“STRONGER than Fiction”, the Canberra documentary film festival, has grown because of good local support and a commitment by co-producers Simon Weaving and Deb Kingsland to seek and obtain extraordinary stories that prove that the truth, the unusual, the confronting, the energetic and the magical are stronger than any fiction.
And in the hands of talented and astute documentary creatives, the results are a pleasant departure from the current comic book and computer-generated fantasies that meld into a mishmash of sameness.
Opening night and we were off to the Himalayas for “Sherpa” directed by Canberra filmmaker Jennifer Peedom.
Sherpas are essential to the climbers, delivering everything that makes for a camping and climbing experience that has gone up quite a few notches since Hillary and Tensing conquered Everest.
Peedom fortuitously found herself filming slap-bang in the middle of a sherpa dispute after an avalanche killed 16 sherpas on the infamous Khumbu Icefall. The change in the relationship of these mild-mannered, deeply religious and respectful sherpas to the foreign climbers and their sense of entitlement, is the stuff of a balanced and confronting story well told.
The conquest of Everest is a trophy for foreigners, for Sherpas it is hard work as their “beasts of burden”.
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