July 1 2009

The 12th Revelation Perth International Film Festival commences tomorrow.  Running from July 2 - 12 and under the curatorial leadership of author Jack Sargeant, the Revelation Film Festival has developed from a range of alternative and independent screen culture activities and experiments to what is regarded as one of Australia's most unique annual screen activities.

Revelation takes place in cinemas, bars and clubs around the country. Revelation is not only about films.  It's about live music, performance, movies and all manner of strange and unusual activity. 

This year's highlights include Tarsem's epic "The Fall", 1920s jazz scored animation "Sita Sings The Blues", a documentary on Wizard Rock - a genre of music inspired by Harry Potter - called "We Are Wizards", the re-release of "Wake In Fright" and documentary "FLicKeR" about the dream machine created by William Burroughs's associate Brion Gysin. 

Revelation maintains its focus on progressive and inspiring works and embraces audiences of all ages, tastes and backgrounds. Like the films it presents, the event maintains an energy and enthusiasm for the industry quite unlike any other film festival in the country.

You can read more about the Festival's activities, buy tickets and see film reviews at the Revelation Film Festival website here.

You can also catch an interview with curator Jack Sargeant on ABC's "At The Movies" here.

July 1 2009

It is a new month.  A new month brings new changes to TradeWesternAustralia.com. 

July's new features include:

• Hot Air Ballooning and Skydiving above the Avon Valley in a new Postcards video experience (pictured);
• The music videos of Tame Impala's "Half Full Glass Of Wine" and Karnivool's "Set Fire To The Hive" on the Multimedia page;
• A new regular weekly update on news from The Americas region each Saturday; as well as
• New events added to this month's Upcoming Events.

Highlights include: 

• Murdoch University's water and waste management experts as part of Environmental Biotechnology CRC have developed a cost-effective and industry effective way to harness bacteria to biodegrade odor causing substances by way of a biofilter.
• The Australian Senate has passed a bipartisan bill that abolishes section 23AG of the Income Tax Assessment Act.  In simple terms, if Australian taxpayers go overseas for between 91 days and two years they will remain liable to pay Australian tax, and the only way out of it will be to produce a certificate from another jurisdiction, a FITO or Foreign Income Tax Offset, to show how much tax was paid over there.
• 17 of the 35 successful applicants for the first round of the state government's new co-funded industry drilling program were gold explorers.  Each applicant will receive up to 50 per cent funding for their direct drilling costs capped at $150,000 to help fund exploration drilling activities in WA's under-explored areas.
• Rio Tinto is forging ahead with its ''mine of the future'' plans and will open its Perth operations centre one month ahead of schedule, a move that will benefit rival BHP Billiton.
• A quiet revolution is taking place all over the Perth metropolitan area. Inconspicuous small bars are opening their doors on laneways and alleys to little fanfare but are welcoming small crowds of loyal customers.
• Harry Watermeier, a student from the University of Indiana is shocked at the attention about his intentions to stage a play titled "The Last Days Of Heath Ledger", which is adapted from a controversial story written by Lisa Taddeo (published in the April 2008 edition of America's Esquire magazine).
• FOX and the Houston Press amongst others have reported that NASA may have found the long-lost original Apollo 11 videotapes, discovered in a university basement in Perth and just in time for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.

Read all the latest news on the left side bar of the home page or on the Past News page.

Picture:  iStockphoto.com, iStockphoto.com, Tourism WA, HeathLedger.com, NASA

June 29 2009

Influential entertainment publication Variety today looked at the changing face of Australia's indigenous feature film making. 

It says that while audiences expect indigenous directors to tell only stories that grapple with indigenous history as an oppressed minority, a new generation of directors is breaking with tradition, telling tales that are more comedic and irreverent.   It refers to the fact that a romance, a musical and a comedy are being released within weeks of each other, which is a significant feat given only four other feature-length films by indigenous Australian directors have ever been released.

"Bran Nue Day Dae" (pictured above), Australia's first indigenous musical, tells the story of a young Aboriginal man, Willie, growing up in the old pearling town of Broome in the 1960s.  It is directed by Rachel Perkins and stars Ernie Dingo and Geoffrey Rush. 

"It owes more to P.J. Hogan's "Muriel's Wedding" and Gillian Armstrong's teen musical "Starstruck" than the usual documentaries about serious issues of land rights and aboriginal deaths in custody", it says.

The world premiere of "Bran Nue Dae" will be on the closing night of the Melbourne Film Festival on August 9 2009.

Australia's first indigenous comedy, "Stone Bros." (pictured below) has been warmly received at its world premiere at the Dungog Film Festival on May 28.

City based Eddie, sets off to reconnect with his blackfella roots by taking a sacred stone back to his hometown. But when wild-boy Charlie forces himself along for the ride, Eddie's spiritual journey takes a sharp turn off-track and becomes a riotous trip through outback Australia as the boys are forced to contend with a self-obsessed Italian rock God, a possessed dog and a host of other eccentric characters along the way. 

Warwick Thornton's outback romance, "Samson and Delilah," which is more stark than romantic, has gained international acclaim and recently collected the Camera d'Or at Cannes.

The whole Variety article can be read here.

Highlights include: 

• Canadian mining company Mega Uranium has unveiled a plan to have indigenous workers making up half of the 250-strong workforce within four to five years at its proposed new uranium mine at Lake Maitland in the Eastern Goldfields.
• Another Canadian, ATW Gold, has completed commissioning and achieved commercial production at its Burnakura mine, in Western Australia.  It said it is now starting work on a planned expansion aimed at increasing production to 50 000 oz/year.
• Newmont Mining has paid about USD 1.1 billion to complete its acquisition of the remaining 33.3% interest in the Boddington gold mine in Western Australia from AngloGold Ashanti Ltd.  Boddington, located about 130 kilometers southeast of Perth is expected to be Australia's largest gold producer once completed, with an expected capital cost of USD 2.6 billion to USD 2.9 billion.
• Nestlé Australia has received approval from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for their proposed acquisition of a selection of Fonterra's ice-cream interests in Australia which includes the Peters brand in Western Australia and Connoisseur brand Australia-wide. 
• Scientists at Murdoch University are a step closer to creating a synthesised dingo urine in aerosol form that, when sprayed on farm boundaries, has been found to deter foxes and kangaroos.
• BHP Billiton is looking at selling its Yabulu nickel project in Queensland and its closed Raventhorpe operation in Western Australia as a package if it can drum up enough interest from potential buyers as the miner steps up plans to exit its nickel laterite obligations.

Read all the latest news on the left side bar of the home page or on the Past News page.

Pictures:  Tourism WA, iStockphoto.com (last three) 

June 26 2009

The New York Times has looked at the role of Government's in leading a region's innovation.  This discussion comes on top of the Obama Administration's appointment of Aneesh Chopra as the new Chief Technology Officer, who speaks of building "innovation platforms" to spur growth as well as a recent high-level discussion on innovation that included innovation-policy practitioners from nine countries: Australia, Brazil, Britain, Chile, Colombia, Finland, India, Norway and Singapore.

"Innovation is a tricky, many-step process by which ideas become products and services - has typically been seen, studied and celebrated at the micro level, as a pursuit for entrepreneurs and clever companies ... But governments are increasingly wading into the innovation game, declaring innovation agendas and appointing senior innovation officials", says the report.

It seems that the impetus for government-lead innovation policy "comes from two fronts: daunting challenges in fields like energy, the environment and health care that require collaboration between the public and private sectors; and shortcomings of traditional economic development and industrial policies."

It reports that Australia provides a good example of focusing on targets of potential advantage.  For example, the government is looking to nurture industries that arise from its harsh climate and a scattered population. So research centers are working to improve strains of drought-resistant wheat and cotton for export as adaptive technologies to cope with climate change. 

The Western Australian Government is much the same.  Recent focus, as has been reported on this site, has included key funding for water, climate change and other scientific research projects as well as providing innovation exporters and investors with access to government programs, financial and human resources across the world. 

You can read the whole New York Times article here.

Pictures:  iStockphoto.com

June 24 2009

As part of this week's G'Day UK events in London, the Western Australian Government is today hosting an event to promote the best of the state's science and technology including its proposed Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Project.

The event will demonstrate both the high standard of science in Western Australia and the UK and what can be achieved through greater collaboration. 

The SKA plan is for a revolutionary next-generation radio telescope 50 to 100 times more sensitive than present day instruments. It will involve an array of several thousand receiver dishes, potentially spread across Australia and even to New Zealand and with a collecting area of one million square meters (as visualized above).

Presentations at the event will be based on the joint work being undertaken in the UK and Australia and the potential discoveries from the SKA with key speakers including Professor Peter Quinn, the Director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Perth; Professor Phil Diamond, Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester; as well as Professor Barry Marshall, Nobel Prize winner for Physiology or Medicine

To RSVP or to seek further information, please contact The Western Australian Government Europe.

For more information on the Western Australian SKA project please visit here.

Picture:  www.ska.gov.au