A thirteen-minute award-winning documentary based on footage secretly filmed inside Australia’s former detention centre on Manus Island is to be screened in Lismore Thursday night.
Angus McDonald’s “Manus” was made possible thanks to surreptitious video footage from Australian videographer Olivia Roussett and two others who joined her secret mission to Australia’s off-shore immigration processing centre in 2017.
The short film won Best Documentary at the 2020 FIFO film festival, Best Byron Film at the 2019 Byron Bay Film Festival and Best Documentary at the 2019 St Kilda Film Festival and has earned acclaim from film critics across the world.
Mr McDonald is a visual artist as well as a documentary filmmaker and last year won the Archibald People’s Choice Award for his portrait of former Manus Island detainee, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani.
The artist is also an ambassador for Human Rights Watch Australia and Asia, and World Vision’s Kids Off Nauru campaign.
He’s scheduled as guest speaker at a Politics in the Pub event in Lismore this week.
Byron Shire readers may be familiar with the former Ngara-hosted Politics in the Pubsessions and more recent ones hosted by Turning Point Talks – Lismore’s event is run separately.
Mr McDonald says his intention with all of his work is to ‘contribute towards the public rediscovering their compassion and changing our collective approach towards how we deal with those fleeing war and persecution’.
Lismore’sPolitics in the Pub starts at 7pm Thursday May 13 at the Rous Hotel in Lismore with meals available from 6pm.
Entry is by donation but organisors say bookings are essential due to public health requirements in the pandemic: email [email protected].
