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Dilan Gunawardana
Dilan Gunawardana is an arts reviewer and online content editor. He is a former Deputy Editor of Australian Book Review (2017–18). He currently manages the ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) website and edits its Stories & Ideas section. He holds a Masters Degree in Communications and Media Studies from Monash University (Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence).
Michael Winterbottom’s three Trip films are, in essence, all the same: two middle-aged men motor through beautiful locations around the world and eat sumptuous meals in high-end provincial restaurants while impersonating celebrities, sniping at each other, and complaining about various physical and emotional ailments. On paper this doesn’t sound enthralling, especially three times over, and ye ... (read more)
Every winter for the last few years, Hobart has soaked itself in a shade of deep red and invited a mass of bodies to cavort and feast on its flesh for MONA’s annual winter arts festival of ‘darkness, light, birth, death, and renewal’, Dark Mofo. Therefore, the performance by Viennese artist Hermann Nitsch, where a similar thing happened to a freshly slaughtered bull, should have caused littl ... (read more)
For those seeking a concise illustrative history of the Vietnam War, Marcelino Truong’s graphic novel, Such a Lovely Little War, is the ideal place to begin. Those seeking a graphic novel memoir as engaging as Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1986–92) or Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2001–2), will be unsatisfied.
‘Marco’, as the author is referred to in this book, is the son of a Vietnamese d ... (read more)
When ticketholders are forewarned not to wear white clothing to a small-scale production, feelings of trepidation are understandable. The aptly named ‘In Your Face Theatre’ troupe’s Trainspotting condenses Irvine Welsh’s 1993 critically acclaimed collection of short stories about a group of self-destructive Scottish heroin addicts and their equally dysfunctional friends, and spits it back ... (read more)
If a single word could sum up the world première of Satan Jawa, it would be ‘bewitching’. Indonesian Director Garin Nugroho’s black-and-white silent film combines mime and dance to relate a Faustian tale of love, sacrifice, and agony, rooted in Javanese mysticism. A twenty-piece Indonesian gamelan orchestra accompanied the film in collaboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; they pr ... (read more)
It seems fitting that the co-opted electrical substation in Newport, Melbourne should be the site of an enterprising arts space. Formerly it was used to generate electricity for Victorian Railways (it fell into disrepair in the 1960s). Perhaps some residual energy still pulses through the concrete lattice of its red-bricked walls or runs along the arched tops of its double-story windows, investing ... (read more)
Songs are of great importance to the Dinka people of South Sudan. ‘They’re our avatars, and our biographies. They precede us, introduce us, and live on after we die,’ writes the refugee advocate, Archibald muse, and NSW Australian of the Year for 2017, Deng Thiak Adut. His memoir, Songs of a War Boy, serves as a profound if disturbing ballad to his tragedies and triumphs.
... (read more)
The cover of Sean Rabin’s first novel, Wood Green, depicts a foggy eucalypt forest at dawn (or dusk), and a ghostly figure in the glow of torchlight. With the added element of the story’s setting – a secluded town nestled in the shadows of Mount Wellington, Tasmania – one could be forgiven for assuming that Wood Green is ‘yet another bush gothic’, instead of a modern and humorous disco ... (read more)
In the notes accompanying this year’s Melbourne Festival, artistic director Jonathan Holloway stated that his diverse program was designed to ‘puncture the creative borders between artforms’. The concept of artistic cross-fertilisation is hardly new, nor does it always result in something worth experiencing (think most comic book film adaptations), but three notable Melbourne Festival presen ... (read more)