‘The Other Lamb’ panel (top) Krista Carpenter, Catherine S. McMullen, (bottom) Chris Deckard, Stephanie Wilcox.
Responding to the COVID-19 crisis, Australians in Film (AiF) is giving existing members two months free membership and extending that offer to new members.
To help members to stay connected and to support each other, the organisation is running a series of online events including sessions with Bloom creator Glen Dolman and Truant Pictures’ Toby Nalbandian and Greg Schmidt.
AiF executive director Peter Ritchie tells IF: “One of AiF’s core values is community. Our strength comes from our members and partners internationally and together we will get through this.
“The staff with the support of the board pivoted very quickly to move our entire programming online. We are having global networking events twice a week with our members in LA and Australia, meditation classes with writer Chris Phillips in Byron Bay and our Hollywood industry sessions with leading international screen professionals.
“This pandemic has hit many people economically and has also isolated many people physically and emotionally, so we are offering two months complimentary online membership to AiF to anyone in the Australian or international screen industry.”
Dolman will take part in conversation on Thursday at 9am AEST with Christiaan Van Vuuren, who appears in the second series of Bloom , which premieres on Stan on Thursday.
The Truant Pictures’ co-founders will discuss their development slate next week. The weekly events program includes the following (Pacific US time):
• Mondays 4pm-5pm, Global coffee catch-up
• Wednesdays 4pm-5pm, Online Hollywood sessions
• Thursdays 4pm-5pm, AiF Global Lifestyle including meditation with Chris Phillips
• Fridays 10am-11am, Good Morning LA coffee break
Last week the AiF hosted a session on Polish director Małgorzata Szumowska’s The Other Lamb, a horror movie scripted by Catherine S. McMullen which premiered in Toronto last year and has just been released in the US on digital platforms by IFC Midnight.
Raffey Cassidy (Vox Lux) plays Selah, a young girl born into an alternative religion known as the Flock, whose members – all women and female children – live in a rural compound cut off from modern society.
Leading them is a messiah-like figure known only as Shepherd (Michiel Huisman). Selah begins to bond with Sarah (Denise Gough), an outcast wife who has grown skeptical of Shepherd’s teachings. But when Selah takes part in a sacred ritual she has a shocking and transformative experience
To join the AiF for free go here.