New film shines a light on Tasmania’s housing affordability crisis and homelessness

Alex Laird’s short film examines personal versus social responsibility within Tasmania’s housing affordability crisis.

A still from Alex Laird’s short film, Tabernacle, on homelessness in Tasmania.

“WHO are we when nobody’s watching?” asks Hobart filmmaker Alex Laird.

Laird’s darkly satirical film, Tabernacle, speaks directly to this question and others that examine personal versus social responsibility and class anxiety within the housing affordability crisis in Tasmania.

The 22-minute, independently produced Tasmanian film will be shown for the first time at the Moonah Arts Centre tomorrow with introductions by Labor housing spokeswoman Alison Standen and Screen Tasmania executive manager Andrew McPhail.

The film launch comes as two Tasmanian charities this week put forward a proposal for a Safe Night Space in Hobart to help the growing number of people sleeping rough in the city.

“I wrote the script with a friend [S. Gerry Edwards] in very early 2018, and in terms of the housing affordability crisis and homelessness, there wasn’t nearly as much conversation about it [as there is now],” says Laird, a Hobart-based filmmaker who works as the lead editor of Moving Image at Mona.

“The conversation from what I was hearing [in 2018] had an element of victim blaming about it and ‘Why don’t these people just get their shit together?’ It was around this idea of people’s investment properties and it was all very self-centred and self-focused, but on the other hand we had these people in this awful situation.

“There was a refusal by people to see they might be contributing to [the problem] in some way. That was the defining narrative for me.”

Laird says he felt compelled to explore these issues in a film. He initially approached Screen Tasmania for funding, but eventually decided to produce the film on his own with a shoestring budget (of $3500) and a volunteer crew and cast of 45.

“I was committed to making a cinematic story that really functions as a TV pilot,” Laird says.

Filmed over four days during March and April this year, in and around Hobart, Tabernacle follows Nick, a middle-aged family man who appears to have it all, but is increasingly concerned about the growing homeless population living in tents at a park near his Airbnb property. The pressure of expectation from his friends, co-workers, family and society force him to confront his own actions and behaviours after an altercation with a homeless person.

The cast and crew include leading Tasmanian actors Ivano Del Pio (Rosehaven), Sara Pensalfini (Dark Place) and cinematographer Richard Williams (The Gloaming, The Kettering Incident).

Laird says he wanted to shine a light on homelessness and housing affordability in Tasmania by provoking the audience to interrogate their own actions and response to the crisis.

“It’s a film that does indict the audience — that’s what it attempts to do at least. The film is funny, ironic, dark and sad, but it does point the finger and it raises a lot of questions and wants you to think about how you might respond to these situations,” he says.

Laird sees Tabernacle as a proof-of-concept for ambitious film productions made on a shoestring budget and hopes it may help pressure “the people in charge to drive change”.

“I’m someone who believes in the power of people, but more than that I believe in [the need for] structural change,’’ he says. “I might rub people up the wrong way, but my heart is in the right place.”

Tabernacle has a free screening at 7pm tomorrow at the Moonah Arts Centre, Hobart. Donations will be taken for Loui’s Van (St Vincent de Paul). More information @TabernacleMovie