“The people we depicted gave me their souls to put in a film”: Jaydon Martin on Flathead
“I’ve always wanted to make a small, strange film that people stumble upon”, says Jaydon Martin about the journey he went on with his first feature film. The Australian filmmaker made his feature directorial debut at IFFR 2024 with Flathead, a black-and-white intimate docu-fiction portraying the lives of a small working-class community from Bundaberg, Australia. Flathead was part of IFFR’s trademark Tiger Competition, where it was the recipient of a Special Jury Award. “After winning the Jury Award, it just snowballed from there” says the filmmaker about the award and the success of Flathead after Rotterdam.

“I never saw cinema that spoke to me and addressed the experience of living in a working-class town.”
Growing up in a low socio-economic area in Australia, filmmaker Jaydon Martin made his way to independent international cinema only around 15 years-old, when he had access to the Internet. He mentions this “opened the floodgates to international cinema”. He was jolted by the social realism depicted in Ken Loach’s films and felt represented and inspired to portray the experience of the working-class community where he grew up through cinema: “I thought that’s something I could do”.
“I’ve always just wanted to do guerilla filmmaking.”

After being in film school for about a year, the Flathead filmmaker realised this might not be the path for him. “I dropped out and bought a one-way ticket to London. I was so poor and struggling to get by in the UK for years‘”, says Jaydon. Reflecting his “humble beginnings”, Jaydon crafted his own path towards the world of filmmaking: he started working for a magazine and doing behind-the-scenes video work for theatre and opera companies. “That was really my film school”.
After eight years away from his home country, he felt ready to go back and make his first feature film. “I wanted to do a feature that incorporated the people I grew up with. So, I made a pilgrimage back home and started working on Flathead”.
“There’s not much cinema or media depicting working-class Australians in a real and authentic way.”
The journey of Flathead started from Jaydon’s drive to shed light on a community of people that, even though makes up the majority of the country, does not get revealed often in its purest form. “They have a lot to say and feel in this world”, says the filmmaker about the community he grew up with. Not only did he want to make a film entirely “based on them”, but he wanted to do so in a pure and genuine manner, where fact and fiction blend to re-create intimate and traumatic experiences from people’s lives. “More than anything, I want to come across in a sincere lens. I think the most beautiful way of communication is through sincerity”, explains the filmmaker about making the film’s characters relatable and merging fact and fiction.

He further explains that within each scene, the people depicted “have agency towards what level of truth and reality they want to share [with me] in the film, it’s up to them”. He recalls that they would sometimes re-create scenes that dig up particularly traumatic or emotional experiences in a fictional scenario. “It’s a really beautiful way of working because there’s a cathartic nature to recreate something that you’ve lived through. You can really get a more authentic feeling on screen, even though it’s staged. And that’s the beautiful trick of film.”
“The beautiful thing about black-and-white is that it strips everything away.”
In Flathead, memories are laid bare, and Bundaberg is a “land scarred with fields”. About the stylistic decision of coating the film in black and white, the Australian filmmaker echoes his references of black-and-white films about working class communities made by Ken Loach and Charles Burnett. “That was always at the forefront”. Furthermore, reflecting his commitment to always working with cinema through a sincere lens, Jaydon uses this stylistic choice as a vignette that sucks the audience into the characters’ lives and emotions. “The beautiful thing about black-and-white is that it strips everything away. And you’re left focusing on the emotions of the characters”.

Comparing a black-and-white Bundaberg to a “land scarred with fields”, the filmmaker explains how he protruded this serene landscape with archival footage in pops of colour. Within a small working-class community where “life is living day-to-day, black-and-white”, expectations are subverted and memories are laid bare, unstylised, and real: “Our memories are the most vivid things we hold onto and the most vivid things we have. I always think they should be done in colour”.
“Our experience at the festival was nothing short of amazing. Everyone was so lovely and had such a love for cinema.”
Among seeing the “amazing response” from the press and the audience, getting a review from The Guardian’s chief film critic Peter Bradshaw, and winning an award in competition at the festival, Jaydon calls his experience at IFFR “nerve-wrecking”: “You never think you’re going to get it [the film] done, let alone come to Rotterdam, in competition. To get that response was beautiful”.
With the support of IFFR Pro and the Pro Hub mentorship, networking and panels for filmmakers in selection, Jaydon further remembers to have found at IFFR a place where “you realise how great the industry is, and how many like-minded people there are.” He explains how, as a filmmaker having to work on a film for years, it often happens that you lose perspective and “you’re kind of isolated and feel lonely. Then you come to a festival like Rotterdam and it’s just so refreshing.”

“Rotterdam is pushing the boundaries in the selection of films. The programming is so amazing, so vast, so daring.”
At a time when theatrical runs for small, independent films are limited and finding distribution gets more difficult, “to have festivals like Rotterdam champion independent and unique voices is amazing, that’s what we need to push independent cinema forward”, says the filmmaker when discussing about the professional doors IFFR opened for Flathead. He adds that “as a filmmaker, all you want is for your film to be out in the world. You want as many people as possible to experience it. And the only reason the film’s out in the world is because of IFFR and the brave and bold curation of the programming team and the artistic director Vanja Kaludjercic”.
“I’m only a very small part of why the film has connected with so many people.”
Five years and a successful international reception later, Jaydon and his crew went back to Bundaberg to give back the film to the community where it was born from. “We packed out a theatre there”, recalls Jaydon. “I’m outside in the lobby pacing and hoping that they like it, because this screening really counts”, adds the filmmaker. As if “visiting old family members”, the Bundaberg screening concluded with a wonderful reception, and an emotional evening of talking at the pub.
“It was a really beautiful cathartic experience”, remembers Jaydon about going back to Bundaberg after five years have passed and seeing the people depicted in the film again: “because I’ve been in the edit for so long, they stay preserved in the edit and preserved in the images you’ve captured. But then five years go by and everyone’s aged. It’s a strange feeling”.
“It’s a beautiful thing, living with a film.”

At the end of this full-circle experience, the filmmaker reflects on the passing of time and the timely nature of cinema, emphasising the privilege of having the people of your film be part of your life forever: “That little black box of a camera allows you to step into people’s lives and worlds, and they open up to you sometimes more than they would ever open up to their family members. It’s an extraordinary thing, because you live with a film, but also with the people you’re filming. You grow with them for years and they’re always part of your life. And that’s such a privilege. Even if I didn’t press record on the camera, just this experience alone is life-changing, transformative, and wonderful.”
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