Sydney’s first doco fest opens a window to the world
A selection of world-class documentaries is hitting Sydney screens from October 5 to 9, for Australia’s first international documentary film festival.
Films spanning the 60s acid-fuelled bus trip of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to a humourous investigation into the life of an Indian detective are among the selection in Antenna International Documentary Film Festival.
Artistic director David Rokach and a small team of dedicated film-buff friends dedicated six months to watching more than 400 submissions.
The result is 29 beautifully-crafted, moving, insightful, funny and challenging docos from around the globe.
The films traverse topics including the war in Afghanistan, nuclear waste storage in Finland, regrets over sex-reassignment, life in Russia after the fall of the Iron Curtain, matchmaking in Slovakia, and a community’s fight against Shell oil in Ireland.
Rokach couldn’t be more pleased with the program he describes as a “window into contemporary cinema”.
“We were trying to cover lots of stories, not just in terms of content but in terms of approach of directors. They are films that will challenge the ways we are looking at documentaries,” Rokach says.
“We chose films that are intelligent, sensitive and showing a complexity of stories.”
One of the lighter films is Alex Gibney’s Magic Trip. The Academy Award winning director of Taxi to the dark Side has rescued footage from the acid-fuelled 1960s bus adventure of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.
“This one is really enjoyable and fun. It’s a moment in history that you can see hippies before they were hippy,” Rokach says.
Rokach moved to Australia in 2008 after graduating from film and philosophy in Israel. He had worked in several film festivals there and was surprised to find that Australia did not have its own international documentary festival.
“It was a great opportunity for me to create one,” Rokach says.
The Israeli entrant, The Collaborator and his Family, shows the devastating impact on the family of a Palestinian man who has collaborated with the occupying authorities.
“It was important to me as an Israeli to bring something from this part of the world,” Rokach says.
“If I wanted to bring an Israeli film it had to be one that talked about occupation.”
“[The Collaborator and his Family] is from a different point of view to the way Australians usually see the conflict. It’s getting rid of this dichotomy of Israeli bad and Palestinian good, and showing there’s another approach,” Rokach says.
“It’s a reality whether you like it or not, I hope people can see beyond that.”
Antenna International Documentary Film festival opens Wednesday October 5 at Dendy Opera Quays with Memoirs of a Plague. Other films in the festival are screened at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington until October 9.
BY LIZ CUSH
