A small budget Australian LGBTQI drama, Pulse, has won a major prize at this year’s Busan International Film Festival. It is the first Australian film to win the BNK Busan Bank prize, which on the weekend awarded the filmmakers US$20,000.
Pulse screened earlier this year at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival and the Sydney Film Festival. It is yet to find an Australian distributor.
Written by Daniel Monks (also producer and editor) and directed by Stevie Cruz-Martin (also cinematographer and producer) the story follows a gay teenager with a disability (played by Monks) who longs to transform into another body. Based in a slightly futuristic world, he decides to undertake a new medical procedure that allows this to happen.
Busan is a city in South Korea, a country known for having conservative views on disability and LGBTIQ communities.
Flicks contributor Luke Buckmaster saw Pulse earlier this year, and has this to say about it:
“Pulse is a strange, interesting, at times exquisite film that very much dances to its own beat. In fact it is the most interesting exploration of disability in Australian cinema since the turn of the century. Like Dance Me to My Song, the courageous Australian film made about disability in the 1990s, it is very bold. I guarantee you have never seen a body swap drama anything like it.
“The screenwriter Daniel Monks, who is also the lead star, told me at an event a couple of months ago that the film came from a deeply personal place. As a gay teenager with a disability, he longed to be in a different body. That kind of deeply personal consideration can be felt quite powerfully in the final result.”
After accepting the award at Busan, Cruz-Martin told Inside Film:
“We were very shocked and extremely excited to take out this award and very humbled by the entire experience…many of the audience members told us how important a film like Pulse was for Korea; there is clearly a hunger for this kind of material and that really excites Daniel and myself.”
