Guysmatters Of Interest

At the opening night shindig of the Melbourne International Arts Festival, when director Brett Sheehy casually shouted-out some highlights of the 2012 program, only one earned the immediate TRL wooo! from the freeloaders, the mere mention of the angel name of genderqueer warbler Antony – his iconic singular long-ago earnt – causing devout followers to holler heavenward. This is no surprise, Antony slowly inching towards Oprah-like status with each passing project; becoming some benevolent indie-music Earth Mother figure, clutching us to his bosom and singing us lullabies to quell the tears of children dwelling on a dying planet.

This is all writ large on his mega-orchestral Swanlights performance, but amidst the Festival's film program, there's Antony on screens, too. Here, we get Turning, the film adaptation of his collaboration with Charles Atlas; in which I Am A Bird Now songs soundtrack subjects mid transgender transformation. Shot on tour in 2006, by Atlas, when they took the production to Europe, it's, in part, a concert movie (note: this is a pejorative), but the confessionals and histories of its interviewees give the film added resonance. Turning's been the spur to a mini-suite of Atlas pictures: including his 1986 lark Hail The New Puritan, a portrait of flamboyant, firebrand choreographer Michael Clark; and 2011's Ocean, his latest – and last – collaboration with Merce Cunningham.

The rest of the program is a scatter-shot collection of documentaries documenting artists at work; or occasional curios like Without Gorky, in which the granddaughter of the surrealist chronicles how his suicide sent ripples of trauma through the women of her family, across generations.

Cinephiles will get plenty from Arirang, a form of non-narrative therapy for Korean auteur Kim Ki-duk that both subverts and lives up to his hysterical brand of macho-Buddhist genre-tropin'. After an actress nearly died during the making of his 2008 film Dream, Kim retreats for some wilderness time, living in a tent inside a shack; trawling through a mixture of dark depression, infinite navel-gazing, and radical challenges to his beliefs. It's plenty silly seeing him talk to himself on screen, and the transition to fiction on close is kind of embarrassing, but in an era of director portraits that play like PR puff-pieces, the savagery is welcomed.

Anton Corbijn: Inside Out plays far closer to PR puff-piece, this an amiable portrait of the amiable Dutchman at work, casually photographing U2, Lou Reed and Metallica et al, whilst recounting his life and career. It opens with a gallery exhibition of Corbijn's photographs seemingly staged to say 'what a lot of famous people he's photographed', and doesn't go much beyond there. Andrew Bird: Fever Year is just as fluffy, but at least it has the linguistically-gifted violinist-songwriter-whistler at the centre of its lens; its portrait of a year on the road always at its best when Bird is tossing over certain phrases.

Last Days Here is the musical highlight, however: a wince of terrifying failure tinged with moments of intermittent redemption; a warts-and-all – crack is constantly smoked on camera – portrait of wasted heavy-metal vocalist Bobby Liebling, in a film that plays like some stranger-than-fiction cross between Anvil!: The Story Of Anvil and the brutal Roky Erickson chronicle You're Gonna Miss Me. It's riveting viewing that, much of the time, feels like a car-crash in slow motion.

WHAT: Art Matters On Film Program

WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 13 October to Saturday 27, Melbourne Festival, ACMI Cinemas and Greater Union