2015 Transitions Film Festival Announced

January 21, 2015 Dave A Will For The Woods, Alive Inside, Amanda McKenzie, Amy Browne, David Hood, Defendant Five, Heidi Douglas, John Wiseman, Laura Nix, Merchants Of Doubt, Not Business As Usual, Peter Charles Downey, Steven Bygrave, Surviving Earth, Transitions Film Festival, Within Reach, Yes Men Are Revolting

The Transitions Film Festival returns to Melbourne this February, with an expanded program of world-changing documentaries. The Festival kicks off on Friday 13th February with an open air screening of Inside Out :The People’s Art Project at Testing Grounds and runs until the first week of March. The program features a Projector Bike ride and outdoor screening at Argyle Square in Carlton, as well as free films on the Big Screen at Federation Square, and a jam-packed program at Cinema Nova, including 11 national premieres and 4 Australian documentary features.

From the towering epicentre of Hollywood to the dirt and dust of the developing world, the films in this year’s Transitions Film Festival showcase the disruptors, defenders, innovators, and champions in the ever-accelerating transition to a new way of seeing, hearing thinking and doing.

Highlights of this year’s festival include the fascinating film Inside Out:The People’s Art Project which follows the TED prize-winning artist JR on his adventure to blanket entire cities with community generated art; Black Ice, a gripping tale of the Greenpeace Arctic 30’s capture and imprisonment by the Russian authorities; Yes Men are Revolting, the long anticipated sequel from the hilariously fearless serial pranksters the Yes Men; and Merchants of Doubt, a powerful exposé of the fossil fuel industry’s employment of spin doctors to deliberately mislead all of us about climate science.

The Festival turns itself inside out with a series of Projector Bike shorts being beamed onto walls and buildings across Melbourne, a free open air screening of Within Reach at Argyle Square in Carlton, and a showing of the B-Corp film Not Business as Usual at Melbourne’s first social enterprise bar, Shebeen.

The program also features a series of films revolving around the life-cycle (and the will to transcend it) including Alive Inside, a powerful film about one man’s quest to use music to bring joy back to dementia patients; A Will for the Woods, an exploration of the green burial movement; an intimate portrait of a doctor with lymphoma and his quest to organise a green burial for himself, Immortalists which delves into the fascinating world of the brilliant and eccentric scientists who are on the cusp of making eternal life a reality; and Surviving Earth which throws its gaze at the life cycle of our entire species, highlights the severity of our predicament, and offers solutions.

Key festival guests include filmmakers: Laura Nix (Yes Men Are Revolting – USA), Heidi Douglas (Defendant Five) Peter Charles Downey (Surviving Earth) and Amy Browne (Will for the Woods) as well as leading artists, activists and sustainability leaders including: Steven Bygrave (CEO BZE), Amanda McKenzie (CEO Climate Council), John Wiseman (Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute), David Hood, (Doing Something Good) and many more.

Discount tickets are on offer again this year for cyclists, with concession priced tickets being rewarded to patrons who ride their bike to the cinema.

The Transitions Film Festival is dedicated to showcasing inspirational documentaries about the social and technological innovations, revolutionary ideas and trailblazing change-makers that are leading the way to a better world.