Throughout most of August, Melbourne’s city and surrounds will be consumed by film, with 257 feature films, 102 shorts and 12 XR works on the bill for MIFF’s 70th anniversary.

The festival, set to kick off on Wednesday 4 August will be showcasing two Greek movies in this year’s program.

On Saturday 13 August MIFF presents A Marble Travelogue by Sean Wang, an experimental documentary following the world’s most cherished stone, Greece’s snow-white marble on a cross-cultural odyssey – from quarry to gift shop – in this colossal tale of commodification.

Today, its most avid buyers are Chinese. Wang follows the journey as Greece sinks into debt all the while China enjoys an economic boom – and because nothing says prosperity like marble, great slabs of stone travel oceans to China, where Quyang artisans carve them into imitations of Hellenic statues and columns.

The director patiently records remaining gravel becomes fridge magnets and other souvenirs that are shipped back to Europe, destined to be sold to Chinese tourists.

Seeing this monumental material in moments that range from dizzyingly sublime to wryly funny he watches as its cultural meaning is literally being reinscribed and introduces the audience to several oddball characters – a businessman, a marble dealer, a pair of twins who act as ‘cultural ambassadors’.

Showing similarities between East and West, the narratives melt into a very real and human story about the cost of what we value.

Also screening on 13 August, director Ana Kokkinos’ Head On revolves around a queer 19-year-old Greek-Australian man’s ecstatic journey to find himself.
Alex Dimitriades plays Ari, angry and nihilistic, in conflict with his traditional parents, who want him to settle down, having no idea that he spends most of his time taking drugs and hooking up. But Ari’s vulnerable, too, wrestling with his sexuality and what it means to be a man. Over a ferocious 24 hours, he journeys around the streets of Melbourne and into his own alienated heart, trying to reconcile it all.

First screened at MIFF in 1998 after its premiere at Cannes, Head On depicts Melbourne at street level – its dark alleyways and pulsing dancefloors, the highs and lows of multicultural life from east to west. Based on Christos Tsiolkas’s explosive 1995 debut novel, Loaded, Kokkinos’s second feature courted controversy on its original release for its graphic violence and sexual content, but went on to be nominated for several AFI Awards (winning Best Editing) and nabbed the AWGIE for Best Adaptation.

  • A Marble Travelogue (97 mins, 15+) – Screenings provide assisted listening and wheelchair access

When: Saturday, 13 August @ 4:15 pm

Where: Kino 2, Lower Ground Level, 45 Collins Street Melbourne, VIC

When: Tuesday, 16 August @ 1:15 pm

Where: ACMI 1, Federation Square, Flinders St, Melbourne VIC

  • Head On (104 mins, 18+/Contains high-level sex scenes, depictions of drug use and adult themes) – Screening provides assisted listening and wheelchair access

When: Saturday, 13 August @ 4:15 pm

Where: Kino 2, Lower Ground Level, 45 Collins Street Melbourne, VIC

For bookings and more information visit: play.miff.com.au