Cedar Boys

When will we finally see the real Sydney on the big screen? Even the latest films, like Ten Empty and The Square seem outdated, anglo-nostalgic celebrations of the famous icons and dreary suburban sprawl. Where are the Lebanese corner shops, the African bakeries, the Greek cafes, and the Vietnamese tailors? Where are the suburbs like Blacktown, Rockdale and Lakemba where Arabic and Asian scripts jostle with English signage, the radio shits sitar, oud and hip hop, the streets sweat cinnamon, soy and curry?

No need to hold your breath. Shooting right now at 30 locations around the city, from Coogee to Homebush, is Cedar Boys, the very first film shot in Sydney which embraces this simmering cultural crucible as it is, and not as it used to be.

Writer/director Serhat Caradee is an Australian of Turkish descent, and a film school graduate who spent most of last year sweating on the holes in his pocket when the funding for his first feature film fell through. He survived, and with a budget of $1.3 million, and a cast of unknowns, he's fulfilling what he calls "my burning desire to tell the story of our own Mean Streets."

"Before Scorsese made Mean Streets in 1973, everyone said there were no ethnic actors in America," he points out, during a break in a hectic shooting schedule, on Oxford street. "It's the same in Australia now. Our migrant communities are always in the media for the wrong reason. What I'm interested in is this generation - the kids who have these rich ethnic cultures at home, partake in the Aussie larrikin sports and TV-shows world at school, and are into American hip hop clothes and music."

Caradee is fascinated by this "constant switching between cultures". He wrote Cedar Boys because he grew up playing football with kids from Lebanese families, and found they had similar customs to his own.

"We don't make enough films about outsiders in this country," he argues. "Considering most of us come from ‘outside', that says a lot."

This is just what the handsome young actor Les Chantery, who has briefly returned from a burgeoning career in the US to make Cedar Boys, related to in the script.

"I didn't like it at first," he admits. "I expected the script to answer all the socio-political issues. But then I fell in love with the story. I realised that it doesn't matter if you're a Lebanese-Greek-Indigenous- Asian Australian, whatever. Even someone in the Czech Republic would relate to what it's like to be ashamed of where you live, and to lust and hunger for what you think is on the other side of the tracks."

Of his character Tarek, Chantery says: "He's a Lebanese panel beater from the western suburbs who wants to live in Rose Bay! His intentions are for a better life, but he makes some bad decisions because he's been branded with this shame, and he despises himself."

Chantery originally went to LA for similar reasons. "I came out of NIDA and 99 per cent of the roles were terrorists, and gang rapists," he explains. "So when Tarek says ‘I fucking hate being Lebanese', it's like me saying ‘I'm sick of being typecast!'"

Typecasting is no longer a problem for Chantery. He just finished Righteous Kill in America, also starring Robert de Niro, and Al Pacino, and now lives in LA.

Playing Tarek's mate, Sam, is Waddah Sari, an untrained natural whose talent has propelled him through the ranks of Wildside, WaterRats and All Saints.

"No matter what anyone says, Australia is my home, but when you feel left out of mainstream society, when you have to deal with everyone hating you and the media attacking you, it can make you pretty angry."

In fact Sari, who works in youth refuges out West, is a genial young man, at 24, already married with kids. He says the last time he went to Lebanon for a holiday, he was shocked.

"I speak Arabic with an Australian accent, so everyone was asking me where I'm from. That's the same thing I get asked all the time in Australia! It was like a big slap in the face."

The third friend in the trio is Buddy Danoun who plays Nabil, the well educated, brains of the three, who neither smokes nor drinks, and runs a tidy business.  Another NIDA grad, Danoun is adamant the film has nothing to do with the Cronulla Riots, or Lebanese gangs.

"These boys are not hard," he explains. "They are soft people! Really this film is about three boys from the Western suburbs who just happen to be Lebanese."

Cedar Boys will be released next year. Visit their website and you could be in it

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