leebutler Review

FoodxFilm Festival Review: Wild Relatives (2018)

Over on Soda & Telepaths, another one of the FoodxFilm festival reviews is up (yes the festival ended 2 days ago, the reviews still good). This one’s for the film Wild Relatives which is about seeds because this festival had a very pointed theme.

Also guess whose internet is borked so can’t watch any new films? That’s why I haven’t started on the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival stuff, though I have got access to that and will get onto it the moment my internet is unborked.

leebutler Uncategorized

5 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Films I’m Excited To See

Film Festivals have had a hard go the last few years, having to adapt to the pandemic meant that a lot of them have had to move online. Over the last month I reviewed films for one of those festivals, the Sydney Underground Film Festival, but coming up throughout the month of October is the 6th Annual Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. 

Between the 1st and the 31st of October, the MDFF will be showing over 20 feature-length documentaries and dozens upon dozens of shorts. There’s so much on offer that it’s going to be a challenge to pick what to view… luckily for you, I’ve skimmed through the list and picked 5 documentaries that I’m most looking forward to in order to influence your decisions of where you put your money because that’s the kind of thing I do.

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leebutler Review

FoodxFilm Festival Review: Gather (2020)

Over on the good old Soda & Telepaths I’m reviewing films that are part of the FoodXFilm Festival, which takes place over three days and has a whole bunch of films that relate in some way to food. The first one is a film called Gather, about indigenous people’s relationships with food… and also genocide, it’s a fascinating film, you should try and find it and also read my full thoughts on it

leebutler Review

The World’s Best Film (2020) – The World’s Sweetest Documentary

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

There is really no pithy opening paragraph I can come up with to properly start this review of a film that, rather charmingly, calls itself “The World’s Best Film”. I tried, couldn’t think of anything… mostly cos I was just too damn charmed by the film to really bother with the normal format of these reviews.

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leebutler Review

Origin of the Species (2020) – I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Overlords

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Origin Of The Species Info

Do you remember the Tay Twitter bot? For those who don’t remember, this was a Twitter bot that Microsoft designed in order to try and get an AI to learn how to have a normal human conversation… and because they put this on TWITTER, that bot went from sweet and charming to full-on Nazi in under 24 hours. It was a quick lesson in how quickly an AI can learn and how that learning can be used to create something terrifying… and the limits and uses of AI make for an interesting time in the Sydney Underground Film Festival entry Origin Of The Species.

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leebutler Review

Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché (2021) – Obsessed with This

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

After the gut-punch of a documentary with Lydia Lunch, it feels right to wash it down with a documentary about another performer that broke boundaries in her own unique way. The idea of course was to try and watch something that was a little lighter and maybe a little easier to take on… stupid me forgetting that the Sydney Underground Film Festival thrives on really just fucking with the audience. So, time to talk about Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché.

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