Where is looking for alibrandi filmed

The film is produced by Robyn Kershaw. This content is from Wikipedia. GradeSaver is providing this content as a courtesy until we can offer a professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors. We do not consider this content professional or citable. For Toliopoulos, the event's a passion project of sorts. And then when I got to high school they had the book in the library, and I stole it from the library.

Toliopoulos represents a new era of first-and-second generation Australians who've come to Melina Marchetta's novel via the film. To prepare for Friday's table read, he visited Marchetta who was also the film's screenwriter at her Haberfield home, prompting a raid through her basement storage to find her original script drafts. And I think of all those kids, like me, sitting in [their] room thinking [they]'re the only person out there with these dreams, and I feel so touched about the solace this story has provided.

Josie Alibrandi was the first Australian teenager filmed in the 21st century, and I think it's a failure of the industry to not have been able to continue on with that rich storytelling. For Marchetta, her impetus for penning the film — a process that began less than three months after the novel was published in October — was similar to the book: a yearning to show "that someone like me could belong in the world".

She kept saying they're going to make us look violent, they're going to make us look silly I did feel a responsibility not just for myself, but for a lot of people. And so, while Saving Francesca also features a teenage girl of Italian descent, Marchetta avoids the issue of cultural confusion that pervades Alibrandi and, instead, deals with teenage identity and the problems that arise when a family member - Francesca's normally go-getting mother, Mia - is struck down with severe depression. Another important difference, says Marchetta, is the characterisation of the men.

They were somewhat romanticised in Alibrandi, she admits. They were just the love interest. The father, even, was a bit of a love interest. I wanted the boys in Francescato be real. The stereotypes drive me insane because they care, and they are the most sensitive, crazy little characters I've ever come across. And they give me the shits a lot of the time, too. I wanted that to come across.

She is, in fact, thoroughly fed up with Alibrandi. I mean, it's been 11 years. I've spoken about this book I can't compete with that. I knew, as soon as Alibrandi came out and started getting the recognition it did, that my competition for the rest of my life was not going to be any other writer, any other whatever; it was just going to be this novel.

And I've been asked if there's going to be a sequel every second week. People want to talk about it but I just don't want to talk about it any more I love it but I've got nothing else to say The trio of producer, writer and director made assorted comments on the screenplay in their DVD commentary, including:. Woods notes that there are a significant number of fantasies, and it took time to whittle them down.

The scene had been cut out. There are no more fantasy sequences. Thereafter, she says, things shift;. One of the aspects that pleased Woods is the way that Josie and her father are complete strangers, and so she forms a crush on her father.

She thinks Miranda conveyed this with subtlety, while LaPaglia balanced it by showing an awareness of what his daughter might be feeling, and how he handled that as a father. Marchetta says that the dancing was important. Kershaw consoles Woods - she would have liked to cut out a little earlier from the crane shot, as it cranes up over the dancers in the backyard.

It's the final shot in the film, and is held long enough for Scacchi to make a small move away from LaPaglia. Woods would have liked viewers, for that last moment, to see Scacchi and LaPaglia staying together in the background. The trio of producer, writer and director also spent a considerable amount of time discussing various changes made to the film on the way through to the final cut, including:.

Woods really loved it, but realised it was absolutely not necessary, and never thought about it after it went in the editing;. After the fast food scene, about 52 and a half minutes into the film, with a fade to black, and a fade up on Josie on public transport, the creative team note that they had a whole another story going after that point, but a very large sequence was deleted in the final edit.

There was a moment they were sad to lose in the scene when Josie and Jacob get together. Marchetta notes that the father-daughter scene in the volcanic coffee shop combined dialogue from scenes at the start and near the end of her novel. She found that she frequently had to combine scenes, because otherwise they came across as being too repetitive if she constantly had Michael and Josie sitting around having coffees all the time;.

Another combined scene comes when Josie and Jacob have a love scene, and go quickly from making love if only by way of kissing to having a big fight. The scenes originally happened in quite different parts of the script.

Josie and Anna are attacked by two boys who are seen in the queue in the takeway. Jacob turns up to rescue her and punches the youth out, and when he says that Josie is a slut just like her mother, Josie races over to begin punching him. Jacob drags her off the youth. He wipes away a tear, and then holds her face before moving in to kiss her. He kisses her again, with more force, and she responds. He leans in agin and gives her a full mouth kiss, and this time she puts her arms around him.

The scene ends with a wide shot of the pair kissing in the car park. There were originally other scenes setting up the tension between Josie and the boy 'Greg Simms' now uncredited , but they bit the dust when the assault on top of a car bonnet bit the dust. The important element in the scene was the way that Josie and Jacob came together - that he rescued her - but as producer Kershaw notes, it raised other questions.

While she loved the first kiss, it was impossible to have the one without the other, and so the entire scene went. The dropped scene means the graffiti in the main titles has no echo in the body of the film, and a joke about nose-blowing later in the film isn't set up earlier. The DVD commentary track had these thoughts on the cast assembled for the film, and the process of casting:.

According to Woods, the creative team saw about 3, actors trying out for the role of Josie, over a six month period. All the young characters in the film came from this audition process, which involved a national search through secondary and drama schools, using newspapers to help;. The first scene in the classroom between Miranda and Kerry Walker as the teaching nun, was also one of the scenes used in the auditioning of Miranda;.

Other actors also had no experience, as with maried Rosa and Domenico Dimarte, who played Josie's relatives, Patrizia and Riccardo;. At various points in the commentary track, it becomes clear that Cotta faced a difficult task.

She had also been cast only two weeks before the shoot began. Woods and Kershaw took a quick trip to Italy with a list of interesting older actresses to consider and after they met her, Cotta was always the one;.

She has a short listing at the Wheeler Centre here , WM here , and there is a useful pdf about her relationship with Patrick White here , WM here direct downloads. Miranda has a reasonably detailed wiki listing here.

For an interview with Gurry looking back at the movie, see the Wayback Machine here. Leeanna Walsman as school bully Carly Bishop: Walsman did work before and after her successful role in the film, and has a detailed wiki listing here. However a few with wiki listings can be spotted in minor roles, including:.

Geoff Morrell as Mr Barton, wiki listing here only a few scenes as John's politician father ;. Linden Wilkinson as Mrs Barton, wiki listing here her role was cut to little more than an extra at John's funeral ;.

Ned Manning as Mr Coote, wiki listing here only one scene as Jacob's father ;. Salvatore Coco as Angelo Pezzini, wiki listing here a kissing scene, and a comedy driving scene, before being dumped offscreen by girlfriend Sera. Producer Robyn Kershaw recalls that the film shot on over forty something locations in 35 days, and as a result, a fair amount of Sydney is packed into the exteriors.

The bathroom was another room, dressed up by the designer to be a bathroom which offered a little more space for crew. The house was on the corner of Cardigan and Bellevue streets, and was still there with a new paint job in ;. Kershaw recalls that the house was in a quite dense residential area, and so they only had a certain number of hours in which they could film the night scenes, as when Jacob brings Josie home on his motorbike after the school dance.

It resulted in short nights, as being summer, the sun set very late and Woods moans that it would then start raining very early into the evening. As a result, they only had a couple of hours of night for filming, and it took them a couple of nights to complete the night scenes.

Even then Woods thinks the location worth it;. The school was an operating school, still at work during filming, with year 12 facing exams as Josie does in the film. Woods notes that the experience was a demystifying one, with some who started keen on the idea of an acting career, but by end of filming, not so sure;. It has its own website here , and a wiki listing here ;.

The football scene was shot in two different locations, four months apart. The crowd was in one place, the football in another.

The very last shot of the shoot was of the football being placed for a try over the goal line. Between halves of the real football match being filmed, Michael Gallina, who was playing Robert, was briefly placed on the field, before being chased off it.

The film had to be shot in seven weeks, so it was pulled from the schedule, in the hope that Woods would be able to find savings to allow for the half day required. She did, and so they could keep the crew on for an extra day at the end of the shoot to pick up the scene. Woods notes that the shoot was plagued by bad weather, and one of the bad weather nights came as the teens left the dance party.

They had planned to show the whole of the exterior, which was shot at the state library of NSW. They had searchlights and other glitter planned, but in the end, everything ended up on the library verandah, because only inches away, it was pouring with rain. It is possible, however, to see the distinctive state library doors as the teens emerge;. Woods notes that they became somewhat obsessed with the image of the volcano in George street, which they repeated through the film this is now a precious time warp artefact as it was when Scientology was at its boldest, and placed the volcano in the main drag as an advertisement for the cult ;.

Woods notes that it was quite an effort to get the volcano, as it only went off every twenty five minutes and they kept missing it. The volcano returns visually at a coffee shop. After George street, the action then shifts to what became known as the Anzac bridge, as Jacob takes Josie back home to Glebe;. Around 46 minutes into the DVD, the University of Sydney and its original main quadrangle makes an appearance Woods moans that it was another rainy day, as shown by the umbrellas on view ;.

After Josie has an argument with Jacob at the Village theatre in George Street reflexively, Village was the film's domestic distributor , her long-absent father drives up beside her in the street. Later Woods mentions another symbolic moment derived from the location. Haberfield was the suburb used for some street scenes. For example, the Zanetti 5 Star Delicatessen was in Ramsay St Haberfield, and continued to operate as of August , though with a makeover from when filmed;.

The main drag in Haberfield returns when Josie and Nonna walk down it after Josie has had a coffee with her father and Nonna has dragged her away. Woods thought the street terrific because it was the heart of the Italian community and there was no need for them to enhance it in anyway, which might have become a cliche.

When her dad tries to give Josie a driving lesson in his posh, 'difficult to change the gears' car, the creative team selected a location beneath the Anzac bridge, used in the film as a metaphor for the road from the west to the east, and to the CBD and the harbour bridge, where Josie aspires to go.

They liked the location because it showed off these areas in the background. However just before they started filming, a large cargo ship docked and obliterated the view;. In a similar way, when the unit was at Bondi beach briefly early in the fiim, then at c.

They just had to live with it. Woods thinks it took away the picture postcard quality away from the beach, so even though it was difficult to cut together, she liked the effect. At about c. Marchetta remembers describing to her Nonna the way they used to twist, to the original version, in her backyard. Marchetta also recalls being asked in Sicily why the film used such traditional Italian music throughout its score, and she replied that the creative team wanted music that was also accessible to a non-Italian audience that they had heard before and that they could relate to.

For the dance scene, the creative team knew they had to get the licenses for the featured music before they shot so they could show the crowd dancing in time to the music. According to Kershaw, Woods had done extensive research on school dances, and found out what they needed was very retro music, rather than contemporary. Woods says she hung around school dances like an old school teacher, and the film reflects pretty well much what she saw. However, George must have ruled himself out of performing it, with the end credits attributing the singing to Hamish Cowan of Cordrazine wiki here.

For the love scene, about 77 minutes in, Robyn Kershaw recalls that she kept hearing about a new Silverchair album, and worked very hard to acquire the rights to the song Miss you Love. She kept asking if they could listen to it, and then added it to the already edited sequence, and thought it fitted perfectly.

Then she had to spend a rather long time negotiating the rights. Kershaw thinks this was another perfect track for the film. It was a brand new track. Sony had only just signed up the band, and this was the first single, which the creative team thought was the perfect metaphor for the make or break life moment for Josie of the HSC exam. A CD of the soundtrack was released, and there are several Italian language pop songs that run over the head and tail credits.

In relation to the dance scenes, the DVD commentary trio are keen to insist on the reality of the scene, with real kids dancing, and without the sort of choreographed numbers that might be found in an American teen film. Marchetta noted that there was a sense of ownership with the film when it came out, with young viewers seeing it as their city and their film.

The film is frequently dated to , the year of its domestic release, but it actually carries a copyright notice for in the tail credits. It was shot at the end of and completed in The little insignias used in the title sequence above the names were, according to Marchetta, inspired by a photograph she took when she and director Kate Woods were in Italy casting Elena Cotta. The graffiti was on a wall that they whizzed past. According to Woods, it took them three and a half hours to wind their way back and find it again.

The idea also appeared later in the film, but was in a scene that was cut see above ;. Woods says the intention in the opening bottling of sauce scene was to always want it to be one continuous shot. In post they coloured the scene to make it look like a garish home movie, as if someone was roaming around the yard with a camera.

For the church singing scene, there were only about 15 girls wearing the proper school uniform. The others in the scene had little pieces of cloth around their neck to hide other school uniforms;. According to Woods, none of the women used in the spying sequences - designed to show how Josie felt about and related to her family - spoke English well;.

Similarly Elena Cotta spoke not a word of English and so had to learn all of the English lines given to her phonetically. She and Pia Miranda were unable to communicate one to one, and an interpreter had to be on set to facilitate communication. While Miranda was half Italian, she spoke no Italian;. Woods notes that they had to be careful not to ask Cotta to do too many lines in English in a row, so she could remember what she was saying phonetically - instead allowing her to break back into Italian;.

Woods notes that Cotta had an extremely long career as a theatre actress and was extremely beautiful, and so the photo she shows Josie while the pair are in bed together c.

The photo is held up against shots of a younger Scacchi and Pia Miranda. Kershaw notes that they had a lot of good will and support from a number of schools, offering students who wanted to experience the film-making process.

They were helped with the book already being popular with school-aged readers. Woods notes that as the day wore on the kids started to get restless, and Kick Gurry kept on changing his speech to keep the kids amused.

The scene changed locations a number of times. The school dance sequence also involved a number of extras from a variety of schools.

The idea was to show a diversity of faces, ethnic groups, size and types, with touches of geekiness and awkwardness adding to the reality of the scene;. Marchetta claims that intergenerational hands were a significant theme in the book as with hands in the sink, preparing ingredients for a meal. The Easter scenes were a significant part of the attempt to establish the chronology for Josie's HSC year, rather than using cards or other devices to establish the timeline;.

Woods remembers that the slow track across the extended family at table in the back yard required 17 takes before they got it right, with time and light running out about 28 mins into the DVD version. She and her husband Domenico Dimarte Riccardo were actually a couple they found in a cafe. So while they looked perfect for their roles, they sometimes found it difficult to coordinate their moves with the camera. Kershaw recalls she thought the anecdote perfect, just what they should have in the film, but Marchetta first had to go off and ask her Nonna for permission;.

Director Woods notes it resulted in a moment which always works with audiences. She thought that Gurry managed to walk a fine line between the audience liking and not liking his character, with Gurry eventually winning them over;. One scene in which Gurry acts in an unlikeable fashion comes at the Village theatre in George street, which Woods says was the very first scene that was shot.

Woods says she was terrified and she forced writer Melina to come to set at some un-Godly hour because she just needed her there to kick off the film;. In the fast food scene, Josie limps because Miranda had fallen and hurt her ankle that day of the shoot, and had also been stung by a bee. She limped for a couple of days but mostly managed to hide it from the camera.

She did in her ankle while walking with Jacob in the car park about 67 minutes into the film ;. Woods says that the scene where post John's suicide, Miranda bursts into tears on a train and is hugged by Kick Gurry was done at the end of a very long day, and she found astonishing the ability of the young actor to come up with the emotional intensity and honesty required;. Towards the end of the shoot, Woods found herself running behind, with some scenes not complete. She had to find some time to do pick-ups, so she had to cram two days into one, and instead of doing the usual average of minutes in a day, she had to do closer to twelve.

This meant there were a lot of words for Cotta to remember phonetically in one day. There was another big scene done the same day - the scene between Nonna and Josie which begins just after 85 minutes into the DVD version, in which they argue and Nonna confesses to Josie about her relationship with her husband and an Australian lover;.

Woods notes that Cotta could only come out mid-shoot, and so she and Miranda only had a day together before they had to do these big emotional scenes. Robyn Kershaw remembers this doubling up also created complications in post-production, especially for the first scene, with Scacchi going back to the UK, LaPaglia to the US, and Cotta to Italy.

They had to get the details to Cotta who was on location in the UK, but she only received half the lines and recorded only half of what they needed. The newly constructed lines comes when Cotta tells Josie that every Christmas Francesco would go away into the bush. Being an Italian family, there were plenty of photographs;.

Kershaw notes it was quite an organisational feat to get students bussed in for the action that day, with the outermost ones being returned earliest in the day, while at the same time having on a micro level a couple of students on set being supervised for their HSC exams;.

The location for the love scene was a tiny little room found very much at the last minute, and the creative team recall that the set had been dressed overnight, but the person who owned the bedroom just moved back in and slept the night on the set.

There were about sixty people crowded around that monitor just as Miranda walked out the door, but Woods hastily adds it was just for the moment, and they quickly moved it;. They ran out of time, and had to shoot the daylight scene using artificial light, which explains the tight grouping of the threesome. Wood still thinks that, despite the obvious lighting of the daylight scene, that this was the right call, that the scene had to play in the light;.

Marchetta jokes that they should presume that Josie and Christina went out for dinner to discuss how they were going to deal with this new information before arriving back for the showdown with Michael;.

Originally the end tomato bottling scene was to be shot on Steadicam, but after seeing the first day of Steadicam filming, Kershaw says they decided to revert to Toby Oliver doing handheld. Woods jokes it was much cheaper, but adds it was much better handheld, with Oliver doing a good job.

The film relies heavily on voice-over narration by Josie to help structure the narrative and give insights into character. The opening credits feature the pop song Tintarella Di Luna and the activities of a family backyard tomato sauce bottling. As a plane flies overhead and head credits finish, Josie - Pia Miranda as Josephine Alibrandi - begins:.

Josie comes into frame and looks directly to camera. Or as I like to refer to it - National Wog Day. On the various sauce-making and bottling activities. You might think this is all quirky and cute, but I actually find this really embarrassing. Josie has washed her hands and headed over to put a new rockier sound on the record player. Put the music back on, we have to finish. We kind of happened by default.

Josie gets through the front gate When everyone was choosing their friends in Year 7, we were the only ones left in the playground. Anna gets out of the front seat, creating room for Josie to slide in to it. The car drives off, as a pop song begins and the Tomato Day sequence ends Josie pauses. She sees Jacob - Kick Gurry - ambling up the driveway to the backyard.

A Charger? Well, except for my mum not to die. But, God, I love your faith. A car horn beeps and Josie races out the front. Michael offers Jacob the wooden stirrer. At the bottling, her mother and father briefly pass each other, as Josie arrives with her friends. A plane roars over dangerously low, as they do every day of the year in the western suburbs of Sydney.

The opening song returns, Josie takes a basket from Nonna and persuades her to dance, and soon everyone is dancing. For a detailed synopsis, with cast, of what happens in between these scenes, see below, underneath the Beyond press kit. That was two and a half years ago. Now Alibrandi is ready for release and Wood's feature film directorial debut is garnering strong critical accolades.

Helmed sic by experienced actors Anthony LaPaglia and Greta Scacchi as the maladjusted parents of a teenage schoolgirl, Alibrandi showcases a trio fresh young talent. Pia Miranda is Josie, a third generation Australian carrying the Catholic burden of her forbears' tragedies. Matthew Newton son of Bert and Pattie portrays John Barton who is labouring beneath the expectations of a high achieving father. Cotta was cast just two weeks before pre-production after producer Robyn Kershaw hatched a madcap plan which involved travelling to Italy in search of their woman.

The scheme more than paid off. Kate Woods says, "I was determined Nonna was going to be Italian. There is a group of fabulous ethnic Australian] older women actors but they are not necessarily Italian and I didn't think it was fair on them or on the story.

Cotta doesn't speak any English, so once cast, she had to learn her role phonetically. With Scacchi and LaPaglia on board, Woods and Kershaw opted for an open call in their quest for the younger actors. Though the casting was arduous, Woods says the freedom to search for new actors was liberating.