FILM TITLE

Focus Country - Australia. The Lonely Spirits Variety Hour

18+

20th March 2023 | 06:30 PM
Stein Auditorium

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Image-Description
Country
Australia
Genre

Absurdist Comedy

Language
English
Duration
77 mins
Director

Platon Theodoris

Festival And Awards

Winner Best Film – Sydney Underground Film Festival; Winner Best Actor – Festival des Antipodes, Saint-Tropez;70th Melbourne International Film Festival ; 25th Perth International Film Festival; NFSA Canberra – Australian Independents Program

Synopsis

An existential mishmash of Spike Milligan and Jacques Tati with an Australian flavour, this is absurdist comedy at its weirdest and most charming.

Neville Umbrellaman is a verbose, velvet-voiced intellectual who hosts a late-night radio show from his parents’ garage. The alter ego of Rabindranath Chakraborty, Umbrellaman is deeply committed to the program, a labour of love and fantastical fancy that masks deeper, more tragic truths. Luckily, he’s got plenty of eccentric guests to help him out, from folk singer Kenneth Wong and Terry the neighbour to French baker Yvette and Chakraborty’s secret crush, Sabrina D’Angelo. But is anybody tuning in?

This adaptation of Nitin Vengurlekar’s lauded stage show of the same name is a rare gem of independent local filmmaking. Starring Vengurlekar as Chakraborty/Umbrellaman – reprising the role he also played onstage – the film builds on the warped whimsy of award-winning director Platon Theodoris’s debut feature Alvin’s Harmonious World of Opposites, enabling him to stake a claim as one of the country’s most distinctive and curious filmmakers. The Lonely Spirits Variety Hour is a hilarious, wonderfully weird delight.

  • Cast

    Alison Bennett, Joyce Edmonds, Nitin Vengurlekar, Peter Gizariotis, Sabrina Chan D'Angelo, Teik-Kim Pok

  • Producer

    Brian Rapsey, Platon Theodoris

  • Screenplay

    Nitin Vengurlekar, Platon Theodoris

  • Cinematography

     Brian Rapsey

     

  • Editing

    Brian Rapsey

  • Sound
  • Music

    Dimitri Vouros, Donald Baldie, Nick Wishart, Peter Theodoris