Director Hannah Cairns
Rated 4/6
In the documentary, Red Sunday, community members of rural far east Gippsland, Victoria, Australia recount their experiences regarding the devastating 2014 bush fires, which lasted nearly 70 long, unpredictable, and traumatic days. Red Sunday is the first in a series of reviews of Documentaries that are going to be screened at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival (though it’s not the first documentary that I have posted).
Before starting to watch Red Sunday, there was a term in the title (in a still at the beginning of the copy I was given to watch) ‘healing through narrative therapy’ which I hadn’t heard before. This promoted me to do a couple of minutes of research so that I could have the most basic definition of ‘Narrative Therapy’ before watching the documentary. Apparently, Narrative therapy is a form of psychotherapy that seeks to help people identify their values and the skills and knowledge they have to live these values, so they can effectively confront whatever problems they face.
Armed with definition I become impressed with what the director Siloh Cairns did with Red Sunday. Apart from at the beginning and at the end there was no voice overs. I’m sure that you have all noticed it before when you have watched a documentary in the past that the documentarian will use voice overs or even do a piece to camera. Sometimes, however unintentional could take the spotlight away from the subjects of the documentary and Cairns should be praised for doing that. However, little I understand what Narrative therapy exactly is, I can see how it played apart in structuring Red Sunday as a documentary.
There is also amateur footage form the Gipsland bush fires that was used and I can’t help but think that the footage lost some of its impact because I watched Red Sunday on a smaller screen.
Now the world can be a cold and cruel place to live in sometimes and despite all the problems that the communities had with various government agencies I found it very comforting hearing the stories of how all the communities came together.
