Past events
Castlemaine Documentary Festival shows films throughout the year that challenge, provoke, and invite reflection on the strength of persistance, resistance, truth-telling and the ongoing legacies of colonisation.
As well as facilitating events to help the local community learn how to create their own film content.
Blak Douglas vs The Commonwealth
29th May 2025
Theatre Royal
Blak Douglas vs The Commonwealth follows renowned Dhungatti artist Blak Douglas as he confronts Australia’s colonial legacy through bold art and personal truth-telling.
In painting his grandmother’s portrait, he uncovers buried histories of the Cootamundra Girls Home and the intergenerational trauma it left behind.
Told entirely in his voice, this powerful film explores identity, resilience, and transformation through art.
Motherhood in the Colony
11th May, 2025
Theatre Royal
Motherhood in the Colony is a moving storytelling project uniting First Nations and Palestinian women to explore shared struggles and strength through motherhood. The film invites reflection on love, resilience, and decolonisation.
All proceeds support Nalderun Education Aboriginal Corporation and Mutual Aid Market Castlemaine in their vital community-led work.
Free entry for First Nations and Palestinian attendees — join us in solidarity and celebration this Mother’s Day.
Looking for Simone & Teachers of Peaches
International Women's Day Eve
Screening & Music Performance
Friday March 7th 2025
Theatre Royal
Looking for Simone retraces the roots of Simone de Beauvoir’s revolutionary ideas from The Second Sex, a cornerstone of global feminism. Through an American road trip exploring the landscapes that shaped her thought, the film confronts love, capitalism, and liberation.
Artist and musician Peaches is a feminist icon leaving an indelible mark on popular culture as proven by this blend of archival gems, interviews and riveting tour footage of The Teaches of Peaches Anniversary Tour.
TAKAYNA, The Heart of Lutruwita
26th February, 2025
Theatre Royal
TAKAYNA – The Heart of Lutruwita / Tasmania is a journey to the vast and threatened landscapes of Australia’s largest temperate rainforest in northwest Lutruwita / Tasmania. Told through the powerful stories of Tasmanian Aboriginal community members, frontline activists, scientists and musicians.
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
International Women's Day Eve
Screening & Music Performance
Thursday March 7th and Saturday 9th, 2024
Theatre Royal
Shere Hite’s 1976 groundbreaking study of the intimate experiences of women, The Hite Report, remains one of the bestselling books of all time. The book challenged restrictive conceptions of sex and opened a dialogue in popular culture around women’s pleasure. But few remember Shere Hite today. What led to her erasure?
GRASS AND ZÖJ
Screening & Performance Friday March 1st, 2024 Astor Theatre
A not-to-be-missed cinema experience mixing live music with one of the greatest silent films of all time. After a stand-out premier at the 2023 Castlemaine Documentary Festival, Grass and ZÖJ will play for one night only at Melbourne's iconic Astor Theatre.
Editing Workshop for Filmmakers
Saturday March 2nd, 2024
Castlemaine Senior CItizens Centre
Build your capacity for great visual storytelling by learning the art of digital editing. You will develop your knowledge of video editing software, learn how best to organise your material, what makes a great edit, mixing audio, adding titles and a soundtrack - and most importantly, how to share your work at the end.
HELLO DANKNESS
Soda Jerk
Screening & Q&A
Tuesday January 23, 2024
Theatre Royal
Soda Jerk (Terror Nullius) returns with Hello Dankness - a new film comprised entirely of film samples. A political fable that bears witness to the psychotropic spectacle of American politics from 2016 to 2021, Hello Dankness explores the mythologies and lore that took root around it.
Sound & Vision Workshop for Storytellers
Saturday November 25, 2023
Senior Citizen Centre, Castlemaine
Led by local practitioners Tony Jackson, Leonie VanEyk and Kyla Brettle. A full-day workshop developing technical skills in sound and vision - focusing on getting content and coverage when making short non-fiction films. Offered to support the production of entries into ‘LOCALS 2024’, a program of short non-fiction work screeneing Opening Night of the next Castlemaine Documentary Festival.
NAM JUNE PAIK: MOON IS THE OLDEST TV Amanda Kim
Thursday October 26, 2023
Theatre Royal
Was that “The George Washington of Video Art”? or a “Cultural Terrorist”? Maybe even “Citizen Zero of the Electronic Superhighway”? Who really was Nam June Paik, pillar of the American avant-garde in the 20th century and arguably the most famous Korean artist in modern history?
SENSES OF CINEMA
John Hughes & Tom Zubrycki
John Hughes & Tom Zubrycki
Screening and Q&A
Sat 7 Oct, 2023
Northern Arts Hotel
The rise and fall of Filmmakers’ Co-operatives is a lively, untold story of the late 20th century Australia that links social movements of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s with an ‘underground’ cinema that fostered alternative filmmaking enterprise in production, distribution and exhibition.
CLIMATE CHANGERS: Tim Flannery's Search for Climate Leadership
Screening and Q&A
17 September 2023
Theatre Royal
CLIMATE CHANGERS - a brave new film tracking Prof. Tim Flannery’s global search for genuine climate leadership and reflection on his own trajectory as a conservationist. Screened in concert across Australia, the film will be followed by a live zoom Q&A with Tim Flannery, Australian-American inventor and engineer Saul Griffith and international human rights lawyer Kavita Naidoo.
Filmmaking Workshop for Storytellers
with Tony Jackson, Bergen O'Brien and Sam Dinning
9 September 2023
Northern Arts Hotel
Supporting entry into LOCALS – documentary films for locals by locals screening Opening Night at the Festival 2024.
THE UNREDACTED
Jihad Rehab
Australian Premier
3 May, 2023
Theatre Royal
A group of men trained by al-Qaeda are transferred from Guantanamo to the world’s first rehabilitation center for “terrorists” located in Saudi Arabia. Filmed over three years, with unprecedented access, this film is a complex and nuanced exploration of the men we have heard so much about but never heard from.
BECAUSE WE HAVE
EACH OTHER
Sari Braithwaite
23 April 2023
Theatre Royal
Made over five years, Because We Have Each Other is a delightfully hyper- intimate feature. A masterclass in slice-of-life documentary, the film embeds its audience in the life of a neurodiverse family in the forgotten working-class suburb of Logan.
LOCAL'S RELOADED &
WALKING WITH FISH
Michael Harkin
21 March, 2023
Theatre Royal
To commemorate the 30 year anniversary of The Fringe Festival the premiere screening of Walking The Fish, a film about the birth of Castlemaine Fringe.
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED
& MIUCHA; THE VOICE OF BOSSA NOVA
8 March 2023
Theatre Royal
Castlemaine Documentary Festival and Theatre Royal proudly present two films centring around courageous, impactful women.
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED
& MIUCHA: THE VOICE OF BOSSA NOVA
EDITING WORSHOP
with Bergen O'Brien
4 March, 2023 Senior Citizens Centre
A hands on editing workshop. Participants to bring in footage to edit. Supporting entry into LOCALS – documentary films for locals by locals screening Opening Night at the Festival 2024.
THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THINGS
1st December 2022
Theatre Royal
When Jennifer Abbott lost her sister to cancer, her sorrow opened her up to the profound gravity of climate breakdown. Abbott’s new documentary The Magnitude of All Things draws intimate parallels between the experiences of grief—both personal and planetary. Stories from the frontlines of climate change merge with recollections from the filmmaker’s childhood on Ontario’s Georgian Bay. What do these stories have in common? The answer, surprisingly, is everything.
THE CANDIDATE
27th November, 2022
The Northern Arts Hotel
The Candidate follows Greens candidate Alex Bhathal over the final three weeks of her campaign to win a seat in the Australian federal parliament in 2018.
In this, her sixth attempt in fifteen years, and with a 1% margin between her and victory, she and her team have good reason to believe that history is finally on their side.
But this is no ordinary campaign…
SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS
18th November, 2022
Theatre Royal
SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS is the untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, remarkable composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today.
MINE-FIELD
19th September, 2022
The Northern Arts Hotel
Filmed over 4 years, MINE-FIELD shows how a farming community in East Gippsland fought a ruthless mining company – and won. This topical film also examines the negative effect of mining on three other rural communities – and warns that mine regulation is failing while the government promotes mining across the state.
ANONYMOUS CLUB
9th April, 2022
Theatre Royal
The antithesis of a rock biography, ANONYMOUS CLUB paints a raw and intimate picture of enigmatic singer-songwriter, Courtney Barnett an ananti-influencer who is a powerful voice for our times, a recluse acclaimed by audiences the world over and a strong female artist in conflict with herself.
WOMEN OF STEEL
8th March, 2021
Theatre Royal
For International Women’s Day, CDoc is screening Women of Steel.
Wollongon, 1980: Ater being told “there’s no jobs for women” at the local steelworks, a group of women begin a campaign against Australia’s most powerful company.
WILD THINGS
28th January, 2021
Theatre Royal
Wild Things documentary follows a new generation of environmental activists that are mobilising against forces more powerful than themselves and saying: enough. Armed only with mobile phones, this growing army of eco warriors will do whatever it takes to save their futures from the ravages of climate change.
BRAZZEN HUSSIES
9th December, 2020
Theatre Royal
Brazen Hussies celebrates the social activism and the grass-roots nature of the Women’s Liberation Movement – featuring key activists passionate testimonies. From its first stirrings in Brisbane in 1965 to its controversial incursions into the Whitlam government from 1973 to 1975, the film shows how women began organising around issues such as equal pay, reproductive rights, affordable childcare, and the prevention of family violence and rape.
