Luna Cinemas in Leederville will feature an exclusive season of the new Australian documentary features directed by Tom Zubrycki and Hugh Piper.
The Hungry Tide, produced, written and directed by Zubrycki, and Dancing With Dictators, written and directed by Piper and produced by Helen Barrow, will screen at rotating sessions over a week from Thursday December 8.
Dancing with Dictators is the timely and remarkable story about the struggle for control of MCM, the only media company in Burma with any foreign investment. Australian publisher Ross Dunkley, a Perth local, started and owns 49% of Burma’s leading newspaper The Myanmar Times. The paper comes out weekly in both Burmese and English and like all media in the country it is heavily censored. What sort of journalist owns a newspaper in one of the most repressive countries on earth? Against the background of the country’s first election in 20 years the filmmakers travel inside this closed and frightened society. The government has forced a 51% partner on Dunkley and after the election their enmity comes to a head. Dunkley is arrested and charged with immigration offences linked to assaulting a woman. He spends seven weeks in Burma’s notorious Insein prison before being bailed. After 20 court appearances Ross Dunkley is now free and he is plotting to not be the last foreign publisher in Burma.
The Hungry Tide is the personal story of Sydney-based activist Maria Tiimon as she works to raise the world’s awareness about the plight of her spiritual home, the Pacific Island nation Kirabati, which is already being inundated by rising tides. Kiribati is one of the countries in the world most vulnerable to climate change. Sea level rise and increasing salinity are threatening the lives of 105,000 people spread over 33 atolls in this remote corner of the Pacific. It’s the same ocean, which for generations has sustained the country that is now the source of its destruction. . Maria must balance the demands of her family with her determination to do all she can to save her country.
These films are at the cutting edge of Australian documentary features made by the country’s most awarded and experienced filmmakers. Check with the Luna site for times you can get your fix of factual film.
