Published: 6 October 2016
Last updated: 4 March 2024
For more than 100 years cinema has confronted the question of what constitutes a documentary: is it a mere reflection of reality or a directed creation?
The growing technical ability of filmmaking, together with many years of documentary film experience, have enabled two developments. First, documentary film language is now well acknowledged and, secondly, the documentary has evolved into a much more complex genre. In today’s world, the documentary includes many sub-genres, and different answers to the question of what constitutes a documentary.
No one worries that the train will burst from the screen as audiences did when they saw the first Lumiere Brothers film Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895). The belief that documentary films can and should purely represent reality, as proposed by the early French filmmaking group ‘Cinema verite’, is no longer the prevailing view.
In Israel, the country of my birth, the documentary genre has a long history. Two main reasons were the low cost of producing a documentary film compared with a feature film and, no less important, that there was never a dull moment in the country, and hence a wellspring of topics.
Israeli-born David Rokah is one of those currently helping to develop the documentary genre in Australia. In 2010, he initiated the Antenna Documentary Film Festival in Australia.
Rokah grew up in an atmosphere in which documentary creation was important. He studied Philosophy and Cinema at Tel Aviv University, and was particularly influenced by Doc-Aviv, the Israeli documentary film festival.
The 2016 Antenna program includes a great variety of non-fiction forms, demonstrating the diversity of the documentary film genre in today’s world. Rokah says Antenna’s main objectives are to promote and support documentary film culture in Australia, providing screenings of documentaries that will most likely not be released in local cinemas.
The remarkable 2016 films, chosen carefully over the course of a year, raise many tough questions. The following are some examples.
The Family by Australian filmmaker Rosie Jones, is about a sinister apocalyptic cult that was active in Melbourne in the ‘60s and '70s, led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne. The film reveals the scars victims still carry to this day and asks difficult questions about how the cult was allowed to flourish in the first place.
A Revolution in Four Seasons is an American film by Jessie Deeter. Two young women on opposite sides of politics fight to shape their lives and the future of Tunisia, the sole country to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings as a functional democracy. Emna, a journalist, advocates for a western-modelled secular state, while Jawhara works with the Islamist party, aiming for a democracy guided by Islamic principles.
Mother With a Gun by Australian Jeff Daniels, is about Shelley Rubin, who defies the expectations of her family by falling in love with the leader of the Jewish Defence League (JDL). Advocating any means necessary to prevent antisemitism, she supports armed response and preventative violence. The director, Jeff Daniels, will be in attendance to participate in Q&A after the screening.
The festival will also include a three-film tribute to Chantel Ackerman (1950-2015). Ackerman’s mother, a holocaust survivor, encouraged her daughter to pursue a film career, and the result is 40 films,that have earned her legendary status as a cinematic radical, a formal innovator and a pioneer of modern feminist cinema. For example, Lá-Bas (Down There) is a film Ackerman made about her life in Tel Aviv. Unfolding in a series of fixed, inquisitive shots, Ackerman peers through blinds at neighbours as she ruminates on her family, Jewish identity and daily life.
For the first time, Antenna will tour Melbourne and Brisbane after screening in Sydney.
Sydney
Tues 11 – Sun 16 October
Palace Cinemas, Blank Space Gallery and MCA
Brisbane
Weds 26 – Sun 30 October
New Farm Cinemas, New Farm
Melbourne
Weds 2- Sun 6 November
Palace Westgarth, Northcote
The full Sydney and Tour programme and tickets are available on the festival website.
This The Jewish Independent article may be republished if acknowledged thus: ‘Reprinted with permission from www.thejewishindependent.com.au ’
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