50 Years of Filmmaking: Tricks I’ve Learnt
A masterclass with Phillip Noyce
Tickets here / $22 (limited seating)
Saturday, March 2nd
3:00-4:30pm Masterclass / 4:30- 5:30pm Reception
Hosted at The Australian Embassy
Join award winning Australian Filmmaker Phillip Noyce (bio below) for a Masterclass and Conversation on the art and craft of film-making. He has directed over 19 films including: Clear and Present Danger, Newsfront, The Quiet American, Salt, The Saint, among many many others. Join us for an up close and personal masterclass as he traces his enormously successful career spanning over fifty years and gives you some insider tips about the film industry. A highly engaging speaker, Phillip Noyce will make this event one to remember. You name will be at the door. ID is required for entrance into the Embassy.
The Films of Phillip Noyce: A Retrospective
Dead Calm
Friday, March 1st
9:30pm – 11:30pm
At The Miracle Theater
Key Cast: Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman, Billy Zane
Australia / 1989 / 96 mins
Q&A with Director Phillip Noyce
Dead Calm is a 1989 Australian psychological thriller film based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Williams. It was filmed around the Great Barrier Reef with cinematography by Dean Semler and a score composed by Graeme Revell. The plot focuses on a married couple (Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill) who are sailing a yacht through the Pacific. They encounter a damaged boat and a distraught man (Zane). Their efforts to help and investigate lead both the husband and wife into danger. This is the film that launched Nicole Kidman’s career. Director Phillip Noyce will take part in a discussion with the audience after the film.
Newsfront
Saturday, March 2nd
7:30pm – 9:50pm
At the Miracle Theater
Key Cast: Bill Hunter, Gerard Kennedy, Wendy Hughes.
Australia / 1978 / 110 mins
Q&A with Director Phillip Noyce
In post war Australia the men and women of Cinetone struggle to produce the weekly news reels for the movie going public. Set between the years 1948 and 1956, when television was introduced to Australia, the film tracks the destinies of two brothers, their adventures and misadventures placed in the context of sweeping social and political changes in their native Australia as well as natural disasters. Director Phillip Noyce will take part in a discussion with the audience after the film and at a post-screening party.
The Quiet American
Saturday, March 2nd
9:50pm – 11:50pm
At The Miracle Theater
Key Cast: Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Thi Hai Yen Do
USA / 2002 / 101 mins
Q&A with Director Phillip Noyce
A 2002 film adaptation of Graham Greene’s bestselling novel set in Vietnam, The Quiet American. In contrast to the earlier 1958 film version, Noyce depicted Greene’s original ending and treatment of the principal American character, Pyle. Like the novel, the film illustrates Pyle’s moral culpability in arranging terrorist actions aimed at the French colonial government and the Viet Minh. Going beyond Greene’s original work, the film used a montage ending with superimposed images of American soldiers from the intervening decades of the Vietnam War. Director Phillip Noyce will take part in a discussion with the audience before the film.
Phillip Noyce Bio
Phillip Noyce was born in Griffith, New South Wales, attended high school at Barker College, Sydney, and began making short films at the age of 18. A poster for a screening of “underground” films had captured his imagination and the 16 US and Australian experimental films ignited something else. Four months later he shot his first short film, the 15 minute “Better To Reign In Hell” financed by selling roles to his friends.
In 1969, Noyce became the manager of The Sydney Filmmaker’s Co-op, a collective of short filmmakers. With Jan Chapman, he ran the Filmmaker’s Cinema for three years atop a socialist bookshop in Sydney, screening the short films of the directors who would go on to form the Australian New Wave: Gillian Armstrong, Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, George Miller, Paul Cox. These were a generation of boomers who had grown up rarely seeing an Australian film, as British and American interests controlled distribution and exhibition Australia wide.
After graduating from Sydney University, he joined the newly opened Australian Film, Television, and Radio School in 1973, and released his first professional film in 1975. Many of his films feature espionage, as Noyce grew up listening to his father’s stories of serving with the Australian Commando unit Z Force during World War II.
After his debut feature, the medium-length Backroads (1977), Noyce achieved huge commercial and critical success with Newsfront (1978), which won Australian Film Institute (AFI) awards for Best Film, Director, Actor, and Screenplay, opened the London Film Festival and was the first Australian film to play at the New York Film Festival.
Noyce worked on two miniseries for Australian television with fellow Australian filmmaker George Miller: The Dismissal (1983) and The Cowra Breakout (1984). Miller also produced the film that brought Noyce to the attention of Hollywood studios – Dead Calm (1988), which launched the career of Nicole Kidman.
Moving with his young family to the United States in 1991, Noyce directed five films over the following eight years, of which Clear and Present Danger, starring Harrison Ford, was the most successful, critically and commercially, grossing $216 million.
After 1999’s Bone Collector starring Angelina Jolie and Denzel Washington, Noyce decided to return to his native Australia for Stolen Generations saga Rabbit-Proof Fence, which won the Australian AFI Award for Best Film in 2002. He has described Rabbit-Proof Fence as “easily” his proudest moment as a director: “Showing that film to various Aboriginal communities around the country and seeing their response, because it gave validity to the experiences of the stolen generations.” Although independently financed, the film was a huge hit with Australian audiences and sold worldwide.
Noyce was also lauded for The Quiet American, the 2002 adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel, which gave Michael Caine an Academy Award Best Actor nomination and earned best director awards from London Film Critics’ Circle and National Board of Review in the US. After the Apartheid-set Catch a Fire (2006) in South Africa, Noyce decided to make another big budget studio film with 2010’s Salt, starring Angelina Jolie, which proved to be his biggest commercial hit to date, making nearly $300 million worldwide.
In 2011, Noyce directed and executive produced the pilot for the ABC America series Revenge and has since directed numerous TV pilots including Netflix’s What/If starring Renee Zellweger which premieres in June 2019. Noyce’s most recent film, to be released in August 2019, is Above Suspicion, starring Emilia Clarke and Jack Huston. Phillip Noyce’s next film will be Rats of Tobruk adapted from his father’s diary of the epic World War II Siege of Tobruk in Libya.
Go to: TOP OF PAGE (Phillip Noyce Retrospective) / Features / Documentaries / Series / Animations / Shorts / Doc Shorts / High School Films / Program
