by Reuben Stojanovic-Rowe
Feeling stuck in your 9-5 job? Do you miss having new experiences? Is that two-week holiday away from work REALLY enough? Matty Hannon knows the feeling.
“I wasn’t in the best head-space. And that was the motivation for going on this journey,” Hannon tell us about the adventure that would take him from Alaska all the way down to, you guessed it.
The Road to Patagonia is a documentation of one person’s search for purpose in this enormous place we call Earth.
“In terms of what I’ve gained out of this documentary, my life is completely different post-trip,” he says. “I met my partner; now fiancé. I now have a son. I own a little farm. Professionally, I’ve honed my craft and now I do documentary filmmaking for a living.”
The film has only been on film festival circuits so far, but the buzz around it has been very positive.
“We won the Byron Bay International Film Festival, which is an amazing feeling for a small indie film, which was made for little next to nothing budget. And no real plan when we were making it.”
Hannon is beaming with confidence today, but he also has an exceptionally humble demeanour about him. It is quite clear that he is very proud of his achievements and the life he has built for himself.
“I studied film. I completed a Masters in Filmmaking, specialising in Documentaries. However, I was living in the Melbourne CBD and boxed myself into a 9-5 job. I thought that was the next inevitable step in life and quickly realised it was making me feel very unhappy.”
Prior to this, he had spent his early twenties living in a remote area of Sumatra.
“I was living with a hunter/gatherer traditional community and that really blew my mind with what was possible to do in your life; the different approaches to living.”
After five years in Sumatra, Hannon was feeling homesick. He went to Melbourne and was able to land a well-paid office job, but he quickly hit a hard truth.
“I had just been diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I felt very lonely in the city.”
Thinking back on the freedom that he felt in Sumatra, he decided it was time to challenge himself.
“I booked a one-way ticket to Alaska. I didn’t really have much more of a plan except knowing I would be getting a motorbike and trying to ride to the bottom of South America.”
Hannon decided to document the full experience using his Canon 5D Mark II and ordering what was then the first version of the Sony A7 to be delivered to a deeply remote town in Alaska.
“I had absolutely no idea how to use it. But yeah, I essentially ran with these two. Which in hindsight is pretty funny because colour spaces don’t speak very well between (Sony/Canon) each other.
“We didn’t set out with a treatment, no kind of predetermined idea of what the film was going to be about,” he continues. “I thought I would make a little surf movie along the way but it snowballed into something much more.”
Going for a cinéma vérité approach, a style that fully embraces improvisation, Hannon knew that he would have a lot of footage to work with.
“The shooting ratio was off the charts, but the adventure of the situation always came first – the pursuit of what we were after. Like, when we are selling the motorbikes for the horses in the film. That was all based on the logistics of that process and any shooting was a secondary thought.”
He also met many interesting people on his travels, many of whom became good friends. One would become the love of his life and would join Hannon on his travels, learning the ropes and contributing as cinematographer to the film.
Along with the travel stories and gorgeous landscapes that they immersed themselves in, Hannon wanted to be able to capture all the inspirational people that he met on-camera.
“Interviews can be a beautiful exchange of information. To share deeper thoughts that people normally wouldn’t say in normal conversation, but all of a sudden, turning ‘on’ the camera. It’s a level of trust that they give to you. And I wanted to respect that.”
Through these travels, Hannon rewired his approach to life and humanity’s relation to it.
“Really, this started with my close friends in Sumatra. I learned so much from the shamans who I had spent many years with, who taught me these animistic philosophies. I understood it at a certain level, but it wasn’t until all these journeys came into my life that I really took it. Speaking to traditional artists when I was in Alaska. Or when I was in Mexico. Or down in Chile. A lot of people who ended up in the film were from indigenous cultures but it’s not exclusive to indigenous philosophy either.”
Hannon feels that the film’s philosophy, exploring these ideas of animism and deeper ecology, are very hard to grasp from the perspective of an individual stuck in the lifestyle of a 9-5 worker. Not that he totally dismisses the point of it, but he certainly feels that people should really embrace adventure sometime in their life.
“You have to have the time available and when you’re working a 9-5, I don’t think you can achieve that in your 2-week holiday. These immersive experiences, when you’re on top of a mountain in total elation… When you’re absolutely exhausted and dirty after a long day. And all the things in-between. When you can immerse yourself in these type of experiences, I think you gain a different relationship about the world around you. And that was something that we really wanted to share to the world.”
Once the journey was completed for Hannon and his partner, there was still the great road ahead: the editing suite.
“It’s the pointy end of the process, isn’t it? The brutality of sitting down at the computer and sifting. It was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. It was more challenging than going on the journey and riding four horses through South America,” he laughs.
It became apparent that they would need to sacrifice their comforts to get the film finished in a budget-friendly fashion. “We lived in a caravan in Byron Bay on a little farm. We volunteered our time to live there for free… With an Alfresco kitchen,” he laughs. “It was an amazing epoch of our lives anyway. It wasn’t something that we were doing begrudgingly. That kept our costs down and made it possible to go through the footage.”
He was also lucky to have the assistance from professional documentary editors Mike Bolson and Harriet Clutterbuck.
“I would sort of do the grunt work and I was able to bounce these ideas off them and help with my doubt in going through the borderline horrifying experience editing a film. And it made all the difference getting their support.”
Soon, Hannon came to realise where he might be going with the film and that his travels had the ability to become a feature length documentary. “I feel that we got every shot that was needed for the film. Which is a little bit of a feat in of itself.”
Comfortably working as a full-time documentary filmmaker now, exposed to a lot more high-end camera equipment, Hannon can appreciate the simplicity of the footage that he captured for The Road To Patagonia.
“For a super indie film, I’m proud of the aesthetic. There’s something about the simplicity of not having things like drones, no gimbals. No accessorising of the craft. It’s got me rethinking how I approach some of my upcoming projects and films, bringing it back to more handheld movements.”
Above all, though, the responses from the public to Hannon’s film have resonated deeply.
“A lot of the heart-warming stuff has come from personal messages that tell me how the film affected them. From small things to being inspired to change their life. Even going as far as selling their house and going on an adventure. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
The Road to Patagonia is in cinemas 2 May 2024
