Daphne                        Jacqueline McKenzie
Nick                            Jack Finsterer
Mr Crewe                     Simon Burke
Mrs Perez                    Fiona Martinelli
Kelly                           Genevieve Hegney
Mrs Harrison                Kris McQuade

CREW
Writer & Director          Sofya Gollan
Producer                     Della Churchill
Prod Design                Elizabeth Mary Moore
Costume Design          Margot Wilson
Cinematography          Cordelia Beresford
Edited                         Simon Martin
Sound Design              Liam Price
Production Mgr            Michelle Russell

Synopsis

Daphne is certain love has passed her by. In the late 1890’s Sydney Depression she runs a failing inherited taxidermy business alone, and is easy prey for a charming spiritualist photographer. He plays on her loneliness to put her in touch with her dead father.

Struggling to make ends meet, she advertises for a boarder. Daphne’s ordered world is shaken when Nick knocks on her door. A quiet travel-stained man, who’s lost his farm in the drought, he has his own dark past. Against her rules, Nick brings home “loose women”, drinks to drown out voices he hears at night and encroaches on Daphne’s personal space.

As Nick and Daphne’s secrets unravel under the gaze of dead animals, a tenuous, fragile love grows for two people who thought themselves lost to love. Preservation boasts a wonderful cast and lush production values to create a haunting Gothic melodrama interlaced with black humour.

View the film:

TV Sales achieved:

SBS Television, TVNZ, ABC Asia Pacific, Screenrights educational uses

Film Festivals and Awards: Australian

2003

Sydney International Film Festival

Melbourne International Film Festival

50 minutes from Home: An Australian Film Festival

Australian Film Institute Awards Nominations:

Best Short Film, Best Screenplay in a Short Film and Open Craft – Production and Costume Design

Film Critics Circle Awards Nomination:    Best Australian Short Feature

ASSG Awards Winner: Best Sound for a Telefeature.

2004

International Womens Day Festival, Gold Coast

Australian Writers Guild Nomination: Best Short Feature Screenplay

Film Festivals and Awards:European

2003

London Deaf Film Festival

Cinema des Antipodes, St Tropez

2004

Festival du Film de Paris, Paris

FIPA, Festival International des Programmes Audiovisuels, Biarritz

Commonwealth Film Festival, Manchester

Stockholm Deaf Film Festival

2005

11^th Australian Film Festival, London

Film Festivals and Awards:North America

2004

Banff TV Festival Rockie Awards –Winner: Hors Concours Award, Banff, Canada.

Telluride Indiefest 2004 – Winner: Feature Film Category.

SALES:

35mm print in English, 35mm print with French subtitles, DVD and Beta SP copies available.

Please contact us for more information.

Attached Cast

STELLA                    Rachael Taylor

JOJO                         Adrienne Pickering

MIMI                          Veronica Sywak

GEORDIE                 Tye Harper

Crew

Writer/ Director          Sofya Gollan

Producer                    Della Churchill

Designer                    Elizabeth Mary Moore

DoP                           Jules O’Laughlin

Budget:                  A$ 3,000,000

 Genre:                   Erotic Drama, Feature Film.

Status:                   Financing, Developed by Screen NSW and Screen Australia

Synopsis

At 23, Stella’s still a virgin, an oddity in her small country town. Her friends, sisters Mimi and Jojo, take turns to seduce strangers, while Stella dances around Geordie’s passion for her, fearing a relationship that will keep her stuck. Jojo hides her unrequited love for Geordie, whilst fun-loving alcoholic Mimi pretends she’s not near breaking point.

Stella’s been hired to create dresses for the local rich girl’s wedding.. By day she’s a butcher running the family business, by night she looks after her ailing Nan, her dreams of being a fashion designer withering under the weight of obligation.

Then Frosty Clyde comes to town, the sensual and charismatic ice sculptor hired for the wedding. He invites them all to be his models for the ice bride. Gatecrashing the status quo, Stella wants him, and the sisters reluctantly agree she can have him. However, when Stella fumbles the seduction of Frosty, the sisters, separately and secretly, jump the queue into Frosty’s willing arms, agreeing to keep their assignations quiet. Unknowing Stella pursues Frosty  exhilarated by Frosty’s ideas of freedom.

Stella accuses the sisters of disloyalty, and the girls abandon their friendships rather than admit their truths. Shunned by the sisters, forced to refuse Geordie’s dramatic marriage proposal and oppressed by her bullying dependent Nan, Stella explodes, accepting Frosty’s offer of flight. Stella loses her virginity but even with first-love’s blinkers on, she discovers that Frosty’s sophistication is a smokescreen and his ambition is as small as drifting from job to job.

Rejecting Frosty, Stella turns back home to make amends and strike out on her own.. Stella must reconcile with Geordie, whilst standing up to her family. In the final moments we see Stella backstage at her graduating  student show, sexually assured and in charge of her own future.

Director Sofya Gollan’s showreel:

 Attached Cast:

Faith  is Frances O’Connor     Ethan  is   Callan McAuliffe

Please scroll down for Video Assets after the synopsis.

Synopsis

FAITH habitually runs from her past. Faced with creditors and yet another eviction, the struggling single mother hits the road with her two sons – resentful teenager ETHAN and deaf 7-year-old JAMIE.

When a stolen car collides with them, Faith is lost in a coma for days, waking to discover her shattered family recuperating in hospital.  Out of desperation she lands unannounced at Tempest, the decaying bayside mansion of the estranged grandmother who inexplicably cast her out as a six-year-old, almost 30 years ago. The house brings back painful memories of her banishment, and her mother’s subsequent suicide under mysterious circumstances.

It’s not long before Faith realises that she may have struck a deal with the devil. The agoraphobic, viper-tongued 90-year-old IMOGEN reigns like a demanding monarch from her creepy Edwardian bedroom. Concealing debilitating trauma-induced headaches, Faith struggles with the demands of caring for three dependents with very different needs, as well as dealing with her own splintered memories. To her horror, Faith begins to realise that her grip on sanity is slipping away, and that she is in danger of repeating the actions of her mother.

When MERELEINI, a local Pacific Islander girl, appears around the isolated house without warning, Faith develops a deep mistrust. At the same time, a sinister force begins to pervade the house. Inexplicable events fracture the logic of Faith’s everyday reality. The past begins to collide with the present when Faith finds herself repeatedly trapped in the year 1911, inhabiting the pregnant body of a South Pacific islander servant girl from the era.

Terrified of losing his mother to a psychiatric facility, Ethan pressures her to take medication, yet refuses to leave the house when Faith tries in vain to get them out. Ethan does not realise that his mother is hiding a sad secret of her own. Pushed over the edge, Faith is inevitably hospitalised, and soon discovers that everything she had experienced was a delusion caused by the trauma of the accident. Or was it?

Faith returns to the house, believing herself to be finally free of her demons.  However, she is once again faced with the unseen presence hellbent on getting what it wants. This time, Faith knows that in order to find peace in her future, she must resolve the past.

Budget:        A$3,000,000
Genre:          Supernatural Thriller
Status:         Market ready script, Developed by  Screen Queensland & Chilling Pictures

The Witness Tree mood reel:

The Witness Tree pre-visualisation:

Sieze the Day by director Alex Chomicz won the critics prize at Brisbane International Film Festival and the Audience Prize at Melbourne. His other work can be found at www.alexchomicz.com.