19th Feb 08

What:
Focus on Gus Van Sant

When:
Thurs Feb 21 - Fri Feb 29

Where:
ACMI Cinemas

Watch the trailer to Paranoid Park:
Here

Win:
We have 3 double passes to Paranoid Park on Sat Feb 23 at 9.30pm AND 3 double passes to Mala Noche (Van Sant's first feature) on Fri Feb 22 at 7pm. To enter, email win@threethousand.com.au with your preferred film and the subject line ‘a murder for narrative thrust'

Gus Vant Sant is synonymous with a particular brand of American arthouse, epitomised by films like Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. Since then, he's journeyed into the mainstream, sometimes subversively (To Die For) and sometimes for some commercial feelgoodery (Good Will Hunting).

He's also fostered his strange streak, producing films like the compellingly stripped-back Gerry and his visual poem to the Columbine shooting, Elephant. (And that's not accounting for his virtually shot-for-shot remake of Psycho; it's the cinematic equivalent of typing out someone else's book in a new font.)

ACMI's upcoming Focus on Gus Van Sant features almost all of the above, as well as premiering his latest, Paranoid Park. It's a creative compromise: a teen drama with a murder for narrative thrust, and plenty of gorgeous, dreamy slo-mo for fans of his mood pieces.

The young actors range from oh-so-the-producer-must-be-your-father to surprisingly strong, especially Gabe Nevins in the lead as Alex, the young, lost skater who haltingly narrates the story. While Van Sant has always seemed more interested in adolescence than adulthood, this might be his first film that's explicitly for teenagers, and not just about them.