NEW CROWNED HOPE

AFF owes a significant debt of gratitude to Peter Sellars. During his time as director of the 2002 Adelaide Festival of the Arts, Sellars and Bridget Ikin commissioned a series of films (including The Tracker, Australian Rules and Walking on Water). The success of this initiative laid the groundwork for the AFF Investment Fund.

Sellars was recently director of Vienna's New Crowned Hope festival, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. Keen to repeat the experience of bringing film closer to more traditional arts, Sellars collaborated with Simon Field (who made the Rotterdam Film Festival one of the world's leading film eventshop) and Keith Griffith of Illuminations Films to commission films which foreground the most intriguing filmmakers and emerging regions in world cinema. The only brief was that the films respond to the masterworks created during the last year of Mozart's life: The Magic Flute, La clemenza di Tito and Requiem. The resultant six features and one short have created enormous excitement at the world's leading festivals. The AFF is proud to present their Australian premieres. Details of two other NCH films, Half Moon and Syndromes and a Century, can be found on the Natuzzi Competition pages.

New Crowned Hope Festival
Artistic Director: Peter Sellars
Vienna, November 14 - December 13, 2006
A festival within Wiener Mozartjahr 2006
Executive Producer: Wiener Festwochen
www.newcrownedhope.org