WELCOME TO BABEL
Australia / 2024 / 99 min / DCP
Directed by James Bradley
Production : James Bradley, Graeme Isaac, Carl-Ludwig Rettinger
Sydney Festival 2024
Introduced by James Bradley & (To be confirmed) Graeme Isaac
Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen has an ambitious plan: to create a monumental 130-square-meter painting depicting the tumultuous history of communism. His wife, Lan Wang, also an artist, considers it a foolhardy challenge. Yet her unwavering support plays a key role in Jiawei's almost obsessive mission. The film explores the decade Jiawei dedicated to studying the Chinese Cultural Revolution, as well as his relationship with Lan, a bond forged during this time. Through hundreds of portraits and reinterpretations of iconic works, will Jiawei succeed in completing his Tower of Babel?
James Bradley
James Bradley has worked in film and TV for over 45 years, variously as a writer, producer, director and editor of numerous documentary films and series. He has a reputation for telling powerful stories and a passion for cross-cultural collaboration. His many editing credits include a slate of award-winning Australian Indigenous projects including the dramatic feature “Radiance” and documentaries “Dhakiyarr vs The King”, “5 Seasons”, “In My Father’s Country”, “art + soul”, and “Mr Patterns”, for which he received the 2005 AFI Editing Award. He co-directed “50 Years of Silence” which won the 1994 AFI Best Documentary Award and in 2011 produced and directed the award-winning short documentary “Ochre and Ink”, the story of Chinese-Australian artist Zhou Xiaoping’s 23-year collaboration with Aboriginal artists. James also produced the documentaries “Destiny In Alice”, “Blown Away”, and “Under a Pagan Sky” for ABC TV, and has taught film production and editing at several Film Schools and Universities in Sydney. In 2019 James received the prestigious Stanley Hawes Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Australia Documentary industry. In 2024 James completed his first feature documentary as director, “Welcome To Babel”, which premiered at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, winning the Documentary Australia Award.
