This past Sunday night, a piece of television gave people pause to recall precisely what they'd been doing before they heard the news: playing on the beach, whining about the heat, sitting in front of their airconditioner pretending the world outside didn't exist.

Most people who weren't initially directly affected by the events of Black Saturday have wincingly clear memories of how mundane their grievances were on February 7th, 2009.

Mine involve barking at my then-partner that the tomatoes and cucumbers in the backyard were being sunburned because the shade-cloth had fallen down in the wind - everyone remembers the wind.

The Sunday television in question was ABC1's premiere of Jacob Hickey's Inside The Firestorm, and if its beginnings pushed people to recall what they were doing that afternoon, the rest of the documentary compelled viewers to remember exactly what everyone affected by Black Saturday experienced.


From start to finish, it was a truly remarkable piece of filmmaking.

So remarkable, indeed, that many people chose not to watch it, or turned off after a few minutes.

One particularly odious opinion that seemed to spread quickly through social media was that it was "disaster/tragedy porn".

That stance suggests that to commemorate a disaster such as Black Saturday in filmic/televisual form automatically translates to a gruesome cheapening of actual tragedy for 'edge of your seat' drama, something Inside The Firestorm didn't do.

(Though you can't deny how compelling it was to watch the progress of the fires retold; perhaps more compelling because, unlike a disaster movie, we know exactly what the horrible denouement is.)

But what was so vitally important about Inside The Firestorm's role (aside from the traditional duties of documentary television) was that, in addition to presenting "what happened", it provided a document of Black Saturday told only (with the exception of Hugo Weaving's excellent, measured narration) by those who fought and escaped the fires - on behalf of those who didn't.

As Hickey told the ABC website, "The common theme throughout the making of this documentary has been the extraordinary generosity of spirit shown to us by those who have suffered the most unimaginable and devastating experience. Many of who lost everything they owned, others who lost so much more.  All gave us the one thing we needed more than anything else, their time."

If there was one momentary clang in the film's entirety, it was the slightly manipulative way it was revealed that Jason Lynn's wife and children had, in fact, survived the fires when they fled early.

Seeing photographs of people throughout the film had  become a kind of ominous shorthand for "deceased", so while his family's survival was remarkable and wonderful, it felt almost cheap to put it forward in such a "ta da!" manner.

But on a day of such unrelenting horror, who's to blame the filmmakers for choosing to inject that surprise 180 - after all, it was real.

And the realness of everyone involved in Inside The Firestorm was its true strength: beyond the impressive CGI mapping and the astounding amount of actual footage shot on cameras, phones and by the news media, it was the people who were so captivating and moving.

There are not a lot of television moments you can say you were truly glad to witness, but Inside The Firestorm was one of them.


(Disclosure: Inside The Firestorm was produced by Renegade Films' factual unit; I have worked with Renegade's entertainment arm on a number of projects including RocKwiz.)