The 2021 Castlemaine Documentary Film Festival is going ahead this weekend … online.
The festival will see eight incredible films screened over two big days on Saturday and Sunday.
C-DOC festival chair Claire Jager said organisers were ready to go ahead online with 48 hours to view.
“We are now the festival you can participate in when you’re not allowed to go anywhere else!” Jager said.
Among the films to screen is AFI Award-winning veteran director Nick Torrens’ absorbing documentary and Australian production China’s 3 Dreams.
The documentary about the changing face of China is both intriguing and confrontational.
In the 1970s, the people of China had three dreams: a watch, a wireless and a bicycle. What are the dreams of the Chinese people today?
Filmed over an 11-year period, Torrens’ film about China in the modern world is an exploration of the missing years – the years of the Cultural Revolution. This period is rarely talked about and is expurgated from the history taught in schools, and yet have left a traumatic imprint on every Chinese family.
In exploring this ‘missing history’, Torrens introduces us to a young woman, Zhang Lei, from an ancient village in southwest China and follows her search for an understanding of the past and the present life around her. Confused by silences and half-truths, China’s young people, like Lei, have new dreams to guide them: to make China rich and powerful, to find a better material life for themselves, and to find a meaningful existence.
Filmed without narration and free of ‘outside’ analysis or polemic, Torrens presents an intimate collaboration with his main subjects and their families and others who were willing to talk about their time as Red Guards or Rebels during the Cultural Revolution, and to see those years in perspective.
The film was voted the winner of Best Documentary by the Film Critics’ Circle of Australia and at the Singapore International Film Festival.
It was also a Grand Jury Winner Best Documentary, Hong Kong World International Film Festival and Grand Jury Winner Audience Award at the Los Angeles World International Film Festival.
Be sure to catch the film when it screens this Saturday at 4.30pm.
For the full program and tickets visit cdocff.com.au
