Big Dreamers (2006)

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Tully is a small city in Queensland along the northeast coast of Australia that was once dominated by the sugar trade. However, since Brazil and other South American nations began upping production of sugar and cutting their prices, Tully's sugar producers have been in dire circumstances.… More Tully is a small city in Queensland along the northeast coast of Australia that was once dominated by the sugar trade. However, since Brazil and other South American nations began upping production of sugar and cutting their prices, Tully's sugar producers have been in dire circumstances. Needing to bolster the local economy, Tully's city fathers propose making the town into a tourist attraction by building the world's largest gumboot. Odd as this might seem to outsiders, Australia has a tradition of massive public sculptures of common creatures and items, from Border Village's Big Kangaroo and Dadwell Bridge's Big Koala to the Big Pineapple in Nambour and the Big Abalone in Laverton North. So the people of Tully decide to construct the Big Gumboot, but building the enormous galosh is more complicated than they expected; an artist from out of town is given the commission, but Tully-based sculptor Roger Chandler wastes no time demanding he be given a chance to handle the job. A compromise is reached in which Chandler will carve a massive tree frog to attach to the boot, but getting the boot built in the first place is a longer and more expensive process than either the artist or his patrons anticipated. Filmmaker Camille Hardman followed the slow birth of the Big Gumboot, and Big Dreamers is a documentary which tells a potentially silly story while respecting its serious undertones. Big Dreamers was screened in competition at the 2007 Silverdocs Film Festival, a festival for documentary cinema sponsored in part by the American Film Institute. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi