The 65th Sydney Film Festival held in Sydney from the 6th to 17th of June 2018 will present Oyster, a delightful portrait of a NSW South Coast oyster farmer from Merimbula, with his family covering the precarious three year journey it takes to bring his Sydney rock oysters to market. Directed by Kim Beamish Oyster follows Dom and his wife Pip at home, their work shed, and on the water, to see what it’s like to raise two energetic young boys, while you’re working long hours to keep a few million oysters alive. The Sydney rock oyster takes three years to mature and is highly vulnerable to pollution, diseases and changes in water temperature and salinity.
To many of us on the south coast an oyster punt gliding over a waterway presents a romantic picture of tranquil beauty and a life close to nature. But Dom and fellow locals swear the water’s getting warmer and the storms more severe.
Kim Beamish won awards for his 2015 film, The Tentmakers of Cairo. He is an educator and tutor in cinematography and editing at the University of Canberra.
This film is nominated for the Documentary Australia Foundation Award for Australian Documentary
