The stage is set for The Sapphires to sweep the AACTA awards for film and television this week. The most popular local film of 2012 won five of the six categories for which it was nominated at yesterday’s AACTA awards luncheon for technical or craft awards.
The drama about a 1960s Aboriginal girl group sent to Vietnam is now expected to add to that collection at tomorrow’s AACTA Awards, presented by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts. It is nominated in six of the remaining eight film categories, including as best film against Burning Man, Lore and Wish You Were Here.
Several of the craft categories could just as well have fallen to Lore, Wish You Were Here or Burning Man in particular (the romantic comedy Not Suitable For Children won the best original film score prize) but the academy has again focused its affections on a single film across multiple categories.
Not that you could begrudge The Sapphires. It won AACTAs for cinematography (Warwick Thornton, who previously won two Australian Film Institute awards for Samson & Delilah), editing (Dany Cooper, her second AFI/AACTA), best production design (Melinda Doring, her fourth, including last year for The Eye of the Storm), costume design (Tess Schofield, her fourth) and sound.
In the television categories, Adam Zwar and Nicole Minchin shared two awards for their series Agony Aunts (best light entertainment series) and Lowdown (with Amanda Brotchie, winning best TV comedy series), defeating A Moody Christmas, Danger 5 and Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell.
The ABC won with the ABC3 animated series, The Adventures of Figaro Pho, named best children’s TV series and Patrick Brammall won best performance in a television comedy for ABC1’s A Moody Christmas. He also had the ceremony’s best line, noting what a pleasure it was to be in the company of fellow nominees “until a minute ago, when I was sort of elevated out of it”.
The ceremony’s major focus was Raymond Longford Award winner Al Clark, with reminiscences from friends and colleagues such as Guy Pearce, Richard Branson, David Stratton and Stephan Elliot. “Curiosity and desire are my driving forces,” said Clark, the producer of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert among others.
SBS had two wins with Go Back To Where You Came From named best documentary series and Once Upon A Time In Cabramatta lauded for editing in a documentary by Sam Wilson.
Ellenor Cox and Marcus Gillezeau’s Storm Surfers 3D was named best feature length documentary, and Bra Boys director Macario De Souza won best direction in a documentary for Fighting Fear, as well as best cinematography in a documentary, which he shared with Tim Bonython, Chris Bryan and Lee Kelly.
