by FilmInk Staff
DocPlay is committed to championing local stories that celebrate and showcase the richness of Australian characters and place. With their new Indie Booster initiative, DocPlay looks forward to assisting independent documentarians to reach distinct communities in the sacred space of the cinema.
Described by director Jen Atherton as a ‘Grey Gardens-meets-Frederick Wiseman road movie’’, Mosquitoes is the first winner of the DocPlay Indie Booster. The feature documentary follows 89-year-old artist Evelyn Roth, her neighbour Ali – who is Jen’s mum and a well-known Adelaide publican – and Jen, as they travel together from Maslin Beach, Adelaide’s famous –and first – nude beach, to Vancouver and back, with some diversions along the way. The DocPlay team was impressed by ingenuity of Jen’s previous work, produced under the Garden Reflexxx moniker with artist Andre Shannon, and can see how a distinct and curious audience would congregate to see Mosquitoes in a cinema space.
The second winner of the DocPlay Indie Booster is The Dig, from the team at Closer Productions (director Matthew Bate and producer Rebecca Summerton). The DocPlay audience – like many streaming audiences – are susceptible to the allure of true crime, and investigative series from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand have proven to be of particular interest to the platform’s subscribers. The genre can take many forms and shades: The Dig reopens the notorious 1966 case of the Beaumont children’s disappearance from Glenelg Beach in Adelaide, and offers a thoughtful reflection on the shifting mythology of a city.
