DIRECTOR'S CUT + Q&A
Dir. George Gittoes, 2025, Australia/Afghanistan, 109mins
+Q&A with filmmakers George Gittoes & Hellen Rose
In 2010, renowned Australian artists George Gittoes and Hellen Rose established the Yellow House in Jalalabad, Afghanistan - a sanctuary for artistic expression amidst conflict. This documentary chronicles their return to the Yellow House in 2024 under Taliban rule, aiming to demonstrate that "where war fails, art wins."
This special Director’s Cut deepens the story with additional intimate footage and interviews, capturing the resilience of Afghan artists and the transformative power of creativity in the face of oppression. Gittoes’ directorial approach offers a poignant exploration of the intersection between art and activism in a war-torn society.
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Screening Sunday 14 Sept 1:30pm
George Gittoes Director's Statement
I’ve been working in Afghanistan since 1999. In 2007 made ‘Miscreants of Taliwood’ as a protest against the Taliban attempting to destroy the Pashto Film Industry. That gained me a scarry note from the Pakistani Taliban threatening to remove my face from my body.
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My wife Hellen Rose and I have ignored the risks and made two following documentaries ‘Love City’ and ‘Snow Monkey’ in Jalalabad. Simultaneously we created the Yellow House Arts Centre.
‘Yellow House Afghanistan’ weaves this 25-year history through our recent experiences working from 2021 to 2024 under the Taliban regime.
‘Yellow House Afghanistan’ calls the US and its allies to account for the 20 years, when they had a chance to transform the country but squandered it, while committing countless and barbaric war crimes.
As much as any travel film, Yellow House Afghanistan enters spectacularly beautiful landscapes which have never previously been filmed. Many times, I have looked down at my feet and known what it must have been like to be an Apollo Astronaut seeing their feet on the surface of the moon. It is incredible that I safely entered villages, where the people were kind and welcoming to me, when they have all had someone close killed by outsider invaders. They needed to hear someone like me say, “sorry”. I am the only foreigner in our camera team when going out to the far villages in the mountains besides Hellen.
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All the editing has been done in Jalalabad at the Yellow House to enable the participants to check-out the process. I have edited with Khurram Shehzad and Waqar Alam, who are both Pashtuns, and who have collaborated on all the Afghan documentaries and dramas since 2007. The music has also been recorded by Hellen with top Afghan musicians, generational custodians of Pashtun culture, who have been coming to the Yellow House since 2011 in collaboration with famous Australian musicians who have created a unique and intercultural soundtrack.
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What makes this film different to any of my previous documentaries is that I have used time as a plastic element. Yellow House Afghanistan has become a TIME MACHINE with characters who were teenagers in 2011 participating as adults in 2024. In one case a 13-year-old, first-time-filmmaker, sees himself, in ‘Love City’, as a newborn baby. In my own case I transform, on camera, from middle age to a 75-year-old. It has been a long journey.
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Our aim with ‘Yellow House Afghanistan’ is to show how art and communication can succeed when war has failed.
