The Exploding White Mice show at The Producers Hotel on October 12 is being jointly presented by the festival and Music SA. It will be the first time the Adelaide band – whose recording career kicked off with their 1983 record Nest of Vipers – has played together since 1999.
Film Festival CEO and artistic director Amanda Duthie said the festival was “imploding with excitement” to have the group perform at the one-off event: “South Australia is such an epicentre for invention and creativity and so much amazing music has originated here, including one of Australia’s major punk outfits.”
Music SA general manager Lisa Bishop described Exploding White Mice as an iconic band, and said she was thrilled the theme of this year’s Film Festival would enable a celebration of “Adelaide’s rich tradition of punk music”. The gig will also feature a selection of current local punk artists .
The first batch of film highlights announced for the October 5-15 Adelaide Film Festival, which will be presented at the GU Film House in Hindley Street, includes three world premieres:
- Cargo, filmed in SA, which stars actors Martin Freeman, Natasha Wanganeen and David Gulpilil in a story about an infected man trying to protect his daughter in the aftermath of a violent pandemic.
- F*!#Ing Adelaide, a comedy-drama by Adelaide’s Closer Productions and featuring local actor Tilda Cobham-Hervey, which is told from the perspectives of six different family members who reunite when the mother plans to sell the family home.
- After the Apology, activist Larissa Behrendt’s documentary exposing the rate of Indigenous child removal since former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations in 2008.
The festival will also feature the Australian premiere of the western Sweet Country, director Warrick Thornton’s first feature film since 2009’s acclaimed Samson & Delilah, and the sci-fi romantic comedy How to Talk to Girls at Parties, starring Nicole Kidman as a punk rocker.
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Art on Screen, a collection of short films celebrating artists on screen, will include Benjamin Dowie’s short documentary Brumley’s Suitcase, which follows three Adelaide musicians (Dan Crannitch, Taash Coates and Kelly Menhennett) as they join with musicians from Austin, Texas, to bring to life a suitcase of songs half written by the legendary songwriter Albert E Brumley.
The festival also promises some “hand-picked gems” that celebrate the 40th anniversary of the punk movement.
Duthie said the theme Vive Le Punk would see the festival present “the mavericks, the outliers, the auteurs, the radicals, the ratbags, the artists and the supreme creatives”.
“This is just a tease of the soon-to-be-released full program.”