We Are The Shaggs is an ardent, highly entertaining doco on "the worst band ever". (Supplied: MIFF)
Settling in for an enlightening documentary with a compelling soundtrack is a unique cinematic delight.
It's the key appeal of the Music On Film program at Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).
This year it's included the world premiere of Jebediah: Are We OK?, a candid doco on the Perth alt-rock icons, and a 25th anniversary screening of influential queer classic Hedwig And The Angry Inch with creator John Cameron Mitchell.
Beyond those, here's our take on program highlights and where you might view them beyond MIFF.
Tina Arena: Unravel Me is a suitably glamorous portrait of its "fierce and vulnerable" subject's long career. (Supplied: MIFF)
Tina Arena's six-decade career is more than deserving of a silver screen examination.
The Australian singer's enduring success marks her as a survivor who has had to "kick against the system time and time again," as manager Michael Parisi notes late in this glossy documentary.
Resilient and resplendent as ever, Arena is still out there doing it at age 58 with the same professional tenacity she did as a prodigious 9-year-old on Young Talent Time.
Arguably its biggest alumna, she dazzled audiences as well as the TV phenomenon's late, legendary creator Johnny Young.
But Filippina Lydia Arena, or "Pina" as her Sicilian-Australian family lovingly call her, initially struggled to shake her girl-next-door image and transition to a solo career. Until, that is, she penned Chains, Sorrento Moon and Wasn't It Good. Hits too good to ignore.
Tina Arena: Unravel Me excels in chronicling this formative period, punctuated with input from the modern-day doyenne, an effortlessly glamorous, eternally impressive vocalist captured in photo shoots and to-camera narration.
A shame then that the film doesn't dig deeper past the curated image, regularly falling back on platitudes and gesturing to profound emotional stakes without really interrogating them.
We're told, rather than truly shown, the challenges of juggling motherhood and pop stardom, or navigating multiple international markets.
Nuance is often skated over in favour of melodrama or simply ticking the next box in Arena's trajectory.
