Golden Age of Humanity

Nine great Australians, nine remarkable films, nine nights at Surry Hills’ beloved Golden Age Cinema. Selected for their own connection to Vivid Sydney’s 2024 theme of humanity — through their advocacy, work or life story — nine notable Australians will introduce the film they have specially selected that connects with the festival theme.

A celebration of each of the curators, their contribution to culture, and some cinematic greats, join us at Golden Age Cinema for nine nights of illumination and surprise.  

Browse the full program below 

Amar Singh and Viceroy’s House, Saturday 25 May | 8pm  

Delhi, 1947: Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) has been assigned to the position of the last Viceroy, overseeing the last days of British colonial rule in the transition to Indian independence. The Viceroy and his wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson) must navigate culture shock, the expectations of propriety and simmering political tensions between the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh household staff. Among them are star-crossed lovers Jeet (Manish Dayal) and Aalia (Huma Qureshi), torn between their desire and sense of familial duty. This upstairs-downstairs conflict provides a fascinating glimpse into the lives of ordinary people caught up in forces beyond their control as writer-director Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) broadens her canvas to make the complex web of history accessible and engrossing.  

Saxon Mullins and Bend It Like Beckham, Tuesday 28 May | 8pm  

Instead of wanting to be like her older sister, who is preparing to be a traditional Indian wife, young Jess (Parminder Nagra) dreams of playing football professionally, much to her parents’ chagrin. Jules (Keira Knightley) notices Jess’s skills on the field and invites her to try out for the local women's football team. The two become close friends, bonding over parental strife, budding romances and their football-shaped dreams. Will Jess’s family accept her passion, or will she be forced to choose between her family and the sport she loves more than anything?

Megan Davis and The Tracker, Thursday 30 May | 8pm  

More than twenty years since its release, Rolf De Heer's mythic Western The Tracker has only grown richer and more haunting in its depiction of Colonialism's violent legacy. It is 1922, and government trooper the Fanatic (Gary Sweet) is leading an expedition to capture the Fugitive (Noel Wilton), an Aboriginal man accused of murdering a white woman. He and his white associates, the naive Follower and the jaded Veteran, recruit a skilled Aboriginal Tracker (David Gulpilli) to navigate their way through the outback, but as the pursuit grows more dangerous the crew begins to turn on each other and lines of loyalty are drawn in the sand.  

Daniel Nour and Sicko, Saturday 1 June | 8pm  

Sicko sees filmmaker-provocateur Michael Moore take on his most intimidating adversary: the US health insurance and the pharmaceutical industries. A brief primer on the history of American health care unpicks the tangled web of corporate malfeasance that has left almost 50 million (in 2007 numbers) citizens uninsured, while many of those who do have coverage find themselves ensnared in a nightmare of red tape and government-approved fraud that leaves them high and dry. Moore travels to Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba, comparing the possibilities of a publicly funded health care system against the for-profit model that sees Americans from all walks of life forced into medically-induced poverty.  

Kylie Kwong and The Quiet Girl, Tuesday 4 June | 8pm  

A film that’s already made history as the highest-grossing Irish-language film of all time, The Quiet Girl feels like an instant classic. Child actor Catherine Clinch delivers an astounding debut performance as Cáit, a nine-year-old girl from an overcrowded, dysfunctional and impoverished family. Struggling at school and at home, she has learnt to hide in plain sight from those around her. As summer arrives and her pregnant mother’s due date approaches, Cáit is sent to live with distant relatives, the Kinsellas. In the warmth and love of their care, Cáit blossoms and discovers a new way of living. But in this house where affection grows and there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers one painful truth.  

Carly Findlay and Clueless, Thursday 6 June | 8pm  

A veritable classic of '90s teen cinema, Clueless follows Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone), a student at Beverly Hills High who is sweet, pretty, popular, rich and...clueless. Loosely based on the Jane Austen novel Emma, this film begins as Cher and her best friend Dion (Stacey Dash) decide to mentor the new girl at school (Brittany Murphy). Complicating matters: Cher’s socially conscious stepbrother Josh (Paul Rudd) is home from college and there's a handsome new guy in town who loves Billie Holiday. Clueless does a wonderful job of skewering high school woes, life in L.A., and the fads, fashions, and cultural air of the 1990s.  

Fourteen years after she directed the iconic '80s high school comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Amy Heckerling returned with this irresistible gem, featuring an era-appropriate soundtrack (with No Doubt, Supergrass, Velocity Girl and Coolio) and future stars Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd and lady-of-that-moment Alicia Silverstone. It also spawned a TV series and a handful of enduring catch phrases. Come roll with your homies, already!  

Bernard Collaery and Beau Travail, Saturday 8 June | 8pm  

With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant (Denis Lavant) sows the seeds of his own ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit (Grégoire Colin) plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of Benjamin Britten. Denis and cinematographer Agnès Godard fold military and masculine codes of honour, colonialism’s legacy, destructive jealousy and repressed desire into shimmering, hypnotic images that ultimately explode in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema.  

Kate McClymont and All the President’s Men, Thursday 13 June | 8pm  

Based on the Watergate scandal that nearly destroyed a US administration, All The President's Men is a brilliantly realised story of old-school investigative journalism and the people who drove it. In Nixon's paranoid America, 1972, five men have been arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters under cover of darkness. The Washington Post gives this minor story to Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), who learns that the men have ties to both the CIA and the Presidency. As the story snowballs Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) is assigned as Woodward's partner and despite their personal differences the reporters must work together, drawn deeper into a dangerous conspiracy that goes all the way to the top.  

Craig Foster and Flee, Saturday 15 June | 2.30pm  

This acclaimed documentary uses animation interspersed with archival footage to tell an extraordinary story of perseverance and hope. In conversation with director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Amin Nawabi recounts his harrowing journey as a child, an odyssey that took him from Afghanistan through Sweden and Russia before settling as a refugee in Denmark. Separated from all that he knew Amin grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon-to-be husband.

This film will screen with the premiere of the 20-minute short film The Forgotten People, a documentary produced by Médecins Sans Frontières in which Craig Foster travels to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, the world’s largest refugee camp with 1 million Rohinga refugees.