From the inhuman conditions in India’s textile industry to the vast stretches of bush that line the Murray River, into dozens of abandoned buildings and settlements across the world, the heart of the dynasty that shaped the wild and varied nation of Pakistan and the National Library of Australia.This month’s films take a look at how people find like-minded individuals and forge communities through self-expression.
Rivers of Australia: A Journey Along the Murray
Director Albany Asher brings her husband, two dogs and the viewer on a kayaking trip the length of Australia’s longest river from Bringenbrong Bridge, NSW to The Coorong, South Australia. Along with narrator Tony Barry, Asher documents the river as it was in 2018, in both a celebration and a commemoration of land often referenced in prose and government policy, but less often seen.
Machines
Rahul Jain’s depiction of life and work at a huge yet claustrophobic textile factory in Gujarat, India uses powerful visual language to portray the existence of just a few of the 45 million workers, many underage and in forced labour, driving India’s $40 billion textile industry. As his camera follows the Dickensian lives of the workers, Jain contrasts their aspirations for unionism with the factory operators’ equally open discussion about how the exploitative industry operates with impunity.
Homo Sapiens
In Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s acclaimed film, people are the one thing that are absent. Instead, Homo Sapiens quietly and powerfully documents what happens to places after they have left. Artfully made and with intricate sound design, Geyrhalter crosses the world to show hospitals, schools, nuclear reactors and entire villages being reclaimed by nature, in a film whose cumulative effect is to show the world as a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Bhutto
The life of Benazir Bhutto, the first woman in history to lead a Muslim nation, is given epic treatment in this documentary about how she rose to run one of the most violent nations on earth. Born within six years of each other, Bhutto and her homeland share a tumultuous story encompassing murderous cycles of vengeance, acts of stunning bravery, and the rise of Sharia law. This is the story of how a 35-year-old woman won the hearts of a nation of 160 million.
Paper Trails
As Australia’s first female talkback broadcaster, Anne Deveson was a pioneer who used her public profile to take a principled stance on a range of subjects including mental health, disability rights and feminism. Sari Braithwaite’s documentary short follows Deveson’s efforts to collate the documents of her fascinating life for the National Library of Australia as she battles advancing Alzheimer’s with the vibrant will to live on her own terms that defined her life.
