Girls on film at the L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival 2011

screen cap 'catwalk' via 123nonstop.com

Arguably more fashion-specific documentaries have been lensed in the past four years, than in the last two decades combined, with offerings including Lagerfeld Confidential (2007), Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton (2007), Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008), The September Issue (2009) and Picture Me (2009). That's not counting the recent proliferation of fashion shorts and videos, whose distribution has obviously been facilitated by the net. For anyone who is interested in seeing some older examples of the frockumentary genre, in addition to some less high-profile recent examples and who happens to be in Melbourne next week, this year's L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival, which officially kicks off tomorrow - and which frockwriter will be attending as a guest of the organisers and Tourism Victoria - has an abundance of offerings.

As part of its ongoing fashion on film series, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image [ACMI] is running a festival dedicated to the model doco called Fashion Models on Film.
 

screen cap 'model' via ACMI

Featured are Sarah Ziff and Ole Schell's controversial Picture Me: A Model's Diary (2009); Robert Leacock's Catwalk: Milan, Paris and New York (1996), which tagged along after Christy Turlington during one runway season; Frederick Wiseman's Model (1980), which profiled New York's Zoli agency (since subsumed into Click) and Dressed for Summer 2011 (2010), the Spring/Summer 2011 chapter of French journalist Agnès Boulard's longrunning French television series on Paris Fashion Week.

ACMI's screenings kicked off on Thursday with Picture Me, but here is the remainder of the program:


Picture Me                           Sun 13 Mar 2011, 5.30pm
Model                                  Sun 13 Mar 2011, 7.30pm
Catwalk                               Mon 14 Mar 2011, 3.30pm
Dressed for Summer 2011  Mon 14 Mar 2011, 5.30pm
Model                                  Mon 14 Mar 2011, 7.30pm
Picture Me                           Tue 15 May 2011, 2.30pm
Model                                  Wed 16 May 2011, 2.30pm
Dressed Up                         Wed 16 May 2011, 7.30pm
Catwalk                               Thu 17 Mar 2011, 2.30pm

ACMI  

Address: Federation Square, Melbourne

Phone: +61 3 86632583

Web: http://www.acmi.net.au/fashion-models-on-film.aspx

screen cap 'catwalk' via 123nonstop.com

On Monday this week, as part of the broader LMFF cultural festival, ACMI also hosted the launch event of a new Australian initiative called NoHome.tv.
 

Conceived by Alastair McCann and Justin Watson, NoHome.tv is a fashion film portal that will go live on March 20th, showcasing submissions from, among others, Alexi Freeman, Arabella Ramsay, Beat Poet, Carly Hunter, Limedrop, Orri Henrisson, Upper Left Arm and Sweden’s Acne – with consumers encouraged and enabled via the site to remix the films.
 

On Thursday, sadly prior to the arrival of many out-of-towners for LMFF, a separate project called FASHIONFILM screened a number of short films at the Rooftop Cinema in Melbourne’s CBD, notably Mark Skaszy’s Corrine Day Diary, which documented a decade in the life of the late, great British fashion photographer.

Girls (and boys) on film

OK so as already mentioned, the Cycle 6 launch of Australia’s Next Top Model is tonight at 7.30pm on Fox 8. In what is shaping up to be a jam-packed model doco/film fortnight, 7.00pm tonight also sees a Sydney screening of the 2009 film Tiger, from the Sydney Beaufort collective that is (also as previously reported) headed up by Sydney actor/producer/comedian James McFay. Check the Facebook page for details - or watch this live stream, above. The film, a love story about two models in Tokyo, has had a number of screenings already, including one in LA, with a DVD launch in Sydney in March. This time it's being presented in collaboration with Anina Trepte’s 360 Fashion network. Then on the 23rd and 28th of July, the Melbourne International Film Festival will present two screenings of Picture Me (trailer below), made by model Sara Ziff and her partner Ole Schell.




Filmed on the road over five years, while Ziff was working the world’s runways, Picture Me takes a hard look at the modelling business – or as hard a look as you can without actually naming any names.

Launched last year - before the Terry Richardson controversy - the film recounts many troubling anecdotes about the modelling business.

Model Sena Cech reports that during one casting session she was asked by the photographer to undress and grab his genitals.

Another story, which was cut from the film prior to its release at the request of the model in question, concerns the alleged sexual assault of a 16 year-old by one of the world’s “top” photographers.

Check the Festival's website for details.

RJ Cutler is shooting Rag & Bone at Fashion Week

getty via zimbio.com

Just got off a conference call with The September Issue director RJ Cutler and 10 other bloggers. It was organised by Lionsgate, in connection with the release the DVD version on February 23. Over the course of the call - which I will add as an MP3 file once it's emailed - Cutler revealed a few interesting morsels of information. One of which was that over the next three days he will be shooting a behind-the-scenes of the New York Fashion Week preparations of Rag & Bone designers Marcus Wainright and David Neville. Another documentary perhaps? Kinda. Cutler is shooting "short vignettes" which will appear, he says, on Starbucks website and Facebook page. Ah the commercial realities of indie design - and filmmaking.