The Rehearsal.
Ghita Loebenstein is gearing up for another year of She Speaks First, the female-focused film series she founded in 2015.
The series, in which screenings of films made by women are followed by conversations about the space women occupy in cinema, most recently presented Athina Rachel Tsangari's Chevalier at Melbourne's Australian Centre for the Moving Image last October.
This Wednesday, She Speaks First returns to ACMI with a screening of New Zealand feature The Rehearsal, directed by Alison Maclean.
Afterwards, Maclean will appear via video-link from LA to talk about her film. Kim Krejus, artistic director of 16th Street Actors Studio, will also join the conversation.
The Rehearsal is adapted from the novel by Booker Prize–winning Kiwi author Eleanor Catton (The Luminaries). Variety described the film, which premiered last year at TIFF, as "like Fame redone as a good movie".
James Rolleston (Boy, The Dark Horse) plays Stanley, a shy drama student who exploits a female student for a school project.
An Angel at My Table's Kerry Fox's plays Stanley's teacher: "More J.K. Simmons in Whiplash than Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, she’s the kind of passionate instructor whose intense methods inspire greatness and devastation in equal measure," according to Indiewire.
In the seventeen years between her last feature (1999's Jesus’ Son) and this one, the Canada-born, NZ-raised Maclean has worked prolifically in TV, directing episodes of Sex and the City, The Tudors, Homicide: Life on the Street, The L Word and Gossip Girl.
She Speaks First – The Rehearsal
Wed 18 Jan, 6.20pm, ACMI
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http://www.greygardensprojects.com/
Book tickets here.