Max Dona is a Sydney-based filmmaker, entirely self-taught, six years deep into a career that’s taken him from underground music videos to global campaigns for Alexander McQueen and Converse. He’s worked with OneFour, Adidas, Vogue Philippines. He works on digital, 16mm, and Super 8. Last December, his short documentary These City Circles—a portrait of Sydney’s urban exploration and graffiti communities—premiered alongside Jet Williams’ Off the Rails at a sold-out exhibit in Botany. We sat down with him and asked fifteen questions.
1. These City Circles premiered alongside Off the Rails at Art Atrium last December. For anyone who wasn’t there—what’s the film about?
The subject matter of These City Circles is urban exploration and graffiti, filmed throughout Sydney City and its surrounding suburbs. The film focuses mainly on young people behind the adrenaline fuelled antics/vandalism associated with urbex, and attempts to understand why they risk their lives this way.
2. What made you want to make it?
It’s a story worth telling. An Australian identity piece—far more niche than “shrimp on the barbie” or government corruption… But just as important. I wanted to spotlight these kids, showing them that their unique outlook and perspectives on life can captivate audiences far beyond a few views on Instagram.
3. It’s only been shown once. Is that intentional?
Yes, I love the idea of gathering people together for it—an audience can react, discuss and feel as a group. Let’s call it the ‘living room experience’. It will be online one day, but for now the privilege of getting strangers and peers to watch together is too much fun.
4. That whole event was built from nothing—Marketplace couches, your parents’ TVs as a screening bay. What do you remember about putting it together?
I remember having a very basic understanding of the space in my head. Jet and I had made extremely rough ‘blueprints’. All we needed to do was trust the vision—which was to make an environment that combined the coziness of a living room with the elevated curation of an exhibition space.
5. What’s a spot in Sydney that means something to you?
Summer Hill. I grew up at the skatepark, before the final blows of urban upscaling made this quiet middle-class suburb a trendy hangout. I experienced everything at that park—fights, drugs, graffiti, junkies, fashion, loss, love… and skateboarding of course.
6. How did you get into filmmaking?
It’s a long story.
7. What kind of stories are you trying to tell?
Long ones.
8. What’s always in your bag when you’re heading out to shoot?
Sony FX30, Tamron 28-75mm, Sony Zeiss 16-35mm, couple SD cards, tripod, 1.5L bottle of water from Woolworths.
9. Is there a time of day you prefer to film?
Sunset. Although I hardly film during it, and it’s very rare that I make it look good. But I like the idea of it… and for those 30 minutes when the earth is still, quiet and bathed in orange—it’s easy to be present there.
10. What’s your favourite movie and why?
Impossible question. Maybe, Detachment by Tony Kaye.
11. How do you and Jet know each other?
Much like many other creative partnership origins in modern times, we came across each other online. He reached out to me to catch up and discuss what would be our first project together—blowing up a giant, inflatable Teji figurine at Sydney Opera House… Unlike many creative partnerships in modern times, we’ve been going back and forth on ideas and executions ever since.
12. You two seem to orbit similar worlds. What’s it like working with someone who’s coming at the same stuff from a different medium?
This approach to creative work is refreshing. I don’t know anybody else personally who has written and self-published a book, especially on such topics. Bouncing ideas off him, and hearing his perspectives from literary standpoints has been sick. It definitely helps inform the visual language for our creative endeavours. I feel like with Jet and I—there is as much of an absence from ego as you can get. It doesn’t matter who came up with the idea, or how we get it done. We just care about making the final product as impactful as two 20-something-year-old’s can possibly muster.
13. What are you listening to at the moment?
The SimCity 4 soundtrack.
14. What are you working on right now?
A feature movie. An adaptation of a novel very close to my heart. Another important, long, Australian story.
15. Where do you see yourself in five years?
Having solitude and stability over my mind which bleeds into my daily life, loving 1 wife, riding a Zero Engineering Type 9 motorcycle, making movies with my friends, occasionally touching up paintings on my balcony, travelling for work, having some kids…
The juggling act—I’m already doing it, but I think I’ll be better at it by then.