Courier Mail - September 22, 2005

Movie to celebrate Kokoda

Edition: 1 - First with the news
Section: News, pg. 011

THE Kokoda campaign that won Australian cameraman Damien Parer an Academy Award 62 years ago is to be the subject of a new film being made in southeast Queensland from Friday week.

Parer, a photographer and newsreel cameraman, won his Oscar in 1943
for Kokoda Front Line.

Sydney filmmaker Alister Grierson will direct a cast including Shane Bourne, William McInnes, Travis McMahon and Steve Le Marquand in the as-yet-unnamed film.

Grierson, 36, will film action sequences involving members of a 39th Battalion platoon at Mt Tamborine over five weeks.

He prepared for the film by walking the entire Kokoda Track last month, and says he wants the film to introduce a young audience to the courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice shown by the Australians who fought there.

The actors have had 1940s haircuts and have been rigorously following special diets to make them believable as World War II Diggers.