After its world premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival, the new feature Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Boy was released on 220 Australian cinema screens last week, making it the biggest documentary release since Michael Jackson’s This Is It back in 2009, and the biggest ever release for an Australian documentary. From acclaimed director Mark Joffe (Jack…
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ABC and Screen Australia have announced four short-form documentary projects have received funding through ABC and Screen Australia’s Art Bites Initiative. This initiative is currently in its third year, encouraging filmmakers to produce a total of 6 x 5-minute documentary series for ABC’s online viewing platform ABC iView, based around art. Each team will receive…
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Whitney may not be the most necessary film but it’s certainly an entertaining one. This documentary comes hot on the heels of Whitney: Can I Be Me, but where this latest offering differs is in its unprecedented access to Whitney Houston’s family and friends. The result is an intimate and bittersweet portrait of her meteoric…
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In the nineties, The Go-Betweens’ Lindy Morrison made the documentary, Australian Women In Rock & Pop Music- Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves. Fast forward to 2018 and the film Her Sound, Her Story documents many of the same issues that are still relevant. Gender disparity in the music industry is a pervasive issue with…
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Fashion designer (Lee) Alexander McQueen was a true artist. He would say, “If you want to know me, look at my work.” The documentary, McQueen captures some of his enigma by looking behind-the-scenes at his extraordinary talent and story. While you get some sense of what this artistic genius was like you also get the…
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Following the wildly popular Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country, comes two brand new true crime original documentary series, in Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist, and brand new episodes of the critically acclaimed series The Staircase, which will expand upon the exisiting original ten episodes. The Staircase will premiere…
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Taking place between 9-18 March, the 2018 South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas has come to a close, and with that, the Audience Award winners have officially been announced. The awards cover a range of categories, from documentary features to outstanding narrative structure and creativity. Amongst the list includes Australia director…
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Screen Australia has announced funding for 12 documentary projects through the Documentary Producer and Commissioned programs. The list of projects includes an adaptation of Jimmy Barnes’ memoir Working Class Boy, The Fight, a feature length version of Violeta Ayala and Daniel Fallshaw’s award-winning short film of the same name, and a second season of Filthy…
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Where most foreigners settling in Japan pass their time in Japanese pubs, English schools or seeking out every piece of longstanding architecture, David Elliot-Jones spent his trying to become famous. And you’ve probably never heard of the guy, but that doesn’t mean he failed. Big in Japan opens with a preface about the seemingly endless…
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If American music has a heart and soul then you would find it nestled between Memphis and the Mississippi Delta. The documentary film, Take Me To The River realises this and pays homage to the soul men and women that created those passionate and influential hits for the likes of Stax Records and their ilk….
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When spoofing a film or television series, one could create a shot-for-shot parody of the source material, or merely utilise its formula. The latter approach is the preferred option for many, but that brings with it a need to produce original, compelling material that is worthy of viewing in its own right. Such an example…
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Donald Trump could have saved An Inconvenient Sequel. If Al Gore is the John Wayne of climate activism, as directors Bonni Cohen and John Shenk would have you believe, then Trump is Lee Marvin (AKA Bad M.F). This time it’s personal, as they say. As it turns out, we get very little Truth To Power,…
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In the film, The Wizard of Oz Dorothy taps her ruby red slippers and says, “There’s no place like home.” But have you ever wondered where was home for those striking shoes? The documentary, The Slippers is a fascinating film that covers what became of this beloved slice of movie history in a story that…
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It seems that American Indians have been erased from the history books, including the chapters relating to contemporary music. Until now. The documentary, Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World looks set to change all of that by celebrating the contributions of these individuals and finally giving credit where it’s due. The film is directed…
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A Modern Man is a documentary about a handsome, contemporary classical violinist named Charlie Siem. But who is Messer Siem? Unfortunately that question is not really answered in this film because this British-Norwegian musician puts up a wall that is largely impenetrable. This film is directed by Eva Mulvad (The Good Life). It begins with…
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Getting a release on Hulu today in the US is the hilarious documentary Becoming Bond, which screened at SXSW earlier this year. It takes a look at the life and times of Australia’s only Bond, George Lazenby, in his own words. The film takes the spirit of Drunk History to deliver an original and entertaining…
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More a celebration of drag culture than a heavy-handed expose, Divine Divas proves a fascinating watch as it allows a peak behind the curtains of one of Brazil’s first establishments to showcase men dressed as women. In 1960’s Rio de Janeiro, the Rival Theatre – under the forward thinking of Americo Leal – was one…
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A bold colour palette expressing traditional Chinese imagery overlays both the personal and political difficulties filmmaker Jennifer Zhang has with her mother in Tough, a short student film that redefines the documentary genre tag. In the space of four short minutes, Zhang manages to convey an alarmingly detailed view of her relationship with her mother,…
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I have to admit, I don’t watch a lot of documentaries, but I’ve loved the ones I’ve seen. Some of them haven’t felt like documentaries at all, mainly because the stories behind them are a little too one-sided or hard to believe. Films like Super Size Me and Bowling for Columbine have been accused of being false, manipulative…
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Stop and take a moment to think about what you were doing at the age of 27 or what you will do if it’s yet to come. If you’re a musician it is likely that you are dead but if you were working at NASA during the Apollo era then you had a hand in…
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As Donald Trump continues promoting his idea of building a wall between the US and Mexico it’s heartening to see that there are some people taking a different approach. Through The Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film is a documentary about a land art installation that attempted to reinforce the notion that borders are an…
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Ahead of its premiere on Friday at SXSW in Austin, Texas, we caught up with Australian born, US based director Matthew Salleh to talk about his new documentary feature, Barbecue. The film takes us to 12 countries, from Shisanyama in South Africa, to Engangsgrill in Sweden and everywhere in between to talk about meat: how…
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Sydney recently played host to a screening of the film, E-Team, a documentary about Human Rights Watch’s Emergency Team, a group of fearless individuals that visit the front lines in order to document atrocities that are occurring. There was also a Q & A after the film with Elaine Pearson, the Australian director of Human…
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Winter at Westbeth is a film that’s all about “the art.” And celebrating it at every age. This documentary looks at three young at heart, elderly, American artists who live in a vibrant, housing complex called Westbeth Artists Housing in New York. It is ultimately a film that is like a love letter to the…
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Most people were introduced to James “Jim” Foley when he appeared in a bright orange jumpsuit and reports (and video) confirmed that he had been the first American citizen to be murdered by ISIS. It was a moment where the Islamic State had stripped away his humanity and reduced Foley to a casualty. In the…
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If the prospect of Israeli cuisine leaves you hungry to learn more then there is one documentary film for you. In Search of Israeli Cuisine attempts to answer the question, “What is Israeli cuisine?” In doing so it examines a diverse range of different influences and food styles on Israeli food, which ranges from street…
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The trailers for the documentary Amanda Knox (which debuts on Netflix in late September) questions whether the eponymous star did or didn’t commit the murder of British exchange student, Meredith Kercher. The crime that occurred in Perugia Italy in 2007 had an investigation that had more holes than a pile of Swiss cheese. This documentary…
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Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi is an excellent documentary and cautionary tale. It tells the story of a Brown University student who went missing in 2013 and how he was wrongly accused of being one of the Boston Marathon bombers. The film is a sensitive one about an amazing character and a sad indictment of…
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Seemingly about the fun, bizarre world of an adult sub-culture called ‘Competitive Endurance Tickling’, comes a documentary that takes fast steps sideways, trips down some steep, morbidly dark stairs and leads viewers into the world of abuse, identity theft and cyber bullying. Like so many great documentaries before it, you walk away from Tickled wanting…
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In December of 2014, a lone gunman walked into an Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and shot and killed 20 children and 6 staff members. While most peoples instant response was to condemn the shooter (who killed himself at the scene), many could be forgiven for not instantly considering the parents who lost their sons…
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