By FilmInk Staff
If you’re a fan of non-fiction filmmaking, then The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is right up your alley. Unspooling at Melbourne’s famous Cinema Nova, the festival showcases the very best documentaries from the best fests around the world, including Venice, SXSW, Slamdance, CPHDOX, Doxa, Hot Docs, VIFF, Shanghai Film Festival, Harlem International Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, and the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. There will be a host of Australian premieres for international and first-time ever screenings for many local docos, including nineteen feature length titles.
A special opening night event on July 21 will feature the world premieres of two local Melbourne documentaries: Finding Creativity (which tracks and examines the diversity of the creative impulse) and The Healing (which explores the life-saving equine welfare program that brings traumatised ex-racehorses and traumatised military veterans together to help heal each other). The closing night event ill be on July 31 with a live screening of the festival awards followed by a screening of Meeting The Beatles In India, in which filmmaker Paul Saltzman retraces his epic journey through the sub-continent in the late 1960s, when he hung at The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram on the banks of the Ganges River, and kicked back with John, Paul, George and Ringo.
There will be a host of very special masterclass events, and throughout the festival, there will be documentaries written, directed, produced, narrated by, or starring big names like Bruce Beresford, Ewan McGregor, David Lynch, Oliver Stone, Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Barbara Kopple, Robert Smith, Errol Morris, Kelly Jones, Cornel West, Zachary Quinto, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Michelle Rodriguez, Warwick Thornton, Cynthia Nixon and Sharon Stone.
For all ticketing, venue and programming details, head to the official site. For a look at FilmInk’s picks of what to see at The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, click here.
