The documentary film The Giants’ first showing in Launceston tonight is sold out at The Star Theatre. Its first two showings at Hobart’s State Theatre sold out last Saturday. Two more screenings at The State on Saturday are headed for full houses.
The Giants had already featured at film festivals in Adelaide and Perth.
During the week, it drew large audiences to six different theatres in Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra, including 650 to The Ritz in Sydney’s Randwick and 700 to the Astor in Melbourne’s St Kilda.
The Giants is a biopic on environmental campaigner Bob Brown and showcases the giant trees of Tasmania including its 100-metres-tall Eucalyptus regnans, 4000 years old Huon pines, and a giant myrtle in the takayna / Tarkine rainforest, with Aboriginal advocate Theresa Sainty and national and international scientists and environmentalists giving commentary.
Filmmakers Laurence Billiet and Rachael Antony, whose documentary on Cathy Freeman was the ‘most watched’ on Australian television in 2020, use technological wizardry to demonstrate new science on how trees ‘communicate’ as a forest community. This includes a dazzling display of colourful fungi in the Tarkine. They are delighted by the enthusiastic reception The Giants has received.
Bob Brown says he hopes The Giants will encourage more young Australians to take peaceful action to defend Australia’s rapidly-deteriorating natural environment.
“Saving what’s left of our forests and woodlands has the double bonus of storing carbon in this climate emergency and also protecting the habitat of scores of Australia’s endangered birds, mammals, and reptiles. Anthony Albanese will go down in history if he becomes the prime minister who puts an end to the logging of our forests, as New Zealand ended native forest logging in 2001.”
The Giants is now ready for general release in theatres across Australia.
