These days Jane Campion Palme d'Or and Oscar-winning film director is celebrated for a vein of heartfelt cinema that is aching and quirky, rather than gushing, writes Variety. She's also an intelligent and determined female pioneer who has had to struggle for her present standing in a male-dominated industry. Jane Fonda Announces 18-Month Acting Break Due to 2024 Presidential Election.

The Sydney Film Festival this week is showcasing and contextualising Campion's body of work, Variety reports. Its screening programme includes all nine of her feature films, from Two Friends to The Power of the Dog, and a selection of her shorts. "For our 70th edition, we wanted to present a retrospective commensurate with the milestone, reflecting the audacious and boundary pushing filmmaking synonymous with our festival and region. There was no one more appropriate than Jane Campion," said SFF Director Nashen Moodley in notes ahead of the event.

India, incidentally, is being represented at the Festival, which opened on June 7, by the Manoj Bajpayee-starrer Joram (directed by Devashish Makhija), Kennedy (Anurag Kashyap's much-anticipated noir drama) and The Winter Within (directed by Aamir Bashir).

On Saturday, the Festival screened Julie Bertucelli's 2022 documentary "Jane Campion, the Cinema Woman" ahead of an on-stage interview between the filmmaker and critic and former SFF programmer David Stratton. Conducted largely in chronological order, according to Variety, the interview quickly revealed that Campion's broad-minded parents and Luis Bunuel, the master of the surreal, had been early and significant influences. BTS V aka Kim Taehyung Blonde Hair Look Photos: TaeTae Flaunts New Look, Pics and Videos of K-Pop Idol Go Viral.

Campion recalled her mother taking her teenage daughter to the Spanish-Mexican auteur's film about a housewife-prostitute, Belle de Jour. "(Bunuel) felt like a bolt of energy. Because he saw the world like I feel it too. It's hard to be surreal and often apparently silly and funny. And, you know, of course, I take myself quite seriously," Campion said.

Her theatre director father, took the 16-year-old Campion to Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's controversial Performance, a crime drama that involved an encounter between a rock star and a violent mobster that was banned in some countries, including Australia. "It felt like I was sort of stretching out beyond my capacity. And the film was inviting you to a new understanding of the world," Campion said.

Both the stage interview and Bertucelli's doc, Variety notes, cited the uncomfortable Cannes response to Campion's 1989 film Sweetie, a quirky tale of female best friends. Mass walkouts at the festival premiere left the director feeling "completely humiliated", only for her to find crumbs of comfort from the divisive and domineering Cannes talent scout Pierre Rissient, who reassured her that "the right people liked it".

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 12, 2023 08:34 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).