The event screenings concept pioneered in Australia by Rob Connolly’s CinemaPlus with Underground: The Julian Assange Story and Tim Winton’s The Turning is catching on.
Uncharted Waters, a feature-length documentary profiling brilliant but troubled surfer Wayne Lynch, begins a national roll-out on November 15, with Lynch hosting Q&As at most screenings.
Written, directed and produced by Craig Griffin, the docu premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival followed by the Adelaide Film Festival.Distributor Madman Entertainment has booked the film in about 30 cinemas starting in Lorne, Victoria, then Geelong, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Noosa, Hobart, Perth and other cities.
According to the synopsis, “Wayne Lynch burst onto the Australian surfing scene in the 1960s and rode a wave like no one else. He opened up fresh possibilities with a radically new vertical style. He was a champion, a draft dodger, an outsider, a revolutionary, a messiah, an environmentalist, a victim, a wild man, a pauper and an enigma.”
“It will be shown at event screenings in a similar approach to The Turning and Storm Surfers,” says Griffin, who produced Mark Hartley’s Not Quite Hollywood: the wild, untold story of Ozploitation! “We are pretty much following that model – which obviously Madman have had a lot of success doing.”
Griffin is negotiating a deal with an international sales agent and is confident it will be acquired by distributors in the US, France, Germany, South Africa, Japan and Brazil, given their large surfing populations.
He produced Such Is Life – The Troubled Times of Ben Cousins for the Seven Network and executive produced First Love, director Claire Gorman’s docu about three girls from Phillip Island who went to Hawaii to pursue their dreams of becoming pro surfers.
Director Luke Walker has been hosting Q&A sessions around Australia for his documentary Lasseter's Bones, the saga of gold prospector Harold Lasseter whose body was found after perishing in the Central Australian deserts in 1930.
Producer Steve Jaggi staged event screenings around Australia for teen drama Circle of Lies with director Matt Cerwen and cast in August/September.