Produced by: Rachel Clements, Isaac Elliot, Meredith Garlick, Trisha Morton-Thomas
Narrated by: Eric Bana
Director of Photography: Clair Mathon
Featuring: Isaac Elliot, Scruff Hamill, David Walsh, Daymon Stokie , Luke Hayes, Toby Price.
‘Fast as all hell, rough as hell and dangerous as all hell.’
If that sounds like your idea of fun, you might want to head up to Alice Springs on the Queen’s Birthday long weekend for the Finke Desert Race.
Each year 15,000 spectators and 500+ riders turn up for the Northern Territory’s biggest annual event.
It’s a two hour dash through the scrub to the Finke Hotel, 230 kilometres through the heart of Australia, and for the riders, ‘It’s like holding onto the edge of a cliff for two hours’.
While the car and bike events each crown a King of the Desert, the dirt bikes are the glamour event. Theirs is the raw confrontation with one of the most challenging off-road events in one of the most remote places in the world.
Part of the allure is that a dark horse can come up from behind and steal the crown.
With race favourite Toby Price forced to compete in the four wheel drive section due to injury, the field for this year is wide open. As Finke is raced on corrected time, and each rider sets off individually, the race leader will not necessarily be the winner.
Behind the scenes there are high stakes for these potential dark horses in their ubiquitous trucker caps, with the film honing in to tell the stories of six competitors from a field of nearly 600.
Yamaha hasn’t taken out the race in 9 years and local boy Daymon Stokie, despite a broken hand, hopes to steal the crown from fellow local and KTM rival David Walsh.
Scruff Hamill has driven up from Sydney to race a 1970s’ bike he’s restored himself, while Isaac Elliot will attempt the race on a bike with special modifications. A decade earlier he fell during the race and, while it rendered him paraplegic, it didn’t dilute the Finke fever running through his veins.
Every year there are gut-wrenching stories. Who will take the crown this year? The desert will decide.
Breathtakingly beautiful, ‘The desert is an all-powerful force that looms over every rider,’ and stunning cinematography, using aerial and ground-level views, even bike-cam, captures the inscrutable beauty of this ancient world, while glimpses of the night sky are awe-inspiring.
As Eric Bana’s voiceover intones, ‘It’s God’s country, it’s like nowhere else’.
With its clouds of dust, drifts of red sand, relentless heat, dangerous curves and infamous whoops (like the corrugations on dirt track, only bigger—much bigger) the Finke is intense. It is very much a confrontation with human fragility. According to emergency services, just about every bone in the human body has been broken somewhere along the track. As one rider very perceptively commented: ‘The hardest part of the course is the four inches between your ears.’
The Finke has changed since it began with a group of larrikins in the 70s. According to one ex-rider, ‘It’s a bit different now; it’s a bit serious.’ But some things haven’t changed. There are still plenty of ways to put yourself on the ground. Hard. Even if you’re not in the race, you can ride the 44 gallon drum hooked up to bungie ropes. It’s the Finke version of a mechanical bull.
Produced by: Sarah Thomson, Nick Batzias, Virginia Whitwell, John Battsek
Key Interviewees: Adam Goodes, Stan Grant, Brett Goodes, John Longmire, Tracey Holmes, Nova Peris, Nathan Buckley, Nicky Winmar, Eddie McGuire, Linda Burney, Gilbert McAdam, Andrew Bolt, Paul Roos, Natalie Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin.
“I believe racism is a community issue, which we all need to address and that’s why racism stops with me” – Adam Goodes
Terra Nullius. That’s what Lt James Cook declared during his voyage around the coast of Australia in 1770: no one’s land. Empty land. A land without people.
And because of this declaration, England claimed the land without recognising the civilisation who had lived here for sixty thousand years: the oldest and longest known living civilisation in the world.
On the fringes of my understanding of Australian history, I grew up knowing the Aboriginals were here first. We were taught a little about some stories – I remember some picture books in primary school; hearing a little about the atrocities in high school; knowing of the complete genocide of Aboriginal people in Tasmania. To think that an entire population was wiped out is horrendous and perhaps why the past has been buried so deep.
The Australian Dream is a documentary about Adam Goodes, Brownlow Medallist twice (2003 & 2006) and one of the most decorated football players of all time.
But this documentary isn’t about a sporting legend, this is about a man who stood up to a country and said: racism stops with me.
The backlash against his stance filtered through even to my ears – a person who doesn’t really follow footy (but barracks for the Tigers and always will) – because the media explosion following his stance to take no more racial abuse caused a howl that’s been buried under a casual racism Australians have been a part of for hundreds of years.
Ignorance was brought into the spotlight and the people did not like the idea of an Aboriginal man standing up to a long-standing status quo.
The Australian Dream is a powerful documentary that hit me hard because it finally gives voice to a history people, Australians, don’t want to take ownership of. Not all Australians, sure. But it has to be said our history seems to be acknowledged more outside of the country than within.
It’s seeing the context of the situation that gives understanding of the heavy weight this footballer decided to take on.
And seeing the behaviour of spectators towards Indigenous players in the past, like Nicky Winmar, is shameful.
After the invasion, the lack of acknowledgement of the people already living here, the policies put in place in an attempt at trying to fix a bad situation only made it worse.
Adam himself says his upbringing was difficult, his mother doing her best, moving close to relatives only to move away because of the alcohol abuse, the violence; an environment of, ‘broken glass and mangy dogs.’
But the Aboriginal people survived despite the history of thinking the Indigenous people would just die-out while living in intense poverty, losing connection to their way of life, to the taking of their children to assimilate into the society of those who invaded their country, to make them white, to have to fight to be even recognised as people.
To be called an ape on the football field, when you’re the star.
Putting the audience into the shoes of Adam for just a moment makes the conversation of racism in Australia very hard to ignore.
Director, Daniel Gordon has a background of making films about the cultural significance of sport including, Hillsborough (the Hillsborough Stadium Disaster) and ‘9.79*’: an investigation of the infamous and controversial 1988 Seoul Olympic men’s 100m final, won by Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who was subsequently stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
And there’s a statement from Walkley award winner, journalist, Stan Grant stating, “Sport has a way of really capturing the essence of what’s happening in society.”
This is a brilliant example of a nation’s attitude brought into the spotlight, and how carrying this terrible burden, one that in 2015 caused Adam to quit playing the game he used to love, has made a change in attitude towards Indigenous people. And yes, the original people of this amazing country.
There’s some balance here, as the film shifts from the personal journey of Adam to journalists talking about the circumstances and reasoning behind the constant booing and hate from the spectators directed towards Adam on the field. Andrew Bolt from, The Bolt Report explains you call out a young girl, you call a war cry to the crowd, you’re bound to get a reaction.
As Stan Grant says, about the spectators’ response: Adam made the mistake of being an angry Aboriginal.
And he’s right. When a culture has been systematically forgotten, why should we listen.
To hear Stan tell of his time reporting overseas from places of terrorist attacks and hate, to return to the Lucky Country to hear about the racial tension surrounding Goode. He was shocked. Provoking him to write his landmark essay , The Australian Dream(QE64 – November 2016).
He states, ‘As this man retreated from the field Australia was forced to confront the darkest parts of its own history. Black and white we are all formed by this. We carry the blood of each other in our veins. Yet, we meet across a vast divide.
This wasn’t about sport; this was about our shared history and our failure to reconcile. Some sought to deny this, some to excuse it – to explain it away – but when thousands of voices booed Adam Goodes, my people knew where that came from.
To us it sounded like a howl: a howl of humiliation that echoed across two centuries of dispossession, exclusion, desegregation. It was the howl of people dead on the Australian frontier; killed in wars Australia still does not speak about. It was the howl of people locked up: a quarter of the prison population is Indigenous. It was the howl of hungry children; women beaten and men in chains.’
When put into context, how would I feel to cop racial abuse from the children of the invaders who raped, killed and stole children? Still, in living memory and from the time when my mother was young? Would I take abuse, as a person, let alone a brilliant athlete, the best in the game while playing that game?!
I think I’d retaliate with more than a war cry.
But this a powerful film because it’s a hopeful film.
Adam isn’t about retaliation. The message of the documentary is one of reconciliation.
“What we saw ultimately was the true measure of who we are. It wasn’t the booing; it was the people who stood up to the booing. It can never be too late. it can never be too late for that. Our history is a history of violence and racism and it’s a history of people over coming that. People reaching across that divide.” – Stan Grant
Aboriginal history is an oral history – to teach when people are ready to listen.
Produced by: Red Bull Media House and All Edge Entertainment
Distributed by: Adventure Entertainment
Best Surfing Film in the 2017 Byron Bay International Film Festival
Winner of the 2018 Wavescape Category in the Durban International Film Festival
‘Either the water lets you go. Or it doesn’t.’
Watching surfing guru, Nathan Fletcher tell the story of his life, I can see how bad the drive to find that edge can be. And how rewarding.
Heavy Water is a documentary driven by Nathan’s dream to surf a big-wave by dropping from a helicopter: A Helicopter Acid Drop.
I can’t imagine the coordination, balance, strength and shear will/balls/tenacity it took to successfully pull-off this feat – the first of its kind. But on the 21st of April, 2017 – Nathan succeeds.
For fellow surfers and adrenaline fans that understand the skill involved, this is an exciting feat to watch.
But it’s the story leading up to The Drop that makes this documentary an absorbing film.
Director, Michael Oblowitz states, ‘I’m a surfing anthropologist and my baseline is good storytelling.’
A Hollywood director who surfs to escape the pressures of his career, Oblowitz decided it was time to combine his two passions, ‘To make surf movies that are unlike any other surf movie ever made’.
The documentary flows along the timeline of Nathan’s life, from growing up in San Clemente, California, where he learned to walk and talk and surf all at the same time.
There are voice-overs and interviews and footage giving insight into the Fletcher family, pioneers in surfing, from: Herbie Fletcher starting the motorised wave-ski tow-line drop, to Nathan’s brother Christian who started the aerial surfing trend and even his grandfather, big-wave original Walter Hoffman.
Riding a wave that can kill you is a family tradition.
Heavy Water is a biography showing the tight-knit circle Nathan ran with growing up, with mates like Darrick “Double D” Doerner, Danny Fuller and legendary Jay Adams (the original DogTown Z-Boy) talking skateboarding over footage of the guys skating in an empty swimming pool, the grimace of tough coolness hard-won and admired – the punk-rock style changing the face of skateboarding forever.
Nathan adopted the style, using the skate moves on the water, wanting to jump higher and higher. Eventually leading to his pursuit of big-waves.
Nathan and mates like Bruce Irons would be constantly checking satellite weather patterns searching for ‘Code Red’ swells and then travel to places like Fiji, Indonesia and Tahiti to ride waves called the Himalayas, Jaws, the Mavericks – massive, dangerous waves that can crash you into a 60-foot crevice and hold you under, never knowing if you’ll get to the surface in time, or drown.
Seeing how big those wave are from the perspective of the ones riding them; to see the awesome power of the pull of water literally gave me goose bumps.
The film has footage of guys like Andy Irons and his brother Bruce, and Sion Milosky pushing their limits, all dancing with death – some making it through, some not.
Christian Fletcher states that those lost in the water are immortal, forever at the age they died doing what they love. It’s the ones left that miss them.
The intensity and risk creates a spiritual bond, the documentary giving insight into what it takes to get to such a high level – some of the guys ending up in jail after pushing the limits too far.
Nathan leaves his entire life behind to compete in a comp in Tahiti, scoring 10, then another 10, going home a professional surfer. Only to arrive to nothing – no home and no wife.
He lived in a van for two years, chasing waves.
The film takes away the glamour of the glossy magazine shots and shows the reality of what it takes to get those photos.
The footage of Nathan and Bruce back in Tahiti, leading to that famous shot of Nathan awarding him the XXL 2012 Ride of the Year shows the motivation and spiritual mindset needed to get to that headspace.
This isn’t a stylised promo for surfing or any branding, Heavy Water is the story of a guy who wants to continue the family legacy with all the risk and reward that goes with it.
Starring: Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Nick Frost, Lena Headey, Vince Vaughn.
Based on the 2012 documentary, The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family (directed by: Max Fisher), Fighting with My Family is a dramatization about WWE professional wrestling diva, Paige and her rise to fame.
From Norwich (the mustard capital of England) to the sunny shores of Florida, we follow the wrestling obsessed Bevis family as siblings Zak (Zodiac) and Saraya (AKA Paige, named after her favourite Charmed character) try-out for training for a SmackDown at The O2 Arena.
There’s the tough as nuts Brit humour – ‘dick me til I’m dead and bury me pregnant’ – from the wrestling-mad family; the mum Julia (Lena Headey) coming out with lines like, ‘his legs bend both ways – you should see his dick’. And Nick Frost cast as Rick the dad (who spent eight years in prison, ‘mostly for violence’) is brilliantly cast.
It’s the sibling rivalry that adds drama to the film, with brother Zac (Jack Lowden) wanting to make it to the WWE arena just as bad as his sister, Saraya (Florence Pugh).
Or, as it goes, Saraya has to prove she wants it just as much as him; and well, anybody.
It’s a cheering the underdog kinda movie – dog included – that goes hard on the humour to start, including some gems from The Rock himself (Dwayne Johnson).
Seeing Dwayne circle back to his origins here, showing that, fight until you win, drama gave me an appreciation of the sport.
It’s not fake; it’s fixed.
Trainer Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn – always good in a trainer role!) has to harden the want-to-be professional wrestlers so they can take the pain and winding and 60 quid if you’ll take a bowling-ball-to-the-balls action.
Then there are those dramatic moments like the advice of: Be the First You; the timing of these moments well-placed, well-stated, and really, very sweet.
The sport is shown as escapism, making sense of the outsiders who embrace it.
And I related, feeling warm and fuzzy because the characters are so down-to-earth. I like escaping too.
Paige went on to open-up the sport – being the youngest female wrestler to succeed. Because of Paige, the sport now shows more coverage of female wrestlers.
And the fun of the story made a surprisingly entertaining film.
I kept bursting with laughter at the obvious crude humour, but there’s also the ticklish like a literal hammer on the end of a long pole made by kids because they’re bored: hilarious.
Not a wrestling fan, I did not expect to enjoy this film as much as I did. But Fighting With My Family is well worth a watch.
Directed by: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin
Produced by: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Evan Hayes
Cinematographer: Jimmy Chin
Featuring: Alex Honnold
‘I see it all rooted in rationalism, in a basic evaluation of objective reality: Can I do this? And if I can, then I just do it’ – Alex Honnold.
After nine years of living in a van, living a ‘dirt-bag’ climber existence, professional rock climber Alex Honnold overcomes the most fearsome feat for a ground dweller to contemplate: to free solo climb (rock climbing without rope or any safety net if he falls) the El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. A 3200-foot climb that climbing with ropes requires a gold medal standard of skill.
To climb without a safety-net requires an iron-clad emotional armour where fear has no place.
This ability to overcome fear became such a fascination Alex agreed to have a Functional-MRI scan to analyse the function of his brain while pictures of fearful images were shown: knives, heights (ha, ha). It was interesting to see his amygdala showed no activation compared to the control.
Alex explains he’s faced his fears so often there’s no fear left.
Director Jimmy Chin explains the difficulty in filming a documentary where the threat of death is as close as you can get. It has its issues. Especially when you’re friends with the guy.
It’s all about trusting the subject (friend) to make the right decisions and not push just because he’s on camera. And that trust and not wanting to see someone you know fall to their death while you’re filming creates a whole other dimension to the film because we see the type of personality it takes to contemplate, let alone, achieve something so dangerous, scary, impossible.
Adding girlfriend, Sanni McCandless, to the mix just shows the layers of emotion Alex has to process, or not – he’s kinda a cold rational thinker adding a bizarre lightness to the tone of the film – to get to a headspace to make such a climb.
Free Solo wasn’t so much a thrill ride, although I kept repeating, Oh my God. Oh. My. GOD – the ‘Boulder Problem’ part of the climb had me gripping the arm rest of my seat. The film was more an insight into the process to get to that headspace – iron-clad determination combined with a shrug of, We’ve all got to die at some stage.
Finding the edge just makes death feel more immediate. If you die in an accident, then it’s a shame – you’ll be missed. But dying on your own terms changes the dynamic. Life is short. Live it.
When someone loves you, like Alex’s seemingly accident-provoking, ever-loving girlfriend Sanni, then there’s more to lose.
The film asks, but if you don’t do what you love than how do you feel alive?
Free Solo isn’t a documentary just about Alex, it also brings the film makers into the story, to show the truth of what Alex’s trying to achieve. It’s crazy. To film the climb is crazy. But he does it. And it’s amazing.
Produced by: Irwin Winkler, Charles Winkler, William Chartoff, David Winkler, Kevin King-Templeton, Sylvester Stallone
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Sylvester Stallone, Florian ‘Big Nasty’ Munteanu, Dolph Lundgren, Phylicia Rashad.
‘Don’t do this.’
‘I ain’t gotta choice.’
‘That’s the same thing your father said and he died right here in my hands.’
Two sons: each unbeatable on their home soil, each bearing the scars of a mortal wound, each with a score to settle.
Toe to toe, the two couldn’t be more different.
The challenger, Viktor Drago (Florian ‘Big Nasty’ Munteanu), is a man with absolutely nothing but his towering physique and the will to ‘break’ his opponents.
Thirty years earlier, Viktor’s family was left fractured and demoralised following a grudge match between his father, Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), and Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone).
Growing up in the Ukraine, Viktor has spent his whole life preparing to avenge his family’s honour. Looming over his American rival Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), Drago presents a brooding mountain of raw-boned muscle with nothing to lose.
Significantly shorter with a much lighter frame, Creed has everything to lose, as his trainer and mentor Rocky Balboa points out. Despite a loving mother (Phylicia Rashad), his adoring partner Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and a comfortable existence, Creed grew up without his father and he risks exposing his baby daughter to the same fate if he agrees to meet Viktor Drago in the ring.
While dedicated buffs may find some of the action slightly implausible—even on the movie poster Creed has dropped his guard on the left and is telegraphing his right, leaving himself open (if that makes perfect sense, you might need to suspend your disbelief)—for the rest of us the movie delivers an immersive experience.
Even on set, a sense of danger was present, with director (Steven Caple Jr) describing the choreography of the action as ‘a hardcore musical’. A single misstep and a real punch would have impacted on real flesh, and all of the blows in the slow motion sequences between Drago and Creed were real: ‘Florian said it was only fifty per cent, but it felt like ah a car crash.’ Even the camera operator, Mike Heathcote took a few hits as Florian was stepping up to the lens to simulate the fight from Creed’s point of view.
More than any other, even Clint Eastwood’s harrowing 2004 Million Dollar Baby, this movie brought home to me how primal that space inside the ring actually is. Even with all of the rules, the referees, the high pants and the gloves, in those three minutes between the bells, two men are locked in a struggle not only for the integrity of their vital organs but, ultimately, for their own consciousness.
With so much at stake, the question Balboa poses to Creed before he steps into the ring is: Why are you doing it?
At once he is asking Creed to seek out that nub of grit in his core, at the same time as he asks him whether he should even be stepping into the ring at all.
Haunted by Apollo Creed’s death, the ambivalence in Balboa’s question lends depth to the drama and the feeling is echoed by Bianca when she asks Creed as he lurches around the ring after winning the World Heavyweight Championship, ‘Do you know what’s happening?’
ALL FOR ONE follows the first five years of the GREENEDGE cycling journey.
A pack of men united by a spirit to excel and a shared aussie larrikinism– think lycra and rock and roll montages – who succeed spurred on by unquestionable matemanship in their quest to exceed as a team at the Tour de France.
This film doco is a must see as you are swept into their world descending the French Alps as adrenaline junkies on some of the world’s steepest roads.
We are swept in for one hell of ride, super charged with scenes giving us front row seats to impossibly steep and impossibly fast and fearless downhill descents. Unlike downhill skiers who perhaps have the imagery of landing in powder snow there are no such illusions for cyclists as they speed down tracks of metal, rock and tar.
The team’s joy and comradery on tour is infectious with the rousing musical songs of ACDC, Jet and Prodigy in the background. But unlike a rock and roll tour bus there is no excess on a cycling tour just marathon stretches of training, rehydrating and cycling.
In my favourite scene, the cyclists – armed with gladiator strength – face the infamous Paris Roubaix Cycling race.
The race ‘everybody hates to ride and everybody wants to win’, the race where spectators the world over line up to see firsthand the human sacrifice.
The Paris Roubaix is mythical and ancient – Napoleon is said to have advanced his troops over the patchwork track of cobblestones – cyclists carry names such as Spartacus and spectators line the edges thrilled by the prospect of blood sport.
The carnage is real – cyclists ride on with broken collar bones, blood streaming from face plants, bikes and bones litter the race track and the cyclists push on, their determination to finish and succeed is primal.
Of the 200 cyclists that enter the Paris Roubaix only 50 to 100 are expected to finish.
This movie excels through the lens of documentary by revealing the intimacy of real people in their own real stories. Character biographies of cyclists such as Esteban Chaves, Mathew Hayman, Neil Stephens and Simon Gerrans unearth the message of the movie and the secret of their individual success.
The secret they each share is a willingness to get up each day regardless of their fears and circumstances and believing that each step they take in pursuing their dream will only bring that dream closer.
The message will reverberate with you as you depart the cinema. For 100 minutes, you have been swept into the raw pulse of hearts burning on fire with sheer adrenalin and unedited pure joy.
The effect is intoxicating and as a spectator sitting in a blacked-out cinema you soar vicariously through the pumping music rhythms and sinew of muscles and sheer will determined to not give up and win!
I left the cinema breathless, my heart racing, my spirit filled with adrenaline. Inspired by the driving spirit of humanity to overcome incredible odds in pursuit of our passions, I felt that spirit whisper, ‘yes you can, you know you can do this’.
