A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Yony Leyser, “William Burroughs: Man Within” (2010) An obvious labour of love for Yony Leyser, this documentary on subversive US experimental novelist and artist William S…
Australian and New Zealand Films
Dylan McDonald, “Buckskin” (2013) A young teacher and sometime Australian Rules football player called Jack Buckskin is one of a very tiny number of people who can…
Australian and New Zealand Films
Eva Orner, “Chasing Asylum” (2016) Finding information about Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers kept in its detention centres on Manus Island (Papua New Guinea) and Nauru,…
“Let Your Life Be A Friction To Stop The Machine” (Class War Films, 2012) It’s a modestly made film – just a series of linked visual…
Alexander Korobko, “Through Sherlock’s Eyes: The Case of Alexander Litvinenko” (2015) Not only does this 23-minute documentary present an intriguing scenario of the death of the Russian spy…
Avi Lewis, “This Changes Everything” (2015) Billed as a film about climate change, this documentary essay based on Canadian journalist Naomi Klein’s eponymous book actually follows…
Stanley Kubrick, “The Seafarers” (1953) Stanley Kubrick’s first film made in colour turns out to be a 30-minute documentary promoting a trade union for crews of…
Yana Erlashova, Vitaly Biryukov, “MH17: A Year Without the Truth” (RT Documentary, 2014) On 17 July 2014, Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-17, carrying nearly 300 people, was shot…
Zachary Maxwell, “Yuck! A 4th Grader’s Short Documentary about School Lunch” (2012) Here comes wisdom from the mouths of babes … in this case, 9-year-old Zachary…
Northern European Films, Southeast Asian Films
Joshua Oppenheimer, “The Look of Silence” (2014) A companion piece to Oppenheimer’s earlier documentary “The Act of Killing”, this film considers the effects of Indonesia’s purges…