The Music on Film category is sure to be a popular one with inclusions such as Blasko, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Australia’s own Sarah Blasko, and a revisit to the incredible documentary of a Cuban all-star group in Buena Vista Social Club: Adios.
There’s a category dedicated to Pioneering Women that explores Australian films of the 80’s and early 90’s directed by women, with titles including Clara Law’s Floating Life, Laurie McInnes’ Broken Highway and Gillian Armstrong’s High Tide among the highlights.
MIFF’s VR program for 2017 is also not to be missed with intriguing stories such as Rone’s Empty – a virtual reality film exploring the spaces where artist Rone’s murals are displayed alone – and Step to the Line – a look at prisoners and the prison system shot on location in California maximum security prisons – featured in the diverse program.
Notable Australian highlights include Eddie Martin’s Have You Seen The Listers? about the cost of success for Australian street artist Anthony Lister, Tom Zubrycki’s Hope Road which tells the inspirational story of a Sudanese refugee returning to his village to build a school, and Sera Davies’ The Namatjira Project, exploring the life and work of Indigenous artist Albert Namatjira.
Two new programs for 2017 are the Sci-Fi program and the Animal Documentaries program. See films such as Kathryn Bigelow’s VR tech-noir Strange Days as part of the Sci-Fi program and face questions of morality with Mark Grieco’s animal documentary A River Below.
The festival opens with Daniel McLean’s 2017 film Jungle, starring Daniel Radcliffe, and closes with a documentary about Indigenous Australian musician Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, directed by Paul Williams and titled Gurrumul.
