The Queensland Film Festival (QFF) is a new international film festival, showcasing significant contemporary cinema. Debuting in Brisbane in July 2015, the festival seeks to re-energise local film culture by providing a stimulating environment for thinking and talking about these films.

The Institute of Modern Art has partnered with QFF to present a free preview screening of the film: The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga (2014).

Titled after the Slavic tale of the Baba Yaga – a folkloric, forest-dwelling witch who feeds on the innocent—Jessica Oreck’s meditative, experimental documentary offers a powerful treatise on the collision of tradition and progress in post-war Eastern Europe. Luscious imagery of Romanian forests, agrarian work, and modern civilization in a state of decay and disarray harmonises with the ambient moan of a synthesiser. Poetic voice-over tells us that man, fearing nature, has built walls against it.

Captured by cinematographer Sean William Prince and interweaving hand-drawn animation into its documentary montage, The Vanquishing of the Witch of Baba Yaga is a hypnotising hybrid of visual and aural cultures.

D/S Jessica Oreck P Jessica Oreck and Dan Cogan

Polish with English Subtitles HD

More information on the full QFF program can be accessed here.

This event is free and open to everyone.