Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from Australian Community Media, which has journalists in every state and territory. Sign up here to get it by email, or here to forward it to a friend. Today's newsletter is written by ACM executive editor James Joyce.
He's a tall bloke so not someone you want sitting directly in front of you at the movies, but Xavier Mardling, editor of Australian Community Media's The Border Mail, knows a good story when he sees one, including when it's playing out up on the big screen at the cinema.
Last week Xavier did the honours and officially opened The Border Mail International Film Festival with a special preview screening of The Australian Dream, the new feature-length documentary charting the rise of former Australian of the Year Adam Goodes from talented schoolboy player to AFL star and passionate advocate for indigenous Australians.
While the recent doco The Final Quarter was a confronting, unvarnished account of the booing controversy that ultimately led Goodes to quit the game, The Australian Dream features Goodes and those around him reflecting personally on his achievements, heartbreak and hopes for the future of race relations.
The film, written by Stan Grant and directed by Daniel Gordon, clearly had an impact on our Xavier, who suddenly came over all David Stratton in a message to Border Mail subscribers at the weekend (Well, equal parts scholarly Stratts and passionate Pomers - aka Margaret Pomeranz - from TV's dearly departed At The Movies).
The Australian Dream, Xavier says, "forces us to ask questions of ourselves, and others, regarding the nature of racism and discrimination in society today".
"If the mark of a good film is to evoke an emotional response, The Australian Dream is a beauty. I have no doubt it will help broaden our views and educate us, so that the next time we get the opportunity to call out racist behaviour, we do that."
So, that's five stars from our Xavier!
Another distinctly Australian story playing out on movie screens at the moment is Danger Close: the Battle of Long Tan, which dramatises the events of August 18, 1966, in South Vietnam when 108 young Australian soldiers held off an army of 2500 experienced Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers.
For veteran Adrian Roberts, who commanded the armoured troop carriers sent to help the troops trapped under heavy fire, the film "spares the audience the true horror of war".
For retired major Bill "Yank" Akell, who was a 21-year-old radio signaller in the mud and mayhem of that rubber plantation in 1966, the close attention that Danger Close director Kriv Stenders pays to accuracy was noteworthy.
"If you make a film about World War I there are no guys left to tell you something's wrong or didn't actually happen like that," Ballarat's Mr Akell told The Courier journalist Melanie Whelan.
"With Long Tan, there's 60 of us left and (Stenders) is very keen to do it as accurately as possible."
With Rachel Ward's relationships drama Palm Beach and Jennifer Kent's The Nightingale, a grim revenge drama set in colonial Tasmania, also now showing in cinemas and attracting rave reviews, Australia seems to be enjoying a purple patch for powerful cinema storytelling.
If 1939 was "the" golden year for Hollywood movie-making (think The Wizard of Oz, Gone With The Wind etc), what will the film historians of the future be saying in 60 years about the home-grown stories Australia told on the big screen in 2019?
Best you get out to the movies and do a bit of dinky-di David Stratton-ing for yourself.
James Joyce
Executive Editor, Australian Community Media