A new short film Musings, about a frustrated academic who writes monologues for her much younger actress girlfriend, causing her latent jealousy to unravel, is an homage to Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, and a scathing satire of the Australian film industry.

The film will screen in an event scheduled to coincide with the Spanish director’s 69th birthday and will be preceded by a discussion about ‘whitewashing’ in Australian films that looks at why so many Aussie films have a stoic ‘Anglo’ sensibility to the exclusion of more flamboyant types of cinema enjoyed by people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds and the LGBTIQ community.

The event, “Whitewashed: Minorities on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” will take place at the theatre at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School on Monday, September 24th at 6pm.

Musings, starring Argentinian- Australian actress Alessia Medina, was written and directed by Bina Bhattacharya, a filmmaker from Sydney’s South-West.

Bina was recently selected as a Director for Australia’s first ever Diversity Showcase and was also selected as a writer for the Behind Closed Doors screen project run by CoCurious with the support of Screen Australia’s Enterprise Ideas program, and in partnership with Emerald Productions and the ABC.

‘I feel like ‘Whitewashing’ in Australian films goes beyond the choice of characters and actors. There’s a whole stylistic element to it – an obsession with the rural setting, sparse dialogue, repressed characters and washed out colours. All of this is at odds with people like me from cultures where people express themselves, talk and argue voraciously and live in vibrant, multicultural cities,’ Bhattacharya says.

‘Making an homage to Almodóvar was an opportunity to pose the question as to why Australia doesn’t make more of these ‘talkie’ sorts of films that clearly have an audience here, and are a departure from an outdated view of what an Australian film ‘should’ be.’’

When: Monday 24th September, 2018 at 6pm Where: Australian Film Television and Radio School, Moore Park RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/whitewashed-minorities-on-the-verge-of-anervous-breakdown-musings-screening-and-q-and-a-tickets-49889555002