Check out these three documentaries competing for the Documentary Australia Foundation Award as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2020 On-Demand program.
DESCENT
“When you learn to cope with cold water immersion, it’s going to help you cope with stress, fear, anxiety, and all other kinds of negative emotions.” This is a quote from this healing film that pushes your limits on comfort, tolerance, endurance, pain, and danger.
THE PLASTIC HOUSE
A hypnotic contemplative reflection of the past through the present. This is quite a very quiet film as it painstakingly plows through the garden of familial memories of an Asian-Australian upbringing.
A HUNDRED YEARS OF HAPPINESS
Starts with a humble slow cooking of sour eel vegetable stew and fried fish by the mother of the bride-to-be and culminates with a Vietnamese wedding to her Korean husband. Along the way is a fascinating portrait of countryside Vietnam with all its dainty and exotic customs, colours, and flavours.
There is a lot of trepidation in Hollywood in handling unsure material as CRAZY RICH ASIANS can attest. The last time an all-Asian cast modern-day Hollywood film was made was 25 years ago in 1993 with THE JOY LUCK CLUB, earning modest critical and box office success.
It is the end of another year of wonderful cinema and here is my list of the best films of this year. All the films got my five stars. Catch them on Netflix or Blu-Ray or free-to-air when you can.
