OPENING NIGHT SCREENING AND Q&A
Thursday 19 November 7pm
New Farm Cinemas Brisbane. 

The SQ-supported feature documentary Love Opera (Freshwater Pictures) will be released nationally from 19 November in participating Australian and New Zealand cinemas, with distributer Gil Scrine from Antidote Films.

Love Opera premiered at the Brisbane International Film Festival to sell-out audiences for both screenings in Oct 2019. It was also selected for Gold Coast Film Festival 2020 and BOFA Film Festival 2020 in Tasmania, It screened in St Tropez earlier this month for its European premiere, and has also been selected for Cannes Cinephiles in May 2021.

Love Opera provides an inside look at Brisbane’s world-class Lisa Gasteen National Opera Program as it prepares a production of Carmen with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Nestled inside Griffith University on Brisbane’s South Bank, the Lisa Gasteen National Opera Program is the brainchild of its eponymous leader, whose singular qualities as an opera singer have taken her from The Met to Covent Garden and all across Europe.

This warm-hearted documentary follows Lisa as she looks to cultivate the next generation of opera stars and deliver a top-flight production over the course of an intensive program. The students dig deep to give the performance of their lives for the famous opera Carmen, as they prepare to share the stage with international talent on opening night.

The documentary includes extensive interviews with Lisa Gasteen AO, renowned Australian soprano and Director of the Lisa Gasteen National Opera Program, Alondra de la Parra, who is an internationally acclaimed conductor and recently Musical Director of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Simone Young, leading International conductor from Australia and Italian conductor Giovanni Reggioli, who works with the Washington National Opera, USA.

Love Opera was a 100 percent Queensland production and supported wholly by Queensland investors and contributors — Screen Qld, Orange Entertainment, Griffith Film School and Broadley Rees Hogan.

Senior editor from The Post Lounge, Sue Schweikert, edited the film.

DIRECTOR: LISELLE MEI 
PRODUCER: TRISH LAKE 
PRODUCER: DANIEL SCHULTZ
SCREENWRITER: Margaret McVeigh
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY (DOP) / CINEMATOGRAPHER: ESTEBAN RIVERA
EDITOR: SUE SCHWEIKERT (THE POST LOUNGE)