Midsumma Festival- Fuck Fabulous

A delayed Midsumma Festival is currently happening around Melbourne, and tonight Ash and I went to the Arts Centre Melbourne Fairfax Studio to see the queer cabaret variety show Fuck Fabulous. Hosted by Yana Alana, this "protest party" featured a range of people in the ensemble, including circus performers (Jess Love, Seth Sladen, Dale Woodbridge-Brown), performance and drag artists (Nicci Wilks, Gabi Barton, Koko Ma$$), and dancers and musicians (Glitter & Snatch, Bec Matthews). 

 

Each artist performed solo and in different group configurations alongside a live band and had multiple chances to shine throughout the evening. There were so many great moments in this show with different acts and skits that were feminist, punk, humorous, acrobatic, honest and full of rage on topics such as politics, women's rights, body inclusivity, identity, climate change and sexual assault. Both Ash and I absolutely loved it and thought it was once of the best things we've seen in a long time. Post show we left the theatre feeling empowered and ready to take on the world.

MICF- Zoe Coombs Marr, Tom Ballard and Nath Valvo

The challenge for the acts at this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival seemed to be how to address the coronavirus pandemic in their comedy shows (if at all). Over the past couple weeks Belinda and I have been to see a few of the Melbourne-based comedians at the festival. On 31 March we were at the Melbourne Town Hall for two shows. We started the evening in the Powder Room for Zoe Coombs Marr and her show Agony! Misery! She began by reminding the audience what comedy is and how to laugh through the use of some Wiki How illustrations, and then reflected on her past and key moments from her childhood. Told using slide show pictures and dramatic readings from her diary, we learned a few things about young Zoe, including how through a series of unfortunate events she managed to land the flute solo at band camp when she was 13 years old. It was a silly and fun show which had a fantastic musical ending.

Next we headed upstairs to the Supper Room see Tom Ballard in We Are All In This. Needless to say, if you are a conservative, this is not the show for you. Using PowerPoint slides and some film clips, Tom went through a bit of a 2020 Year in Review covering such cheery topics as the coronavirus pandemic, Liberal Party voters, structural racism and inequality, and climate change. Throughout the show he explored the history of these topics, how we got to where we are now, and expressed the rage we are all feeling living in the world at present with a blistering delivery of biting political humor. No one was spared from Tom's wrath and the audience was laughing and cheering him on all the way through. The show was my highlight of MICF and I definitely recommend seeing it if you get the chance.

Our last show of MICF was tonight at Max Watt's where we saw Nath Valvo in Chatty Cathy. This was the first time I have seen Nath live, and he was full of energy as he wandered around the stage and told stories about his life and how things have changed now that he's in his late thirties. He had observations on how his friends have changed from their partying youth now that they've become parents, his dislike of Airbnbs, fans of true crime stories, and a funny recurring bit where he told mini horror stories he wrote in lockdown under dramatic lighting at the front of the stage. It was a fun and entertaining show.

NGV Triennial 2020

The NGV Triennial 2020 is currently on across all levels of the NGV International in Melbourne. The exhibition features over 100 artists and designers from all over the world showcasing works in contemporary art, design and architecture based around the four themes of illumination, reflection, conservation and speculation. 

 

I have been to the NGV twice over the past couple months in order to see the entire exhibition - once on the evening of 11 February for Triennial Extra with Mary and Belinda (the day before we went into a short five-day lockdown) and then again today to see the remaining pieces on Levels 2 and 3. There are so many amazing works, but these were my favorites in the exhibition:

Refik Anadol's Quantum Memories is a giant LED screen with real-time digital animation that is impossible to miss as you walk in on the ground floor. It was mesmerising to stand there and watch the changes to the 3D animations.

 

 

Porky Hefer's Plastocene - Marine Mutants from a Disposable World is a very playful room with these giant handmade creatures on the ground and hanging from the ceiling.

 

 

Outside in the garden are these fantastic large-scale stained glass window portraits by the French paste-up street artist JR for his project Homily to Country about the ecological decline of the Darling River system.

In its own room on the ground floor are the tiny hand-carved wood sculptures of different people by Tomoaki Suzuki. Each figure is scaled down to one third of the model's size.

Up on Level 1 is the architectural installation Botanical Pavilion by Kengo Kuma and Geoff Nees. The wooden pieces interlock and are held together by tension and gravity. It was cool to walk around and through the pavilion to admire this intricate work.

On Level 2 is Carnovsky's immersive wallpaper installation Extinctions, which has different insect and animal species printed on it in red, green or blue ink based on their extinction threat level. When different colored lights are projected on the wallpaper you see different parts of the print. It was quite a clever piece.

The NGV Triennial runs until 18 April 2021.

MICF- So You Think You Can Drag?

After getting cancelled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is back this year with a program primarily made up of Australian acts due to international travel restrictions. After an Earth Hour dinner by candlelight at Mamasita Sean and I headed down to the Forum Melbourne for So You Think You Can Drag? as part of The Festival Club. The show featured a range of drag performances and was hosted by the hilarious Tina Del Twist, who sang, drank and joked her way through the evening. 

 

There were some great numbers throughout the night. Highlights for me were Dazza and Keif dancing to the Beastie Boys “Intergalactic,” Sabrina Baby Slut’s lip sync themed around a girl addicted to air freshener, Lou Wall’s song about the patriarchy dedicated to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and Kali Forni-Kate’s bee-themed number complete with a section where she lip synced to an ASMR track. My favorite performance of the evening though was the closing act Ruby Slippers & Egson Ham. They came out in a colorful horse costume to Daryl Braithwaite’s “The Horses” and segued into Cardi B’s “WAP." The performance had elements of dance and burlesque in it and was absolutely brilliant.

French Film Festival 2021

After being interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic last year, the Alliance French Film Festival was able to go ahead in person this year. Once again I bought myself a five film pass and have attended the following films over the past couple weeks:

 

Summer of 85 by François Ozon is an adaptation of Aidan Chambers' novel Dance on My Grave. The story is told in flashbacks about a summer romance between teenagers Alexis (Félix Lefebvre) and David (Benjamin Voisin) and the tragedy that ultimately occurs. While it had a good 1980s soundtrack, the movie was a bit melodramatic and all over the shop.

 

Miss is a feel-good film by Ruben Alves about Alex's (Alexandre Wetter) dream of entering the Miss France beauty pageant and challenging the traditional gender binary. It's a heart warming film about chosen families supporting each other and a bit of a satire on the televised elements of beauty pageants.

 

De Gaulle is a biopic by Gabriel Le Bomin focused on General Charles de Gaulle (Lambert Wilson) during World War II as he met with Winston Churchill after Hitler seized Paris and led the French resistance. While de Gaulle is in exile the film also follows his wife (Isabelle Carré) and children as they travel around France trying to stay ahead of the German armed forces. It is a gripping war drama that covers some key moments for France in during World War II.

 

Eiffel is a biopic about Gustave Eiffel (Romain Duris) and what inspired him to design and build the Eiffel Tower for the 1889 World's Fair in Paris. The film shows the issues Eiffel dealt with during the building of the tower, including engineering innovations, protests and financial challenges.

 

Delicious is a historical comedy by Eric Besnard set in 1789 France prior to the French Revolution. Manceron (Grégory Gadebois) is a cook for the Duke of Chamfort, but gets fired when he cooks an inventive dish that is criticized by the Duke's guests. He goes to stay in a regional inn, where he takes on a female apprentice (Isabelle Carré) and ends up creating France's first restaurant to feed travellers coming through the area.

The Alliance French Film Festival runs in Melbourne until 31 March 2021.

Brunswick Music Festival- Joelistics and Loretta & Her Boyfriends

It was around this time last year that the coronavirus pandemic started to hit Australia and a number of shows at the Brunswick Music Festival were cancelled. Thankfully this year the festival has been able to go ahead despite a short five-day lockdown in Melbourne in mid-February. 

 

On Saturday night I met up with Belinda at Howler to see the sold out Joelistics Presents Film School album launch. As with other recent gigs we sat in chairs set up on the floor of the bandroom. The opening acts were DJ Paso Bionic and Beatrice (Haiku Hands/Kardajala Kirridarra), who did a set of ethereal sounding electronic music along with some great visuals behind her. When Joel came out on stage he told us to sit back and relax into the show, which was a collaboration with other musicians and artists. The members of the band jammed and improvised with each other as film clips played behind them and contemporary dancers performed on the floor and stage. It was a really interesting and special show and we both felt it was almost something you would expect to see at the Arts Centre.

Tonight Ash and I headed to the recently opened Brunswick Artists' Bar (downstairs from the Brunswick Ballroom) on Sydney Road to see Loretta & Her Boyfriends. We managed to grab a couple chairs to cram into the small, intimate space. Loretta Miller (Jazz Party) and her bandmates played two sets of songs from some of her favorite female jazz and blues singers, including Peggy Lee, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Julia Lee and Patsy Cline. They appropriately finished the evening with the song "Last Call (For Alcohol)." It was an entertaining night and nice to be able to check out the renovations to the venue.

Promising Young Woman

Tonight I met up with Ebony at the newly opened Palace Pentridge Cinema in Coburg to see Promising Young Woman. Each cinema has large leather reclining seats, which countered having to wear a mask throughout. This film by Emerald Fennell stars Carey Mulligan as Cassie Thomas, a 30-year-old woman who is a one woman vigilante going after guys who prey on intoxicated women. As the movie progresses it is revealed Cassie is trying to exact revenge for the death of her college friend Nina as she tracks down the key players in what happened to her and the aftermath. The film is pretty full on at times but really well done, and it goes to show that you never can tell who is a "nice guy," especially in this era of #MeToo.

Bar Texaco

Bar Texaco is a relatively new pop-up restaurant on Sydney Road in Brunswick that serves a combination of Texas-style barbecue and Tex-Mex dishes on its menu. My friend Kate and I have been a couple of times for lunch to sample dishes from the different parts of the menu. 

 

On the barbecue side I had the Brisket Bun, which includes smoked brisket slices, pickles and secret BBQ sauce on a toasted bun. For sides we shared the fries, classic mac n cheese, and chargrilled pumpkin with puffed wild rice, pepitas, fajita seasoning and vegan yoghurt avocado dressing. The smoked brisket was amazing, as was the chargilled pumpkin the first time we had it. The fries are what you would expect, and even though we shared the mac n cheese it was quite filling.

 

 

On the Tex-Mex side of the menu, we had the corn chips and guacamole and got the combo of any three tacos for $18. I had the pork and pineapple taco (juicy pork, pineapple and Mexican salsa), beef taco (pulled brisket, refried white beans, Mexican salsa and chilli oil) and Baja fish taco (battered fish, pickled cabbage and chipotle mayo). Once again it was those barbecue flavors in the meats that really stood out.

 

Bar Texaco is located at 644 Sydney Road, Brunswick and is open for dinner Wednesday - Saturday and for lunch on Sundays.

RVG- Malthouse Outdoor Stage

The Malthouse Outdoor Stage is hosting a number of COVID Safe shows this summer as live music returns to Melbourne. Belinda and I headed there this afternoon for the 5:30pm early show for RVG. I must admit it was a bit odd to be sitting at a table watching them play in the sunshine. They opened with "Alexandra" and included a number of songs off their latest album Feral in the set, including "Little Sharkie & The White Pointer Sisters," "Help Somebody," "Christian Neurosurgeon" and "I Used To Love You." Other highlights were "IBM," "Vincent Van Gogh," "A Quality Of Mercy," "That's All" and the set closer "Feral Beach." RVG is such a force of a band to watch live and today's show was no different. It was good to finally get to hear the tracks off Feral live now that they can play shows again.

 

Here's the video for "I Used To Love You"

The Living End- Sounds Better Together

The coronavirus pandemic has been catastrophic for the live music industry, with many music venues the first to close and the last to be able to reopen. The Mushroom Group and Victorian Government have partnered for a series of COVID Safe concerts across the state under the banner of Sounds Better Together. Tonight's show that I attended, which only went on sale last week, was The Living End at Forum Melbourne.

It was a bit strange to have seats on the floor of the Forum, but groups of ticket holders were safely spaced from each other. Opening the night was four piece Melbourne punk band Bakers Eddy. They played a very energetic set, with the lead singer taking out his microphone with his guitar during one song. They had people standing up out of their seats by the end of their set.

The Living End tried to begin the evening with "Pictures In The Mirror" but had two false starts as Scott Owen's bass wasn't working. Third time was a charm though and there was some relief from the band when they got through the whole song. The set list covered songs from throughout their extensive catalogue, with old favorites like "Second Solution," "Roll On," "Prisoner Of Society," "All Torn Down" and "White Noise" alongside some deeper album cuts such as "'Til The End," "Bloody Mary," "Hold Up," and "From Here On In." 

 

They also played a couple songs off their latest album Wunderbar with "Wake Up The Vampires" and "Drop The Needle." There was a lot of singing and dancing in the crowd, especially once everyone was standing up about a third of the way through the set. For the encore they played a rousing rendition of "Uncle Harry" to finish the evening. It was a great show full of energy and the usual musical prowess of this fantastic live band. I think everyone leaving the Forum felt their spirits lifted post-lockdown and that our city is coming back to life.

Here's the video for "Otherside"

Olympia- Rare & Solo

Tonight I attended the first of three sold out shows by Olympia at The Gasometer Hotel which are occuring over the next two nights. This was my very first gig since March 2020! Of course during COVID times things are a bit different: smaller audience numbers due to social distancing, early and late shows, and seating on the bandroom floor. The Gaso also has the added bonus of a retractable roof to assist with ventilation.

Opening the show this evening was Taylah Carroll, who played her set solo on electric guitar. Her songs were introspective and dreamy sounding, and I think it would be interesting to hear them played with a full band.

Olympia came out wearing a red turtleneck mini dress and started with "Biscuits" before segueing into "Somewhere To Disappear," both off her debut album Self Talk. Alternating between electric guitar and keyboard she played songs from all her releases, including "Atlantis" off her first EP, "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things," "Honey" and "Different Cities" from Self Talk, and "Hounds," "Two Hands" and "Nervous Riders" off her most recent album Flamingo.

 

The show was quite entertaining as she talked about the source material and inspirations for many of the songs, which ranged from films, tv shows and news events to tales from her own life. She also had copious notes printed out to refer to, with one of the funniest moments being a questionable review from Beat Magazine. After listening to these stories it was then interesting to pick up on lines in the lyrics and understand the songs a bit better. Olympia seemed to have kept herself busy during Melbourne's lockdown as she also played a couple new songs and even gave a shout out to everyone who was working from home and keeping the green light on, which I think many office workers could to relate to (myself included).

Here's the video for "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things"

2020: A Life On Pause

Of course 2020 couldn't end without another coronavirus outbreak in Sydney, which has resulted in around 170 new cases from community transmission in the last two weeks. It also appears that a returned traveler from New South Wales is the origin of eight new cases in Melbourne in the last 24 hours, which ended our run of two months with no local cases. In response (and with the expectation of further COVID-19 positives among close contacts) the Victorian Government has re-mandated the wearing of face masks indoors, limited gatherings in private homes from 30 to 15 people, and will close the border to all of New South Wales as of 11:59pm on 1 January 2021. Happy New Year's Eve everybody!

 

2020 has felt like a year with my life on pause. I began working from home in March and have been fairly homebound for most of the year. There were no gigs, comedy festivals, movie festivals or art gallery visits while Melbourne was in its various stages of restrictions and lockdowns during the first and second waves of the pandemic. The last two months have seen us all cautiously re-enter public spaces as things began to open up again. It's been nice to catch up with friends in person, eat at restaurants and exercise at the gym.

I have been fortunate to live here and not be facing what my family and friends are dealing with in the United States as the pandemic rages out of control. Thankfully we have a vaccine on the horizon (my brother has already gotten his first shot as a frontline worker) and hopefully things will start to return to a new normal soon. I look forward to being able to travel again at some point, but for now I will continue to wear my face mask, follow public health advice, and do my best to support artists and businesses that have done it so tough this year.

Life In Coronavirus Lockdown: COVID Normal

COVID-19 cases in Australia (source: The Age)

I don't think in our wildest dreams that any of us thought Victoria would have gone 31 straight days without any new COVID-19 cases and ended our second wave. We have celebrated "double doughnut" days of no new cases and no lives lost (although there was one new death today from a previously cleared case) and "triple doughnut" days when the last active case in the state was cleared and left hospital on 24 November.

Victoria is now on the Last Step of the roadmap for reopening, which means most things have reopened with certain density limits, you can have visitors to your home, face masks are no longer mandatory outside (unless you can't socially distance from others), and as of today up to 25 per cent of private sector workers could begin returning to their offices. I have started venturing out to catch up with friends, eat at restaurants, go shopping and head back to the gym (although the timetable is still very limited). The Melbourne CBD is starting to come back to life, with events such as Urban Blooms and the Myer Christmas Windows attracting people back to the city.

As of today there have been 27,904 cases and 908 deaths due to COVID-19 in Australia. The only current active outbreak in the country is in Adelaide, which was the result of the virus escaping hotel quarantine (sound familiar?). Most state and territory borders will be open as of 1 December, which means people can travel interstate without having to quarantine for 14 days. I think we are all cautiously optimistic as we head into December and start living a COVID Normal summer once final announcements are made in the next week.

West Side Place Artcade

West Side Place is a new residential, retail and hotel high rise development being built on Spencer Street in the Melbourne CBD. While their retail arcade is currently vacant they have handed over the shops to a variety of contemporary Australian artists to do an "Artcade" of installations for the next six months. Ebony and I headed over there this afternoon to check out the space and see this public art gallery.

 

Artists that are featured include John Aslandis & Mayonaize, George Rose, Adnate, Rone, Meggs, and Reko Rennie. It is a kalidescope of colors with the murals and installations, but unfortunately you can't go inside the spaces to get a closer look. 

 

My favorite was by Rone as his piece was a nod to his Empire exhibition at Burnham Beeches. If you are around Southern Cross Train Station, go check out Artcade before the retail stores move in.

Life In Coronavirus Lockdown: Reopening

COVID-19 cases in Australia (source: The Age)

It has been a long road for metropolitan Melbourne, but after 111 days we finally emerged from our lockdown at 11:59 pm on Tuesday, 27 October. It took an extra week to get here due to an outbreak in the northern suburbs, but the good news is that it is contained and we are under the 14 day average threshold of five new cases and five mystery cases per day. Melbourne is now on the Third Step of the roadmap, which means there are no restrictions on reasons to leave home, retail and hospitality have reopened (with distancing rules in place), and you can meet with friends and family either in groups of 10 outdoors or with up to two people from the same household inside your home once a day. 

 

The city is coming back to life and there was genuine relief and excitement when the announcement was made on Monday by Premier Dan Andrews (wearing his weekend North Face jacket). If all continues to go well over the next week we should see a further easing of restrictions in metro Melbourne on 8 November, including the elimination of the 25km travel radius and 'ring of steel' border with regional Victoria, which will bring the state back together again.

 

As of today there have been 27,581 cases and 907 deaths due to COVID-19 in Australia. The big political issue of the moment is borders between states and trying to get those open before Christmas. All the other states and territories minus Victoria and New South Wales have no cases and are finally opening up to each other. The question is when will we get to join them? Then there is the prospect of international travel bubbles with countries in the Asia Pacific, with New Zealanders being the first to travel to Australia and not have to quarantine on arrival.

Life In Coronavirus Lockdown: Roadmap To Reopening

COVID-19 cases in Australia (source: The Age)

 

Slowly but surely Victoria is getting on top of its second wave and is now on the road to reopening the state. The roadmap was released a few weeks ago and we are already a bit ahead of schedule. While regional Victoria has nearly no cases and reopened to the Third Step on 16 September, metropolitan Melbourne is basically still in lockdown. The First Step on 13 September allowed for singles to form a social bubble with a person from another household, people to be outside for two hours a day, and moved curfew to start one hour later at 9pm. 

 

On 27 September since metro Melbourne surpassed the 14 day average of between 30-50 new cases per day, we were able to move to the Second Step. This meant the curfew was removed and allowed for the reopening of childcare and return to schooling for most year levels in Term 4, an increase in permitted workers for certain industries, and up to five people from two households to meet in public during the two hours outside a day. These restrictions will be in place until at least 19 October, where the Third Step can be triggered if we have a 14 day average of under five new cases a day.

As of today there have been 27,078 cases and 886 deaths due to COVID-19 in Australia. Victoria's daily cases have averaged in the low teens for the past few days, with 365 active confirmed cases. The biggest story of the past few weeks has been Victoria's COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry, where various department secretaries, Ministers and the Premier testified last week. On Saturday the Minister for Health resigned from Parliament. On Monday the three counsel assisting the inquiry delivered their conclusions based on the evidence, which were pretty damning. You can read more about it in the article Devastation and despair: Hotel quarantine failures blamed for 768 deaths.

Life In Coronavirus Lockdown: Stage 4 Restrictions

COVID-19 cases in Australia (Source: The Age)

 

As cases continued to rise in Victoria, metropolitan Melbourne ended up going into Stage 4 lockdown on 2 August 2020 for six weeks. These restrictions meant that a curfew was put into place from 8pm - 5am, and you needed to stay within a 5km radius of your home when shopping for essentials or exercising outside for one hour per day (allowed with one other person). All but the most essential services and retailers were closed, and you had to have a worker permit from your employer if you couldn't work from home. Schools throughout the state went back to remote learning and the rest of Victoria went into Stage 3 restrictions (including mandatory face masks/coverings).

 

Thankfully the restrictions have been working, and the second wave is trending downward. Over the last few days Victoria has started to get under 100 new cases per day, the lowest numbers since early July. As of today there have been 25,746 cases and 652 deaths due to COVID-19 in Australia, with the vast majority of recent cases occurring in Victoria in the health and aged care sectors. Borders between states and territories remain closed, and while Queensland and New South Wales have had some small outbreaks, they have been able to contract trace and keep clusters under control.

For me Stage 4 hasn't changed things too much since I was already mainly staying at home except to go grocery shopping once a week. I have accumulated an assortment of reusable cloth face masks to wear for when I head outside. At work I am currently contributing to the COVID-19 effort for the next few weeks by working on school closures and reopenings in a jobshare arrangement where I am on from Wednesday - Saturday and have Sunday - Tuesday off. I've also been focused on the wildfires back home in the Bay Area as my cousin is current evacuated from her home (whieh thankfully is still standing) and my brother was on an evacuation warning before that fire became under control.

As things improve in Victoria attention is turning to the easing of restrictions and how we will begin to reopen. Premier Dan Andrews has flagged that he will be making announcements about a roadmap out of restrictions on Sunday, 6 September. The new case numbers and levels of community transmission this week will determine if Stage 4 restrictions will extend beyond 13 September. It's good that there is some light at the end of the tunnel as we head into spring and may be able to get out and see people again.

MIFF 68 1/2

Normally at this time of year I would be racing between cinemas to line up for my next movie as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). However, this year's physical festival was cancelled once the coronavirus pandemic hit. With Melbourne currently in Stage 4 lockdown, MIFF thankfully has gone online as MIFF 68 1/2 and is available for streaming across Australia. Since there weren't any mini passes available this year, I was good and only purchased six films to watch instead of my usual 10 plus.

I started with the Opening Night film First Cow by Kelly Reichardt, which is based on the Jonathan Raymond novel The Half Life. Set in the Oregon Territory in the 1820s, the movie is about the unlikely friendship between Cookie (John Magaro) and King-Lu (Orion Lee) as they enter business together selling oily cakes at the market with the secret ingredient of cow milk they've stolen from wealthy Englishman Chief Factor. The tension of the film is will they eventually be found out?

My usual preference of film genre at MIFF is documentaries, and this year was no exception. The Go-Go's told the story of one of the greatest all female bands as they emerged from the LA punk scene in the late 1970s to international stardom. It contained archival footage of them performing, photos and interviews with all of the band members as they detailed the trials and tribulations of the band's history. Martin Margiela: In His Own Words featured the avant-garde Belgian fashion designer speaking for the first time about the inspirations for his key fashion collections throughout his career. Margiela shunned fame and publicity in order to let his clothes be the focus (and he still doesn't show his face in this film).

My other three films were part of the Social Justice 3 Pack bundle. 9to5: The Story of a Movement detailed the women who came together and organised female office workers in the 1970s and 80s into a huge movement for better pay, professional recognition and ultimately as a union. These office women's stories were the inspiration for the movie 9 to 5, and unfortunately the struggle of underpaid primarily female workforces continues to this day. My favorite film of all the ones I watched was Coded Bias, which explored the research done by some female academics into the racial and gender biases that are written into the coding for AI and algorithms used by the main tech companies. It's an incredibly important film that shows the real life impacts of this so-called "impartial" technology on society. 

 

My final film was Hong Kong Moments, which documented key dates in the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong as told from seven citizens from all walks of life on both sides of the movement. Filmmaker Zhou Bing allows them all to speak for themselves and the film documents daily life alongside the street battles between police and protestors. It culminated with the local district council elections, which saw a large group of pro-democracy candidates elected.

MIFF 68 1/2 is available for streaming from 6 - 23 August 2020.

Life In Coronavirus Lockdown: The Second Wave

COVID-19 cases in Australia (source: The Age)

Back in June things were looking promising in Australia as restrictions were lifted and places started to gradually open back up. I had three glorious weeks of being able to travel into the Melbourne CBD to go to the gym after work. However, coronavirus transmissions were bubbling away in Melbourne's north and west, likely from security breaches in hotel quarantine (there's currently a judicial inquiry to investigate what happened). As a result, Victoria's coronavirus case numbers started to increase again, and on 9 July Metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire went back into Stage 3 lockdown. The rest of the states and territories implemented travel bans against Victoria and we became the pariah of the country.

As of today there have been 16,906 cases and 196 deaths from COVID-19 in Australia, with the vast majority of these numbers coming from Victoria. Even current outbreaks of cases in New South Wales and Queensland can be traced back to people who have recently been in Melbourne. The closing of borders with Victoria resulted in every single Victorian sports team moving to hubs in other states (mainly Queensland) so seasons could continue. Now that Greater Sydney has been declared a hot spot their sports teams are also having to move so as to avoid 14 day state quarantines.

Every day around 11am I watch the Victorian press conference to get the daily update on numbers from Premier Dan Andrews and Victoria's Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton. Despite being half way through our current six week Stage 3 lockdown, and a week into mandatory face mask/covering wearing, our numbers have not been improving as hoped. We were getting a few hundred new cases a day, but the last two days have been the worst yet with Thursday seeing a record-high 723 new cases and today 627 cases. The main transmission sources of this second wave have been in workplaces with more casual/insecure workers, abattoirs, public housing, healthcare workers and aged care homes.

It's quite disheartening that the current restrictions aren't bringing down the new case numbers. It was flagged today that further data analysis will be done in the next couple days to determine if Melbourne needs to go to Stage 4 lockdown. In any case, I don't think our current lockdown will be ending in the next three weeks on 19 August as currently planned. I also doubt I will be making it back into the office this year.

For some historical perspective, this article in The Age by Zach Hope looks at the parallels of our current situation with the 1919 Spanish flu in Melbourne - Masks, lockdowns and a second wave: A century on, history repeats itself.

Life In Coronavirus Lockdown

COVID-19 cases in Australia (source: The Age)

It's been an interesting year in Australia so far. Just as the bushfires that raged throughout the summer were being extinguished, the coronavirus pandemic started to hit. After some initial restrictions on return travellers from China in February, the majority of restrictions came into effect three months ago in March: Victoria declared a state of emergency, return travellers from overseas were mandated to self-isolate for 14 days (later became mandatory 14 days hotel quarantine), schools moved to remote and flexible learning, and social distancing measures and strict limits on numbers of people allowed to gather together were implemented.

The economic impacts were swift as whole industries essentially shut down overnight, including the arts sector, sports, restaurants and hospitality, cinemas and gyms. My social calendar dried up as activities I had planned in the coming months were cancelled, including concerts, NGV exhibitions, the French Film Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and Melbourne International Film Festival. People were mandated to work from home if possible, which is what I have been doing since 24 March. In Victoria, restrictions meant you could only go out for the following reasons:
1. shopping for food and supplies
2. exercise
3. medical care
4. work and school - if necessary
5. visiting family and friends (from mid-May 2020)

Thankfully, unlike in many other countries, the restrictions and community efforts have resulted in Australia flattening the curve. As of today there have been 7,320 cases and 102 deaths from COVID-19 in Australia. Many of our cases have been from returned overseas travellers, with little community transmission. Large scale testing and contact tracing is helping to catch cases earlier and limit their spread. As a result, the country is gradually easing restrictions and we are starting to emerge from lockdown and see many things open up again (although still with social distancing). Sports have just started up again for the NRL and AFL. State borders that were shut should hopefully begin reopening soon, and we may have a trans-Tasman travel bubble with New Zealand in a few months.

It's nice to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Living alone it's been a bit isolating, despite my introverted nature. I've been catching up with Sean weekly to watch episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race, but otherwise my only interactions with people are through video conference meetings at work and weekly trips to the grocery store. I'm probably most looking forward to the gym reopening as I have had a lack of physical activity despite trying to exercise at home. We still aren't sure when we'll be able to return to the office, but I would like to get back into the Melbourne CBD. Hopefully we will avoid a second wave of COVID-19 cases, but only time will tell.