Past Programs
Film - Documentary - 2008
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Celebrity: Dominick Dunne
23/10/2008
This documentary about the journalist and former Hollywood social climber Dominick Dunne is the work of Australian filmmakers Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley, made with much cooperation from 83-year-old, ailing, Dunne himself.
Now Dunne has had a crowded, and well-documented life. He married an heiress, went to Hollywood, became a publicist and briefly a film producer but was, by his own admission, an assiduous cultivator of celebrities. Finally his wife Ellen, with their three children, left him.
Dunne hit a low spot, and was brought even lower when his daughter Dominique was murdered. Then he began to channel that anguish and anger into writing about her murder, and covering celebrity murder cases for Vanity Fair.
While his sister-in-law Joan Didion has mainly kind but guarded things to say about Dominick, some of the most acerbic comments in the film come from his son, the actor and director Griffin Dunne.
It's an absorbing and honest film, but a sad one.
Whatever happened to Brenda Hean?
02/10/2008
In l972 Brenda Hean, Hobart piano teacher and passionate crusader to save Lake Pedder, set off in a Tiger Moth with experienced pilot Max Price to fly to Canberra. They were going to skywrite their protest over Federal Parliament. But they never made it. Somewhere along the way the plane just -- disappeared.
There was evidence at the time that the plane may have been sabotaged. The door to the hangar where it was kept had been jemmied. And Tasmania being Tasmania, rumours kept circulating.
In his five year investigation, documentary maker Scott Millwood turned up at least three different theories about what happened. It makes for an absorbing real-life thriller, with more than a streak of Tasmanian gothic.
U23D
10/04/2008
A U2 concert movie shot in 3D at various locations in Latin America during their 2006 'Vertigo' tour, but mostly in front of an MCG (Melbourne Cricket ground) size Buenos Aires crowd going nuts. With virtuosic lighting design, giant screens and cameras swirling, it's a whirlpool with the Irish four-piece -- all focused energy -- at the centre. The ringmaster is Bono, of course, using his body and hand gestures like an opera singer -- always a bit of a ham -- but to his credit when he belts out songs like 'Sunday Bloody Sunday', it is as powerful as a great aria. If you want to see a band at their peak, if not musically, certainly as a stadium act, this multicam 3D is as close as you'll get in a cinema.
The King of Kong
28/02/2008
A low-budget documentary about two middle-aged men obsessed with achieving the highest score on the 80s video arcade game 'Donkey Kong'. One is Billy Mitchell, a big-talking takeaway chicken entrepreneur, who's held the highest score for 20 years. The other is Steve J. Wiebe, an unassuming high school teacher -- a nobody to the arcade gaming community -- who is the first to beat Billy. That's when the fun begins, a rivalry ignites between them that has more Machiavellian cut and thrusts than the US Democrat primaries. A poignant study of the fragile male ego: absurd, funny and high, high drama.
Night
07/02/2008
Australian director Lawrence Johnston made a big impression in the nineties with his documentary,Eternity , telling the story of Arthur Stace, a man who spent his nights chalking the word in beautiful flowing script on Sydney pavements. It was a gentle, contemplative film which left room for reverie on the back of his beautiful images.
After a stint as a film bureaucrat, and some intriguing short films, Lawrence has returned with another feature documentary: this one exploring what Night means to a collection of Australians.
Once again, the images, captured this time by cinematographer Laurie McInnes, are beautiful. To tell the truth I was rather dreading a film which worked in sound and image only, on the model of Godfrey Reggio's Koyannisqatsi. Not that I don't enjoy a film which makes us look carefully at images, but I feared an imitation.
But Lawrence Johnston has done something more. He's also talked with a gaggle of Australians about what night means to them. At first, their voices are anonymous. Later, we glimpse faces, but they are always subservient to the image. I could have done with an even larger range of people, in fact.
What this does do though is prompt us to pursue our own memories and reveries.
Blindsight
07/02/2008
A documentary which tells an extraordinary story: a team of six young Tibetans, all blind, scaling a peak on the north side of Mt Everest (Lhakpa Ri), all 23,000 feet of it. They're led by the blind American mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer, who himself scaled Everest in 2001.
And with them is German-born Sabriye Tenberken, another remarkable person. Blind herself, Sabriya set up the only blind school in Tibet, educating many children shunned or shut away by Tibetan families.
It's an absorbing and rewarding film, as we get to know the students and as they test their own abilities. There is tension and conflict during the climb, not least between the world view of Sabriya and the more competitive, goal driven Erik and his fellow mountaineers, tactfully but truthfully captured by British director Lucy Walker. Uneven, but a journey worth taking.
Joy Division
31/01/2008
If you still haven't gotten your Joy Division fix after Control, the documentary Joy Division sheds further light down the dead-end street that was the seminal post-punk Manchester band. All the main players are here: the surviving members, the roadies, managers, the girlfriend and even the graphic designer! Fans will know the story already but it's a delight seeing these now-middle-aged faces, lined by years of rock and roll graft, and hearing the thick working-class accents that haven't been smoothed over by success. The emotion and the passion are very near the surface in these interviews. A great companion piece to Anton Corbijn's movie.
