Cinequest announced this week that the highly acclaimed Australian short film Audio Guide will make its International Premiere as part of their Film & Creativity Festival program on March 6, 2020. The thought-provoking film will screen at the Silicon Valley festival before each screening of Quinn Armstrong’s feature film, Survival Skills. Audio Guide director Chris Elena will be an international guest of the festival and will be in attendance at each screening.
Directed by Elena and written by Lee Zachariah, Audio Guide takes place in an art gallery on a day that turns out like no other. A young woman is told the secrets of the world through an art gallery issued audio guide. Starring Emma Wright (Mako Mermaids) and Nyx Calder (Can You Dig It?), Audio Guide made its World Premiere late last year at the Sydney Sci-Fi Film Festival, where Wright won Best Actress.
“There is so much to appreciate and admire about Audio Guide … a powerful short film that will no doubt act as a calling card … What makes Audio Guide work so well is how assured and knowing the direction by Chris Elena and the writing by Lee Zachariah.“
Andrew Pierce – The Curb
Based in Sydney, Australia, Elena shot Audio Guide entirely on Super 16mm film to give it a timelessness that makes the film as visually beautiful as the paintings in the gallery which it is set. “The script, written by Lee Zachariah, originated from the idea that technology has given us access to almost every piece of information available, yet we either don’t know what to do with it or refuse to believe differently from what we’ve been told”, he says. “It’s also an exploration of how we use information in a personal way to better our experiences of the world; for example, social media. We use technology and provide information to engage with people whilst simultaneously becoming estranged from them in the process.”
“Above all, it’s a love letter to high-concept storytelling like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits,” Elena continues. “Short-form stories that challenged our understanding of human behavior and the world whilst giving us characters we could empathize and share this exploration with. To me, they ultimately defied genre tropes and conventional storytelling.
“I wanted Audio Guide to feel personal and timeless and hopefully mean something to somebody like those stories did to me.”
Audio Guide will screen prior to Survival Skills on March 6 at Century 20 Redwood City, March 8 at Hammer Theatre San Jose and March 12 and 13 at Century 20 Redwood City.
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