0/5

ABC’s Eternity Man wins international award

An ABC opera based on the life of the man who chalked the word "Eternity" across Sydney has won a prestigious Rose D'Or Award.

eternity1An ABC film opera, The Eternity Man, has won an international Rose d’Or Award for Best Performing Arts program.

The Rose D’Or is amongst the most prestigious television awards in the world -the Rose D’Or Festival began in Switzerland in 1961.

The Eternity Man, which aired in January, was the sole finalist from Australia and defeated 5 other entries including from the BBC and Bravo TV.

Produced by Goalpost Pictures Australia and Illuminations Media (UK), the opera brought to screen the life of Arthur Stace, who chalked the word “Eternity” on the streets of Sydney nearly 500,000 times, until he died in 1967.

Written by the late poet Dorothy Porter and composer Jonathan Mills it featured baritone Grant Smith and Machine Gun Fellatio’s Christa Hughes and was imaginatively directed by UK director Julien Temple (The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle, Absolute Beginners). It was lavishly staged using several Sydney locations including Luna Park, King’s Cross, Museum Station, The Rocks and The Gap.

Producer Rosemary Blight said: “The Eternity Man is a film I feel privileged to produce. It was thrilling to bring together an inspiring collaborative team, including our director Julien Temple, the late celebrated poet Dorothy Porter and internationally-regarded Australian contemporary composer Jonathan Mills, to produce a something genuinely unique, sumptuous and exciting.”

ABC TV Head of Arts, Entertainment and Comedy, Amanda Duthie says “It’s thrilling that this unique collaboration received such a prestigious TV arts prize.”

In 2006, Australian Chris Lilley won a Rose d’Or for Best Male Comedy Performance. Previous nominees have included The Chaser’s War on Everything, The Librarians and actress Jackie Woodburne from Neighbours.

Full winners are:
ARTS DOCUMENTARY: The Curse of Mona Lisa, Channel 4
COMEDY: Rick Mercer Report, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
DRAMA: Windfall & Misfortunes, Distraction Formats
ENTERTAINMENT: The Anthill, 7 y acciόn
GAME SHOW: Relentless, ITV Global Entertainment
PERFORMING ARTS: The Eternity Man,Australian Broadcasting Corporation
(Special mention: La Traviata At Zurich Main Station, SF Schweizer Fernsehen)
MULTI PLATFORM: MI High, Whack The Mole, The MI High Alternate Reality Game, BBC
PITCH PILOT: The Telephone, Productions Pixcom Inc
REALITY: I Survived A Japanese Gameshow, Small World IFT
SITCOM: My Family, DLT Entertainment
BEST OF 2009: I Survived A Japanese Gameshow, Small World IFT

The Eternity Man remains the only title to receive a 5 star review on TV Tonight.

2 Responses

  1. I was a bit iffy on this one for this first 15 minutes or so but then it completely sucked me in. Fantastic film, and it’s great that an incredible man like Arthur Stace has been memorialised with something this excellent.

  2. Hey! you forgot the Mono Lisa Curse! I am pretty sure that is hosted by an Australian and was really good! Robert Hughes makes interesting and entertaining critiques into the art world very much from his point of view. There is a classic momment in The Mono Lisa Curse where he asks a collecteor of Any Warhol pictures “Did you ever meet Any Warhol?” and the man replies “No” (I think) and Hughes then goes on to say “I have met him and I thought he was really stupid!”. This was shown on SBS this year (in the afternoon).

    Congrats to the ABC for funding challenging ideas and projects that go against the grain. I hope this gets repeeted again because i havent had a chance to see it. It looks visually stunning.

Leave a Reply