Directing
Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.
Charming, intelligent and iconoclastic, Ben Lee is an Australian singer-songwriter whose creative growth since his early adolescence has undergone almost relentless media scrutiny. This is a playful yet deeply intimate portrait of Lee, exploring his meteoric rise to pop stardom and the issues of celebrity and spirituality that arise when launched into the spotlight.
An idealistic film student is drawn into a shadowy and intoxicating world when she befriends an enigmatic performance artist.
Friends and Strangers follows two middle class wanderers in a dryly comic exploration of inner Sydney.
Schtick Happens documents the conflict between documentary filmmakers and their subject after the release of the film, Original Schtick.
Bob has scheduled his own death in eight days. Now he must make peace with his family, the love of his life and himself.
Charles is a portrait of a middle-aged man I met outside a 7/11 late one night on the outskirts of Oklahoma City in 2015. Charles had been homeless for some years, estranged from his family because of his schizophrenia, and was living by a pond at the back of the convenience store. We instantly formed a very intimate connection due to his gentle and deeply compassionate outlook on life. He told me beautiful stories about how he would talk to the trees and clouds before going to sleep each evening, and his plans to visit his daughter in Memphis before the end of the year. We ate some dinner together by his pond before shooting this portrait at about 3am.
A group of schoolboys engage in tomfoolery, but it’s not long before playful behaviour turns primal.
Fresh from a Melbourne jail, Dan is reunited with the love of his life, Leanne. A fierce, passionate and tender couple who have learnt to appreciate the simplest pleasures in life, Dan and Leanne celebrate, and when surrounded by friends he announces he has resolved to go straight.
The plague is already here. Pesticides, lies and Paranoia. Tractor beams in the vineyards. A yellow dust coats everything. Everyone is sleepwalking. Steam under the hood. Gravel in the mouth. Tom and Red are back on the road and Red tells Tom to pull over. Reagan delivers the State of the Union on the radio. A body was found next to the river. The sickness is growing.
Cicada is the immersive story of a five-year-old child who witnessed a murder. Daniel P Jones confronts a traumatic memory in an incendiary, visceral monologue.
Shot in three days in January 2016, the film captures the legendary jazz pianist Cecil Taylor and Japanese dancer-choreographer Tanaka Min in a delicate interaction. An impressionistic, extremely intimate portrait of the unspoken dynamics between two masters who have been collaborating for over thirty years.
Late in life, Cass is drawn to his long-forsaken childhood home of Bundaberg, where he finds himself on a spiritual search for redemption.
In his inspired first film, Chasing Buddha, Amiel Courtin-Wilson (who happens to be Robina’s nephew) provides an intimate portrait of a unique individual whose own search for inner peace helps guide others to transcend their arduous circumstances. An Australian expatriate, ex-Catholic, and ex-leftist radical with a penchant for speeding, espresso coffee, and four letter profanities, Robin Courtin hardly seems a likely candidate for a Buddabist nun. And yet, since her conversion, Robina has traveled the globe, teaching her very unique brand of Buddhism to an international following of passionate devotees.
Milena travels to a remote opal mining community to see her estranged, ill father. Lost and alone, she falls into his bewildering world, where men escape society and share ideals of freedom. Soon, he doesn’t want her to leave. Stuck in time, father and daughter try to mend their fractured bond, but their connection is fragile, like the strange, colourful gems he digs up from the earth.
A response to Yoko Ono's Film Script No. 4 “ASK THE AUDIENCE TO STARE AT THE SCREEN UNTIL IT BECOMES BLACK.” I decided to assemble material shot in Cambodia in 2013 during the Cambodia King-Father Norodom Sihanouk’s funeral- a week long period of national mourning in which millions of Cambodians swarmed to Phnom Penh to grieve for the loss of their beloved leader. The profoundly overwhelming nature of this mass grieving seemed to resonate with the notion of an audience literally collectively willing an image out of existence. I chose to read the action of the screen turning black as being due to the audiences collective will rather than something imposed on an audience by the filmmaker/artist.
Provocative, funny and profoundly moving, Bastardy is the inspirational story of a self proclaimed Robin Hood of the streets. For Forty years and with infectious humour and optimism, Jack Charles has juggled a life of crime with another successful career- acting
In the American South, two lovers forge an all-consuming love as their physical and spiritual worlds are pushed to the limits of time and space. CARNATION is an impressionistic portrait of love and the ways in which we attempt to transcend our mortality.
Phirun is 19 years old and lives in Phnom Penh. One day he is accused of theft and involuntarily injures his employer. Phirun escapes and during his flight, he meets Sovanna; a powerful bond grows between the two of them, and develops into love. Amiel Courtin-Wilson is Australian, and made his debut at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000 with Chasing Buddha; since then he has made many films, screened at the major film festivals. In 2011 he directed Hail, presented at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in the Orizzonti section. Michael Cody, producer, director and screenwriter, has often collaborated with Courtin-Wilson and now they are back together with Ruin.
A new moving image work by Amiel Courtin-Wilson in response to Pierre Guyotat's text EDEN EDEN EDEN.
