Taking the utopian wish fulfilment of The Wizard of Oz and the social realism of The Grapes of Wrath as points of departure, the film season Honey, I’m Home: Visions Beyond the White Picket Fence, screening at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, explores cinematic representations of ‘home’ and community in a variety of registers, from comedy and satire, to psychological horror and absurdist fable.
Spanning an arc from the Great Depression to our GFC-altered landscape, Honey, I’m Home: Visions Beyond the White Picket premieres two new award-winning documentaries direct from the Sundance Film Festival, in which notions of home are set against our contemporary social and economic reality.
The Queen of Versailles is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall portrait of time-share mogul David Siegeland and his former beauty queen wife Jackie. The film follows the couple as they set about building the largest privately owned home in the States, just as the Global Financial Crisis hits. This eye-opening film was awarded the Best Director, Documentary award at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Siegel’s swag of children, seven to be exact, along with their live-in domestic help and extended circle of family and friends, offer disarmingly candid observations as the family are forced to renegotiate their sense of entitlement. The film also offers an insight into the implied terms of success encapsulated in an ethos that has, for several decades, informed how Americans view themselves.
Despite her Barbie Doll veneer, Jackie proves a thoroughly sympathetic and down-to-earth character. Before she found success as a model and married ‘up’, she candidly admits that she used to clean corpses in a nursing home for $3.35 an hour. Her husband’s ability to rationalise, much less accept, the perceived affront to his role as head of the family and a business empire, is far less certain.
Rachel Grady and native Detroiter Heidi Ewing, the acclaimed directors of award-winning documentaries Jesus Camp and The Boys of Baraka, unveiled their latest documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it received the Documentary Editing Award. Detropia presents a compelling portrait of the transformation of Detroit, the iconic Midwestern ‘Motor City’ whose social demographics have been dramatically impacted by declining economic fortunes. As the city with the highest foreclosure rate in the US in 2011, Detroit’s Mayor and city officials face an unprecedented challenge in rationalising services and maintaining social cohesion across a city reeling from the most dramatic ‘downsizing’ ever seen by an American city.
Historically famed as the birthplace of the American middle class, Detroit has witnessed an exodus of more than a quarter of its population in the last decade. The fall comes despite the arrival of younger out-of-towners into abandoned neighbourhoods, enticed by low property prices.
A panel discussion will follow the screening on Saturday 20 October, featuring Geoffrey London, Victorian Government Architect, and John Flaus, film academic and cinephile. The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Flavia Marcello from the Department of Architecture, Deakin University.
Stand out films in the season also include The Fountainhead, King Vidor’s sensational adaptation of Ayn Rand’s hit novel; Momma’s Man, a wry, affectionate exploration of the ties that bind by Azazel Jacobs, featuring his real-life parents, Flo and Ken Jacobs; and The Wizard of Oz, as Judy Garland sets off down the Yellow Brick Road, bound for the Emerald City in Victor Fleming’s glorious 1939 musical.
Presented in association with Melbourne Architecture Annual.
Honey, I’m Home: Visions Beyond the White Picket Fence screens from Thursday 18 October – Wednesday 31 October 2012
Tickets > Full $15 Concession $12 ACMI Member $11
6 session Pass: Full $72 Concession $60 ACMI Member $54
Visit www.acmi.net.au/film for sessions dates and times.
ACMI Cinemas, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, Melbourne
