By Zona Marie Tan
Lantana actress Kerry Armstrong will be flying in from Melbourne, along with American director Aloura Charles from LA, to attend opening night and the Australian premiere screening of Reservations on Wednesday October 1.
The film follows the life of seven strangers in one night at a New York city hotel who reach out and connect. On the roof of a Manhattan hotel, Helen (Armstrong), a flight attendant with cancer, who meets Marc, a depressed actor. Below, Marketa, a young Czech woman connects with Marlene, a Cuban maid as they struggle to communicate. Brendan, 7, mistakenly dials a sex hotline, connecting with a lonely operator and Hallie, a runaway shares an encounter with a Danish businessman, neither will forget. Drifting through the hotel we find these strangers connecting in moments of compassion and hope.
The first-time feature director Aloura Charles, who previously worked as an assistant to Martin Scorsese on the film Gangs of New York, will be available for a Q&A after the premiere screening.
Also screening at the WOW film festival is the world premiere of Shooting Women, an American documentary about women cinematographers. Australian cinematographers, Erika Addis and Jan Kenny ACS, will introduce the film presentation held at the Chauvel on Thursday October 2
WOW is a short film festival that promotes the talents of women in key creative roles in the film industry in Australia and internationally, and it will be screening films with the thematic perspective of “Seeing The World Through The Eyes Of Women”.
For more information, visit www.nsw.wift.org/wow