With her deep experience of the organisation’s changes, Rochelle Siemienowicz has covered AACTA and this year’s awards in considerable depth. Now, at last, she can come back to earth, purged by this final dispatch from the front line at Ego Central.
If there was ever any doubt that the Australian screen industry values Baz Lurhmann, then last night’s 3rd AACTA Awards ceremony, held at the Star Event Centre in Sydney and broadcast on Network Ten, settled the question. Baz is beloved – or at least, very necessary – and the ceremony was an out-and-out celebration of ‘Bazness’, not just for the six AACTA awards won by The Great Gatsby (making the film’s total haul thirteen); but for Luhrmann’s entire film career, which was celebrated in live song and dance performances, against screened clips from Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge, Australia and yet more Gatsby. (This culminated in a mass release of white balloons which tumbled down from the ceiling onto Baz and Catherine Martin, and all other front row VIPs, leading to some rather chaotic and undignified scrambling by ushers and celebs to pop them all in time for the next segment.)
