What does the arty, discerning cinephile have in common with your average Aussie bloke? At the Byron Bay Film Festival, the answer is clear: absolutely everything. From online dating to speed-racing demons and exotic mountain-climbing the festival has something for both movie buffs and the he-men (and women) among us, writes Lonnie Gilroy.

There’s not much that’s blokier than motorbikes and one of the festival’s most exciting films has hyper-powered two-wheelers as its true stars. Out of Nothing, directed by Chad DeRosa, and co-produced by Andrew Lahmann and Ryan Stiles of Whose Line Is It Anyway? fame is a terrific feature-length documentary following an obsessed group of motorbike enthusiasts who travel each year to the fabled Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to compete for land speed records.

Petrolheads will get a real thrill from the technical and mechanical aspects of the film, not to mention the exhilarating race cinematography. Complications inevitably arise during the speed trials – inclement weather, mechanical faults, even personal inner struggles – but the men involved display a reassuring certainty throughout.

From Out of Nothing. Photograph: Phil Hawkins, 2012, Ishootfromthehip.com

On the whole it would have to be said that the Shire is not a place where tough guys carry much clout and the BBFF generally shies away from anything that smacks of macho or militarism. But Oden Roberts’ A Fighting Season is such an impressive film we had to screen it. The film, which is having its World Premiere at the festival, looks at the work of two Army Recruiters who face the daunting task of finding people to sign up while the 2007 ‘surge’ is going on in Iraq, but whose own jobs are in danger. One has been stationed in the recruiting office long enough to get comfortable and the other, injured in the field, just wants to get back to the frontline. They experience a whole new type of conflict: war isn’t confined to the battlefield.

A local tough guy movie features Ballina kickboxing champion, Brodie Stanton, who is as tough as they come and has been a world champion kick boxer since he was 15. In the very fine doco Brodie Stanton: A Film Portrait made by his 16-year-old schoolmate, Ballina’s Jayden Morrison, Brodie is a sweet, smiling youngster. Just don’t get him angry.

Ballina boy Brodie Stanton has been a kickboxing champion since the age of 15. Brodie Stanton, A Film Portrait tells his story.

Another Australian film, Splendr, shows blokes doing that very blokey thing: chasing women. A remarkable student production from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Splendr tells the story of a young man who decides, on the urging of his best mate, to meet up with an older woman via an online dating app. Although prepared for a saucy rendezvous, both characters are confronted with something else entirely. It’s the sort of film that sneaks up on you, and is both effective and moving.

The perils of online dating and male confusion when the unexpected happens are also communicated hilariously in two other short Australian films: First Date and Early Checkout, starring Dustin Clare, and in the fun romp Ignition, a Griffith Film School graduate film, it’s 1970s Brisbane, the right time and place for men behaving badly. Long-haired Jake is awakened by the sound of rustling in his backyard. He rushes to the window to see someone’s stolen his beloved VW Kombi, Betsy. Ignition follows Jake, clad only in his undies, as he ventures into the night to rescue Betsy, with his unhelpful roommate Ben in tow.

Agua Blanca, shot in Mexico, is more of a slow-burner, with a deeply moving story of life lived to the fullest. The protagonists share a passion for the wild outdoors – the grandfather a love of climbing snow-topped mountains, the grandson is a white-water rafting enthusiast. Faced with the prospect of living his final days in a nursing home, Mauro instead sets out on one last trek. His grandson Sebastian accompanies him, and they embark on a journey that is as much philosophical as it is physical. The visuals are powerful and the direction measured. There isn’t a moment wasted in 29 minutes.

Agua Blanca, shot in Mexico, is a deeply moving story of life lived to the fullest.

More macho still are the expedition climbers in the breathtaking Jaeger Des Augenblicks, who like to make things difficult for themselves, choosing the most demanding of new routes to get to their destination – this time the top of the daunting mesa Mt. Roraima in South America. Awe-inspiring footage of the spectacular scenery helps us understand their motivation.

Last but by no means least, we all know that delusions of grandeur are great fuel for comedy, and there are none so deluded as the ageing cock-rockers who “star” in Brisbane writer/director Steve Pratt’s mockumentary Thunderlust and the Middle Beast.

Past their prime and struggling for a comeback hit, glam band Thunderlust travel to Jordan to make music videos for their new album. Abandoned by their regular video guy, they recruit local (and Thunderlust fan) Anas to direct the film clips. Anas soon learns the truth of the warning that you should never meet your idols. He’s got a tiny budget, tight timeframe, public controversies and squabbling band mates to manage.

It’s a classic band-story told with comic flair and confidence, perfect for fans of Spinal Tap and Led Zepplin alike. Along with writing Thunderlust’s music, Pratt also stars as guitar-shredding egomaniac Rocketeer, all at sea in Jordan’s traditional culture. It’s a hoot.

Byron Bay Film Festival runs from March 6-15. Tickets available now at venues and at www.bbff.com.au.

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This year the Byron Bay Film Festival celebrates one of the nation’s greatest artists, with the film The King Sun; John Olsen at 85, writes Digby Hildreth.  The BBFF and Verandah Magazine are offering a free double pass to the film, which also includes two other fascinating documentaries on Garry Shead and local artist Scott Trevelyan.  Simply post a comment on the FB link below the story, or on our Verandah Magazine FB page to be in the runnning to win a free double pass to the films which will be showing on Sunday, March 8.

 ‘An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing.’

W. B. Yeats, Byzantium

The years and many illnesses (a stroke, a double-bypass and two knee replacements) have taken their toll on John Olsen’s body.

The revered Australian artist borrows from Yeats to colourfully describe old age as “a crooked back upon a stick” in The King Sun; John Olsen at 85, a colourful and inspiring cinematic tribute to his talent, creative drive and courage, and one of several enriching films about artists showing at the Byron Bay Film Festival.

Olsen continues, misremembering Yeats’s poem but conveying its gist: “The soul must sing, and louder sing.” And it’s his singing soul that shines through this stunning film, which is a record of his work on the second largest painting he has created – a 6m x 8m mural called The King Sun, his salute to the brilliant, life-giving orb.

Revered Australian artist John Olsen, with his work King Sun.

Olsen’s aged mottled face becomes boyish, radiating his joy in this outrageously ambitious work as he sweeps brushes across the surface of eight huge panels on the floor or bangs the paint down on them, forcing it to do his bidding. But while the singing spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. He had to be supported through much of it and he became exhausted and collapsed, though still laughing, joking about “swinging by” the mural in the ambulance to put his signature onto it before it’s too late.

Filmmakers Tony Williams and Anna Hewgill’s 54-minute documentary captures each day’s progress, starting with the arrival of the huge blank panels to the empty studio. There are interviews with Olsen’s son, Tim, with his old friend Barry Humphries and others, and Olsen himself shares his philosophy of life, reflecting on mortality, the creative process and the sun itself.

The King Sun by John Olsen, 6m x 8m, commissioned by Lang Walker for Collins Square.

The King Sun now graces the foyer wall of a Docklands high rise building, bringing cheer to all those who enter – as does this film, which is as joyful, energising and uplifting as the man himself.

Garry Shead’s carefully premeditated work is very different to Olsen’s.  This idiosyncratic documentary, In the Steps of Lawrence, takes us on a very different trip – starting in New Guinea, where Shead first came across a book of letters by D.H. Lawrence and became fascinated by the man, his beliefs and, above all, his time in Australia, when he wrote Kangaroo. Shead found out all he could about the British author, and embarked on a series of paintings focussing on Lawrence’s sojourn at Thirroul with his wife Freda in 1922.

Garry Shead, D.H. Lawrence series, Le dejeuner sur l’berbe; oil on board, 1992, 91cm x 121cm.

The series, painted in the 90s, starts on the ship that brought the couple over: Lawrence wanted to flee a Europe devastated by war (he foresaw the second rise of Germany, and World War II) and without any real motive, ended up in Australia.

There is a sexy and fantastical quality about the vibrant, colourful paintings, which feature exaggerated figures of Lawrence and his wife seeming to fly, the ubiquitous kangaroo sitting in various postures, or inter-acting with a mythological, even God-like authority. Narrated by Jack Thomspon, In the Steps of Lawrence reveals Lawrence’s fascination with the landscape, the classless society and, weirdly, Australia’s ‘Secret Army’, a bunch of volunteers, many of them ex-Diggers. It’s still a controversial thesis, but Shead believes that Lawrence met many members of this anti-communist militia, including its charismatic leader Rosenthal, the Kangaroo himself.

Through historical footage, mock re-enactments, interviews and close-ups of this fabulous series, In the Steps of Lawrence tells us a lot about the painter, about Shead as an artist, and about Australia.

North Coast artist Scott Trevelyan works on a smaller scale, but with the same focus and purposefulness, and a most unorthodox style, collaborating  as he does with bees (yes, bees!) to create beautiful nature-infused prints. The festival film The Man Who Works With Bees is an absorbing documentary about Trevelyan and his unique methods.

Scott Trevelyan in action with one of his ‘hive’ art works.

After creating an image through a process known as ‘relief print-making’, Trevelyan secures it to a wire frame and inserts it into the bee hives, then uses the honecomb they create in the final artwork. It’s random, he never knows what to expect, and he is always surprised by the result.  Trevelyan has been a bee-keeper for 20 years – as long as he’s been an artist – but the avian collaboration is more recent, following a severe motorcycle accident in 2002 which left him with a brain injury.

It took him a year to learn to walk again and as part of his recovery, Trevelyan found that both his art practice and the calming bees were highly therapeutic – the combination of the two providing him with a new way to practice art, and in which to see the world.  “I found the repetitive nature of printmaking very cathartic and almost meditative,” he says.  Trevelyan runs regular workshops for people with ABI (Acquired Brain Injury) at his Willowbank Sutdio in Alstonvale, not far from Lismore. ( scott-trevelyan.com)

The Byron Bay Film Festival runs from March 6-15, with screenings in Byron Bay, Ballina, Lismore and Murwillumbah. Program and ticket sales available from Monday, February 23 at venues and www.bbff.com.au

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What do surfers feel as they hit the waves: joy, anticipation – nerves? Anyone who’s surfed knows it’s a combination of all three – and it’s a heady feeling. Those feelings will be on show for all to see at the Byron Bay Film Festival, which this year is showing a variety of surf films – and Verandah Magazine is giving away a double pass to one of them…

The Brazilian feature-documentary 1970 Something, which is also having its the Australian Premiere, is an ode to the surfing, music, fashion and counter-culture scene of a romantic period in history, and it shows how Brazil came to the attention of the global surfing community.  With a mixture of unseen film and photo archives, present-time action video clips and exclusive stories from the main players of the day about surfing between the oppressive political atmosphere and the environmental degradation of the day, it’s a quick lesson in Brazil’s rapidly rising surf status.

Sally Fitzgibbons – one of the brightest lights on the 2015 WSL Women’s Championship Tour

If evidence is needed that surfing can bring a surfer joy, then look no further than Sally Fitzgibbons and Sally: Behind the Smile. Everyone in the surf community knows Sally’s smile can light up a small continent, but this film also shows her tears and her unfailing determination to be the best.  One of the brightest lights on the 2015 WSL Women’s Championship Tour, Fitzgibbons’ driving spirit is inspiring as she challenges herself again and again in pursuit of a world title. This is a film that every aspiring and professional athlete can take something from.

It’s pure joy that illuminates the Australian Premiere of Learning to Float,  about an overweight African American kid from South Central Los Angeles whose life – and figure ­ – are transformed when he discovers a love of surfing.

Learning to Float, about an overweight African American kid from South Central LA whose life – and figure ¬ are transformed when he discovers a love of surfing.

Similar but different is Nothing Too Serious, about Dean “Dingo” Morrison’s love of the big waves. Morrison won the Gold Coast Quicksilver Pro a dozen years ago but chose a different path – and here we see some breathtaking footage of him doing what he does best: charging.

So surfing can change the mindset of those who surf, but can it change the world? One film shows how the international surfing community can bring financial aid and hope to those who need it most. A Surfer’s Legacy follows an Indian girl born into child slavery with one arm, one leg and a dream. Her life is changed forever when surfer and prosthetist Pete Farrand and his team of Australians create a limb for her, a “new leg” using recycled parts from Pete’s workshop bins.

Grass Roots is another demonstration of how surfing and surfers can change the communities of remote places, when surfers set out to bring hope to a village in Papua New Guinea. It happens to have an awesome surf break, and in collaboration with the elders and with financial investment from ecological sensitive surf tourism, this village feels the positive ripple effects surfing can bring.

In the Australian Premiere of Oney Anwar – Chasing the Dream, we see how Rip Curl, through its sponsorship of Indonesia’s first professional surfer, influences his life and community. Anwar grew up in a remote and impoverished area where no one went surfing. As he chases his dream of becoming the first Indonesian to qualify for the world championship tour, his village feels the benefits of that sweet surf break at its front door. It’s a transformative experience for everyone involved.

A scene from Oney Anwar – Chasing the Dream. Indonesia’s first pro-surfer discovers the benefits of sponsorship.

Similarly, What the Sea Gives Me is a gorgeously filmed love affair with the ocean. It explores our incredible relationship with the sea and dives into our hopes for the future. And it’s not just about surfing. Every one has a unique and valuable perspective – the artists and fishermen featured, the people doing research on massive great white sharks, as well as those riding the waves.  The footage is epic.

The Cradle of Storms is an Australian premiere about a few dudes going for a surf in a stupidly remote location in Alaska. Why? Because they can. It’s a high performance surfing adventure with no one else out there.

The journey continues with the Australian Premiere of Tierra de Patagones, an Argentinian film about two brothers wandering through Patagonia to surf in the freezing waters of one of the southernmost areas of the world: the Isla de los Estados. They discover new surf spots, new people, and a whole new way of looking at the world.

Tierra de Patagones: two brothers wandering through Patagonia to surf in the freezing waters of one of the southernmost areas of the world: the Isla de los Estados.

Lastly, there’s Journey On about Shane Herring – a hugely talented surfer who gave it all up 20-odd years ago. Amazing archive footage and close-up interviews with Herring and those closest to him make for a complex and candid portrait.

So, can surfing really change the world or does it just change those who do it? The finer points of such a question can be discussed and debated endlessly, informed by the festival’s line-up of fun, friendly and fantastically challenging films.

Simply go to Verandah Magazine’s Facebook Page, and leave a comment on why you would like to win the double pass to Learning to Float to be in the draw to win a double pass.  Winner announced next Saturday, February 21st.  Verandah Magazine

Byron Bay Film Festival runs from March 6-15. Program and tickets available February 23.

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An Australian answer to Gaslands, the North American documentary that first opened the eyes of the world to the terrifying realities of the methane gas industry, Frackman the doco-drama follows the trials of ‘accidental activist’ Dayne Pratzky, the self-styled Frackman.
Denouncing fracking (coal seam gas or CSG mining) as “the biggest environmental issue Australia has ever faced”, Pratzky’s land at Tara in southeast Queensland was engulfed by the industry after a gas company demanded access to his land, and told him he couldn’t refuse.  From a knockabout pig shooter building a home on his block of land, Frackman follows Pratzky’s journey from reluctant to radical activist, travelling the world to take on powerful pro-fracking corporations. Pratzky sets out to expose the long-term dangers of fracking to a mainstream audience and on a series of intrepid commando missions he does so with convincing flair.

Wayne Dennis has 13 CSG wells on his property. His story is told in Dayne Pratzky’s (The Frackman) compelling environmental film, Frackman, which has its premiere at the Byron Bay Film Festival on Saturday March 7.   Photograph: Andrew Quilty/Oculi

Part Crocodile Dundee, part The Hobbit, the film adopts the tone of a classical heroic saga as The Frackman’s investigations reveal much about this secretive business and the corrupt political machineries in place to preserve it. Pratzky is up against heavy odds, fighting an established industry that has thus far been successfully promoted as an economic and even environmental panacea by such icons as Queensland football legend Darren Lockyer. But he has hyperbole – “it’s the biggest con that has been perpetrated on the Australian people since the asbestos disaster” – a surging, emotive soundtrack and some powerful allies on his side.

On a cross-country odyssey The Frackman moves from mining badlands in Queensland to the Pilliga forest in northwest NSW and to Bentley in the Northern Rivers, where the stirring sight of peaceful Aboriginal warriors uniting with farmers demonstrates the powerful momentum of the growing movement against CSG. They’ve been protesting under the banner of Lock the Gate, the apolitical lobby group whose name itself has become a powerful slogan, uttered with convincing fervour in the film’s bona fide protest scenes, where The Frackman comes into his own as an activist, disrupting CSG mining conferences and being arrested in dramatic scuffles.
Along the way he’s encouraged by Lock the Gate founder Drew Hutton, who counsels farmers on a Ghandian approach, urging ordinary people “to step up and become heroes”.

People power raised Lock the Gate from a grass roots organization to an international slogan.  Photograph: Andrew Quilty/Oculi

There’s even a visit to the mansion of the bewilderingly powerful radio commentator Alan Jones in his southern NSW estate. Jones, in his best Churchillian soprano, tells Pratzky “You’re a gutsy bloke” and thunders about the CSG pestilence that has destroyed his Queensland hometown. He tells his enormous radio audience with righteous fervour: “The battle is on for our rights and for our country. The enemy is within”.
Jones’ presence in this film will give it some heavy credence in conservative, mainstream Australia, but it’s Pratzky’s personal narrative arc that gives it a gritty, if patchy authenticity. He finds romance, for instance, with a beautiful fellow activist from the USA, where methane mining has already wrought devastation worse than that seen in Gaslands. This relationship is the gold in filmmaker Richard Todd’s story, giving Pratzky’s sometimes somewhat overplayed histrionics a humility that fits beautifully into the elaborate plot.
Frackman is a fast-paced and fluid doco that has plenty of incendiary ingredients readymade.  The effortless indignation of Pratzky’s fellow Tara landowners, victims of corporate mining conspiracies, provide plentiful high pathos and there are solid hints of governmental skulduggery when The Frackman’s plans come unstuck in a cliff-hanger ending. It’s a worthy thriller that may well broaden the already universal appeal of Lock the Gate, whose mantra is creating a credible voice of opposition to a doomsday industrial cult that threatens our very air and water.

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From the BBFF

Another film in the running for the festival’s Best Environmental Film Award is Maarten van Rouveroy’s Black Ice.  This feature-length documentary captures the first-hand accounts of the infamous Arctic 30 – a group of Greenpeace protesters who attempted to sabotage the world’s first Arctic oil-drilling platform and found themselves the centre of geopolitical controversy.

 Black Ice charts the group’s adventure aboard the Greenpeace icebreaker Arctic Sunrise, their protest at the Prirazlomnaya oil platform, arrest, imprisonment and eventual freedom. It provides a behind-the-scenes look at the life and dramatic times aboard the Arctic Sunrise: tense, provocative, inspiring.

A scene from Black Ice – a day in the life of a Greenpeace warrior on board Arctic sunrise.

 There’s uplift, hope and, yes, positivity also in Net Positiva, a short documentary about a trio of young surfers who do something practical about the discarded fishnets that make up 10% of the plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.  The three friends travel to fishing villages in Chile and come up with a fishnet collection and recycling program, converting the fishnets into skateboards, illustrating the impact that the actions of a few can have on the future of many.

Uranium mining is creating havoc for the environment in Australia, where every operating mine has a history of leaks, spills and accidents, and it’s no different in the US. The film Crying Earth Rise Up tells the story of two Lakota women who work to expose the human cost of such mining and its impact on the people and water of the Great Plains. Debra White Plume is a grandmother and tireless leader in the fight to protect her people’s water and land from corporate polluters and is the lead plaintiff in a case challenging uranium mining on Lakota treaty territory.

Debra White Plume, grandmother and leader in the fight to protect the local water in Crying Earth Rise Up

Elisha Yellow Thunder knows too well the dangers of contaminated water. She unknowingly drank water with high levels of radiation while pregnant with her first daughter, whose severe medical anomalies are life-threatening. A nearby mining operation is extracting uranium ore from deep in the ground by tapping the aquifer that supplies drinking water to rural communities from South Dakota to Texas. Crying Earth Rise Up follows Debra White Plume as she rallies her community against the operation. But the promise of a much-needed infusion of economic opportunity to the region is seductive, despite the risks, and public opinion could go either way.

The 9^th Byron Bay Film Festival runs from March 6-15, with films screening at venues in Byron, Ballina, Lismore and Murwillumbah.  Says festival director J’aimee Skippon-Volke of this year’s offerings.  “We have 220 films of an exceptionally high standard, with something for everybody’s taste.”

See Verandah Magazine next week for program details.

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