PLANET OF THE HUMANS

Featuring: Jeff Gibbs, Richard Heinberg, Richard York, Nina Jablonski, Ozzie Zehner, Adriann McCoy, Philip Moeller, Steven Running, Steven Churchill, Sheldon Solomon, Josh Schlossberg, Catherine Andrews, Adam Liter, Pat Egan, Van Jones, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva.
Director/writer: Jeff Gibbs

Available free for 30 days on:

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

“How long do you think we humans have?,” asks frontman Jeff Gibbs in the opening frames of his Green Industry takedown doc, Planet of the Humans. The answer? If Earth’s recovery is left in the hands of those that spruik loudest for industrial reform, it’s a lot less than you think. Steeped in executive producer Michael Moore’s steely brand of deep-dive investigative conjecture and finger-pointing , the pair paint a bleak picture of a near future that mankind’s very existence is irrevocably condemning.

The title has the ring of a 50s B-movie, the kind about a lost spacecraft that finds itself on a distant planet populated with some horrid lifeform. That ‘horrid lifeform’ is us; as Agent Smith said, “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.” Planet of the Humans makes the double-barrelled point that population growth will be the death of us all (“Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide,” Gibbs observes in his narration) and that we may have been fatally misled regarding those in whom we have put the trust to right our highway to Hell.

Strong words decrying the human race’s abuse of its status as the single dominant species on the planet bleed into a series of revelations about the insidious takeover of the green movement by capitalist interests. Gibbs offers up a bullet-point history of our understanding of climate change and impact of pollutants; in 1958, only five years after the postwar wave of industrialization swept across America, director Frank Capra made a short film warning of the long-term cost. From that point on, environmental activism has fought Big Industry, while all the time Big Industry increased its influence over lawmakers and commercial hold on the sector.

Gibbs narrows his focus in the film’s homestretch, ripping into the likes of once-were-eco-warriors Al Gore, Bill McKibben (pictured, above; left, with Gibbs), Richard Branson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for their interests in green-tinged business fronts for billionaire investors and Wall Street snakes. Also exposed as profit-driven hypocrisy is the ‘biomass/biofuel’ sector, a developing faux-green industry that guts forests and burns carcinogenic garbage utilising practices that unbelievably fall within the government guidelines for ‘sustainable energy’.       

In his feature directorial debut, Gibbs (who produced Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Fahrenheit 11/9 for Moore) proves less the personality than his regular collaborator. However, understanding his lifelong commitment to environmental causes gives Gibbs’ occasionally onscreen/mostly offscreen role an intensity that serves his advocacy aims well, even if his delivery is a bit dry. That said, he bites hard when he has a point to make; his final frames, which tragically portray our impact upon those with whom we share this world, are gut-wrenching.

Unavoidably, Planet of the Humans is a downbeat journey, often in spite of factual filmmaking that is energised and driven in its storytelling. Its message is, more or less, “Hey, we trusted the same people you did, and they’ve shafted us.” Gibbs offers no ‘If you want to help...’ call-to-action at the film’s end; instead, he imparts crushed resignation, implying we had our shot and we blew it. We are further down the path towards our own destruction than any of us knew, except for those steering us there.

Happy Earth Day, everyone…

THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE WATER

Featuring: Ellen Page, Ingrid Waldron, Michelle Paul, Jolene Marr, Dorene Bernard, Michelle Francis-Denny, Carol Howe, Rebecca Moore, Paula Isaac, Marian Nichols and Louise Delisle.
Directors: Ellen Page and Ian Daniel.

Available on:

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Ellen Page returns to her Nova Scotian roots to document the ongoing exploitation of traditional indigenous lands in There’s Something in the Water. With her ‘Gaycation’ collaborator Ian Daniel sharing camera duties, the Oscar-nominated actress puts her celebrity to good use highlighting the scourge of environmental racism, as it impacts the First Nations people of Canada.

Taking as her starting point the bestselling book by Dr Ingrid Waldron, Page goes deep into her homeland’s heartland to reveal both the human and ecological scarring caused by close to 60 years of government neglect and callous corporate profiteering. Establishing her familial ties to the eastern Canadian maritime province and recalling an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show where she passionately addressed the ongoing abuse of indigenous entitlement, Page pinpoints three economically-challenged regions that have long been sacred to the traditional owners but have become shameful monuments of capital-C capitalism.

The first stop is the southern township of Shelburne, historically significant for the role it played in the mid-19th century America as a drop-off point for the Underground Railway; at one point in the country’s history, it had the highest population of African-Americans in Canada. However, in the 1940s, a waste dump was established on the town’s outskirts and remained open until 2016, the resulting stench and seepage of toxins into the water supply now thought responsible for generations of cancer fatalities. 

Page and Daniel then travel to the far north, to the Boat Harbour region and traditional lands of the Pictou people. In the film’s most personal account, Michelle Francis-Denny tells the story of her grandfather, an elder Chief in the early 1960s, who was conned into signing over rights to the land by local government officials working in tandem with developers of a proposed paper mill. The waterways, known to generations of Pictou as the spirit-enriching Ossay, were ruined within days. Page gives a face to ‘big business villainy’ in archival footage of one John Bates, the aged white businessman whose indifference to the native population’s suffering is chilling (“So what? They weren’t living in the water.”)

Finally, There’s Something in the Water highlights the ‘Grassroots Grandmothers’, a woman’s collective from Stewiacke who take on the Alton Gas Corporation over the plans to dump mined salts into a sacred river in defiance of M’ikmaq treaty conditions. Their battle with local and federal officials (including a sidewalk face-off with PM Justin Trudeau), stemming from their spiritual bonds with the landscape of their ancestry, closes out the ‘past, present and future’ structure of Page’s matter-of-fact account, an approach that highlights the systemic prejudices and ingrained corruption of Canada’s democracy.

It is not the most elegant film; handheld camera work from a car’s passenger seat takes up an inordinate amount of the 73 minute running time. But perhaps a film that captures waves of sewerage vapour gliding towards a helpless population, or recounts the alcoholism and suicides that are the by-product of a community’s collapse need not purify its approach for aesthetic gain. There’s Something in the Water tells an ugly story about the horrendous exploitation of a proud people and their beautiful land, so urgency and honesty over artistry seems entirely appropriate.

EATING ANIMALS

Narrated by Natalie Portman.
Writer/director: Christopher Dillon Quinn; based upon the 2009 book by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Available on:

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

(Producers Natalie Portman & Jonathan Safran Foer. Photo credit: Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The very title itself barely encapsulates the scale of the issue that director Christopher Dillon Quinn and producer/narrator Natalie Portman examine in their collaborative exposé, Eating Animals. A frankly shattering uncovering of the corrosive impact that 50 years of industrial food production has had upon traditional U.S. values, this sad, often shocking, ultimately hopeful work provides further evidence of corporate America’s heartless profiteering in defiance of basic human decency.

Based the 2009 bestseller by Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals ostensibly looks at the procedures used to mass produce and subsequently cull pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys and cows. The footage, much of which was obtained through hidden cameras by animal activists infiltrating killing facilities, has already been seen extensively on news broadcasts and YouTube. This doesn’t lessen the horror, but it raises the question as to what else Quinn’s production has to offer the discussion.

The director (whose first feature, God Grew Tired of Us, earned Audience and Grand Jury honours at Sundance in 2006) wisely opens up his investigation to include how the industrialisation of farming practices has gutted the American spirit. His cameras spend personal time with farmers who employ traditional methods to raise stock, a practice that has taken the financial brunt of over-development and exploitation in rural communities by multi-national ‘Big Ag’ companies. The crumbling lives that these ‘family farmers’ endure, as well as the fates of two whistle blowers who reveal the mercenary business models employed by corporations such as Perdue and Tyson, make for truly tragic narratives.

Arguably, the environmental impact of the modern factory farm (or CAFO, as in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) may be the most potent argument against their ongoing implementation. Giant pink ‘waste lagoons’ – man-made bodies of putrid water that hold urine and faecal matter from mass swine enclosures – seep into and make toxic the estuaries of middle America. The accompanying odour causes sickness amongst the surrounding townships. Antibiotics, pumped into livestock to offset the diseases and malformations caused by their genetic tampering, infects the food chain all the way to your local McDonalds.

The immorality of ‘Big Ag’ and its manipulation of the democratic process to ensure it has a stranglehold over legislation and lawmakers that would impact its cost-effective operations are revealed (facts that aren’t necessarily surprising to anyone living under the current regime). Also, Quinn deftly places the curse of food sector capitalism in an historical context, with the early ‘70s and the faster, cheaper consumer-driven ethos that fuelled the boom years of the modern fast-food empires seen as Ground Zero for our current malaise.

Natalie Portman’s lyrical narration differs from the usual strategy by which celebrities lend their names to cause films. While her presence ought to help the film’s profile, it is her reading of passages from the source material in accompaniment with wrenching imagery, both visceral and psychological that is most affecting. Her contribution, the understated yet profoundly disturbing aesthetic that Quinn uses to tell this alternate-American story, and the hope that he provides that generations moving forward will adopt better practices, places Eating Animals in the very top tier of investigative advocacy documentaries.

THE TEST: A NEW ERA FOR AUSTRALIA'S TEAM

Features: Justin Langer, Tim Paine, Steve Smith, David Warner, Nathan Lyon, Pat Cummins, Usman Khawaja, Aaron Finch, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Shaun Marsh, Mitchell Starc and Marnus Labuschagne.
Narrated by Brendan Cowell.
Director: Adrian Brown.

Available on Amazon Prime.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Not since the summer of 1981, when Australian captain Greg Chappell ordered his brother Trevor to roll the final delivery along the pitch to deny New Zealand any hope of winning, has the national team been held in such low esteem as it was in the wake of the 2018 sandpaper/ball-tampering incident against South Africa.

The Test: A New Era For Australia’s Team begins at that low point in Australian cricket history. Captain Steve Smith and opening batsmen David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were banned from the sport for a period, after Bancroft was filmed damaging the ball to help it swing against the dominant South African batsmen. Warner was deemed the mastermind, while captain Smith (and, ultimately, coach Darren Lehmann) took responsibility and bore the brunt of the reprisals.

Director Adrian Brown’s polished and insightful Amazon Prime documentary series chronicles the resurrection of the squad and the baptism of fire they had to endure at the hands of the global media, rabid international crowds and, most importantly, the Australian public. The very fact that the series exists at all, with a great deal of its eight episode arc unfolding within the previously untouchable ‘inner sanctum’ of coach’s and player’s personal space, is testament to how desperately damaged the iconic brand was in its homeland.

New coach Justin Langer (pictured, below) is tasked with rebuilding team culture, confidence and public trust, and The Test highlights what a sturdy, passionate traditionalist the former Australian opener proved to be in a role that needed just such an unshakeable integrity. The playing and coaching group visit the Western front in northern France, where young Australians fought and died on foreign soil for their country. Langer’s aim is to re-establish in his young group the responsibility and heritage that comes with representing a nation.

Brown’s camera then follows the team as they undertake a very rocky path to redemption. Series losses in England, the sub-Continent and, over a particularly soul crushing Australian summer, against archenemy Virat Kohli’s Indian super-side, expose tension, disappointment and frustration. Newly appointed captain Tim Paine, as resolute a character as Langer, emerges as a true modern leader, aware of the mindset of his young charges and not above unforgiving self-analysis.

Crucial to the rebuilding of team character are the inevitable positional shifts within the playing group. A run of outs for One-Day captain Aaron Finch expose the mental anguish associated with the risk of being dropped from the squad; Langer’s often merciless, hard-edged demands run afoul of veteran batsman Usman Khawaja, the pair clashing in one memorable encounter.

While Warner’s return to the fold is somewhat underplayed, Steve Smith’s unique personality and influence on the team’s fortune becomes the unavoidable focus. By episodes 7 and 8, which recount the team’s return to Ol’ Blighty to retain one of sport’s most famous trophies, The Ashes, the thrill of the contest and the complexity of the personalities have melded, resulting in utterly captivating drama where the stakes are clear and the emotions are raw.

The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team is also a superb technical triumph, with game footage, editing and the accompanying sound design making the action as involving as any follower of the sport could hope for (and which any non-disciple ought to warm to in no time).

Offshore cricket fans, most of whom found icy joy in watching the Australian team’s fall from grace, may find the reformation and rebranding of our team a slightly less emotionally engaging experience than your average Aussie fan. But The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team, like most great sports documentaries, achieves greatness not for what it reveals about a sport, but what universality it reveals amongst the disparate spirits who have come together to play it.

TRACK: SEARCH FOR AUSTRALIA'S BIGFOOT

Featuring: Attila Kaldy, Yowie Dan, Tony Jinks, Duo Ben, Gary Opit, Neil Frost, Mathew Crowther, Robert Grey and Robert Venables.
Director: Attila Kaldy

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

Global sightings of bipedal hominids, aka Bigfoot, and the number of documentaries chronicling those sightings have long since passed tipping point. A search of any of the streaming providers will reveal a thriving genre subset that posits every possible theory on the ‘real story’ behind the elusive, mythical beast; from ‘missing link’ and ‘undiscovered ape’ to ‘alien life form’ and ‘inter-dimensional visitor’, Bigfoot films are a big industry.

Australia has its own legendary ‘forest giant’ and so it has its own documentarians contemplating the nature of the beast. Most notable amongst them is director/producer Attila Kaldy, a veteran of almost two decades of speculative supernatural small screen content. His latest mini-feature is Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot, an engaging, often introspective examination as much of the men who hunt the mythical creature as the creature itself.

Kaldy transports his audience deep into the rugged Blue Mountains hinterland 90 minutes west of Sydney. A majestic section of the Great Dividing Range and some of the most dense eucalypt bushland on the continent, it has long been thought to provide a vast home to Australia’s alpha cryptid, the Yowie. It takes little time for Kaldy to introduce us to his first expert, ‘Yowie Dan’, himself a popular figure amongst believers and sceptics alike.

Dan (pictured, below) has the best footage to date of an alleged Yowie – a few frames captured quite by accident on a solo expedition deep into the lower mountain region. Kaldy utilises parapsychologist and cryptid witness Tony Jinks to verify the authenticity of Dan’s footage in an extended sequence that goes a long way to convince that something unexplainable was filmed. The mid-section of the film affords a lot of time to Rob’s Gray and Venables, of fellow investigation outfit Truth Seekers Oz, who recount their own encounters.

Much of the first half of Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot travels some well-worn paranormal television tropes, albeit delivered in a slick, pro tech package by Kaldy. Green night-vision sequences, monochromatic stagings (including a respectful nod to the iconic 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage), first-person accounts that preach very much to the cryptid choir and a moody soundscape highlighted by an evocative score by Daljit Kundi are effectively employed.

The production explores some new angles in a more compelling final stretch. Cryptozoologists Gary Opit and Neil Frost offer counterpoints to commonly held assumptions (for example, from the bio-geographical perspective, the probability of an Australian ‘ape’ is unlikely) and address such fascinating tangents as the possible existence of a ‘marsupial cryptid’, complete with pouch. The relationship between Australia’s indigenous tribes and the hominid legend is explored, albeit briefly; the ancient people’s perspective on their land’s cryptozoology is worth its own documentary examination, surely? And, to drive home the fear wrought by an encounter with a ‘forest giant,’ Kaldy’s effects team create striking images based upon eyewitness descriptions.

Kaldy leaves a few threads dangling for the doubters. When ‘experts’ stumble upon what they claim to be a cryptid’s nest and shelter, why don’t they collect some hair or scat? Regardless, Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot is a top-tier addition to a crowded, often sensationalised, documentary field. Much like it’s subject matter, one hopes it will be discovered and afforded the respect it deserves.

TRACK: Search for Australia's Bigfoot will be released in North America on DVD and Blu-ray on April 21; other territories to follow. More information about the film, visit the official Paranormal Investigators website. 

2020 OCEAN FILM FESTIVAL

Reviewed at the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace, Cremorne, Sydney on March 5, 2020.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Those special humans that feel an attachment to the world’s great bodies of water are unshakeable in their bond. Sportsman, adventurers, explorers, whether upon or below the oceans, lakes and rivers of our planet, are so steadfast in their connection to ‘The Big Blue’, it takes a rare filmmaking talent to convincingly represent their passion on screen.

The Ocean Film Festival understands both its audience and its contributing filmmakers like few events of its kind. Once again guided by Festival Director Jemima Robinson, the 2020 incarnation exudes a more pure sense of celebratory ‘oneness’ than perhaps any other edition in the festival’s history. At the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace on Sydney’s north shore last night, the evening was enhanced by pre- and mid-show live musical accompaniment, an understated sponsor presence and warmly professional hosting skills that further united the sell-out crowd.

The two-tiered program featured seven films, beginning with the playful, funny A CAMEL FINDS WATER (Dir: Ian Durkin; 8 mins; USA), an account of how a discarded, landlocked hull was resurrected to its former glory, now serving as a run-about for two British Columbian surfers, Trevor Gordon and Tosh Clements. Evoking the same sense of joy that one derives from stories of damaged animals finding  new owners, A Camel Finds Water (pictured, above) is a short, sweet story celebrating a destiny fulfilled.

The true tragedy of how global warming has impacted polar bears is starkly conveyed in BARE EXISTENCE (Dir: Max Lowe; 19 mins; USA). Detailing how bears now need to spend long periods on shore instead of hunting seals in the open sea, Max Lowe’s bleak, beautiful film defines the connection between a township, its people and the plight of the increasingly desperate wild animals they live with. In one tragic turn-of-events, his cameras capture an act of infanticide brought on by starvation. Presented in conjunction with the conservation group Polar Bears International, it is a sobering work.

Nature’s wonder at its most beautiful and brutal is also central to the mini-feature DEEP SEA CORALS OF POLYNESIA (Dirs: Ghislain and Emmanuelle Bardout; 36 mins; France). Having achieved fame for their dives under the North Pole ice flows, Ghislain and Emmanuelle Bardout seek warmer climes in French Polynesia, where they join a team of biologists deep-diving to 170 metres to discover previously unknown forms of coral. The azure beauty of the region and emotional sense of discovery is shattered in one extraordinary moment when, in a frenzied defence of its territory, a black-tip reef shark turns on one diver; the footage is terrifying.

The second half of the evening began with SCOTT PORTELLI: SWIMMING WITH GENTLE GIANTS (Dir: Stefan Andrews; 10 mins; Australia), a profile of the acclaimed undersea wildlife photography as he interacts with humpback whales. Not for the first time this evening, like-minded audience members related audibly with the film, emitting sounds of awe at footage of mothers and their calves. Similar warmth was clearly felt for a very brief short that profiled Grace and Phil Hampton, an octogenarian couple who, in July 2017, entered the Guinness Book of Records as ‘The Oldest Married Couple to Scuba Dive.’

The 2020 Ocean Film Festival wraps up on two works of staggering visual beauty. Utilising the structure of a traditional surfing ‘road movie’, A CORNER OF THE EARTH (Dir: Spencer Frost; 26 mins; Australia) accompanies pro-surfer Fraser Dovell and his boisterous bros on a sort of ‘Endless Winter’ odyssey to the black surf of the brutally picturesque Arctic (accompanied by the night’s best soundtrack); then, a forty year-old canoe journey into Alaska’s majestic Inside Passage comes full circle, as a family’s legacy is fulfilled in THE PASSAGE (Dir: Nate Dappen; 25 mins; USA).

The spiritual connection that audiences shares with filmmakers, their protagonists and the environments on-screen make these sessions some of the most deeply rewarding on the festival calendar. That affinity for and understanding of what programming an environmentally-themed film event means to their patrons is one of the great strengths of the Ocean Film Festival.

The 2020 OCEAN FILM FESTIVAL (AUSTRALIA) is currently screening at selected venues across Australia. For all ticket and venue information, visit the event's official website.

IN SEARCH OF DARKNESS

Featuring: Cassandra Peterson, John Carpenter, Heather Langenkamp, Keith David, Bill Moseley, Jeffery Coombs, Caroline Williams, Barbara Crampton, Alex Winter, Kane Hodder, Katie Featherston, Diana Prince, Nick Castle, Joe Dante, Kelli Maroney, Tom Holland, Greg Nicotero, Tom Atkins, Doug Bradley, Mick Garris, Stuart Gordon, Don Mancini, Sean S. Cunningham, James A. Janisse and Larry Cohen.
Writer/Director: David A. Weiner

Reviewed on Sunday October 13 at the Australian Premiere at Cinema Nova as part of Fangoria x Monster Fest 2019 | Melbourne.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

The daunting four-hour fan-doc In Search of Darkness plays more like an introduction to the era when horror ruled than an academic deep-dive into the VHS vaults of yesteryear some may have hoped for. Director David A. Weiner’s epic effort is the factual film equivalent of a non-stop tour-bus ride, hurtling past monuments of the genre’s 80s heyday (“Look everyone! The Howling! And over there, Childs Play”), with many worthy of mention getting lost along the way.  

The mixed bag of contributors include period-appropriate talking heads, recalling their biggest hits; the gorehound minds behind Fangoria, Cinemassacre, et al; and, (mostly) irony-free millennial types who oversee horror sites, fanzines and podcasts. For the hardcore fans who can rattle off their favourite Freddy kills or Vorhees eviscerations, the collective banter and steady stream of clips will be fun but a tad too familiar; those just beginning their love affair with the likes of Brian Yuzna, Sean S. Cunningham and Stuart Gordon will likely derive the most joy.

The first in the director’s planned series of ‘In Search of…’ retrospectives (next, an ‘action heroes’ reverse-angle), …Darkness works through the 1980s year-by-year, with the occasional detour into subsets that touch on such defining influences as Reaganomics, the home-video boom, the MTV/HBO influence and AIDS. Also spotlighted are such genre trends as 3D gimmickry, ‘holiday horror’ and the effects industry coming-of-age.

Each ‘year’ offers up a grab bag of title profiles, and Wiener brings some freshness to his analysis of true cult items such as Basket Case, Night of The Comet, Chopping Mall and My Bloody Valentine. But he spends a big chunk of the 260 minutes going over inferior sequels, the Stephen King oeuvre and works already microscoped ad infinitum (we love Gremlins, of course, but even Joe Dante must be struggling for new angles to explore).

Wiener has worn many caps as a player in the LA scene, notably as the executive editor of the iconic Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Clearly the role afforded him contact with many of the great personalities of 80s horror, so it comes as somewhat of a letdown that his roster of on-screen talent are such always-up-for-a-chat types as Mick Garris, Kane Hodder, Cassandra Peterson, Lloyd Kaufman, Bill Moseley and commentator Joe Bob Briggs. Each is always a compelling orator, but they have all orated a lot in recent years; when Mark Hartley reinvigorated the retro-doc format a decade ago with the inside-Ozploitation classic Not Quite Hollywood, the podcast wave had yet to mine and re-mine the quality talent pool.  

There are certainly highlights and insights – acknowledgement of the turning point for the genre that Kubrick’s The Shining represented; a cranky John Carpenter relating how he lost the Firestarter gig; a delightful Barbara Crampton recalling that moment from Re-Animator; BTS-giants Mark Shostrom (make-up on Evil Dead II and ...Elm Street’s 2 & 3) and Graham Humphreys (legendary poster artist); and, the final filmed interviews with late genre greats Tom Atkins and Larry Cohen. But Wiener might have cast a wider net, or eased up on fringe horror names like Alex Winter (a bit player in The Lost Boys) or 90s name Katie Featherston (Paranormal Activity).

That said, it was a blast to see the films that brought many teenage years into sharp focus getting fresh dues up on the big-screen. Once, B-movie gems like Pumpkinhead or From Beyond or Hellbound: Hellraiser II would have faded away. Like many of the films he profiles, perhaps Weiner’s mammoth undertaking will reveal its true worth in years to come, when 80s horror will need to be re-introduced to new generations. Despite its flaws, it is the work of a true fan, geared towards the like-minded. 

MORGANA

Stars: Morgana Muses, Petra Joy, John Oh, Anna Brownfield, Judith Lucy and Candida Royale.
Directors: Josie Hess and Isabel Pappard

WORLD PREMIERE: Melbourne International Film Festival, Friday August 16 at The Capitol Theatre.

Available from July 9-19 via Perth Revelation Film Festival's online screening event, COUCHED.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The emergence of a vibrant, creative free spirit from the constraints of societal expectation is captured with genuine affection in Morgana, co-directors Josie Hess and Isabel Peppard’s expansive yet deeply personal account of one woman’s coming-of-middle-age journey. Charting a course from the depths of despair to artistic and emotional fulfilment then back again, this frank, often funny and very moving portrait piece is an engaging crowd-pleaser, particularly for those who adhere to the sex-positive beliefs of their protagonist.

Having grown up in the harsh climes of Coober Pedy, Morgana Muses bought into the ‘suburban ideal’ of her mother’s longings and was soon constructing her own middle-class façade. Having married well and embraced motherhood, she soon found herself sadly unfulfilled in a union devoid of warmth; the dissolution of her marriage and subsequent disconnection from friends and family led to thoughts of self-harm. These moments are thoughtfully reconstructed through a ‘little boxes’ motif, in which Morgana is captured peering longingly through the windows of a grey suburban landscape.

The turning point came as Morgana’s life force was at its lowest ebb; a ‘last hurrah’ sexual experience awakened in her a hunger to explore the boundaries of what she always believed were acceptable sexual practices. With her old life fading fast, Morgana Muses reinvents herself as a feminist porn actress-filmmaker, her debut film Duty-Bound becoming an award-winning global hit that takes her from suburban Melbourne to the BDSM mecca, Berlin.

Via her friendship, co-director Hess (who features at key moments in her own doco) is afforded rare access into Morgana’s highs and lows over a period of several years; the 70-minute feature began life as a short, morphing into a frank and confronting study of mental health and its impact upon the creative process. Hess and Peppard, one of the local industry’s most respected animators and horror sector artists, are clearly advocates for the practice of ethical pornography and strong feminist ideals, but these themes, while central, never overshadow the universal humanity at the core of Morgana’s narrative.

Most importantly, the woman herself proves a complex, fearless frontwoman for her own story. Muses bares all, yet it is her physical openness which ultimately proves the least shocking of her revelations; the self-reflection and psychological torment she is willing to expose for the documentarian’s lens is first-person storytelling at its bravest. Audience empathy is so engaged that, by the time the ‘cherry-on-top’ moment happens deep in the third act, the intimacy required to fully accept every inch of Morgana Muses is comfortably in place. So sex positive and emotionally resonant is her factual film journey, everything about the body and soul baring of Morgana Muses feels convincingly empowering and wonderfully real.

Morgana Documentary - 'First Look' Teaser #2 from House of Gary on Vimeo.

FROM SHOCK TO AWE

Featuring: Matt Kahl, Mike Cooley, Aimee Stahl and Brooke Cooley.
Directors: Luc Côté.
Content Producer: Janine Sagert.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The heartbreaking journey through Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that many veterans undertake upon their return from combat zones rarely ends on the kind of high note that director Luc Côté offers in From Shock to Awe. As detailed in this alternative-treatment advocacy documentary, more US ex-servicemen and women have died by their own hands back home than on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Returning to feature-length factual filmmaking for the first time since 2010’s Four Days Inside Guatanamo, Côté’s latest offers both insight and answers into a different aspect of military life. The struggle to live with PTSD, to deal with horrific memories and the unfamiliarity of a life that was once familiar, has torn apart generations of soldiers. The production presents this hardship through two struggling heroes - Matt Kahl, an Afghanistan vet having served in the 101^st Airborne from 2007-2011; and, MP Mike Cooley (pictured, top), deployed once to Afghanistan and twice to Iraq.

The first act punches hard in its depiction of the wide-reaching impact of PTSD. These are broken men, their families and communities alien to them. Côté uses both real-time and archive footage to show the shells of their former selves that Kahl and Cooley have become. The ability of respective wives Aimee Kahl and Brooke Cooley (herself a returned veteran with trauma issues) to deal with the psychological disintegration of their husbands for nearing breaking point.

The production follows the men to a wooded retreat, where they endeavor to purge their psyches of despair by injesting the psychoactive brew Ayahuasca. A banned substance in the US, it combines the Banisteriopsis caapi vine with plants containing the compound DMT (dimethyltriptamine) to produce a powerful visionary and healing experience. (Pictured, below; Matt and Aimee Kahl)

Scenes of the men under the influence of Ayahuasca are truly revelatory, their emotional and spiritual healing unfolding in real time for Côté’s lens (and, no, there are no Yellow Submarine-style sequences to overstate the experience). Even more remarkable is the footage of the men several months after the Ayahuasca session. They are transformed, their healing allowing for human connection, ambition and clarity of emotion.

Of course, the treatment makes them criminals. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refuses to legalize psychotropic drugs for treatment of PTSD in any form. From Shock to Awe allows the recuperative experiences of the men do the hard selling of the film’s message, but the message is clear – soldiers are dying at home and non-traditional treatment can ease the nation’s pain, but bureaucratic governance remains immoveable.

The newfound positivity in the lives of the two men in the wake of the Ayahuasca treatment (and, for Brooke Cooley, therapy under the influence of the similarly-blacklisted MDMA drug) wraps up their story in what could be the feel good film denouement of the year. But the sadness that now haunts them is that so many of their combat brothers and sisters (many of them federal employees and subject to workplace drug testing) live burdened with PTSD, while a treatment exists that could ease their suffering.

YOU DON'T NOMI

Featuring (voice only): Jeffery Conway, Joshua Grannell, April Kidwell, Haley Mlotek, Adam Neyman and David Schmader.
Archive Footage: Elizabeth Berkely (pictured, below), Joe Eszterhaus, Paul Verhoeven, Gina Gershon and Kyle MacLachlan.
Director: Jeffery McHale

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Artful, incisive documentary analysis into the legacy left by cinematic classics has emerged as genre unto itself in recent years. Rodney Asher deep-dove into the conspiratorial mythology of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with Room 237 (2012), and Alexandre O. Phillippe took a scalpel to the most famous shower in film history with his Hitchcock autopsy, 78/52 (2017).

That Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls finds itself in the company of such milestone movies may surprise some but, by the end of Jeffery McHale’s You Don’t Nomi, it somehow seems appropriate.

McHale comes at the much-maligned 1995 melodrama from angles both academic and humanistic. He initially contends that understanding the most critically reviled film of Verhoeven’s career can only be fully realised if one studies his run of critically adored works. The very motifs evident in his anti-establishment Dutch classics (Diary of a Hooker, 1971; Turkish Delight, 1973; Katie Tippel, 1975; Soldier of Orange, 1977; Spetters, 1980) and the Hollywood blockbusters that made him so bankable (Robocop, 1987; Total Recall, 1990; Basic Instinct, 1992) – elements like sexualised violence, drama pitched high and richly conjured mise-en-scene - were used against him to condemn Showgirls, his second collaboration with iconoclast scriptwriter Joe Ezsterhaus. (Pictured, below; Berkeley and Verhoeven, on-set)

In a cute stylistic touch, McHale uses scenes from Verhoeven’s own The 4^th Man (1983), featuring Jeroen Krabbé, to help explore the director’s modus operandi, in scenes that any self-respecting film buff will adore. The analysis extends to the Dutchman’s post-Showgirls films (Starship Troopers, 1997; Hollow Man, 2000; Black Book, 2006; Elle, 2016), as well as EPK and BTS footage that paints a picture of the director as both a moviemaking genius with a very 'European' love of the human form and a pre-#MeToo eccentric obsessed with the sensational.

Despite some of the most scathing reviews in modern film history (‘Trashdance’ was one of the kinder headlines of the day), Showgirls has slowly resurrected itself as a retro-screening must-see. You Don’t Nomi affords the cult followers a voice to vouch for its worth, most notable in a narrative detour that recounts how an actress recreating the lead role of ‘Nomi Malone’ on stage brought her post-assault PTSD into manageable focus.

Of course, the star of You Don’t Nomi, just as she was the star of Showgirls, is ‘Nomi Malone’ herself, Elizabeth Berkeley. The teen sitcom star whose ego/career/life soared then plummeted in the wake of her casting has become an enigmatic presence in the town that shredded her young life. The actress’ appearances since the film (presented here as archive footage) suggest she is reconciled to her fate as a Hollywood pariah. If Jeffery McHale’s film doesn’t quite realign the reputation of Verhoeven’s misunderstood mega-flop, it certainly paints a picture of a film that is a true auteur’s vision, enlivened by an actress’ devotion and worthy of its audience’s adoration.