Samson and Delilah

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now embraced by world_________________________






Australian film wins Cannes first film prize

Stephanie Bunbury in Cannes
May 25, 2009 - 6:12AM

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Winner ... Warwick Thornton.
Photo: Getty Images

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Charlotte Gainsbourg, Michael Haenke and a tearful Warwick Thornton receive their awards.

• Video: First-time Aboriginal filmmaker wins at Cannes
• Haneke's The White Ribbon wins Palme d'Or
• Cannes awards list

Aboriginal director Warwick Thornton's powerful Samson And Delilah, a tale of troubled young love in Alice Springs, was today awarded the prize for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival.
"Thank you for believing in our first-born baby," Thornton said as he accepted the award. "I don't don't know what to say. Viva Cannes, viva le cinema."
Samson And Delilah competed against 25 other films dotted around all the festival's sections to win the prize known as the Camera d'Or.
It was a popular win among the world's film press, among whom word-of-mouth over the course of the festival had taken the film from obscurity to the prize's top contender.
The chairman of the Camera d'Or jury, French-Moroccan actor Roschdy Zem, said he saw the film at the beginning of the festival and was very impressed by it.
"We watched many marvellous movies and I kept waiting for something to chase it away, but nothing did," he said.
Zem particularly praised the unknown actors Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson, both 14 at the time of filming, for their depiction of "a great love story, almost without words".
Thornton said the pair had yet to hear the good news.
"It's 4am in Alice Springs where the actors come from and neither Marissa nor Rowan have phones," he said.
"Someone will have to drive to their community, knock on the door and say: 'We won!' "
Thornton said his life had been a Cinderella story, with cinema as his fairy godmother.
"I grew up on the streets of Alice Springs, getting into trouble with the police. I needed direction and somehow I found cinema, or cinema found that direction for me. It saved my life."
He felt, however, that the Camera d'Or marked the beginning of his story rather than its culmination.
"I've got so many more stories to tell, what I believe are beautiful stories, that are fires inside me that I desperately need to show the world."
It was not initially easy, he said, to find the beauty in a story of dereliction.
"The original story came out of anger at the neglect of our children, not only by the government and wider society, but even by parents. So it came from a dark place. I had to think about it for a year in order to present something that wasn't angry, where people could just go on a journey
with these children."
But once he began writing everything went remarkably smoothly. He wrote the script in 14 days, finished both shooting and editing early. He even found he had more money than he wanted, a problem probably no other filmmaker in Cannes has ever experienced.

"We had to cap the budget," said Thornton. "For every million dollars, you add three more executive producers and we had to say 'No, we don't need that.'
"We made it for $1.6 million. We only needed that amount of money. It was one of those beautiful experiences in cinema where all the stars aligned at the right time."
He patted his award, a large representation of a projector.
"Obviously the stars aligned at the right time," he said. "Nothing went wrong."



and a lot went right--still haunted by the images and performances...a truly great film.

[pedro skychaser]

Samson and Delilah
<LI class=mail>Sandra Hall, reviewer
May 7, 2009


Australia's Cannes winner is a tender film, and an honest one, but it's tough going.
Marissa Gibson as Delilah and Rowan McNamara as Samson.


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Samson And Delilah wins at Cannes
Aboriginal director Warwick Thornton wins Camera d'Or prize for first film at Cannes Festial.

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• Australian film wins Cannes first film prize
• Haneke's The White Ribbon wins Palme d'Or
• Cannes awards list

GenreDramaRun Time101 minutesRatedMA 15+CountryAustraliaDirectorWarwick ThorntonRatingstars-3half

• VIDEO: Samson And Delilah trailer

OVERLAID with the jaunty sounds of Charley Pride singing Sunshiny Day, the opening scene of the indigenous filmmaker Warwick Thornton's Samson And Delilah has a lambent beauty.
As 15-year-old Samson (Rowan McNamara) wakes, the morning light strikes his bed as if bestowing a benediction.
Then he sits up and with a groggy air of purpose, he fractures the image by picking up a can from the floor and holding it to his nose to take a long, deep breath. He's a petrol sniffer, and for the next few minutes we're taken through the hazy patterns of his day, which is spent languidly kicking the dust around the tiny Aboriginal settlement where he lives in the Central Australian desert.
In this place of magnificent skies and endless red plains, Samson and most of the others in his community behave as if trapped in a belljar and starved of the oxygen necessary to make things happen. Only 16-year-old Delilah (Marissa Gibson) and her grandmother, Nana (Mitjili Gibson), seem content. Nana is the community's painter and her work is spirited away to the city by a dubious character who snaps up each painting as soon as it's finished. And as her grandmother paints, Delilah watches and sometimes helps, entranced both by the purity of the pigment and her grandmother's pleasure in the work she does. Nana's happiness is infectious and as Samson silently studies these two from the sidelines, he decides that he loves Delilah and wants her for his girlfriend.
It's a demanding film, so determined to replicate the listless rhythm which governs the community's routines that you feel a need to slow your pulse beat to adapt to it. Thornton, who shot the film himself, has the action unfold in long takes which give you plenty of time to dwell on the desert vastness. But there are bursts of restless energy, too. Samson's brother has a garage band which Samson is banned from joining because of his fondness for snatching up the guitar and thrashing it tunelessly at full volume. So he resorts to his boom box, while Delilah finds her refuge in the car, where she sits at night, listening to Latin music.
Samson doesn't speak, for reasons which are revealed much later in the film, and nobody else says much either. His courtship of Delilah is conducted in gently humorous pantomime. He carries his bed roll from his brother's house and lays it beside hers. She tosses it back at him, and so it goes until he eventually wins her trust. It's a beguiling sequence but at other times you long for the release of tension to be had from simple conversation. Despite the dusty realism of the setting, the story's tongue-tied nature gives it the deliberate feel of a fable, as if stillness were being used as a blunt instrument to impose meaning.

The pace quickens after Nana dies in her sleep. Despite the conscientiousness with which Delilah has cared for her, she's accused of negligence and beaten brutally with sticks by the other women in the community. Profoundly stirred by her injuries, Samson steals a van and takes her off to Alice Springs, where things inevitably get a lot worse before they get any better.
The few moments of cheerfulness come courtesy of Gonzo, a homeless man the teenagers meet while sleeping rough under a bridge on the town's edge. He's played by Thornton's brother, Scott, and his breezy if bumbling attempts to make friends with the couple add a bracing shot of spontaneity.
Thornton has said that he sees the film primarily as a love story and he's certainly endowed the relationship between the teenagers with great poignancy. McNamara, 14 when the film was shot, has a coltish grace and Gibson projects a remarkably mature sense of resilience. As well, Thornton has a real gift for the transcendent image. The film's opening is one example. Another has Delilah helping the spaced-out Samson to bathe himself - a scene filled with intimations of baptism and regeneration.
Yet like all stories about addiction, this one is ultimately dispiriting. Despite the flash of hope that Thornton gives you at the end, he isn't in the business of providing the kind of cathartic release you get from more conventional storytellers. He takes you into another world, but finds no obligation to make you comfortable there. He's made a tender film, and an honest one, but it's tough going.

?

[pedro skychaser]

COOLEST FILMMAKER IN OZ (MOVE OVER BAZ)




How learning became a dreaming Warwick Thornton … with a painting by Jackie Kurltjunyintja Giles Tjapaltjarri at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
Photo: Ben Rushton






August 29, 2009

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The winner of Australia's biggest writing award taught himself as he penned an outstanding film script, writes Garry Maddox.
He left school at 14 barely able to write. As a talented cinematographer, he struggled to pen a script for a short film when ''the work wasn't coming fast enough to pay the rent and fill the fridge''.
He wrote his first feature film longhand because he didn't know how to ''switch a bloody computer on''.
But the Aboriginal filmmaker Warwick Thornton has overcome all those obstacles to win the year's biggest award from the Australian Writers' Guild. His script for the indigenous romance Samson and Delilah - full of potent non-verbal moments between two vulnerable teenagers - won the Major Awgie and Best Original Screenplay at last night's Awgie Awards in Pyrmont.
''I could read but to actually write something was an incredibly rude shock,'' he says of his first script. ''I didn't know how to write. Everything was phonetic and I couldn't spell. I was writing … but I was too embarrassed to show anybody.''
A decade on, Thornton is being feted as the writer, director and cinematographer of Samson and Delilah. He won the Camera d'Or at Cannes for the film, the year's most successful Australian cinema release, which is off to the Toronto International Film Festival next month.
Writing the script was a learning experience for the Alice Springs filmmaker.
''Each draft was another year of school in a sense - learning how to bloody spell,'' he says.
After an upbringing that had much in common with the film's central characters, Thornton has enjoyed even being nominated for a writing award. ''It's gorgeous, isn't it? It's something that I actually had to overcome.''



can't recommend this film highly enough---a bruising love story set in outback

oh yes "only love will survive"


(here is the trailer set to music of THE BLUE NILE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skBzd_9scZI )

[pedro skychaser]

NOW IN RUNNING FOR "BEST FOREIGN" FILM --OSCARS 2010





Samson & Delilah film review: a seminal indigenous drama of gradual and menacing beauty

May 6, 2009 – 7:35 am, by Luke Buckmaster
Samson & Delilah, the Cannes-selected breakthrough feature of writer/director Warwick Thornton, follows the gradual partnership of two indigenous teenagers who live in a small impoverished rural community outside Alice Springs. It is a film of slow and menacing beauty, phlegmatically unravelled with painfully authentic performances delivered in front of vast and vacuous backdrops soaked up like a sponge by Thornton’s wide and searching lens.
It is a stunning achievement and one of the least sentimental boy-meets-girl films you will ever see, period. The first shot is a harbinger of things to come – a long and steady take depicting Samson’s (Rowan McNamara) morning ritual of waking up, reaching for his trusty tin and taking a long, deep whiff of petrol. On this uneasy note the film’s harsh but seductive mood begins.
In opening scenes romantic chemistry between 15-year-old Samson and 16-year-old Delilah (Marissa Gibson) consists largely of the characters throwing rocks at each other, but give it time and a close affinity between themselves and the audience develops. Samson lives near a trio of reticent musicians who endlessly rehearse a handful of simple riffs, more out of routine than pleasure, and Delilah cares for her elderly grandmother – a wizened, giggly old gal who spots romance well before it blossoms. Our protagonists seem drawn to each other organically, their partnership presented as a natural progression born more of necessity than desire. Eventually they will leave their isolated community and venture to the big smoke, and this is when the film really takes off, the second half carrying a heaviness built on top of the commonplace details illustrated in the first.
Beautiful, heartbreaking and technically proficient, Samson & Delilah is the cinematic event many Australians have waited decades to see: an extraordinarily powerful picture that frames the debate about Aboriginal living standards in an intensely personal context, without loading up on cheap shocks or political didacticism. It is easily comparable to the best films made about indigenous Australians including Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout and Fred Schepisi’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Both of those films were made by white fellas in the 70’s. A film as personal as Samson & Delilah, which seems to spring from the grass roots of contemporary Aboriginal society, needed to come from the inside and Warwick Thornton was the man to do it.
The title characters build enormous screen presence despite very little dialogue and few moments of overt emotion; they are stolid personalities the audience come to understand over time. Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson appear naturalistic and effortless and their acting unconsciously nuanced. Together they create the kind of painfully real performances that has critics, for a good reason, choking themselves on superlatives. In addition the handful of ensemble cast are a memorable bunch: Delilah’s Grandma and a friendly hobo who goes by the name of Gonzo bring a little humour and light to the story, though some audiences will inevitably describe it as too much of a downer.
2009 has already been a particularly strong year for Australian films, with titles such as Mary and Max, The Combination and My Year Without Sex more than satisfying the itch for local talent. A few more years like this and critics start using crazy words to express their elation – words like ‘new wave’ and ‘renaissance.’ We can only hope.
Samson & Delilah’s Australian theatrical release date: May 7, 2009

[pedro skychaser]

S+D up for more gongs---still possibly greatest oz film ever...holding up well.....................................going to toronto film festival...nominated for best foreign oscar >>>>>>>>>>>>>


Samson and Delilah, Balibo top IF list

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• Inside Film Awards nominations

October 12, 2009 - 3:19PM


Samson And Delilah and Balibo will lead the charge at this year's Inside Film (IF) Awards.
The two films received the highest number of nominations, at eight and seven respectively, including Best Feature Film.
Samson And Delilah stars Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson were recognised in the Best Actor and Actress categories, as well as Balibo's Anthony LaPaglia.
Australia picked up just two nominations, for Best Sound and Best Production Design.
Australia's David Wenham was on hand at the nominations announcement in Sydney on Monday morning presenting alongside director Jeremy Sims and Packed To The Rafters actress Jessica McNamee.
Beautiful Kate, Blessed and Mary And Max were also among the films to pick up several nominations.
Cedar Boys got the nod in just one category - Best Feature Film.
The IF Awards will be handed out at Sydney's Luna Park on November 18.

[pedro skychaser]

Samson & Delilah scoops IF awards Garry Maddox
November 19, 2009


Samson and Delilah actor Rowan McNamara (left) and director Warwick Thornton arrive at the 2009 IF (Inside Film) Awards at Luna Park.


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YOUNG Aboriginal actors Marissa Gibson and Rowan McNamara won best actress and actor at the first round of the country's film awards in Sydney last night for their roles in Samson & Delilah.
They beat such well-known names as Frances O'Connor (nominated for Blessed), Sasha Horler (My Year without Sex), Hugo Weaving (Last Ride) and Anthony La Paglia (Balibo).
The IF Awards, at Luna Park, were a triumph for Samson & Delilah, which won six prizes including best film for producers Warwick Thornton and Kath Shelper.
Thornton, who won the Camera d'Or at Cannes, also collected the best director, script and music prizes.
The film, which screens on ABC TV on Sunday, is also Australia's nominee for the best foreign language film at the Oscars.
The IF living legend award went to the director of Moulin Rouge and Australia, Baz Luhrmann. Australia also won the prize for box office achievement.
Balibo, which had seven nominations, won best sound and editing, while Rachel Ward's intense drama Beautiful Kate collected best cinematography and Adam Elliot's animated Mary & Max won best production design.


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IF YOU ONLY SEE ONE AUSTRALIAN FILM IN YOUR LIFE

MAKE SURE IT IS "SAMSON+DELILAH"

A FILM ABOUT FAMILY,LOVE+SURVIVAL



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[pedro skychaser]

Never mind the box office, feel their breadth Samson and Delilah's young stars, Rowan McNamara (Samson) and Marissa Gibson (Delilah).
Photo: Mark Rogers

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• AFI Awards major nominations

December 9, 2009

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Garry Maddox previews the Australian Film Institute awards.
How's this for a scenario? A shy Aboriginal teenager from the remote Northern Territory who has never acted before - and says only one stuttered word in his first film - wins best actor at the premier film awards in Australia.
Or even more unlikely: three first-time Aboriginal actors - possibly four - win the top acting prizes. And an Aboriginal filmmaker who left school at 14, barely able to write before entering the film industry as a cinematographer, wins best director and best original screenplay.
History - in the form of an Aboriginal sweep of the major categories - is one of the dramatic and heartening possibilities at the strongest Australian Film Institute awards since 2001.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Major awards nominations list
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In a change this year, an undisclosed number of industry professionals have voted for best film instead of the 5000-odd AFI members. With Baz Luhrmann's epic Australia bizarrely overlooked in an expanded best film list, there will be support for Balibo, about the murders of five newsmen in East Timor in the 1970s, and Mao's Last Dancer, the box-office hit about the life of the ballet dancer Li Cunxin.
But Samson & Delilah, the year's most potent and successfully realised film, is almost assured of winning yet more prizes for writer-director Warwick Thornton. It is favourite for best film and direction, while its teenage stars Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson, who won best actor and actress for playing the struggling young lovers at the Inside Film Awards last month, are a good chance of triumphing again.

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BTW that orangey-brown flannelette shirt that samson is wearing is officially AN ICON right now!

i must have one!

[pedro skychaser]

THE TRAIN JUST KEEPS ON A'ROLLIN'_________________



Samson & Delilah: little film, big wraps The stars of Samson & Delilah, including Warwick Thornton, second from left, and Marissa Gibson, second from right.
Photo: Luis Enrique Ascui


Rachel Browne
December 13, 2009


SAMSON & DELILAH triumphed at the Australian Film Industry Awards in Melbourne last night, winning best film, best direction and best original screenplay for writer-director Warwick Thornton.
The $1.6 million film explores the problems facing remote Aboriginal communities. Its stars, Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson, both 14 at the time of filming, won the AFI young actor award.

[pedro skychaser]

From AFI Awards to Oscars for Samson & Delila
December 14, 2009 - 12:00AM




Director Warwick Thornton & producer Kath Shelper.
Photo: Edwina Pickles

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The day after celebrating Samson & Delilah's AFI Awards glory, director Warwick Thornton has already set his sights on his next prize - a possible Oscar for the film.
Samson & Delilah took home a total of seven trophies over the two nights of the Australian Film Institute (AFI) awards, including best film, best direction, best original screenplay, best cinematography, best sound and the AFI members' choice award.
There was also recognition for the film's two stars, untrained actors Marissa Gibson and Rowan McNamara, who were joint winners of the AFI young actor award.
Thornton was on a plane bound for the US first thing on Sunday morning to begin his Academy Awards campaign.
Samson & Delilah has been selected as Australia's official entry in the best foreign language film category at the 2010 Academy Awards, with nominations to be announced in February.
"I fly to LA to start doing all the screenings for the voters," Thornton said.
"That's the big pie in the sky that one, but we've kind of done everything else we've wanted, so let's try for that one.
"No such thing as a free lunch for Warwick Thornton, I've just got to work."
Thornton said he never imagined his film about two struggling teenage lovers, which was made for just $1.6 million, would have this kind of success.
"You wish your film has this kind of life but you never know, and then when it happens you're just so happy," Thornton said.
The director is also looking ahead to his next project, based on an idea he has had for as long as the one for Samson & Delilah.
"It's a period film, it's set in the wheat belt, it's in an orphanage/monastery run by a couple of Benedictine monks," he said.
"I believe it's an incredibly amazingly fantastic story that you'll want to seriously watch.
"I just haven't written it very well ... so another year of drafts and then 2011 we'll hopefully have a new film."

[pedro skychaser]

oooo S+D missed out on golden globe nom ouch!




______________________________________________
www.pedro-tv.com

[Lulu Mortice]

I hope there's a bit more action and dialogue in his next film.

[pedro skychaser]

Originally Posted by Lulu Mortice

I hope there's a bit more action and dialogue in his next film.

err S+D had plenty of action///kidnapping/car accidents/bashing the reggae playing dude with a piece of mulga wood.............................................h ehehehhee

next film Thornton reports will be about an outback benedictine mission feat. (hopefully) wild-eyed defrocked priests///dusky beauties and proto-punk country music!!!

ole!


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Lulu Mortice]

S& D was SO SLOW!! And even the kidnapping had no emotional resonance because of the lack of response from S. I have to say, it's the most overrated Australian film ever.

There, I've said it. At last.

Jeddah did it all so much better 50 year ago. What has happened to Australian films since then?

[pedro skychaser]

[QUOTE=Lulu Mortice;1894706]

S& D was SO SLOW!! And even the kidnapping had no emotional resonance because of the lack of response from S.

QUOTE]

.a lack of response because of S's petrol-sniffing haze + adolescent powerlessness living in a foreign community...completely in character and tragedy presented as numb struggle ie...no obvious grandstanding or vengeance or sentiment....

the reason the whole film is affecting+powerful

if you ever only see 1 australian film in your life , make sure it is SAMSON + DELILAH



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www.pedro-tv.com

[Lulu Mortice]

[QUOTE=pedro skychaser;1895199]

Originally Posted by Lulu Mortice

S& D was SO SLOW!! And even the kidnapping had no emotional resonance because of the lack of response from S.

QUOTE]

.a lack of response because of S's petrol-sniffing haze + adolescent powerlessness living in a foreign community...completely in character and tragedy presented as numb struggle ie...no obvious grandstanding or vengeance or sentiment....

the reason the whole film is affecting+powerful

if you ever only see 1 australian film in your life , make sure it is SAMSON + DELILAH



______________________________________________


www.pedro-tv.com

We'll just have to disagree on this one Ped.

I thought the film was extremely flawed to be quite honest, poorly scripted and directed with poor pacing throughout. And as it was not a documentary, it required more dramatic action. I don't think it will be accepted into the Oscars for these reasons. It has already been rejected for the Golden Globes, and rightly too, however worthy the subject matter.

And remember, it was their own comunity that caused their problems and made them run away - where was the sense of responsibility for looking after their own young people? Simply not there.

[True Believer]

You wanna see a good movie?

AVATAR!

[Lulu Mortice]

Originally Posted by True Believer

You wanna see a good movie?

AVATAR!

Ped's seen it, I'm going to. Then we'll all be friends again!

[pedro skychaser]

Samson and Delilah makes Oscar short list

January 21, 2010 - 10:39AM


Samson and Delilah tells the 'survival love story' of two 14-year-olds living in a remote Aboriginal community.
Photo: Supplied



Alice Springs filmmaker Warwick Thornton and his award-winning drama Samson and Delilah have taken a major leap toward Oscar glory.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced Samson and Delilah made the short list for the best foreign language Oscar.
The Academy slashed its list of foreign language film entries from 65 to nine yesterday, with Samson and Delilah one of the survivors.
Thornton and Samson and Delilah have to clear one final barrier to make it to 82nd Academy Awards ceremony at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre on March 7.
A "specially invited committee" will cut the nine remaining films to five on January 31.
The five survivors will be the nominees and compete for the Oscar.
"The short list will be winnowed down to the five nominees by specially invited committees in New York and Los Angeles," the Academy announced.
"They will spend Friday, January 29, through Sunday, January 31, viewing three films each day and then casting their ballots."
The final five nominees will be announced with all other categories at the Academy's nomination ceremony in Beverly Hills on February 2.
Samson and Delilah stars first-time actors Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson and tells the "survival love story" of two 14-year-olds living in a remote Aboriginal community who steal a car and drive to Alice Springs.
Actors speak in English and Warlpiri
Thornton has picked up awards for Samson and Delilah across the globe, including the Camera d'Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and eight Australian Film Institute Awards, including best picture, director, original screenplay and cinematography.
The eight other films on the Academy foreign language short-list are: El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina); The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner (Bulgaria); Un Prophete (France); The White Ribbon (Germany); Ajami (Israel); Kelin (Kazakhstan); Winter in Wartime (The Netherlands); and The Milk of Sorrow (Peru).
The White Ribbon is the frontrunner after claiming the foreign language Golden Globe on the weekend.
AAP