AARON WILSON’S FEATURE FILM DEBUT ‘CANOPY’ IS TO HAVE A WORLD PREMIERE AT THE UPCOMING 2013 TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL!
The Toronto International Film Festival (September 5-15, 2013) announced today that Melbourne based-filmmaker Aaron Wilson’s debut feature CANOPY has been selected to make its world premiere in the festival’s coveted Discovery section next month.
Set during World War II in Singapore, CANOPY tells the story of an Australian fighter pilot (Australian actor Khan Chittenden) shot down in combat who awakens suspended in the treetops. As night devours day, he must navigate through a dangerous jungle in search of sanctuary. Transcending language and culture, CANOPY is a cinematic tour de force exploring the collision of war, nature and its impact on humanity. Aaron Wilson’s thrilling, breathtaking film marks the debut of an exciting new voice in Australian cinema.
CANOPY, was produced by Finer Films, as an Australia/ Singaporean co-production with Chuan Pictures. It was filmed almost entirely in Singapore, with some footage from the director’s hometown, Tocumwal, NSW. The actors are Sydney’s Khan Chittenden and Taiwan’s MO Tzu-Yi.
Born in rural Australia, Aaron Wilson has made numerous short films with a minimalist approach to narrative and passion for understated human drama. His films have screened at over 100 festivals and acquired numerous international sales and awards. His films include RENDEZVOUS (‘03), TEN FEET TALL (‘05), WIND (FENG) (‘07), FAUX PAS (‘07) and LEAP YEAR (‘08). He currently works as a director at Airbag Productions, based in Melbourne, Australia.
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theaussieword.com was proud to support this project with Aaron and the whole crew from ‘CANOPY’ early last year. News of the Toronto premiere is the icing on the cake! Good luck with the Canadian premiere guys!
Here’s our special interview with Aaron back in March 2012…
A blog special interview with Aaron Wilson, Film Director of CANOPY. A movie that needs YOUR help… Please support the genre!
A: CANOPY is my first feature film, though I’ve made several short films overs the past few years. In a way, they all seem to have built towards this full-length film. One of them, WIND, was about two elderly war survivors and their lives today. I also made a small doco where I followed Bill, an Australian Ex-POW, back to Singapore and Malaysia. It was wonderful to see the connection between Bill and his old friends from those two countries. Talking with them about their experiences sparked my interest in the different parts of war that had so affected them. That’s how CANOPY came to be.
A: There seems to be a cultural divide in Singapore. There are those keen to preserve their historic buildings and heritage areas. Then there are others who only look forward, wanting new buildings and new ventures in commerce without much regard for the past. The main tract of jungle that we filmed in, for example, contains thousands of old Chinese graves, it’s so historic. And it’s about to be destroyed to make way for an expressway, it’s so sad. I will say that the Singaporeans I have met told us they didn’t know much about their wartime history, but expressed a keen interest in knowing more about their own family history during the Japanese occupation of WWII. Many didn’t even know there were Australians in Singapore during the war, they thought it was only British. 
A: That’s right. You can see on Anzac Day that there’s such a renewed interest from our younger generation in what happened during World War Two. There were lots of Australians sent to Singapore, and lots of Indian troops, too. Something like 16,000 Australians who were fighting in Singapore were taken prisoner of war when the Japanese captured the island city. I remember one Ex-POW I interviewed told me about when he first arrived in Singapore. The British didn’t like the fact that the Australian troops would mingle with the local Singaporeans – the Chinese and Malays. But the Aussies didn’t much care for the segregations the British so loved. 
A: One character is Australian and the other is Singapore-Chinese. I was really inspired by the stories I heard from Ex-POWs and veterans about how they got on with the locals in Singapore and Malaya. I wanted to show that there were many different peoples fighting. From the interviews I carried out, it seemed that you could be fighting alongside a Singapore-Chinese resistance fighter or an Indian or Malay or British soldier, and you all had a common enemy in the Japanese.
A: Khan, our Australian actor, has just appeared in the ‘Underbelly: Razor’ series as Frank ‘The Little Gunman’ Green. He was also in the ‘Sisters Of War’ TV film on the ABC. Tzu-Yi, the actor playing the Chinese resistance fighter, is a young Taiwanese star. He’s done heaps of popular TV Drama series and films, and he’s getting quite a name in Taiwan and China.
A: Well we’ve finished 90% of our film. It’s all shot, edited and our visual effects are done, which is why we could put together a trailer to show people what it’s like. We’ve had a very lean budget the whole way, moving forward bit by bit as we secure more funding. We’re currently sourcing the last bit of funding to finish the film. For our sound design and to output the film. 
