CLICK TO ENLARGESunday, October 14, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
INSIDE FILM MEDIA LAUNCH PHOTOS
Inside Film nominees, hosts and industry including John L Simpson of TITAN VIEW distribution waving an arm for The Jammed's six nominations
Best actress Nominee Veronica Sywak with Inside Film's Rachael Turk & Clare Sawyer
Jammed stars, Veronica Sywak & Masa Yamaguchi
VERONICA SYWAK NOMINATED FOR BEST ACTRESS
Garry Maddox Film WriterOctober 11, 2007
Veronica Sywak choked back tears after being nominated for a best actress award among the international stars Brenda Blethyn and Joan Chen yesterday.
The recognition came after a tough period in which the little-known star of the low-budget drama The Jammed stayed on friends' couches between jobs.
"My brain has short-circuited," said Sywak after the announcement. "I was sleeping in my car, like, 2½ - three months ago."
After a series of mostly guest roles on television, the 25-year-old shines in the director Dee McLachlan's tough film about the sex slave trade. But even after finishing a difficult shoot in Melbourne, Sywak had to learn some lessons about survival in Sydney.
"The trick, if you sleep in your car, is to stay up all night and go to internet cafes," she said. "If you sleep in your car at night, you fear that someone is going to break in. Then, during the day, you go somewhere like Centennial Park and just hang out and doze in the sun."
Sywak is up against Blethyn, who plays a comic in Clubland, and Chen, who was a Chinese nightclub singer in The Home Song Stories, at the Inside Film Awards next month.
The self-styled people's choice prizes - rival to the Australian Film Institute Awards - has given The Home Song Stories nine nominations, ahead of The Jammed with six and the comic refugee tale Lucky Miles and the moody thriller Noise with five.
Surprisingly overlooked were the Oscar-winning animation Happy Feet and the immigrant drama Romulus, My Father.
The Jammed was headed for a brief cinema run before a DVD release, until it attracted rave reviews. It has now run for nine weeks and taken $330,000.
"We had so many doors kicked in our faces," Sywak said.
Veronica Sywak choked back tears after being nominated for a best actress award among the international stars Brenda Blethyn and Joan Chen yesterday.
The recognition came after a tough period in which the little-known star of the low-budget drama The Jammed stayed on friends' couches between jobs.
"My brain has short-circuited," said Sywak after the announcement. "I was sleeping in my car, like, 2½ - three months ago."
After a series of mostly guest roles on television, the 25-year-old shines in the director Dee McLachlan's tough film about the sex slave trade. But even after finishing a difficult shoot in Melbourne, Sywak had to learn some lessons about survival in Sydney.
"The trick, if you sleep in your car, is to stay up all night and go to internet cafes," she said. "If you sleep in your car at night, you fear that someone is going to break in. Then, during the day, you go somewhere like Centennial Park and just hang out and doze in the sun."
Sywak is up against Blethyn, who plays a comic in Clubland, and Chen, who was a Chinese nightclub singer in The Home Song Stories, at the Inside Film Awards next month.
The self-styled people's choice prizes - rival to the Australian Film Institute Awards - has given The Home Song Stories nine nominations, ahead of The Jammed with six and the comic refugee tale Lucky Miles and the moody thriller Noise with five.
Surprisingly overlooked were the Oscar-winning animation Happy Feet and the immigrant drama Romulus, My Father.
The Jammed was headed for a brief cinema run before a DVD release, until it attracted rave reviews. It has now run for nine weeks and taken $330,000.
"We had so many doors kicked in our faces," Sywak said.
To read full article head over to SMH online: http://www.smh.com.au/news/film/no-place-to-rest-now-one-of-the-best/2007/10/10/1191695990671.html
Sunday, October 7, 2007
THE JAMMED OPENS IN TASMANIA TO BRILLIANT REVIEWS
The Jammed
Date of release: October 2007
Date of Review: Friday, 5 October 2007
Venue: State Cinema-Hobart
In a global film industry where more than half the movies made each year go straight to DVD and then to the bargain bin, the breakout success of Dee McLachlan’s thriller with a heart, The Jammed, is itself a little miracle.The Jammed starts up fast and never lets you go. Essentially it’s not a whodunit but more a howdunit that goes to the dark heart of international sex slavery. It also takes a hard look at Australian bureaucratic attitudes to immigrants – legal and not – and the swelling underground traffic in people and blood that makes a joke of Australia’s fantasy image of itself as the Home of the Fair Go.Edgily shot in a neon lit Melbourne, The Jammed takes no prisoners. However smug – or depressed – you may feel about immigration tactics, detention centres sex slaves and the state of the universe, this stinging movie busts open any sense of I’m All Right, Jack. In fact it’s that last mantra – the real meaning of “mateship” perhaps? – that really gets interrogated here. We follow a young woman, Ashley (an electric Veronica Sywak) who’s bailed up by a bewildered and desperate Chinese woman (Amanda Ma) with the demand that someone – and for some reason she’s chosen Ashley – do something to find her missing daughter! It’s a tangled web that draws Ashley in and leads the movie into the heart of sexual darkness. The fast moving story follows a cruel pilgrim’s progress of three innocent girls: Saskia Burmeister, as the feisty Eastern European survivor, Vanya, Emma Lung is both tough and fragile as Crystal and Sun Park is the tragic Rubi. We rapidly come to care for these girls even as we sense that nothing can save them – least of all the stony faced apparatchiks of immigration and the Federal Police.There’s a wonderfully unlikely villain in Vic Glassman – a rich Toorak businessman greasily, queasily played by Andrew S. Gilbert (normally cast a sadsack) and some lovely stuff in the snooty art gallery of his wife, (Alison Whyte) who after all wouldn’t be the first to subsidise Art with the blood of the innocent. Stephen Frears with Dirty Pretty Things (2004) opened the book on sex trafficking in Europe, but Dee McLachlan has made a film that is its equal, with a zero budget but a story and a whizz-bang style peppered with moments of genuine terror that make The Jammed a truly international as well as a hauntingly human piece of cinema. In another world it would sweep up all the Aussie awards: but that’s what you get for going it alone round here!Dee McLachlan:“I wanted The Jammed to be immediate, fluid, voyeuristic and gritty – powerful, and heavy with contrast and contradiction. I wanted to reveal the dark side of Melbourne that most of us are either unaware of, or would rather not think about, and to ensure the story, the characters, the script and the style were not overworked and certainly not sanitised.In the character Ashley Hudson – I see some of myself – someone essentially wanting to live life undisturbed, un-hassled – just trying to make a living, find a relationship and get through each day. She agrees to pick up Gabby’s friend and that leads her into meeting Sunee. It is Sunee who forces her to make a choice: to help or to walk away. She reluctantly helps – and then she is drawn in wanting to save the girls.And when you save someone – it is not always convenient and clean – as not everyone wants to be saved or to be rescued (they’d prefer to rescue themselves), and this leads to tragic consequences in the film.” (from the Press Kit: Titan View in association with The Picture Tank, 2007)
- Jonathan Dawson
to read more head over to the ABC Hobart website: http://www.abc.net.au/tasmania/stories/s2051177.htm
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
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