Ben Apfelbaum

RED CARPET : RUBY’S CHOICE : A NEW AUSSIE FILM

Stephen Hunter, Coco Jack Gillies, Jane Seymour, Michael BuddCARPET =
Jane Seymour
Angela Bishop
Coco Jack Gillies
Diarmid Heidenreich
Michael Budd
Nicole Pastor

Stephen Hunter
Suzan Mutesi

Shot during the Covid lockdowns of 2020, RUBY’S CHOICE is a poignant tale that follows three generations of strong Australian women. Ruby (Jane Seymour), is a sweet, creative elderly lady who lives alone with undiagnosed dementia. After accidentally burning her house down she is forced to move in to her daughter Sharon’s (Jacqueline MacKenzie) crowded home and share her granddaughter Tash’s (Coco Jack Gillies) bedroom.

Family dynamics are shifted and family secrets are unravelled, when the time comes to move Ruby in to a nursing home.

The creatives behind this movie are passionately invested in it.  Michael Budd, the director, witnessed his beloved grandmother’s progressive dementia but noted that the family matriarch, even with her diminished capacity had something to contribute.

Michael Budd is also unique in that he is the first Australian born Afro American to direct, produce and act in. a feature film.

The writer Paul Mahoney has fifteen years experience in dealing with mental health issues and so this was a passionate  project for his also.

Clearly Jane Seymour believed in this project as she flew from the United States, Covid or no Covid, to grace the Red Carpet. Her commitment was such that she was made an Honorary Ambassador for ‘Spark Of Life’, a dementia charity. In fact, some of the financial contributors to this movie were dementia charity organisations that also believed in what  Michael Budd was creating.

It was clearly a happy set as supporting actors and creatives went on to the Red Carpet to great her, and she in turn was absolutely delighted to seem them once again.

RUBY’S CHOICE opens in cinemas on Thursday 3rd March, 2022.

Featured image : ex Wiggle Jeff Phat. All pics by Ben Apfelbaum.

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.