The forest

Overwhelmingly Australian screenwriters are encouraged away from the multi-protagonist model of narrative and into narratives featuring one central character and their journey. In The Forest Rogers and collaborator Jo Kennedy wished to explore a less rigid structure of story-telling. The short feature is a particular hybrid form designed to allow emerging filmmakers time and space to experiment before moving onto more marketable feature length work. With this in mind we blew open the traditional narrative journey, instead shaping the narrative around a question which is asked by one character, 'Is my husband being unfaithful?', and not answered through various fleeting conversations and phone calls with friends and family members. Each of these protagonists then features in their own story, in which we see the same dance of love and deception in their relationships with their own loved ones. Through this open and complex narrative structure a rich soup of comparison, contrast and metaphor becomes the primary viewing experience. In comparison, in a traditional, linear, closed, narrative, the viewing experience is based around a narrative question being asked, and finally answered. The Forest was extremely well received, being selected for the prestigious Telluride festival, as well as many local and international festivals, including Clermond Ferrand. In 2004 it was nominated for the Australian Film Critics Circle Award and Highly Commended in the Sydney Film Festival Dendy Awards. It had a cinema release at The George Cinema, Melbourne.