Auds rise as Sydney fest revives
Admission has increased nearly 14%
In the wake of fest topper Gayle Lake's moves to revive the 47-year-old event by introducing more flexible ticketing and enlivening programming, admissions have increased nearly 14% to 91,000, and Sydney has started to attract the younger audiences more commonly seen at fests in Melbourne and Brisbane, which opens its ninth session on July 27.
The Sydney Fest bowed June 9 with raves for Jonathan Teplitzky's "Better Than Sex," a hot overseas seller for backers France Distribution and Sydney's FTO, and closed a fortnight later with Stephen Frear's "High Fidelity."
But some longtime fest subscribers, who buy passes to the entire event, grumbled that fest's turnaround came at their expense as passes no longer entitle them to all venues and scheduling changes reduced the number of films they could attend.
"We always knew change was going to be difficult for people, but the festival has been subsidizing subscriptions for the last nine years," Lake told reporters. "We can't afford to do that any more."
Audiences at main venue the State Theater voted Jan Hrebejk's "Cosy Dens," Zhang Yang's "Shower" and Majid Majidi's "The Colour of Paradise" as their favorite features.
Docu nods went to Tom Zubrycki's "The Diplomat" (a film on East Timor activist Hose Ramos Horta skedded for a special Gotham screening at the U.N. in October) and fellow Oz pieces Trevor Graham's "Tosca" and Andy Nehl's "Buried Country."
Maria Peters' "Little Crumb" and Deborah Hoffman and Frances Reid's "Long Night's Journey Into Day" were voted most popular feature and docu, respectively, at annexed venue the Opera Quays.
