ITS EDAMAME AND KARAAGE TIME and there are few Film Festivals in this country which manage to maintain a unique balance between idiosyncratic pop-cultural flamboyance and compelling cinematic indulgence. The Japanese Film Festival, now years old is one such Festival. Over the past few years the JFF has proven to be not only a commercial success but a highly anticipated event on the festival circuit.

Part of its success is obvious; Australia has a cultural fascination with Japan, a country whose fierce identity finds itself threatened by the very social dogma that made it a subject of curiosity in the first place. Japan’s psyche has long been fractured, torn between post war American influences, a cultural concern over the degradation of moral and traditional values from its pre-war culture and its struggling, disillusioned youth unprepared for the ceremonial trenches of the workforce.

Most rock industry critics claim The Rolling Stones are the greatest Rock and roll Band in the world. Why? Longevity and popularity combined, in an ongoing career stretching back to 1962 when they took London's Marquee Club by storm.

By 1969, the Stones were the biggest live draw in the world. Yet they flew in commercial planes, eschewed five-star hotels for friends’
houses, and had only 11 people in their entourage “There was nothing prima-donna-ish about them,” says  Ethan Russell photographer who was invited to go on tour with them — and witnessed things he’d never forget. “Backstage they’d hang out with musicians: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Tina Turner, Chuck Berry. It was all about the music.”

It was all about the music then, true, but also timing. In this documentary you will see how the postmodern western cultures of the UK and US, where being radically transformed from conservative to liberal social states, in which individualism and free expression was exemplified in the personalities of Mic Jagger and Keith Richards. The Stones fitted themselves perfectly into this developing culture. Then, they were the “bad boys” of rock; the “anti-Beatles” brigade; the defiant rockers you wouldn’t dare take home to mummy or daddy. Their first album (cut in one day) has great raw energy and passion, but their live shows as they are today were terrific. They have inspired melody and spasmodic mayhem in millions, from Hell’s Angels security guards in their 1972 American tour, to the upper crust of the British establishment. In this lively program we hear from their contemporaries, fans and critics about the songs, the scandals, ...the crises and the excesses and we see the news footage and interviews that helped make The Rolling Stones, roll  - with over 24 albums and 437 songs.... a must see documentary, from a musical and social anthropological point of view.