2021 DOCUMENTARY SERIES
THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THINGS
SUNDAY 27 MARCH 2022 | 3:00pm | dendy canberra
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Like smoke from a distant fire, grief permeates everything.
In the wake of her sister’s terminal cancer diagnosis, Sundance-award-winning director Jennifer Abbott uses her personal journey through grief as a lens to grapple with the profound sense of loss that climate change is generating on a global scale. The result is a fresh and lyrical perspective which creates both a space for feeling and a spark for action.
Accelerating reports of climate breakdown can feel overwhelming, and our emotional response sometimes leads to paralysis. From “climate pessimists” to frontline activists,The Magnitude of All Things investigates different ways of processing: how to hold the grief caused by environmental destruction, and respond to a crisis which often feels too big – and too painful – to fully comprehend. Weaving her own memoir with testimony from the founders of Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg, and Sápara, Wonnarua and Nunatsiavut land defenders, Abbott crafts an extraordinary tapestry of raw emotion and staggering beauty. Counterintuitively, facing our grief head on leads us to new and unexpected places, where action is again possible.
“Navigates the space between anger and hope…it’s as poignant as it is provocative.” POV Magazine
The Magnitude of All Things screens Sunday 27th March 2022, 3.00pm.
Language: English, Spanish and Kichwa with English Subtitles.
Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes.
Rating: CTC (Unclassified 15+)
The Magnitude of All Things is presented with the support of The High Commission of Canada in Australia. The screening will be followed by a short reading by local poets Eleanor Malbon and Zoe Anderson. Please join us in the Dendy foyer afterwards for discussion about the film over a glass of wine!
Eva-MARIA
SUNDAY 12 DECEMBER | 4:30pm | dendy canberra
ONE SCREENING ONLY!
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Eva-Maria is a secretary in her early thirties. She wants to have a child. She’s also been a wheelchair user since early childhood.
Becoming a parent with significant and complex disabilities is a difficult journey. Eva-Maria doesn’t have the immediate support of the people around her, and becoming pregnant will present her with new medical challenges. However, Eva-Maria is her own best advocate for the right to self-determination, and guided by optimism and a playful sense of curiosity, she begins the process of in vitro fertilization.
Director and cinematographer Lukas Ladner is Eva Maria’s long-term support worker, and the closeness and trust between them results in a film with extraordinary access and tenderness. We see a lot of documentaries in the process of curating STF, and there are honestly very few as delicate as this one. Warm, frank, and intimate, this film is ultimately about what is possible when a person living with a disability is given the resources to design their own support system.
This film has filled a gap that shouldn’t be one. - Diagonale Jury
Eva-Maria screens Sunday 12th December, 4.30pm.
Language: German with English subtitles.
Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes.
Rating: CTC (Unclassified 15+)
Eva-Maria is presented with the support of the Austrian Embassy, Canberra. Join us in the Dendy foyer afterwards for discussion about the film over a complementary glass of Austrian wine!!
System k
FRIDAY 6 august | 6:45pm | dendy canberra
FRIDAY 19 October | 7pm | dendy canberra
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Forget Banksy - the most exciting, provocative street art isn’t for sale at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. Check the streets of Kinshasa, DRC.
System K showcases an astounding group of passionate street artists and their striking, conceptual and confronting works of art. The political drive of the work is clear: DR Congo is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world, but a history of violent colonialism, civil war and political corruption has left many inhabitants of Kinshasa living in desperate poverty. Under a repressive dictatorship, artists who discuss such ideas risk their freedom each time they exhibit.
With few resources at their disposal, the artists transform broken waste materials culled from garbage bins and trash heaps to create monumental installations, or use their own bodies in poetic, kinetic performance pieces. The resulting work is vibrant, raw, and vital; full of ironic humor and rage.
Scored by Kinshasa’s “sonic warriors” KOKOKO!, a musical collective whose upcycled instruments are made from used paint cans, scraps of wood, transistor radios and other detritus, Renaud Barret’s immersive film echoes the chaotic energy of Kinshasa itself.System K is a whirlwind celebration of art as an act of resistance, art as a way to survive.
“There’s rarely a single shot that isn’t populated by an eye-widening work of art...A film of furious self-representation and self-determination; its eloquent yet angry voices screaming out to be heard.” - Alternate Takes
SET!
FRIDAY 16 JULY | 6:45pm | dendy canberra
SUNDAY 4 JULY | 2pm | dendy canberra
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Table reveal parties and taxidermied monkeys: enter the eccentric, exacting and cutthroat world of competitive table setting!
The Orange County Fair is “the Olympics of Tablescaping” and contestants are out for blood. Judging is ruthless: one slightly misplaced spoon or a fingerprint on the glass could spell doom for a table, and the pressure brings controversies and old rivalries to the fore.
Beneath the high stakes and silverware, Set! is a lighthearted meditation on passion -- caring about something to a degree that most others just won’t understand. Whether it’s ritualistically using a sensory deprivation tank to find creative inspiration, recruiting your whole aquarobics team to help you source porcelain, or measuring a place setting to a fraction of an inch, people who harbour any kind of deep passion are likely to see themselves in this story.
“A surprisingly satisfying study of a cult-like pocket of the population that competes in Table Setting... a full-throated contest akin to wrestling, racing and the Oscars” - Anna Brodie, What She Said
Image description: Mayor Hadid’s head and shoulders from the back. He is wearing a suit, and his short, dark hair is slightly greying. In front of him, the city of Ramallah, slightly out of focus and with smoke filling the sky.
MAYOR
FRIDAY 28TH MAY | 7pm | dendy canberra
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“Local governance is the most beautiful field of work in our country…”
Whether he's briefing the nine abseiling Santas for a Christmas parade, consulting with disgruntled shepherds about drainage problems in their pastures, or trying to cut through marketing jargon in city branding meetings, Mayor Musa Hadid is devoted to improving public life in the city of Ramallah, and his constituents love him for it. However, local governance in Palestine comes with a set of international challenges that most public servants don't come up against.
While Mayor Hadid has control over selecting park benches, door handles and the hotly-contested city slogan, major works - like a desperately needed sewage plant - require Israeli approval which is repeatedly denied. Director David Osit has crafted a gently ironic portrait of Ramallah and its mayor as he responds to the frustrations of governing an occupied city.
Despite Musa's endless optimism and patience, it's an impossible situation with underlying tensions constantly ready to boil over. As Ramallah is plunged into fresh chaos in the wake of Trump’s embassy move, the mayor's unique perspective pushes him to become an important voice in the international debate. Much like Musa himself, this darkly humorous, thoroughly charming film has an unshakeable dignity at its core.
“An engaging portrait of the kind of impassioned and dedicated politician who seems in short supply right now…” - The Guardian
Image description: an older, neatly dressed gentleman in glasses stands in front of a light orange curtain, holding a mobile phone. There are white, yellow and clear balloons strung up, and he is wearing paper angel wings. A woman dressed in white is standing to his right, and two older women are seated to his left.
THE MOLE AGENT - SECOND SCREENING!
SATURDAY 1ST MAY | 3:30PM
dendy canberra
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Rumors of abuse and neglect in a Chilean nursing home prompt a private investigation agency to hire eighty-something Sergio as an inside agent.
After admitting himself to the home, Sergio must deal with technologically complicated spy gadgets, his daughter’s reservations about his new career, and the persistent advances of several female residents who are quick to notice the dapper “younger” man. But as his investigation deepens, Sergio realises that the story he is uncovering is bigger than he or his agency were prepared for.
The most heartwarming spy movie ever made -- Indiewire
The most unusual documentary of the year...a warm-hearted and surprising look at age and intimacy -- The Guardian