Chopin: I Am Not Afraid Of Darkness (2023) – Powerful

Chopin: I Am Not Afraid Of Darkness is available as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer in the 1800s who, by the time of his death at 39, had cemented his place as one of the true icons of classical music. His many assorted compositions have become staples that any person with even a mild interest in playing classical music is expected to learn, pieces of his like Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2 (they did not have great names for songs in those days) are not only standards for people to learn but turn up in pop culture with some regularity because they are just the perfect pieces to set the mood. Chopin’s place in history and in music is so determined that his compositions have been played just about everywhere and the documentary Chopin: I Am Not Afraid of Darkness adds three interesting new locations to that list.

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

Once again, we are heading towards the time when the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival will be happening in all its glory. Once again, unlike a lot of film festivals, they have an online portion for their festival (you can check it out here) that’ll be running for the entire month of July. There really is nothing like a good film festival, especially one full of fascinating documentaries and this one has dozens of them.

They also have a bunch that’ll be happening in the last week of July that’ll be in person in Melbourne… but I’m not in Melbourne so I won’t be able to see those, I can see the online ones and now I have access to the full list of films they’ll have on offer so here is a list of the 10 films that have me the most excited/interested/curious. Please note this isn’t a specifically ranked list, just the 10 that stood out to me.

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Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Short Session 2

Short Session 2 was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Well there’s only 2 more sets of shorts left to go for the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival… so naturally I’m going to go with Session 2, that makes perfect sense at this point, right? We’ve got a good batch to go through so let’s do this.

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Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Short Session 4

Short Session 4 was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

With only a few days left in the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival to go, time to go through the last of the documentary shorts. Because this is all random selection, let’s look at short session 4 because I like the number 4 and wanted to do it at this point.

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Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Short Session 7

Short Session 7 was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Time for even more Melbourne Documentary Film Festival shorts, because there are so many to get through. Today we look at Short Session 7. So far we’ve had a ton of fantastic shorts, I don’t really see them dropping the ball any time soon.

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Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Short Session 5

Short Session 5 was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Time for another stack of short films from the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. Today, we’re going through session 5 on their program which might have the best set of shorts so far, and that bar has been set pretty high by everyone else.

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Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Short Session 6

Short Session 6 was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Time for another batch of documentary shorts from the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, because they’re there and we can totally do this. This time, it’s session 6 that we’re going to go through. The same setup as before, roughly a paragraph on every short so let’s get into it.

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Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Short Session 3

Short Session 3 was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

So, mild housekeeping. Normally on this blog I review feature-length films because that’s what’s easily available to me and provides the most material for a review. For the next week I’m going to be focusing entirely on some shorts available during the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, so basically I’m going to pick a series of shorts and review them all for about a paragraph each. Why? Because it’s my blog and I do what I want!

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Looby (2019) – Intriguingly Artsy

Looby was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Looby Info

Keith Looby is one of those artists that did a ton of great work, some winning major awards, who has been almost completely forgotten by the masses. He won the Archibald Prize in 1984, was named Canberra artist of the year in 1992 and has had a series of exhibitions all over the world and yet it feels like his name is not as well known as it should be considering his impact. Part of this could be due to his relationship with the art world in general which we can politely call “Troubled”… and this relationship is the main focus of the documentary about Looby’s life.

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