This sweet documentary unpacks some big ideas about tiny living.
As part of its autumn season, the Australian Centre of The Moving Image presents Tiny, an independent documentary on the Tiny House movement.
The film focuses on Christopher Smith, who is about to turn thirty. He has made the decision to take control of his life and, for him, that means building a house the size of a parking space in his backyard. What begins as a seemingly ludicrous idea – he only gives himself three months to build from scratch – begins to seem more and more logical as the film introduces us to tiny house owners all over America.
The style of this documentary is very grassroots. The film was shot, directed and produced by Smith himself, along with his girlfriend Merete Mueller. They interview each other as they drive, as they lie in bed and, predominantly, as they attempt to construct the tiny house.
While Tiny might be many viewers’ introduction to the idea of Tiny Houses, the movement has actually existed since the 1990s and is beginning to take hold in Australia. “At the moment Australia has the largest houses on the planet,” Darren Hughes of Tiny Houses Australia tells me. “The average house size in our country is now 243 square metres. This whole McMansion idea of living has only come about in the last thirty or forty years and I think people are starting to move away from that.
“On top of being more sustainable and ecologically sound, affordability issues are a large factor. With average house prices in Australia being upwards of 500 000 dollars people are starting to reassess what’s really important in their lives,” Hughes continues. “They’re deciding, well hang on, this could be a good option instead of locking themselves into a thirty year mortgage for a place that’s hardly a dream home and having all this financial pressure on themselves to have to work fifty, sixty hours a week to pay that mortgage. People are working their butts off to pay for these houses which they aren’t really spending any time in.”
To celebrate their exclusive season of Tiny, the Australia Centre of The Moving Image has installed a true to scale floor plan of a Tiny House on their upper level, which audiences will walk across on their way into the cinema.
Showing at ACMI, Federation Square from April 3 – 30. $10 Full, $9 ACMI Member.
