New releases

UNDERCURRENTS - more international film festivals!

UNDERCURRENTS: meditations on power, a film by Margot Nash has been officially selected to screen (with Margot Nash's feature, VACANT POSSESSION) at the Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea. UNDERCURRENTS also screened recently at the American Documentary and Animation Film Festival, March 27-31, in Palm Springs. The film is a poetic essay documentary about the undercurrents of history playing out in the present: a 'song' for the dark times about repression and resistance.

More Latest News:

• New award for DEATH IN THE CITY
• THE LAST VIOLIN now on DVD and Vimeo on Demand
• The Australian Workers Film Guide has been launched
• New award-winning Ronin release – I WANT TO MAKE A FILM ABOUT WOMEN

CATALOGUE HIGHLIGHTS –

ACROSS THE PLATEAU (2007, directed by Zhang Zeming and Paul Liu) - a personal favourite of the Ronin team. Andrew Pike had met Zhang Zeming in 1986 at the Hong Kong Film Festival when Zhang screened his stunning first feature, SWAN SONG (Juexiang) which Ronin went on to distribute. Zhang and Andrew became good friends and in 2006 Zhang invited Ronin to help produce his new film, a feature-length documentary. I

The film was a multi-layered story superficially about a group of elderly Chinese friends who embark on an epic 3,000km cycling trek across north-west China to Tibet and on to the Everest Base Camp: a good story which gained real depth and emotional traction as a portrait of people who had experienced the Cultural Revolution and decades of privation and who could now celebrate their personal freedom by undertaking adventures like this.

Zhang and his collaborator Paul Liu achieved wonders with the film: it is beautifully made, visually spectacular, emotionally engaging and lyrical. Andrew Pike and his daughter, Harriet Pike, found the finance (miraculously) and hosted the post-production in Canberra with Scott Wombey (later to marry Harriet) working with Zhang on the editing.

There's a lot of family history in the back-story for Ronin, and it remains a film of which we are immensely proud and love watching, and even more importantly, love showing to people. It's available from Ronin Films on DVD or as a digital file.