REVIEWS
DEFENDANT 5
The Australian - by Graeme Blundell
Monday, December 8th 2014
PICK OF THE DAY: Defendant 5, ABC2, 9.30pm.
DOCUMENTARIAN Ken Burns said the art of filmmaking was all about process: “Go, see, do, be” — that it is imperative to just get out in the world, to look, really, then do it. Make the film, and relate, which means having a personal relationship to the environment in which you find yourself.
He would be full of admiration, I think, for this fine piece of subjective filmmaking from Heidi Lee Douglas, who several years ago went to Tasmania to make a film about the effect of logging on the community.
The story that emerged was, she says here, “a nightmare that robbed years of my life — with my video camera I was trying to save some of the world’s oldest forests but I threatened the interests of a million-dollar logging company”.
She discovered Gunns, the biggest wood chipper in the southern hemisphere, was profiting most from the logging of the old-growth forests. As the campaign to protect them escalated, Douglas took more risks and crossed the line from filmmaker to activist.
Community support to protect Tasmania’s forests spread across Australia and the world. At the same time, Douglas increasingly turned her “little video camera”, as she calls it, on herself. But the issue was divisive, with timber workers, many of whom worked for Gunns, believing their futures were at stake.
Without warning, Douglas and 19 other critics were sued by Gunns for $6.4 million for allegedly conspiring to harm the company’s business. The defendants were a disparate group: politicians, campaigners, a doctor, a dentist, an author and students. They became known as the Gunns 20, and Douglas discovered Gunns wanted to use her footage as evidence of its allegation of conspiracy. She faced a crisis of conscience as the footage she had been gathering to help the community threatened to harm them.
This is her personal story, a drama about how one young artist learns that fighting for what she believes in has the most devastating consequences.
Sydney Morning Herald/The Age
Monday, December 8th 2014
Heidi Lee Douglas's simple, eloquent film depicts an ugly and protracted battle over Tasmania's old-growth forests. Recounting how she became caught up in "a nightmare that would rob years of my life", she documents her involvement in the fight to save the trees and the retaliatory action of Gunns Ltd, which attempted to silence opposition to its wood-chipping operations and plans for a pulp mill through legal action. There's a David and Goliath quality to the tale of a campaign by conservationists against a mighty, bullying corporation. However, Douglas's astute and economical eye as a filmmaker also makes the film a touching personal story.
Women's Day, National
Monday, December 8th 2014
The Watch List
Nothing screams "empowering" more than this series. Marking 10 years since the Gunns 20 were sued in Tasmania, this TV special dives deep into the effects of logging on the community. Not to be missed.
LITTLE LAMB
Gruesome Magazine
April 2nd 2016
Australian short film Little Lamb is a gothic thriller that takes place in a world that is bleak, both in the landscapes in which its protagonist Louisa is trapped and in her chances of improving her life – or even continuing it beyond her young age.
Writer/director/editor Heidi Lee Douglas’s film is set in 1829 on Van Diemen’s Land, the name many Europeans used for colonial Tasmania. Louisa (Georgia Lucy) is a convict forcibly transported to that island by the British government. Though her cellmate Agnes (Jude Kuring in a brief but riveting performance) warns that life is worse outside their prison walls, Lucy is desperate to leave what she calls a “death hole.” When a local man named Mr. Black (James Grim) comes to the prison to select a new servant – an act that Agnes feels he has done more frequently than what might be considered normal – Louisa sees this as her best chance at escaping prison life. Mr. Black chooses Lucy and forces her to walk through the forest to his home while he rides comfortably on his horse.
Louisa quickly befriends a lamb and behaves cautiously around Mr. Black, who displays some disturbing behavior, such as peering in on her while she bathes. When he goes to town one day and orders her to prepare her new pet for his supper, she finds blood on a barn door and investigates an area from which he warned her away. After making some gruesome discoveries, she hears him approaching home early and finds that Agnes’ words may have been all too prophetic.
Everything is grim, from Louisa’s filthy face and clothes to the dangerous prison life where women are seen and heard being tormented by the male jailors, to Mr. Black’s farmhouse, which is in disrepair. Heidi Lee Douglas has crafted a masterful work that gives viewers a look at a small glimmer of victory and sense of justice in Louisa’s hopeless life.
Georgia Lucy is splendid as Louisa, embodying her character with a strong will for some sort of a better life. Viewers have no idea of the circumstances that led to Louisa’s imprisonment, yet we become instantly invested in her character thanks to Lucy’s performance. James Grim is chilling as Mr. Black. He exudes a powerful sense of menace and helps build Little Lamb’s growing impression of dread. A scene in which he sniffs and grunts behind Louisa as she kneads dough in his kitchen only tips us off to the beast that lies within him. Heidi Lee Douglas successfully pulls off a horror/thriller formula that seems easy in theory but is difficult to achieve in practice. She gives viewers a flawed heroine to emotionally invest ourselves in and a believable, horrific villain to threaten her.
The world Heidi Lee Douglas has designed for this period piece chiller is wholly realistic. The set, costume, and makeup departments have done a stellar job. Leuke Marriott’s cinematography captures the somber proceedings and inhospitable landscapes impeccably. Benjamin Walter Douglas’s score – often consisting of acoustic guitar, piano, and violin – sets the musical tone wonderfully, and two original songs written and sung by Georgia Lucy provide an authentic period folk-music feel.
Little Lamb (littlelambmovie.com) is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking. I give this tense gothic thriller my highest recommendation.
Little Lamb screened at the Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo tour event in Nagoya, Japan, in February 2016.
Little Lamb: (5 / 5)
Joseph Perry
Joseph Perry’s formative years were spent watching classic monster movies (starting with "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "Godzilla Vs. the Thing") and TV series (starting with "The Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits"), Bob Wilkins’ "Creature Features" and Roy Shires’ Big Time Wrestling (two northern California legends); reading Silver Age and Bronze Age Gold Key, Dell, Charlton, Marvel, and DC comics; and writing mimeographed newsletters about the original "Planet of the Apes" film and TV series. More recently, he has written for "Filmfax" magazine, is the foreign correspondent reporter for the "Horror News Radio" podcast, and is a regular contributing writer to "Phantom of the Movies’s VideoScope" magazine, occasionally proudly co-writing articles with his son Cohen Perry, who is a film critic in his own right. A former northern Californian and Oregonian, Joseph has been teaching, writing, and living in South Korea since 2008.
http://gruesomemagazine.com/2016/04/02/little-lamb-2014-different-kind-devil-preys-women-prisoners-historical-tasmania/
DEFENDANT 5
The Australian - by Graeme Blundell
Monday, December 8th 2014
PICK OF THE DAY: Defendant 5, ABC2, 9.30pm.
DOCUMENTARIAN Ken Burns said the art of filmmaking was all about process: “Go, see, do, be” — that it is imperative to just get out in the world, to look, really, then do it. Make the film, and relate, which means having a personal relationship to the environment in which you find yourself.
He would be full of admiration, I think, for this fine piece of subjective filmmaking from Heidi Lee Douglas, who several years ago went to Tasmania to make a film about the effect of logging on the community.
The story that emerged was, she says here, “a nightmare that robbed years of my life — with my video camera I was trying to save some of the world’s oldest forests but I threatened the interests of a million-dollar logging company”.
She discovered Gunns, the biggest wood chipper in the southern hemisphere, was profiting most from the logging of the old-growth forests. As the campaign to protect them escalated, Douglas took more risks and crossed the line from filmmaker to activist.
Community support to protect Tasmania’s forests spread across Australia and the world. At the same time, Douglas increasingly turned her “little video camera”, as she calls it, on herself. But the issue was divisive, with timber workers, many of whom worked for Gunns, believing their futures were at stake.
Without warning, Douglas and 19 other critics were sued by Gunns for $6.4 million for allegedly conspiring to harm the company’s business. The defendants were a disparate group: politicians, campaigners, a doctor, a dentist, an author and students. They became known as the Gunns 20, and Douglas discovered Gunns wanted to use her footage as evidence of its allegation of conspiracy. She faced a crisis of conscience as the footage she had been gathering to help the community threatened to harm them.
This is her personal story, a drama about how one young artist learns that fighting for what she believes in has the most devastating consequences.
Sydney Morning Herald/The Age
Monday, December 8th 2014
Heidi Lee Douglas's simple, eloquent film depicts an ugly and protracted battle over Tasmania's old-growth forests. Recounting how she became caught up in "a nightmare that would rob years of my life", she documents her involvement in the fight to save the trees and the retaliatory action of Gunns Ltd, which attempted to silence opposition to its wood-chipping operations and plans for a pulp mill through legal action. There's a David and Goliath quality to the tale of a campaign by conservationists against a mighty, bullying corporation. However, Douglas's astute and economical eye as a filmmaker also makes the film a touching personal story.
Women's Day, National
Monday, December 8th 2014
The Watch List
Nothing screams "empowering" more than this series. Marking 10 years since the Gunns 20 were sued in Tasmania, this TV special dives deep into the effects of logging on the community. Not to be missed.
LITTLE LAMB
Gruesome Magazine
April 2nd 2016
Australian short film Little Lamb is a gothic thriller that takes place in a world that is bleak, both in the landscapes in which its protagonist Louisa is trapped and in her chances of improving her life – or even continuing it beyond her young age.
Writer/director/editor Heidi Lee Douglas’s film is set in 1829 on Van Diemen’s Land, the name many Europeans used for colonial Tasmania. Louisa (Georgia Lucy) is a convict forcibly transported to that island by the British government. Though her cellmate Agnes (Jude Kuring in a brief but riveting performance) warns that life is worse outside their prison walls, Lucy is desperate to leave what she calls a “death hole.” When a local man named Mr. Black (James Grim) comes to the prison to select a new servant – an act that Agnes feels he has done more frequently than what might be considered normal – Louisa sees this as her best chance at escaping prison life. Mr. Black chooses Lucy and forces her to walk through the forest to his home while he rides comfortably on his horse.
Louisa quickly befriends a lamb and behaves cautiously around Mr. Black, who displays some disturbing behavior, such as peering in on her while she bathes. When he goes to town one day and orders her to prepare her new pet for his supper, she finds blood on a barn door and investigates an area from which he warned her away. After making some gruesome discoveries, she hears him approaching home early and finds that Agnes’ words may have been all too prophetic.
Everything is grim, from Louisa’s filthy face and clothes to the dangerous prison life where women are seen and heard being tormented by the male jailors, to Mr. Black’s farmhouse, which is in disrepair. Heidi Lee Douglas has crafted a masterful work that gives viewers a look at a small glimmer of victory and sense of justice in Louisa’s hopeless life.
Georgia Lucy is splendid as Louisa, embodying her character with a strong will for some sort of a better life. Viewers have no idea of the circumstances that led to Louisa’s imprisonment, yet we become instantly invested in her character thanks to Lucy’s performance. James Grim is chilling as Mr. Black. He exudes a powerful sense of menace and helps build Little Lamb’s growing impression of dread. A scene in which he sniffs and grunts behind Louisa as she kneads dough in his kitchen only tips us off to the beast that lies within him. Heidi Lee Douglas successfully pulls off a horror/thriller formula that seems easy in theory but is difficult to achieve in practice. She gives viewers a flawed heroine to emotionally invest ourselves in and a believable, horrific villain to threaten her.
The world Heidi Lee Douglas has designed for this period piece chiller is wholly realistic. The set, costume, and makeup departments have done a stellar job. Leuke Marriott’s cinematography captures the somber proceedings and inhospitable landscapes impeccably. Benjamin Walter Douglas’s score – often consisting of acoustic guitar, piano, and violin – sets the musical tone wonderfully, and two original songs written and sung by Georgia Lucy provide an authentic period folk-music feel.
Little Lamb (littlelambmovie.com) is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking. I give this tense gothic thriller my highest recommendation.
Little Lamb screened at the Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo tour event in Nagoya, Japan, in February 2016.
Little Lamb: (5 / 5)
Joseph Perry
Joseph Perry’s formative years were spent watching classic monster movies (starting with "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "Godzilla Vs. the Thing") and TV series (starting with "The Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits"), Bob Wilkins’ "Creature Features" and Roy Shires’ Big Time Wrestling (two northern California legends); reading Silver Age and Bronze Age Gold Key, Dell, Charlton, Marvel, and DC comics; and writing mimeographed newsletters about the original "Planet of the Apes" film and TV series. More recently, he has written for "Filmfax" magazine, is the foreign correspondent reporter for the "Horror News Radio" podcast, and is a regular contributing writer to "Phantom of the Movies’s VideoScope" magazine, occasionally proudly co-writing articles with his son Cohen Perry, who is a film critic in his own right. A former northern Californian and Oregonian, Joseph has been teaching, writing, and living in South Korea since 2008.
http://gruesomemagazine.com/2016/04/02/little-lamb-2014-different-kind-devil-preys-women-prisoners-historical-tasmania/
