Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Pixar's long-awaited sequel to Finding Nemo is deep into production. Titled Finding Dory, it has the forgetful blue tang Dory (voiced again by Ellen Degeneres) searching for her family. According to Pixar's chief creative officer John Lasseter✓ – the visionary director of Toy Story, Toy Story 2 and Cars – Sydney has not been forgotten even though the movie is set in waters elsewhere. "It starts in Australia," he tells Short Cuts of the movie that opens in June next year. Even though directors Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich had never visited Sydney until Finding Nemo was finished, its setting in the Harbour City sparked interest from other cities to be in Pixar movies. "Every country wants to have their city in it, like Sydney in Nemo," Lasseter says. Sydney's historic State Theatre is hosting what's described as "an unprecedented week-long preview event" of Disney's new live-action movie Cinderella, starring Lily James from Downton Abbey as the young heroine and Cate Blanchett as her steely stepmother, next month. It will screen nightly from March 19, with matinees as well on the weekend, before opening nationally on March 26. For both seasons, Cinderella will be preceded – for added princess! – by the Disney short Frozen Fever. "This event is an opportunity for audiences to experience movie magic in Sydney's majestic State Theatre," says David Seargeant, managing director of Amalgamated Holdings.

Hot ticket: Fifty Shades Of Grey. Three more selections for SXSW Two Australian short films and an interactive online documentary about the Cronulla riots will join Josh Lawson's comedy The Little Death at South by South West Film Conference and Festival in Texas next month. Writer-director Yianni Warnock's Happy With Bear, about a Singaporean exchange student who lives vicariously through her online persona, has been selected alongside Tim Marshall's Followers, about an elderly woman who sees a vision of Jesus at her swimming class. Director Jaya Balendra's Cronulla Riots: The Day That Shocked the Nation, the SBS Online project that has already won a Walkley Award, is a finalist in the SXSW Interactive Innovation Award for Visual Media Experience. George Miller will present a screening of Mad Max 2 at the festival, which will be attended by more than 550 Australians. Fifty years after Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins and a group of university students set off on a bus through rural NSW to investigate discrimination and spotlight segregation, the City of Sydney is hosting a commemortive screening of his daughter Rachel's 1993 documentary Freedom Ride. Some of the original Freedom Riders will speak at the free screening at Redfern Community Centre on February 27. Lord Mayor Clover Moore describes the ride as a watershed moment in Australia's history of civil rights. "They encountered racism and segregation and were able to draw the spotlight to this discrimination at a time when the civil rights movement in the United States was gaining an unstoppable momentum," she says. In Freedom Ride, Rachel Perkins(Bran Nue Dae, Mabo) followed her father as he revisited some of the country towns visited on that journey.

Australian Oscar nominee David Lee will get a hint about his Oscar chances when the Cinema Audio Society Awards take place in Los Angeles on Saturday. He is part of the team nominated for best sound mixing in a live action movie for Unbroken against Interstellar, American Sniper and Birdman. While the winner has gone on to win the Oscar six times in the past 12 years, according to The Hollywood Reporter it has happened the past three years in a row now, with Hugo, Les Miserables and Gravity having double victories. Snubbed at the Oscars before winning a British Academy Award this week, The Lego Movie is up for best sound mix in an animated movie against Big Hero 6, The Boxtrolls, How To Train Your Dragon 2 and Penguins of Madagascar, with Australians Ryan Squires, Wayne Pashley and John Simpson represented. There is more Hollywood awards season excitement for The Lego Movie's Australian crew with another nomination at the Golden Reel Awards for sound editing on Sunday. Director and star Damon Gameau will need to keep his blood sugar levels up during a gruelling national tour next month to talk about That Sugar Film, his documentary that trials the effects of a high sugar diet on a healthy body for 60 days. In Melbourne, he will speak at Q&A sessions at Cinema Nova on March 1, Palace Brighton Bay and Kino Cinemas on March 2, Rivoli Cinemas and Jam Factory on March 3 then Village Cinemas Geelong on March 4. In Sydney, he will be at Palace Norton Street and Dendy Newtown on March 9. Event Cinemas Bondi Junction and Cremorne Orpheum on March 10, Event Cinemas Macquarie on March 11 then Event Cinemas Newcastle on March 12 and Palace Byron Bay on March 19. In the ACT, he will at Palace Electric and Event Cinemas Manuka on March 16. Other states are also included. Sequel: Finding Nemo.

The principal of Somers Primary School on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, David Ingham says he loves movies that "encourage children to think". So he is delighted with the two films that will screen outdoors on the school oval to raise funds for chilldren with special needs – The Princess Bride and Some Like It Hot. Arthur O'Bryan✓, former manager of the Kino Cinemas and a parent at the school, is staging Starlight Cinema By The Bay on March 14. In the light of Selma's success, an interesting new role for an Australian in the US: Viva Bianca (Accidents Happen, The Reckoning) has joined Cicely Tyson, Elizabeth McGovern and Maggie Grace in shooting Showing Roots in Louisiana. Directed by Michael Wilson, the drama focuses on a southern town that is thrown into turmoil when the slavery mini-series Roots screens in 1977. Bianca plays the owner of a local diner who wakes up to the social change taking place. Netflix sale: Aim High In Creation.