What's on DocPlay in January

Off Country

2 January

Off Country

From inside the boarding house, on the sports field and in the classroom we follow the 2020 school year as the boarding school is thrown into chaos as they tackle the pandemic. Wrestling with their conflicting identities as students move between boarding life and home life, OFF COUNTRY creates a historic record of one of Australia’s key Indigenous education pathways and a complex portrait of what it is to be an Indigenous child in Australia today.

9 January

Love in Bright Landscapes

LOVE IN BRIGHT LANDSCAPES is the inspiring, tragic and intimate life story of David McComb, cult Australian singer/songwriter and driving force behind one of the greatest Australian bands, The Triffids. Love in Bright Landscapes reveals the man behind the music; and McComb’s status as a quintessentially Australian artist. 

23 January

Three Minutes: A Lengthening

A recently-discovered three-minute film of a Polish town in 1938 is transformed into an expansive meditation on memory, erasure and the Holocaust. Dutch director Bianca Stigter – with the help of narrator Helena Bonham Carter – dives deep into this precious fragment. Through inventive assemblage and intimate reflections, the footage unfurls into a haunting tapestry of mystery and loss demonstrating how the film medium can bear witness. Co-produced by Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave).

26 January

The Velvet Queen

High up on the Tibetan plateau. Amongst unexplored and inaccessible valleys lies one of the last sanctuaries of the wild world, where rare and undiscovered fauna lives.  Deeply moving images of pristine landscapes and the marvellous creatures populating Tibet with original music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, The Velvet Queen is a poetic documentary and an exquisitely beautiful experience that leaves us questioning where humans belong in nature.