Antenna Documentary Film Festival 2022 — October

Overview

Cinephiles of Sydney, choose your soundtrack: at the 11th Antenna Documentary Film Festival, are you going to get Australian punk tunes stuck in your head or Italo disco? Docos about both are on the bill, as part of a wide-ranging lineup that spans 52 titles, all showcasing the possibilities of factual filmmaking.

Antenna has already held a festival in 2022, its tenth back in February; however, usually it's an October affair. Because the past couple of years have thrown that schedule out of balance with lockdowns, restrictions and the like, the event is doubling up to get back on schedule. Yes, homegrown doco Age of Rage: The Australian Punk Revolution, plus the Aussie premiere of Italo Disco: the Sparkling Sound of the 80s, are among the highlights.

There's no shortage of viewing options between Friday, October 14–Sunday, October 23 — or places to get the fest experience, with Antenna popping up at Dendy Newtown, Palace Chauvel, Palace Verona, MCA Australia, Powerhouse Museum, the Ritz in Randwick and Event Cinemas Parramatta. The fest is also bringing back its day-long industry chat about the medium, which'll cover topics such as streaming's impact upon feature-length documentaries and the use of deep-fake technology.

The overall theme, as it is in every iteration of the fest: that there's really nothing quite like a true story, whether it's a wild, chaotic, so-strange-it-can-only-be-true kind of tale or an informative, eye-opening yarn. For this festival run, Antenna is making that plain with titles such as opening night's Retrograde, which hails from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land, City of Ghosts) and captures the situation on the ground in Afghanistan as American troops pull out. Or, there's Fairytale by Russian Ark filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, which uses deepfake archival footage to imagines a reunion in purgatory between Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and Mussolini.

Other standouts include Chilean effort My Imaginary Country, which looks at the Santiago uprising of 2019; Outside, about Roma, who became the poster boy of the Ukrainian revolution as a 13 year old; McEnroe, with the tennis player himself stepping through his career; and 107 Mothers, which tells the tales of 107 incarcerated women.

Or, there's Senses of Cinema, about film movements challenging the mainstream in Australia's history; Riotsville USA, focusing on the fictional town built by the US military back in the 60s to use a training ground; Last Stop Before Chocolate Mountain, which surveys California's Bombay Beach; and How to Save a Dead Friend, about teens in Russia. Plus, The Hole heads into the Bifurto Abyss in Southern Italy, which was once considered the deepest cave on Earth, and Blue Island explores Hong Kong after its 2020 national security law.

And, likely not for the squeamish, De Humani Corporis Fabrica sees filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel (Caniba, Leviathan) use microscopic cameras, X-rays, ultrasounds and endoscopic images to take a deep look inside the human body.