February 20th
Richard Jewell
In My Blood It Runs
Transitions Film Festival
Fantastic Film Festival

As well as one new doco release, and a fine feature film, two excellent (totally different) festivals come to our screens this Thursday. I've decided to publish early this week, which should give you the chance to do your research and figure out what you may wish to choose from the festivals. 

Richard Jewell
Director: Clint Eastwood
Length: 129 mins

 © Warner Bros/Roadshow - an amazing true story of

injustice. Top performances here. 

In 1996, as Atlanta prepares to host the Olympic Games, a bomb explodes in Centennial Park. Security guard Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) helps to save many lives, and is lauded as a hero. But heavy-handed FBI  investigators, led by Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) devise a half-baked theory that heroes are often the perpetrators, and that Jewell fits the profile. Soon the hapless man's life becomes a living hell. Hounded by the FBI, crucified by the press, he turns to off-beat attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), to help prove his innocence. Here's another film based upon a true story, and proof (if it was needed) that Eastwood has not lost his mojo. The film is staunchly anti-FBI tactics, and gives the media vultures a huge serve, especially Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), an obnoxious journalist who will do anything for a story. Eastwood extracts the most incisive performances from his cast. Hauser is both restrained and mesmerising as Jewell, Rockwell magnetic as the kind-hearted, generous-spirited lawyer, while Oscar-nominated Kathy Bates gives one of her best performances as Jewell's mum. Topped off with a fine score, this film raises important issues of justice, accountability, and compassion.
4 - highly recommended!

In My Blood It Runs
Director: Maya Newell
Length: 85 mins
The film has an intricate program of screenings and Q & A sessions. In Melbourne it runs for one week at Cinema Nova, and one-off screenings elsewhere. For other cities and states, visit:
https://inmyblooditruns.com/screenings/

 © Fan Force - through a child's eyes - the world as it is

for our Aboriginal people 

Dujuan is a ten-year-old Indigenous kid, growing up near Alice springs. He speaks English plus three First Nations languages, but is considered a failure in the school system, where he plays up and runs away. By comparison, on his ancestral homelands, he is confident and knowledgeable, and is considered to be a young healer who has inherited his powers from his ancestors. This critically important doco sees the complex issues raised in the film through the eyes of Dujuan and his family. The magnitude of the issues alluded to in this film is overwhelming - the role of indigenous people in their own education systems, the injustice of juvenile detention centres (with horrendous rates of Indigenous incarceration), white society imposing its education and values upon Indigenous society, and at the heart the love and support of close-knit families looking for better ways to navigate a bi-cultural society. The film has already screened at many overseas doc-festivals, and is critically important viewing for all Australians who hope to understand the vexatious issues surrounding our relationship with our First Nations people.
4 - highly recommended!

The Transitions Film Festival
February 20th - March 6th 2020
Cinema Nova, Astor, and a few smaller venues in inner Melbourne
For more information and other states visit: www.transitionsfilmfestival.com/
For a full Melbourne program, visit: www.transitionsfilmfestival.com/melbourne-program-2020/

With the tagline "Visions for a Better World", this is one of the most inspiring and possibly important festivals out there. The Transitions Film Festival showcases groundbreaking documentaries about social and technological innovations, revolutionary ideas and those trailblazing people who are leading the way to a better world. It is the only festival of its nature in the Australia, and one of the few in the world that focuses upon the challenges of our time, and their possible solutions. More than 30 experts are involved in panel discussions which accompany the films. 

I've been fortunate to preview a few:

Chuck in deep conversation with robotic
girlfriend, Harmony

Hi AI: This is a fascinating doco on the human/robot interactions that are already taking place around the world. In Texas, lonely Chuck picks up Harmony, a robot girlfriend he takes with him on a road trip. Harmony has been programmed to trot our some pretty intellectual conversation pieces. It's not the sort of sleaziness you might expect; more a touchingly poignant comment upon Chuck's loneliness and desperation for connectedness.  In Japan Grandma has robot boy Pepper delivered to her house. She tries to converse with him, to keep her brain alive, but the mischievous fellow, who has been programmed to speak with a child's voice, is no true conversationalist. In shopping centres in Japan robotic receptionists interact with customers. Throughout the doco, researchers and scientists show off their progress, and demonstrate the advancements they are making in this technology that is already on our doorsteps. Compelling and thought-provoking stuff. 

The Whale and the Raven: How do small communities achieve a balance between preserving their natural treasures, and coping with the promise of an economic boom that will threaten the very things they wish to protect? Remote Gil Island, just off British Columbia, is a haven for humpback whales and other endangered species, but a proposed thoroughfare for tankers carrying Liquid Natural Gas is threatening the pristine ecosystem. This doco looks at how First Nations people and ecologists are working to prevent a possible disaster. Footage of the whales and the natural beauty is wonderful, and the story is highly relevant to so many parts of today's world.

Magic Medicine: If you've seen Fantastic Fungi at Cinema Nova recently, you'll know of the possible powers of using Psylocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, for medicinal purposes. This doco tracks several depressed people, who are undergoing the first approved medical trial of the drug. It's quite an insight into the nature of depression (which many don't understand within themselves), and of the "trips" they go on to see if they can reconnect with something in their pasts which is causing their current problems. Fascinating stuff!

The Story of Plastic: Yeah, yeah, we all know we should be recycling our plastic. But according to this alarming doco, that is not the solution; we should be stopping plastic at its source, and that source is the global corporations of the fossil fuel industry, pushing the endless creation of  plastic to keep that industry afloat. This one is a real eye-opener, and highly disturbing. The visuals of choked rivers, waterways and oceans, set against the greedy corporate machine should get every viewer stirred up and pushing for change.  

Push: Anyone trying to buy a house knows how prices are skyrocketing, making it unaffordable for many. But even worse, the opportunity for low-income folk to live in affordable rental accommodation is being destroyed by faceless greedy corporate monsters, who buy up apartment blocks that are used for cheap housing, gentrify them, and bump up the rents. The tenants are then forced to the edges of cities, or become homeless. This problem is escalating world wide and the filmmaker looks at ways to combat it. 

I am Human: Looking like a sci-fi film come to life, this doco is the extraordinary story of how the cutting edge of science is put to work on humans to solve pressing medical problems. Teams of neuroscientists track brainwaves to help tetraplegic Bill use only the power of thought to move his paralysed hand.  Stephen receives a bionic eye implant that helps him regain a level of sight. Anne suffers Parkinson's disease, but a deep-brain stimulation helps her regain a level of fluid, normal function. This is mind-blowing technology - the future of science is upon us, along with the possible implications of what happens when scientists can download your brainwaves or create superhuman powers. Once our brains are connected to computers, are we still human?

The Fantastic Film Festival
February 20th - March 4th 
Lido Cinema, Hawthorn 
For more information and Sydney info: https://www.fantasticfilmfestival.com.au/

From their publicity comes this: Offering up its own distinct perspective on genre and alternative cinema, the festival features dystopian zombie mutants, reality-bending psychological terror, dreamlike animations, and a healthy dose of gore . . Offering up its own distinct perspective on genre and alternative cinema, FFFA marries (un)guilty pictorial pleasures with subversive storytelling that hacks away at conventions, unearthing core truths that are typically shied away from: from hard-hitting sociocultural commentary, to unique perspectives on what’s widely taken for granted.

This is the inaugural festival, which will also screen in Sydney. 

Never a good idea to go for drinks with
a serial killer. 

I've had a sneak peek beginning with a film that was nominated for a Golden Bear at the Berlin FF and is directed by award-winning German director Fatih Akin. The Golden Glove tells the true story of serial killer Fritz Tonka, a psychopath who terrorised women in Hamburg in the 1970s. A well-deserved Best Actor Award went to Jonas Dassler who plays Tonka. This is an uncompromising look at an ugly world of sad lonely women, who are desperate (or stupid?) enough to go home with this misogynistic lunatic. It is a strongly directed film, and the sordid atmosphere and people who inhabit the bar of the film's title will stay with you a long time. The movie is an alarming insight into the mind of a serial killer, but it comes with a HUGE warning - the incidents, language and general abhorrent behaviours will be very disturbing for some viewers.

Thrilling and thought-provoking. 

By contrast Swedish feature Suicide Tourist, is a less repugnant, but equally strong film. If you're a fan of Nikolaj-Coster-Waldau (Jamie, in Game of Thrones), you won't want to miss him as Max, a man suffering a brain tumour, who decides to check in to a Swiss clinic which specialises in assisted suicides, with a side-serve of the last fantasy one might wish to fulfill. I can't profess to fully grasp the twists of this plot - suffice to say it's gripping, with some interpretation left to the viewer's imagination. The clinic, known as hotel Aurora, seems to have a dark mysterious agenda, and Max's experience, by the end, leads him to question his own perception of reality. As well as delivering a level of thriller/horror, the film is a moving look at the serious issue of the right to end one's life.