The full line-up for this year’s Revelation Perth International Film Festival has been released ahead of next month’s event.
Held July 12-16, the 2023 festival will incorporate 17 documentaries and 16 feature films, including previously announced titles Devil’s Peak, Frank and Frank (or The Valley and the Walrus: Ruminations on the Mystery from Soup to Nuts), I Like Movies, Hello Dankness, and Manifesto.
There is also the premiere of Love Me Lex, a Fremantle-shot web series from writer Sanja Katich, about a school teacher that reluctantly takes a dip in the lesbian dating pool and finds there is more than one person vying for her attention.
It is joined by Kenta McGrath and Joseph London’s documentary Sunlight:Yes, and Cathy Henkel’s Show Me the Magic: The Adventures of Don McAlpine, an intimate portrait of a life in film that weaves together footage from the cinematographer’s personal archive. Henkel will also present a masterclass in documentary filmmaking as part of Industrial Revelations.
Festival director Richard Sowada said this year’s program had a strong home-grown flavour.
“From opening with a new work from one of our favourite local filmmakers to premieres of a ton of locally produced short and feature films, this year’s showcase of new indie films demonstrates the blossoming of the sector post-COVID,” he said.
Headlining the international contingent for the festival are Robert Machoian’s The Integrity of Joseph Chambers, which tells of an insurance salesman and family man who wants to acquire the skills to be able to take care of his family in case of an apocalypse; Juan Felipe Zuleta’s Unidentified Objects, a film about an uptight dwarf and his free-spirited, alien-obsessed neighbour who hit the road on a border-defying search for their own place in the universe; Sebastian Mihailescu’s Mammalia, about a man on the brink of losing control who discovers a world of strange rituals and unsettling communities, as the lines between the real and the surreal start to blur; and Daniel Goldhaber’s How to Blow Up Pipeline, an American environmental action-thriller in which a group of brave environmental activists come up with a daring plan to make their voices heard and disrupt an oil pipeline.
The festival will also present a screening of An Untitled and Perfectly Legal Coming of Age Parody Film, a trans coming-of-age comedy where filmmakers cannot legally call the film by its original title due to some outstanding legal issues.
Rounding out the overseas highlights are Anthony Shim’s 90s-set Riceboy Sleeps, which follows a Korean single mother raising her young son in the suburbs who is determined to provide a better life for him than the one she left; Lukas Rinker’s German horror comedy Holy Shit!, in which an architect wakes up from unconsciousness – bloody and squeezed into a portaloo; and Daniel Limmer’s Austrian artistic genre film Enter Mycel.
Audiences can also catch Shinji Higuchi’s Japanese superhero film Shin Ultraman alongside 80s titles Maniac Cop and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.
On the factual side, there is Kirsty MacDonald and Andy MacKinnon’s Duthchas, a celebration of community and culture from the 1960s and ’70s containing previously unseen 8mm archival film; Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s De Humani Coporis Fabrica, which opens the human body to cinema from five hospitals in northern Paris neighbourhoods; Thomas von Steinaecker’s Werner Herzog Radical Dreamer, which reveals extraordinary anecdotes about the iconic director’s filmmaking process; and Anna Hints Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, an Estonian documentary set in the darkness of a smoke sauna, where women share their innermost thoughts, secrets and intimate experiences.
The festival will also host the world premiere of Sean Wilsey’s 9/11 documentary IX XI, for which Wilsey will attend in person. Elsewhere, there will be screenings of Lisa Cortés’ The Space Race; Carey Burtt’s Heavenly Resentments; Susana Aikin, Carlos Aparicio and Jerry Blumenthal’s seven-hour documentary The New Americans; and Chris Kasick’s Citizen Sleuth.
Returning for this year’s festival is the International Family Animation Explosion, a specially curated collection of family-friendly international short animations; Westralia Day, which will showcase locally-made films on Saturday, July 15 at The Backlot; and the Get Your Shorts On! and City Of Vincent Film Projects events for emerging filmmakers on Sunday, July 16.
Find the full line-up here.