A recent screening series held in Brisbane reflected on issues of surveillance and reportage with a pinpoint contemporaneity.
Publish and Perish: Video Essays in the Age of Social Media
2016 proved to be a turbulent year for video essayists. In this feature piece Conor Bateman writes about the impact social media has had on the form.
The Was – Soda_Jerk vs The Avalanches
A mysterious download link released online today leads to THE WAS, a collage film collaboration between Australian video artists Soda_Jerk and The Avalanches.
The Truth Shall Not Sink with Sewol (dir. Lee Sang-ho and Ahn Hae-ryong, 2014)
A controversial documentary from South Korea and the mark it left on a major international film festival are the focus this week on Less Than (Five) Zero.
2015 in Review: The Best Digital-Release Documentaries
This year a handful of feature documentaries had their major release online. We take a look at five of the best these.
Hollywood Burn (dir. Soda_Jerk and Sam Smith, 2006)
A bonkers film and sound collage hitched to a mad sci-fi narrative forms the content of Australian visual artists Soda_Jerk and Sam Smith’s argument in favour of a wide fair use doctrine.
The Human Behavior Experiments (dir. Alex Gibney, 2006)
This week’s Less Than (Five) Zero looks at an Alex Gibney made-for-TV documentary focusing experiments in social psychology, including the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment.
Uniform (dir. Diao Yinan, 2003)
Diao Yinan’s debut feature is a subtle tale of self-deception, power and love, featuring some very impressive direction and cinematography, especially considering its miniscule budget.
The Mise en scène is the Message – The Advertisements of Errol Morris and Roy Andersson
Whilst Errol Morris and Roy Andersson have achieved widespread acclaim for the feature film work, both filmmakers have produced hundreds of advertisements throughout their career.
The Savage Eye (dir. Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers and Joseph Strick, 1959)
The ‘fiction documentary’ THE SAVAGE EYE combines a film noir aesthetic with a bleak social portrait, charting a year in the life of a divorced woman in the late 1950s.