Deconstructing Larry: An interview with Lars von Trier

I recently interviewed Lars von Trier via video Skype and I must say it was one of the most unexpected interview experiences I've had in eight years as a film journalist. Not just because I was talking to one of the most interesting filmmakers of the past two decades, but because the man himself was not close to how I had perhaps expected. Physically, he seemed timid, thinning hair greying in colour, puffy cheeked, shoulders slouched, gripping his assistant chair as his voice trembled throughout the interview. For those who know me I'm hardly the most intimidating person to talk with or be interviewed by.

Below is the product of out 20 minute chat, which I found fascinating, insightful and deeply personal. I apologise for all the obvious missed follow-up questions, of which I can see plenty (what does he mean it would be "lying" to not present the graphic sex and violence?), but there was such a limited time and so many things I wanted to try and cover. The finished article was written up for Street Press Australia and I believe made the cover of Inpress in Melbourne (a shorter version was also printed in Drum Media).

I won't pass any further comment on the content, instead I leave that to you...

It’s seven months since the film premiered in Cannes, how do you feel now you have some distance between you and the initial reactions?

Well, I must say I understand the film less and less the more time that goes. I’ve made quite a lot of interviews and I think I’m getting much poorer at it. The negative reception in Cannes was fine with me, I don’t have a problem with that. I’ve been yelled at before.

Were you surprised by the hysteria?

Yeah, I don’t think I had prepared myself enough for that, which was stupid.

One of the common accusations is that the film is ‘needlessly graphic' – do you find that oddly contradictory given your reputation as a provocateur?

[Deep sign] You know, 'needlessly graphic'? Of course it depends on how you work. The normal saying is that you should show as little as possible to let these things exist in the mind or the brain of the spectator and thereby making them much stronger. For me it was never a question whether to have this graphicness both in the sex and the violence, somehow I thought it would be lying not to put it there.

Do you think accusations that ‘you wish to do nothing more than shock’ are unfair?

Well anything is fair to say but I don’t think it is right. I have worked all my life with films and I think shocking is quite poor is that is all you want to do or provoke. I believe there is much more in the films and that my work is… well, if I should shock or provoke someone I will still claim that I provoke myself with these things. But not the graphicness, it is maybe more natural to this country.

You surrendered a lot of control over this film shoot than previously, how important to your development as a filmmaker was stepping out of your comfort zone in this way?

It was interesting but it was not of my own free will I did that. I suffered from depression and I was just working myself out of this by doing the film work. I just didn’t have the strength or sharpness that I think I used to have.

You have said this is your most personal film to date, do you feel a sense of relief or does baring your demons in such a way unnerve you further?

I don’t really feel so strongly about it. It’s made in a very automatic way and if you are a normal human being then you would be very, very scared that this is what would come out of you if you just relaxed but I’m hardcore (laughs). I’ve been trying to work with this tilted brain of mine for many years so nothing, I think, can really shock me.

It is nothing new for artists suffering depression to turn to self-portraits as a reflex to the anxiety and frustration they feel. To what extent then is Antichrist a Lars von Trier self-portrait?

Well, to a certain degree, but I have always made [self-portraits] in that when I write I always put a little or a lot of myself into the characters, I think, or at least I am told, that is my method. If it gets even more of a self-portrait people will run screaming away, which they do already.

In that case, on reflection, do you have an awareness of how that manifests itself in the film?

No. To some point that is how we all have to deal with life.

There’s always much talk about the apparent misogyny present in your films, do you feel you have a healthy grip on your conscious and unconscious relationship with women?

Who has? (laughs) I don’t know, I’m doing my best. My mother was quite a prominent feminist in this country and she if she had not been cremated she would probably be turning in her grave.

You found out your father wasn’t your biological father as your mum was about to pass away – how old were you at this time?

I was quite old, I think I was 30.

It is a life-changing moment for any person this sort of revelation as I know from personal experience, how do you think that experience with your mother informed your relationship with the women in your films?

Well that’s a good question. I haven’t really thought very much about that. You know this situation where you find out your dad is not your biological dad is very common as you know. Just after you find out it was very severe for me and it was a great shock. But I think the longer that goes the more you find out what matters is the man who was there and not the guy who was not. It is very clear from my even more loving relationship with the guy I call my father, that did not deliver the genes, than I did before. It’s very strange about my mother that she kept this a secret because in her beliefs such things should not be kept secret, but it’s quite interesting how bourgeoisie these free-minded people also are.

Have you found any closure in this?

I don’t know. Have you met your real father?

Yes, it was a good, yet somehow unsatisfactory experience.

When I met my father he was extremely unsympathetic and I couldn’t see how I had anything in common with him whatsoever, only the fact that we looked like each other. It was a very negative meeting I had. Later on I found I had siblings from his side who I see now. I had a fantasy about the meeting where we would cry and embrace and it was nothing like that, I tell you. He told me any further contact should be through his lawyer. That was quite hard.

Has it altered your certainty about yourself?

If you believe I have any certainty (laughs). It is good to have some kids and a family, I wouldn’t say I am really certain of anything but I appreciate the qualities of the family life when you have a very turbulent job. I’m beginning to become very much of a sissy, I’m beginning to feel the pressure to make a film, or how a film should be and received. A few years ago I would have denied that for certain. I don’t know what happens, maybe I should just stop.

But then how would you go about managing that uncertainty?

Yeah, I think the biggest problem then is what I should do because just doing nothing is just really bad for me. I have to do something passionate, I don’t know what it could be.

[police sirens]

What is that?

There’s a police station around the corner…

Oh, well you are safe then (laughs).

How does grappling with your own demons inform your approach to exploring the dark recesses of the human condition?

It’s something I do not analyse very much. A film comes to me very much as an idea and then it develops, I’m really not steering it in any specific direction. I feel myself a little bit as a medium in the sense that by following my own thoughts and what you would say is a register of films that I like from when I saw a lot of films, these two things and following my own path without really deciding what the path is. I strongly feel I am following a path with what I am doing and the luxury of being able to follow that path without too much hesitation is a luxury that very few directors have in the sense I can actually finance these films and nobody tells me what to do. And since I this position I have a strong sense I have to use this possibility.

Do you ever wonder if all this will be the making of you or your ruin?

No, I don’t think so. I think I would have been an even sicker person had I not made films, yes, I’m quite sure. When we play Monopoly in Denmark we have a little card that says go directly to the police station and turn yourself in. That would be kinda easy for you… I’m sorry, it was just an idea.

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Film review: A Serious Man

Director: Joel and Ethan Coen
Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed
Country: Coensville, USA
Year: 2009


When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies... Rabbi Marshak

There ought to be a support group for characters of Coen brother’s movie, so tormented are the lives and experiences of such an existence. After the Oscar-winning success of their last masterpiece No Country For Old Men the filmmakers turned their sights to the farcical with Burn After Reading, a film about greed and the self-absorbed. With their latest effort, A Serious Man, the Coens turn their deadpan absurdity levels to 11 for latest victim Larry Gopnik (Michael Struhlbarg), a married, physics teacher with a couple of kids in a Jewish enclave of 1967 suburban Minnesota; a man to whom Very Bad Things are about to happen.

The irony is not lost in the film’s title, nor is it within all that occurs. Life, the Coen’s would have us believe, is a force of natural too unpredictable to be taken seriously no matter how hard we try and no matter whatever certainty we may think exists. Gopnik is a man to whom the status quo is religion in a world where God might just be too cruel a force to allow such malaise to go unchecked.

For Gopnik things start out bad and get progressively worse, and worse, and worse. First his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) announces she is leaving him for his recently widowed pompous pal Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), his redneck neighbour appears combustible while his deadbeat brother has taken up residence in his living room when not frequently bars of dubious moral. Add to this a son newly acquainted with the teenage harlot Mary Jane, a daughter stealing money for a nose job, a tenure committee meeting to decide his job while someone writes anonymous letters slandering him and a failing Korean student who simultaneously brides him and threatens to sue him. So it is at the behest of his lawyer that Gopnik turns to religion for counsel.

Strange it has taken the Coens so long to turn the focus of their dark sense of humour so squarely on their Jewish roots for material, making up for lost time the brothers consciously run riot. As Gopnik seeks the advice of one Rabbi and then another, he discovers little more than abstract fables that provide little in the way of answers and more in the way of questions. God, if he exists, might not be a cruel master so much as he is an ambivalent one with a surreal sense of humour.

Fatalism becomes all prevailing, providing further evidence that when it comes to the human condition there are few storytellers with a keener, darker eye than the Coens. Funny though it might be, A Serious Man is a resolutely uncomfortable experience and deserving of a place amidst Joel and Ethan’s finest work.

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Film review: Cedar Boys

Director: Serhat Caradee
Cast: Les Chantery, Buddy Dannoun, Waddah Sari
Country: Australia
Year: 2009


A big hit at the Sydney Film Festival this year, Cedar Boys sees first-time feature writer-helmer Serhat Caradee join the ranks of filmmakers attempting to take the path less explored of Australia’s non-white (sub)urban experience. As the film’s title suggests, Caradee story focuses on young Lebanese men, though to call them such would be misleading as these are just boys waking the fine line of responsible adulthood and the recklessness naivety of youth. So of course, because no one seems to have an original idea for how to tell these stories, we find ourselves in the territory of crime, drugs and gangs again in what is a very competent, if obvious, drama.

Les Chantery plays Tarek, a young Lebanese-Australian lad who makes what little cash he can as a panel beater whilst living at home with his parents and little sister. At night Tarek can be found cruising around in his mate Nabil’s (Buddy Dannoun) car or getting turned away from upscale clubs because their money’s not green enough and their skin’s not white enough. Tarek’s a good kid who finds himself tempted by another life in Sydney, one of big houses in the Eastern suburbs and flashy white girls who drink champagne. Furthermore, Tarek’s has a brother in the clink with no money left for his appeal. It’s enough for the young lad to compromise his character and get involved with Nabil’s plan to rip off a dealer’s stash and use their hustler mate Sam (Waddah Sari) to shift the pills.

Thus Caradee embarks on a moral tale about kids who think getting rich quick the illegal way will come without consequences. The director tells his story well and there is just enough room for one more western suburbs story after David Field’s The Combination earlier this year. But with those films and Shawn Seet’s boxing drama Two Fists, One Heart it’s starting to feel like the only immigrant stories involve criminals, boys from the wrong side of the tracks and love stories with white Aussie girls. Are there no young Lebanese women in this world we're being served?

Unfortunately not, and until Australian filmmakers start trying to tell their stories without the baggage of imitating American urban filmmakers’ gangland-immigrant tales it’s going to continue to feel like old ground revisited. That there are gifted writers, directors and actors out there to explore the cultural concerns of these groups and that they are being giving the opportunities to do so is undeniably a good thing; Cedar Boys is a decent enough showcase for this talent, but let’s see something fresh, imaginative, original.

What Cedar Boys demonstrates is that on a small budget with the Red hi-def cam you can make a film that looks great and captures an Australia city and outer suburbs in a way that is at times menacing and others magical. Go see Cedar Boys, it is accomplished work featuring an incredible cast (Rachael Taylor, Martin Henderson, Daniel Amalm) by a filmmaker with a bright future.

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Film review: Balibo

Director: Robert Connolly
Cast: Anthony LaPaglia, Oscar Isaac, Damon Gameau
Country: Australia
Year 2009


Robert Connolly’s third feature is a historical political thriller of rare quality, not just in terms of Australian filmmaking but on any. Taking us back to the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor Connolly and his co-writer David Williamson (Gallipoli) refuse to pull their punches yet intelligently avoid sermonising the Australian government’s culpability in turning a blind eye, effectively condemning six Australian journalists to death. Based on Jill Jolliffe’s 2001 book Cover Up, Balibo is powerfully affecting cinema and a compelling piece of storytelling.

The film opens with a Timorese woman giving her oral history at the recent Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in which she recalls witnessing the execution of Australian journalist Roger East. Played by the rock solid Anthony LaPaglia, we first meet East as he is eagerly encouraged by a young Timorese patriot José Ramos-Horta (Oscar Isaac) to head the government’s news agency. Jaded and cynical, East is not to be convinced easily and only comes round when his own buried idealism gets the better of his world weary instinct.

Arriving to find Dili a capital city under siege with Indonesia intelligence wondering the streets in civilian clothes, East is more interested in picking up the trail of the five missing young Australian journos in order to discover their fate. Balibo expertly weaves together two storylines, that of Greg Shacklton, Gary Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie, Brian Peters and Tony Stewart reporting from the frontline whilst East investigates their fate. Despite knowing the men’s ultimate fate, Balibo never misses a beat of tension, the impending spectre of death always looming claustrophobically overhead.

The film’s narrative echoes the sentiment offered by East, that the only way he can get the Australian public interested in the plight of the East Timorese is by exposing the fate of the Balibo Five, much to Ramos-Horta’s distaste. Along the road to the titular village where the Five met their ultimate end we see the results of Indonesian death squads, whose activities resulted in the murder of thousands of civilians. Balibo is anything but a film without conviction, its anger palpable and uncompromising, leaving the audience unable to ignore the spectre of crimes committed and the implications of the Australian government’s inaction.

And while Balibo is an intensely political film, it is also a beautiful one. Nick Meyer’s editing between the two timelines is nothing short of masterful and more than appropriately complemented by Tristan Milani’s photography on both 16mm and 35mm. Milani deploys handheld camera work for the most part in all the right places, beautifully colour contrasting the duelling stories and capturing the lush, exotic locales of East Timor. It is always a pleasure to see filmmaking of such calibre in sync with storytelling and performance.

Director Connolly has made a remarkable film, equal to Oliver Stone’s Salvador, arguably that filmmaker’s best work, and is a reminder to Australia that with great power comes great responsibility. The Balibo Five and Roger East died trying to report the truth, the very least we can do is stand up and pay attention.

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Film review: Bronson

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Cast: Tom Hardy, Matt King, Kelly Adams
Country: United Kingdom
Year: 2009


“My name’s Charles Bronson and all my life I’ve wanted to be famous,” comes the narration from the anti-hero of director Nicholas Winding Refn Sydney Film Festival Official Comp winner. Bronson is a film that offers perilously little else than a character portrait of Britain’s most infamous inmate played by Tom Hardy. And for those who value story over art that probably won't be enough, nevertheless Bronson has ‘cult classic’ written all over it thanks to it’s coiled tension and eventual balls-to-the-wall violence.

Refn, whose Pusher trilogy is another revered collection from the cult section, paints his portrait of a fascinating man with a Kubrickian brush, unapologetically repetitive in its explorations of a life behind bars and man incapable of, or uninterested in, rehabilitation into normal society. A squat fist of muscle with a shaved head and an English moustache, Refn’s Bronson is an intelligent, creative and at times vulnerable man who is nothing if not intensely wild, whimsical and interesting. His world becomes a bizarre vaudevillian affair beset by equally odd characters along the way from a prize-fight promoter, to an art teacher, to a particularly peculiar prison warden.

It all comes as a surprise to anyone from British shores more accustomed to the man born Michael Gordon Peterson whom after being imprisoned for armed robbery became known as the country’s most dangerous criminal, remaining in jail for 40 years (aside a couple of very short stints of freedom) as a result of crimes committed inside. One of the strengths of Bronson is director Refn decision to tell his story through the a tint lens of absurdity and leave the audience to work out how they feel about the ruffian for themselves.

Whilst no doubt capturing his charm, humour and raising questions about the rights and wrongs of institutionalising a man through years of solitary confinement, the filmmaker is never shies away from the brutality of this somewhat deranged and feral character who cannot be defined by normal society. Was he born this way or did prison and society’s limitations of social-acceptability shape him into the man he became?

Bronson is a deeply confronting film in respect of it subject and no matter what your opinion of its value the one feature uniformly agreeable is the stunning central performance by Hardy as the brawler. Previously only seen in bit parts in the likes of Layer Cake, Marie Antoinette and RocknRolla Hardy delivers a text book definition of a tour de force that is both mesmerising and terrifying and a performance that deserves to be talked about in the same vein of Eric Bana’s similar role in Chopper – utterly magnificent.

For 92 minutes Bronson sets out to entertain us with visual flair and a reek of madness. In the process it succeeds in becoming one of the most original and exciting biopics in recent memory and a scary insight into what may lie beneath humanity: little more than survival of the fittest instincts that betray our animalistic tendencies. Or it might just be a wild ride in the mind of a madman.

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Film review: Inglourious Basterds

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Christoph Waltz
Country: USA
Year: 2009


What’s that you say: a Quentin Tarantino-directed World War II film about a Dirty Dozen-esque troupe of Jewish American soldiers behind enemy lines with the sole purpose of killing Nazis? As basic movie premises go it’s hard to imagine a bigger fanboy wet dream really, but be careful what you wish for, because you might not get it. Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is the least disciplined and most wildly uneven of his seven features to date.

Hardly one to dwell on his detractors, here the film geek’s filmmaker betrays what should be his own directorial maturing process and indulges his worst excesses. And while the big chin might be likened in many quarters as The Weinstein Company’s Mickey Mouse; the difference remains that Mickey didn’t have an ego and tens of millions of dollars at his direct disposal. Most disappointingly of all, Inglourious Basterds glaringly lacks for consistent inspiration.

Rather than the action movie about a crack(pot) team of scalping Basterds led by Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine, Tarantino has delivered a series of vignettes, padded by lots of talking with quintessential QT-patter and punctuated by increasingly violent exclamation marks. It is a farcical fairy tale set in Nazi-occupied France where the history books have been gleefully thrown on the pyre so as to enact a roaring rampage of revenge. Disturbingly though, Inglourious Basterds plays uncomfortably well as a 160-minute murder fantasy in which human life means very little in this post-Gitmo world.

Because no filmmaker loses their gifts overnight Tarantino still manages to cram some vintage stuff into his bloated runtime (you’d hope so, right?). The opening homage to Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West, complete with Ennio Morriocone score to a homestead invasion, fused with classic Tarantino cat and mouse dialogue play is as good as any of the writer-director’s greatest hits. The scene excruciatingly drip-drops the tension before climaxing with exactly the execution we’ve come to expect of his violent poetics.

It is also during this opening sequence that Tarantino unleashes his secret weapon, German actor Christoph Waltz as ‘the Jew Hunter’ SS Colonel Hans Landa. Waltz steals every single scene in which he delivers his cunning dialogue in multiple languages, playing pitch perfectly for the uncertain bedfellows of terror and comedy. Where Waltz excels Pitt fails in a grimacing and gurning in a caricaturing that irritates more than it delights.

Because it’s an ensemble we could go on to mention the other standouts like Michael Fassbender and Mélanie Laurent, but it’s hard to care when the director himself barely treats his protagonists as anything more than a collection of names and faces. All the easier to kill one supposes. Tarantino has not lost any of his visual flare nor his talent with language, but here finds his storytelling lacking in restraint to his film’s detriment. There’s entertainment to be had in this escapist fantasy, but be warned, these are not the Basterds you’re looking for.

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Worse Addictions: Episode 5

The podcast is still going strong, check out EPISODE FIVE after reading the synopsis.

"Things got pretty heated as the team took on Michael Bay's latest helping of pyrotechnical cinema Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. Adrenaline flowed and spittle flew as Josh Wheatley, Daniel Crichton-Rouse and Damien Radford joined Scott Henderson for a marathon discussion of Michael Bay as auteur before naturally seguewaying into a chat about Can't Say No challenge film Happy Together. There's a chance for you to WIN a copy of Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg just before listening to the team discuss Manhunter in our Michael Mann Body Of Lies series."

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Film review: Bastardy

Director: Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Country: Australia
Year: 2008 (documentary)


“When you’re pushed out on stage, that’s when you’re born” Jack Charles

Indigenous actor Jack Charles is a rare sort of fellow and his story quite remarkable. Captured in documentary form by director Amiel Courtin-Wilson (Chasing Buddha) over the course of seven years it’s hard to say how close you come to knowing what really makes Charles tick, he’s a master of charisma yet slave to vice. Unflinchingly and candid from beginning to end with one uncomfortable exception, and yet nothing short of an enigma; Bastardy presents one of the most fascinatingly understated portraits of a man in recent memory.

As a prolific actor who starred on screen and stage and is credited as having set up the first Aboriginal theatre company in the 1960s one expects a certain sense of the theatrical around Charles. Life started out that way too. A member of the The Stolen Generation might have been the first really drama he experienced and an onscreen credit at the end of the film tells us it is dedicated to those who have been “lost and found.” The allusion is clear, this isn’t just about those who fall on hard times and find themselves in the homeless nether-regions of the living; ghosts before death even comes for them.

But that’s the bigger picture and Bastardy is much more concerned with the personal and the intimate. Down the years Charles appeared on the big screen in films like The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Bedevil (1993) and Blackfellas (1993), in private he was a thief and a drug addicted – albeit the most charming bloke to invade you home, helping himself to whatever he might be able to maintain the lifestyle he’d grown accustomed – even if that was chasing the next fix.

Charles seemingly has given director Courtin-Wilson full access to his life, we see him shooting up heroin to which he displays no physical reaction – a skill born of years of addiction. Later the pair take a trip to a Melbourne suburb, home to the upper-class and a happy hunting ground for Charles’ exploits in cat-burglary. We see the alleyways and toilets he has slept in and hear about relationships gone wrong. All of it is so honest and without self-pity, yet there’s a sparkle of regret in his eyes that betrays the bravado. He is intelligent, kind, philosophical and a quite beautiful blues singer. There never a dull moment around Charles and the effect he has on the thesps and crew he meets on set at an acting gig or the drunks on a street bench – encounters with this man are always seem enriching experiences.

Bastardy navigates the ere tricky line of documenting the subject and becomes involved with the story. Incredible in many ways given the intoxicating bitter-sweetness of Charles’ life, his gentle demeanour and wise eloquence. A genuinely rewarding film in which you could talk about the skilled execution of the editing and the beauty of some of the photography at great length, but in the end all you’ll care about is Jack Charles, a charming rogue who’ll stay with you long after he’s left the screen.

Scott Henderson

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Worse Addictions: Episode 4

Hello my friends, obviously I've been somewhat tardy with my posting for the past couple of weeks. The podcast if taking up vast amounts of my time as is various freelance gigs I've been able to pick up. Below is the overview for EPISODE 4 of WORSE ADDICTIONS in which we review Disgrace and begin our exploration of Michael Mann in the new Body Of Lies feature. Please remember to subscribe via iTunes, and do feel free to email your feedback and thoughts to worseaddictions@gmail.com

"Despite the editor's failure to bring the power cord for his laptop the Worse Addictions team were able to record episode 4 of the show with the help of a super speedy second half. Alex Parker and Matt Riviera returned to the studio – much to the relief of Scott Henderson and Josh Wheatley – in time to review the new Australian film DISGRACE, directed by Steve Jacobs and starring John Malkovich. The guys (and gal) open the show by talking about Alex's recommendation for film viewing in hospital and Josh's latest DVD purchases. They also introduce our new trailer competition, the Can't Say No feature where one of the team challenges someone to watch a unseen film before the next episode and finally we kick start our Body Of Lies feature on Michael Mann. Hope you enjoy the show folks and please come back next week when we review Transformers 2."

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Trailer for The Warriors Way

I don't normally post trailers but this one was an absolute must see. It came via 24FPS and looks like an unendorsed promo release of the English language samurai western (most samurai films are actually westerns but this one is actually set in the Wild West). The film is directed by Sngmoo Lee and stars Korean actor Dung-Kun Jang as the retired 'World's Greatest Swordsman Ever'. And Jang is not the only talent we should mention with Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush and Danny Huston (hamming it up in all the right ways) providing some serious star power to the cast. Quite frankly this looks incredible, drawing on several genres and influences like Hard Boiled, The Crow (think the strobing shootout), Yojimbo, A Fistful Of Dollars and anything involving bullet time bad-assery. Watch it below or click here.



Type rest of the post here

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SFF review: Burma VJ

Director: Anders Østergaard
Country: Denmark


"Those who are not afraid come to the front” – unknown protester

“All social changes come from the passions of individuals.” After nearly a decade of pessimistic ‘we’re all doomed’ documentaries of despair things might be changing for the better. Whilst many of the features at the 56th Sydney Film Festival have shown a distinct pattern of fatalistic discourse, this comment by a subject in Louie Psihoyos’ The Cove reflects the optimistic hope evident in many of the documentary films showing this year.

In Burma VJ: Reporting From A Closed Country it is more than simply the passion of one person, but the bravery of a group of undercover journalists who operate at all times under the threat of permanent incarceration or worse. They are all members of the Democratic Voice of Burma based in Rangoon where they do everything they can to capture footage of the country’s military dictatorship’s activities and smuggling their elicit goods to a headquarters in Norway. These are video journalists as freedom fighters, where high street camcorders replace rocket launchers and “stories are silent.”

Director Anders Østergaard cuts together footage of the 2007 rebellion led by Burma’s 400,000 Buddhist monks along with the dramatic recreations of DVB journalist Joshua’s (alias) experience hold up in Thailand at the time of the almost-revolution and whose role was to managed the flow of information to the outside world. It’s a problematic decision but for the most part you take Joshua at his word as he tells his comrades story.

What plays out in the film’s grainy home video footage is some of the most incredible scenes of revolt and repression ever captured charting it from beginning to end. The last time the people of Burma rose up against the military in 1988 some 3,000 people were killed in the streets and the film is soaked in fear and tension for the intrepid reporters. Aside the bravery of the reporters who must dodge secret police hiding in the crowds, the monks who march on the capital in their thousands and the student activists who march despite fear the military will fire on them, there is something heartbreakingly inspirational about the intangibles caught on camera here.

The DVB remind us of the role of good journalism in exposing atrocities (and believe me, you will see tragedy) and the truth behind the oppression of a people, with the simultaneous realism how negligent our own media has proved in recent times. Burma VJ is nail-bitingly tense, utterly engrossing and incredible galvanising. More than simply documenting this event the film offers hope in the indomitable nature of the human spirit that refuses to go quietly into the night no matter the consequences.

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56th Sydney Film Festival runs until 14 June

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Worse Addictions: Episode 2

So the second episode of WORSE ADDICTIONS has been posted online. It was a pretty crazy production and editing job as we've all been super busy with the Sydney Film Festival, but I think we made some progress from the first episode and we certainly had some good discussions about the three films we reviewed: BRONSON, VAN DIEMEN'S LAND and 500 DAYS OF SUMMER. I'm trying to knock together some written review to post here at the blog. My favourite film so far has been documentary The Cove, which I can't recommend highly even and rambled about a little too much during the episode. Anyways, go check it out, download it, subscribe to iTunes – all the links should be working.

Also, Matt Riviera is running a critic poll of the films showing at the festival on his blog Last Night With Riviera in which I am taking part. Swing by there to see what have been mine and a number of other critics favourite films so far.

The Sydney Film Festival ends 14 June, so hurry over to the website to book your tickets now.

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