flathead

Jaydon Martin’s feature directorial debut combines fiction and documentary to present a compassionate portrait of blue-col- lar life in Australia. Cass Cumerford has borne more than his fair share of setbacks in life. Now in his seventies, he decides to re- turn to his childhood home of Bundaberg, a small city famous for its rum, in Queensland. Through conversations with the strangers he encounters and the friends he makes, Cass gradually reveals the events that have shaped his life – the mistakes he has made, the moments of joy and the grief that weighs him down.

Drawing on the lives and past of a rich panoply of characters in Bundaberg, Martin creates an environment that allows those in front of the camera to perform – summoning the fabric of their lives to interact with others, with subjects that range from ad- diction, race, faith and the forces that bind and repel us. Shot in crisp monochrome, Flathead traverses its landscape in search of a country that rarely appears in the headlines or on screen. In doing so, it becomes a vital, spirited and poignant portrait of community life.