The Making of Utopia
Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochla-Kalleinen
(FI/AU 2006, 60:00 mins)
Tellervo and Oliver sent an open letter to the communities in Australia inviting them to join a workshop and write a fiction film about themselves. The main questions posed to the communities were related to the ongoing conflict between utopian vision and communal reality. The workshops resulted in 4 short fiction films written and acted by community members. In several interviews the participants commented on the films that came up in each community.
Australia has a long history of utopian communities dating back into the 19th century. A large number of communities were established in the aftermath of the Aquarius festival – the Australian version of Woodstock – held in the rural area of Nimbin in 1973. Some of the festival-goers stayed in the area turning land-sharing fantasies into reality.