Press Release from NFSA
The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) is proud to support the 2011 Sydney Film Festival by providing a brand new print of the 1991 film Dingo. Twenty years have passed since Rolf de Heer’s Dingo – starring Colin Friels and Miles Davis in his only feature film role – first hit the screens, winning Best Music and Sound at the 1991 AFI Awards.
The NFSA is delighted to confirm the film’s Director, Rolf de Heer, will introduce the new preservation print at its premier screening at 2.00pm on Saturday 18 June at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The brand new print of Dingo is a product of the Deluxe/Kodak preservation project which has run over the past 10 years. The NFSA, along with its partners Deluxe Sydney and Kodak Australasia, has a dedicated strategy in place to preserve, and make available to contemporary audiences, new prints of significant Australian colour feature films made in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. Film repair and preservation work is only possible at specialist film laboratories, such as those at the NFSA and Deluxe Sydney.
The partnership encompasses the preservation of 75 Australian feature films.
“It’s a pleasure to once again be involved with the vibrant and highly successful Sydney Film Festival,” said Acting CEO Ann Landrigan. “The Festival creates yet another opportunity for Australian classics to be taken out of the vaults and onto the screen. And it is only through initiatives like the Deluxe/Kodak preservation project that contemporary audiences have the opportunity to view Australian classics – such as Dingo – the same way people did when the film was first released – pure quality film projected in the way it was originally intended.”
Dingo is set in the late ‘60s, in an Australian outback town. Young John Anderson (Colin Friels) is captivated by jazz musician Billy Cross (Davis) and his band when they perform on the local airstrip after their plane is diverted. Years later, now a family man and making a meagre living tracking dingos and playing trumpet in a local band, John still dreams of joining Billy in Paris.
Miles Davis suggested to Rolf de Heer that he co-write the film’s rippling score with legendary film composer Michel Legrand, aiming to “rediscover the sound, the ambience of my cool period, the style of Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain and Milestones.”
Dingo is rated PG screening at the Art Gallery of NSW on Saturday 18 June at 2.00pm.
Tickets can be purchased online at www.sff.org.au, via the Box Office (02 9690 5390) or over the counter at Dendy Opera Quays (10am-5pm).