Sir Samuel Mogg visits Lorne (again)
Sir Samuel Mogg and his wife Dame Minnie first landed on the coast at Mogg’s Creek, Victoria in 1767 a whole three years before Captain Cook sailed into Botany Bay. A statue commemorating his landing next to the Great Ocean Road at Mogg’s Creek, named in his memory, has long since been destroyed by vandals. Sir Samuel and his wife are nevertheless remembered every year at the Lorne Film Festival now managed by the The Moggs Creek Moving Clickers, Inc.
2007 is the 50th year of the annual event and coincides with the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Lorne cinema, not to mention the 70th anniversary of the birth of the the President of the Mogg’s Creek Moving Clickers.
We paid our dues, invited some friends to stay with us at Deans Marsh and started the hectic weekend at Ba Ba Lu in Lorne on Friday 12th October. We arrived a bit late but luckily Tania and Graham Teague had saved some seats for us with a few others. The place was packed and instead of the expected 40 or so people around 100 turned up. Ba Ba Lu did a wonderful job in serving everyone and after dinner we reorganized ourselves to watch a selection of short DVDs. They were mainly animated films showing the differences in animation techniques over the past years.
Saturday promised three films, pre-dinner cocktails, dinner at Marks and then an after dinner film for those able to stay the distance. The morning started at 9.00am with a Brazilian film called Madame Sata followed at 11.00am by a French film by Olivier Marchal called 36 Quai des Orfevres. We had lunch at a place on the beach and then headed back for the 2.00pm film, Network, with Peter Finch, Faye Dunnaway and William Holden. We drove back to Deans Marsh to get ready for the evening (masks, etc) and then back for cocktails and dinner at Marks and the 9.00pm film with Kevin Spacey called Beyond The Sea. This was a film written and directed by Kevin Spacey and he also played the part of Bobby Darin. It was an amazing film with an even more amazing performance by Kevin Spacey who performed all of the Bobby Darin songs in the film. In a sense the story of Bobby Darin’s life was interesting and sad that he died so young. He was born with rheumatic fever and had an operation to replace two valves in his heart which didn’t work out so well. Sandra Dee never remarried after his death and now lives alone in Los Angeles. It was a beautiful film.
There were two films on Sunday morning but the first, due to start at 9.00am clashed with the replay of the rugby union world cup semi final between England and France. Mike and I were able to fit this in before we set off to see the Lady Killers with Alec Guiness and a very young Peter Sellers. This was one of the funniest of the Ealing Studios films and even though it was made in 1955 it was still a great film to see with Alec Guiness at his best.
The weekend ended as usual with Sir Samuel Mogg’s effigy attending the annual BBQ. This is normally held at the Mogg’s Creek Picnic Ground but this year was hosted by Tania and Graham Teague at their Mogg’s Creek house.
The Lorne Film Festival is well worth a visit and hopefully will continue until the owners of the Lorne Cinema succumb to the developers dollars.
