Školská 28

Meet me at the Mango Tree

Films from India by Brian McKenzie introduced by Marcus Bergner.

Mon, June 18, 2012, 19:00

A five-part documentary in Tamil directed by Australian filmmaker Brian Mckenzie, a winner of Best Documentary Series and Australian Directors’ Guild Award, and produced by Santhana Naidu, Tamil of Malaysian origin, nominated for 2009 official selection for Doco Prize at the Sydney Film Festival 2009.

The music for ‘Meet Me at the Mango Tree’ scored by the Chennai-based duo, Aravind-Shankar with original instruments - mridangam, tabla, flute, violin, guitar, bouzuki and the double bass. Title piece by P.K. Ravi, the nadaswaram vidwan.

introduces Marcus Bergner as continuation of his culinary events at Skolska Gallery inspired by literary and film references.

Khatti Dal and Marsala Chai, plus a simple sweet will be served after the screening

Marcus Bergner recently completed a PhD project that reconsiders experimental film in relation to new approaches to the discipline of art history and with regards to the practice and exhibition of contemporary art. He has worked in a wide variety of different restaurants and kitchens in Australia, Europe and the UK. But the apotheosis or defining moment of his somewhat peripatetic and disparate cooking career occurred when working for a number of years in a traditional French bakery as the “boulanger” or bread-shaper. He is a long-term collaborator and member of the Australian sound poetry and experimental literary group Arf Arf.

Brian McKenzie is one of Australia’s esteemed documentary filmmakers known for his pure observational style and interest in the drama of ordinary life. Since the 1970s, his work has screened in cinemas, on ABC and SBS television. His portrait of alcoholics in “I’ll be home for Christmas” (1984) has been studied in schools across Australia. "On The Waves of the Adriatic" (1991), a portrait of a gang of misfits in suburban Coburg won the grand prix at Cinema du Reel in Paris. He has written and directed feature films (drama) and worked at the ABC overseeing breakthrough programs such as The Bush Mechanics series, Wedding in Ramallah and the evening classics slot, Stranger Than Fiction. In 2008 McKenzie won the Australian Directors Guild Award for Best Direction in Documentary for “Love’s Harvest”, a 4-part series about organic farmers that was hailed by The Age as “visceral and heartbreaking…great Australian stories”.

Artists

• Marcus Bergner

Links

• The Hindu Review - Interview with Brian McKenizie
• Santhana Films