Showcasing new and unexpected forms of digital documentary storytelling
Tell us about your project
Past events
Exhibition: Expanding Documentary 2011 25 Nov 2011 at 10:00
Interactive installations, immersive performances and other unexpected representations of reality, presented by IDFA DocLab, Paradocs and Brakke Grond.
Live Cinema Event: Stories We Love to Forget 23 Nov 2011 at 22:00
An evening packed with embarrassing, true stories told live on stage. With Micha Wertheim, Paulien Cornelisse, Kevin Allison (The Risk Show) and someone reading an excerpt from their adolescent diary.
Live Cinema Event: Reality vs Technology 22 Nov 2011 at 20:00
Live presentations of three of the most innovative projects at IDFA 2011: the webdoc and installation Barcode.tv, the interactive installation What Is It Like to Be a Bird? and the immersive iPad app Condition One. The authors will showcase their
Big Stories, Small Towns
A heartwarming portrait of the care organizations in Port Augusta, Australia: the Men’s Shed, the Wami Kata home for the elderly, and the Young Fathers group.
Big Stories, Small Towns by directors Jeni Lee and Sieh Mchawala is a heartwarming portrait of Port Augusta, “the crossroads of Australia.”
As described in the short introductory film, the project’s aim is to “shine a light on locals who cared for the people around them.” The directors accomplished this by making short films about three specific organizations: the local Men’s Shed, a typically Australian phenomenon, where the elderly do woodwork; the Wami Kata home for the elderly, which cares for aborigines suffering from dementia; and the local branch of Young Fathers, a group devoted to young fathers of aboriginal origin.
These three observational films form the backbone of the website, but the site also gives the community itself an opportunity to speak, through photo series and digital stories.
In addition, it presents the history of Port Augusta through a handful of short archive films. Lee and Mchawala’s website uses a collection of small stories to create a bigger and broader picture of Australia’s fifth largest city.
Tags DocLab 2009, Interactive, Social Issue, Video, Watch Online
Project details
Year of development :2009Created by:Jeni Lee, Sieh Mchawala
With:Media Resource Center
Available formats
Project Twitter feed
Join the conversationFollow Big Stories, Small Towns
