David Heslin
Age: 26
Twitter handle: @Furbicide
City I call home: Melbourne
Genre/style/region of cinema I am most passionate about: I love films that are formally ambitious and/or intellectually engaging in some way, particularly the films of that kind that were being made in Europe in the 1970s.
A film that changed me/my mind is: Chantal Akerman's News from Home, because it demonstrated to me that you can make a beautiful work of art with nothing more than one person and a camera.
MIFF 2015 film I’m most looking forward to: The Forbidden Room. It just looks fantastically weird.
I’m looking forward to Critics Campus because: It's a great opportunity to learn about the art of film criticism and put it into practice.
Cinema excites me because: There's no art form that gets closer to replicating the human experience.
Favourite Critic and why: Anthony Carew, because it is a foolish person who ventures into a film festival without his guidance. Also, he makes bad films fun to read about.
A publication I’d one day like to write for: Cahiers du Cinéma. No explanation required. It might help if I learned French, though!
What listicle about MIFF would be most likely to go viral? A pictorial history of the theatres of the Melbourne International Film Festival. With cat gifs.
The Right to See: The ongoing struggle against film censorship in Australia
Feature by David Heslin
Heaven Knows What, four ways
David Heslin reviews Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What – along with three other critics.
In the Shadow of Women
Review by David Heslin
Kommunisten
Review by David Heslin