Cine Wonders is a new program being run this year in partnership with Luna Palace Cinemas to bring Perth Festival to a family audience. I was lucky enough to interview Madeline Bates, the film curator for the Perth Festival and driving force behind the festival’s new program, Cine Wonders.
In 2025, Perth Festival’s goal is to share cinematic stories to everyone, and CineWonders is the perfect way to reach a younger audience as well as those who might prefer more easy-going movies. While Perth festival’s regular programming shows many brilliant films, CineWonders is such a wonderful way to bring original cinema to an audience that might otherwise miss out on such important stories.
Cine Wonders is showing some fantastic movies like Flow, a dialogue-free Oscar contender about a cat and a gang of other animals sailing through a mesmerising post apocalyptic world, and The Lost Tiger, the first Australian animated film written and directed by an indigenous woman, Chantelle Murray. With a lineup of fresh, original films Cine Wonders not only aims to reach a new audience but also presents them with thought-provoking and endlessly entertaining movies. I can personally attest to the quality of Flow, which is in line to become the first Latvian film to win an Oscar, and it will be a well deserved one.
Madeline spoke as a true ambassador for Perth Festival and for film as a whole, being more than happy to gush over how fantastic several of the festival releases are in current and previous years. She also lamented the fact that many movies can’t be included in Perth Festival’s lineup for reasons out of her control like distribution rights.
Curation seems quite a tricky process, having to scout various film festivals like TIFF and Cannes, finding suitable films that fit into the balance of the schedule and hopefully securing rights to actually show it.
One of the hardest things about being curator is balancing the films you select, ensuring the cover several genres, countries of origin and have a variety of emerging and established talent. Madeline mentioned her love for Persian cinema and she was very happy to see movies like My Favourite Cake and The Seed of the Sacred Fig feature in this year’s schedule.
I was so glad to talk with Madeline, to have a conversation with someone so passionate about a program I’ve been so lucky to be a part of was such a wonderful experience.