Last Saturday evening at the Eastend Cinemain Adelaide
Bill had a successful screening of his most recent film
My Darling in Stirling
Bill told me it was shown in a theatre holding about 100 people.
"It was just short of a sell out, only 4 tickets left unbought. But, hey, around 100 people were there so a great success! I personally was pleased with how the film looked and sounded.
At the Adelaide FF in October it looked and sounded horrible. So, on this front, a great success for me personally, and I think it also contributed to the audience being fully attentive to the film and appreciating it.
Amelie Dunda in the central role, as a 19-year-old university student.
It's a real crowd-pleaser this film, there was huge applause in the end. The film does have a light, joyful feel to it, which was my plan, but the audience response has far exceeded my expectations.
Bill Mousoulis with young actors Amelie Dunda and Joshua Blenkiron,
flanked by their respective parents.
Making films as an independent filmmaker, i.e. as a truly independent filmmaker, without any funding attached to the project, is quite difficult these days.
Not necessarily in the actual making of it (apart from letting go of at least around
$10,000of your own money), because there are always keen actors and crew
members ready to be involved in any project, even without being paid for it. Of
course, there are still difficulties and limitations in making any such film. For a
start, it helps if you are into realist cinema, like myself. If you're into set pieces
of action, or you need costumes or props that are quite particular, or a location
that is grand and inaccessible, then you're up against it. For myself, I have made
11 features now, so am quite used to getting around whatever obstacles that are
presented in front of me. Somehow, I end up completing each feature I attempt.
The hard part these days with any indie feature is to get it screened and noticed.
Through my network of film critics, I'm always assured of some reviews appearing,
as they have for this new film of mine (My Darling in Stirling, 79 mins). But when it
comes to any screenings of a no-budget indie film, it is quite hard to get into
festivals, or onto distribution platforms. Basically, there are always vested interests
involved when it comes to the market-place. And festivals are clearly part of the
ecosystem of this market-place. Any 5 million dollar film will always get any festival
slot ahead of any $10,000 film. The distributors always pressure the festivals to take
their films.
With My Darling in Stirling, I was lucky I think with the Adelaide Film Festival in that
the film is made in Adelaide, and the festival created a special "SA indies" section,
\for some low-budget films. So, in October of last year, I had a successful world
premiere of the film there. The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) on the
other hand rejected my film last year. It clearly does not have any "Indies" section,
and it hasn't really supported low-budget cinema since around the mid-'00s.
Through the early months of 2024, I have received more rejections from festivals
(mainly overseas ones, though there is one acceptance at least, a small festival in
Cyprus for June). Because the film has already premiered in Adelaide, I decided to
set up my own 2nd public screening of the film in Adelaide, in a cinema. Assisted by
a young film collective called Moviejuice, I hired a Palace Nova cinema for Saturday,
March 23. It's great that these days even the commercial cinemas hire out their
venues, allowing for indie filmmakers to put screenings on themselves. Of course,
it's a risk. Even for a 57-seat cinema for example, you need 30-35 people to attend,
just to break even. In the end, the 57-seat cinema we had booked proved too small,
so we upgraded it to a 104-seat cinema and managed to pack the place out. This
film of mine seems to actually be a crowd-pleaser (I guess it is a musical, even if it's
an alternative, unusual musical), so one needs that on one's side too.
I look forward to presenting the film in Melbourne in the coming months. MIFF have
agreed to reconsider it, but if they don't take it, I know I can hire out a cinema there,
and put it on myself. An independent filmmaker always needs to be proactive
Her brother, Alan Sainte-Marie, also wrote to newspapers, including the Denver Post in 1972, to clarify that his sister was not born on a reservation, has Caucasian parents, and that
"to associate her with the Indian and to accept her as his spokesman is wrong".[64]
Alan Sainte-Marie's' daughter Heidi has stated that, in 1975, her father had met Buffy and a PBS
producer for Sesame Street while working as a commercial pilot. She has said that the producer
later asked her father if he was Indigenous, because he did not look that he was.
Her father clarified that they were of European ancestry and not Indigenous.[64]
On November 7, 1975, Alan Sainte-Marie received a letter from a law firm representing Buffy
Sainte-Marie, which said, "We have been advised that you have without provocation disparaged
and perhaps defamed Buffy and maliciously interfered with her employment opportunities."
The letter also stated that no expense would be spared in pursuing legal remedies.[64]
Included with the law firm letter was a handwritten note from Buffy Sainte-Marie to her brother
stating that she would expose him for allegedly sexually abusing her as a child if he continued
Sainte-Marie's 2018 authorized biography states she was "probably born" on the Piapot First Nation
reserve in Saskatchewan, and throughout her adult life she claimed she was adopted and does
not know where she was born or who her biological parents are. However, there is no known
official record of her adoption.
Descendants of Piapot and Starblanket also issued a statement defending Sainte-Marie's ties to
the Piapot First Nation, saying that
"We claim her as a member of our family and all of our family members are from the Piapot
First Nation. To us, that holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record
keeping ever could."
They also criticized the allegations against Sainte-Marie as being "hurtful, ignorant, colonial, and racist".[66]\
On October 27, 2023, CBC News published Sainte-Marie's official birth certificate. It indicates
that she was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts, to her white parents, Albert and Winifred Santamaria.[6]Her son Cody has stated that she obtained her claims to Native identity through "naturalization" and
not by birth.[67]To verify Sainte-Marie's early Mi'kmaq identity claims, her younger sister took a DNA test
which showed that she had "almost no" Native American ancestry and she says she is
genetically related to Sainte-Marie's son, which would not be possible if Sainte-Marie was
Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Indigenous Ancestry Called Into Question
Update, Friday, November 24 at 9:15 p.m.: Buffy Sainte-Marie is again pushing back against an investigation that suggested that she fabricated the Indigenous ancestry
she has claimed throughout her career. Last month, CBC’s The Fifth Estate documentary
episode that Sainte-Marie was born to a white Italian family in Massachusetts.
The singer-songwriter previously defended her Indigenous backgroundon Facebook.