Jessie McKinnon

Kitty Green’s film Ukraine is Not a Brothel is a very honest and delightfully composed documentary of Ukraine’s topless feminism awareness group, Femen. The film that was originally sparked by an article in a Melbourne newspaper was born of over 700 hours of footage; recorded whilst Green lived with these girls in Ukraine.   The movie follows the stories of the young women who protest in order to change Ukraine’s reputation of being full of female sex-workers and the perception that all Ukrainian women are controlled by men; they wish for females to be equal to men and have the same work opportunities. It begins with quite an optimistic view of the girls, who each share tales of their involvement with the organisation, and how it affects them and their families, through interviews and footage of their bare-breasted protests. Each of the them are stunning, slim, model-like girls (apart from one, whose grossly overweight body is used for her ‘shock factor’ and publici...

The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) runs from the 31st of July to the 17th of August this year. I've decided to do a subject at uni that is centred aroundthe festival and this means I'll be going to six documentaries and two industry talks as required by the course, and four films of my choice! This is one major plus about choosing to go to Melbourne Uni.. I'm almost finished my maths degree, yet all through my tertiary education, I've been required to do a subject a semester outside of my faculty, and it's been great to immerse myself into arts subjects (namely music and film) that I wouldn't have studied otherwise. I'm really glad that I chose the documentary stream, as I really think I'll get a lot more out of it than a fiction stream. I'm not a huge film kind of girl, and it's not unusual for me to be gasped at with an 'oh my god, how have you not seen [insert film here]?!' I don't really have an excuse, I have...