THE STARS

Thin brows, Things Will Be Different, graffiti bust

★★★★★ Things Will Be Different 

In this subtle and probing documentary, local film-makers Lucie McMahon and Celeste De Clario tell the story of two neighbours in the period leading up to their forced relocation from Walker Street public housing estate in Northcote. Will, a 50-year-old housing activist, and Najat, a single mother of four, are the last remaining residents at the block built on the banks of the Merri Creek in the 1960s. In an unhurried and intimate montage, we see the neighbours go about their everyday lives in an estate doomed for destruction, while also interfacing with housing bureaucracy and searching for new places to live. Will, Najat, and her children remain good-humoured and resilient, but a persistent anxiety hangs over everything—intensified by the thin, melancholic light of Melbourne’s inner north, which the filmmakers capture perfectly. Things Will Be Different is not a polemic, but it reverberates in the context of the Victorian government’s Public Housing Renewal Program, which will demolish over forty estates across the city in the coming decades. The plan is to replace them with mixed social/private developments with Design Files-core finishes: hooray! This invaluable snapshot in time shows what will be lost—friendship, community, shared history. “Do you think you two will still see each other?” McMahon asks Will towards the end of the film, while on a visit to Najat’s new place in Preston. “Hope so,” he says with a shrug.

See website for screening details.

★★★★ Thin Brows

History moves in cycles. Greeks and Romans. Renaissance and Baroque. Edo and Meiji. Thick eyebrows and extremely thin ones. Have you noticed how many fashionistas look like their face follicles are mainlining Ozempic at the moment? Sadly, we still have PTSD from a tweenage tweeze addiction and ne’er-forgotten horror rumours of older sisters who plucked so hard that they never grew their brows back. We have been too scared to make the transition… but kudos to the babes who are bringing Gabbriette home. We're so inspired. What does a thin brow communicate? Restraint, a seductively cocky attitude, comfort with a degree of publicised effort and artifice. Spiky mystery. Weimar. To quote Hilton Als’ classic White Girls essay on the great silent film star and member of the Thin Brow Hall of Fame: “I am Louise Brooks, whom no man will ever possess.” Suddenly, those wholesome bushy brows of yesteryear are looking very Hungry Caterpillar. Maybe we're ready to streamline, after all.