Invited to Teach Australian Documentary Film in Venice

It was both a pleasure and an honour to be invited to teach in a documentary film class in Venice and speak with students about Australian documentary film today. The class I presented, Under the Same Sky: Documentary and Identities in Australia, explored the ways contemporary Australian documentary engages questions of identity, memory, place, and community.

I began with recent short works by Melbourne-based queer filmmaker Liz Baulch, whose films draw on family archives and First Nations heritage. I then introduced The Earth Above: A Deep Time View of Australia's Epic History, a 30-minute immersive fulldome planetarium experience funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) and produced by the Deakin Motion Lab in collaboration with First Nations communities and the University of Wollongong Science Space.

It felt especially meaningful to discuss identity — across documentary, archives, immersive media, and storytelling — within Venice, a city increasingly engaged with questions around the changing forms of personal, familial, and cultural identity.