Despite all the planning and risk mitigation efforts by the organisers of the Melbourne International Film Festival to have an in-person festival this year, COVID-19 reared its ugly head again and Melbourne went back into its sixth lockdown on 6 August (which also coincided with me taking a month's annual leave from work). While in-cinema screenings scheduled in regional Victoria were able to proceed, Greater Melbourne only had access to the MIFF Play online screenings once again, which contained a portion of the films that were due to be part of this year's program.
Of the seven films I had originally booked only three were available to watch on MIFF Play, along with another film that I was interested in seeing. Once again, my main focus was documentaries:
The Gig Is Up by Shannon Walsh is a documentary that showed the true impact of the gig economy in different countries around the world. It explored not only the tech companies making trillions of dollars off the backs of vulnerable workers, but the true cost of all this convenience, particularly as the coronavirus pandemic started to hit in 2020.
Set! was a fantastic documentary by Scott Gawlik about a group of nine competitive table setters vying for the Best In Show ribbon at the Orange County Fair. They were a bunch of interesting and diverse people, and you learned about their backstories, histories competing against each other, and what drives them to enter these competitions every year.
Moments Like This Never Last is a documentary by Cheryl Dunn about the life of artist Dash Snow, who was an iconic figure of the 2000s New York art scene. Using archival footage from the time period along with present day interviews with his friends and colleagues, you got a very raw portrait of Snow, his short life and the underground art scene of that time.
Palazzo di Cozzo was one of the films I was most looking forward to seeing, and thankfully it had its world premiere on 14 August as a special online screening. Franco Cozzo is a well known iconic figure in Melbourne through his baroque furniture stores in Brunswick and Footscray. This documentary by Madeleine Martiniello told the story of his life, from growing up in Sicily to migrating to Australia in the 1950s, and how he worked to build his furniture empire through a combination of entrepreneurial spirit and media charm. It's a fantastic film that also provides the historical and sociological context of the times, particularly for that generation of European migrants, along with some amazing footage of homes completely decorated with his furniture.
Fingers crossed that next year I will finally get to enjoy MIFF again in a cinema after two years of watching films online.
