Academy Award winning production designer Colin Gibson has been the architect of the end of the world. George Miller’s go-to guy for two decades now, he’s credited for creating the look and feel of Mad Max: Fury Road and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, as well as such iconic Australian films such as The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and Babe: Pig in the City. It’s undeniable that Gibson has it in him to make it epic. Join us for a dynamic conversation with Gibson as he takes us through his craft and the process of collaboration in creating these unforgettable worlds.
Presented by
Talks Supported by
 |
 |
Community Broadcast Partner
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Colin Gibson
As a failing actor with two children to support and a hefty community service detention left to run, Colin took what he thought would be the easy option and joined the Art Department. Be careful what you wish for… too loud for props, too bad with crayon or calculator for art directing, he was eventually forced into production design when he became too old and grumpy to take orders from other elderly curmudgeons. Unless they were directors…
And it is largely directors we have to blame for his laughable “career”: lovely, otherwise talented people like Ray Lawrence, Gillian Armstrong, John Duigan, Stephan Elliott, Wim Wenders, Zhang Jimou and of course George Miller. All contributed to the delinquency in their own way, either through apathy, benign neglect or the sort of active amusement one might show a monkey on a bicycle.
Riding on the coat-tails of the talented has proven, if not lucrative, at least amusing and has been a hell of a way to kill time before he must face the reality of his wasted life; to the televisual wonderment of Love My Way, 9 Perfect Strangers and Operation Buffalo and feature films including Bliss and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Babe and The Great Wall, Until the End of the World and Fury Road and Furiosa (A Mad Max Saga).
Perhaps not entirely a wasted life, then?
— Colin
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Late Fame
Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.
Memory of Princess Mumbi
In 2093, a filmmaker arrives in the African village of Umata, where he meets Princess Mumbi, a woman torn between love, legacy, and the future of storytelling. It's a fabulous genre-blending fable about memory, invention and cinematic resistance.
Lessons of Darkness
Werner Herzog's unforgettable documentary reveals the unfolding disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames in 1991 as a sweeping inferno of mesmerizing power.
Beau Travail
Inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Claire Denis' transfixing Beau Travail is set in East Africa. Sgt Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his time in the French Foreign Legion, and the impact of the handsome Sentain (Gregoire Colin).
But I'm a Cheerleader
Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is the perfect All-American Girl, or so she thinks. That is until she’s shipped off to conversion therapy. This pitch black comedy is wrapped in a saccharine bow, featuring the icon herself, RuPaul, as a conversion counsellor.