Film Screening 17th September, 2022

Poster for Strictly Ballroom

Strictly Ballroom 

5:00 PM, 17th September, 2022

  • PG
  • 94 mins
  • 1992
  • Baz Luhrmann
  • Paul Mercurio, Tara Morice, Bill Hunter, Pat Thomson

Champion ballroom dancer Scott Hastings (Paul Mercurio) is a maverick among the conventionally minded Australian ballroom dance community because he believes in dancing "his own steps". After his unorthodox style alienates his regular partner, an awkward beginning dancer named Fran (Tara Morice) audaciously asks to be his partner. Together these two misfits decide to enter the Australian Pan Pacific Ballroom Championships, hoping to truly show up the peers who have doubted and criticised them.

Strictly Ballroom was Baz Luhrmann’s stunning debut as director of a feature film, paving the way for future works like Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge! and this year’s Elvis. It garnered a staggering thirteen nominations at the 1992 AFI awards, winning in no less than eight categories, including Best Film. So come along to this 30th anniversary screening to find out – or be reminded – what the fuss was all about.

Poster for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande 

7:30 PM, 17th September, 2022

  • M
  • 97 mins
  • 2022
  • Sophie Hyde
  • Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack, Isabella Laughland, Les Mabaleka

Once a stern schoolteacher, Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson) is now a recently widowed retiree keen to shake things up in her life. While her marriage was good in a relative sense, good sex was unfortunately not a part of it. So she hires an attractive young sex working named Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) to help her achieve the sexual fulfilment long missing from her marital years. Over several meetings in an anonymous, faraway hotel room, the confident Leo aids Nancy in working through her anxieties and ticking off items off her to-do list, but both end up revealing more of themselves than they could have expected.

Australian director Sophie Hyde (Animals) delicately tackles taboo subjects with wit, compassion and flair. Emma Thompson in particular has never been better – or braver – in a sex-positive film that’s about a lot more than sex.