Director Lachlan Mcleod follows Australian Sandra Pankhurst and her team of ‘trauma cleaners’: those who scrub crime scenes, suicide sites and clear out hoarders’ homes
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“People meet me and they go, you’re real! They can’t believe it,” says Sandra Pankhurst, the subject of Lachlan Mcleod’s second documentary, Clean.
Pankhurst is a person who has led many lives within a life: adopted as a child, then severely abused by her adoptive parents; emerging from a failed marriage and coming out as a transgender woman in the 1980s; working as a drag queen and sex worker; and eventually starting her own cleaning business in the 1990s. Late in her life (she died in 2021), Pankhurst became a public figure after the publication of Sarah Krasnostein’s expansive, heartfelt and award-winning book about her life and line of work, The Trauma Cleaner, in...
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“People meet me and they go, you’re real! They can’t believe it,” says Sandra Pankhurst, the subject of Lachlan Mcleod’s second documentary, Clean.
Pankhurst is a person who has led many lives within a life: adopted as a child, then severely abused by her adoptive parents; emerging from a failed marriage and coming out as a transgender woman in the 1980s; working as a drag queen and sex worker; and eventually starting her own cleaning business in the 1990s. Late in her life (she died in 2021), Pankhurst became a public figure after the publication of Sarah Krasnostein’s expansive, heartfelt and award-winning book about her life and line of work, The Trauma Cleaner, in...
- 8/20/2022
- by Cher Tan
- The Guardian - Film News
One of the many sets of watchwords within the film is "respect and kindness", and for all the potentially upsetting moments within it Clean has both. It opens with a warning for Aboriginal and Torres Street Islander peoples that there may be scenes that depict death and human remains, and for various complicated reasons that is not only justifiable but part and parcel of the film's process.
Mental health is described as a safety issue and while Clean can't and doesn't hide the drops it does a reasonable job of ensuring space and guard rails. There are scenes of death, decay, or rather the aftermath. Our subject is the astonishing Sandra Pankhurst. No stranger to trauma herself, this is not only her story but of the work of the firm she founded, a cleaning company whose team pride themselves on being both qualified and compassionate. Cleaning does not cover the whole.
Mental health is described as a safety issue and while Clean can't and doesn't hide the drops it does a reasonable job of ensuring space and guard rails. There are scenes of death, decay, or rather the aftermath. Our subject is the astonishing Sandra Pankhurst. No stranger to trauma herself, this is not only her story but of the work of the firm she founded, a cleaning company whose team pride themselves on being both qualified and compassionate. Cleaning does not cover the whole.
- 8/14/2022
- by Andrew Robertson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The complete programme has been announced for the 75th Edinburgh Film Festival consisting of 87 new features, 12 short film programmes, and two large-scale retrospectives that celebrate the 2022 Theme of the 50th Anniversary of the Women’s Film Festival in new Creative Director Kristy Matheson’s inaugural edition.
Critically acclaimed gibberish comedy ‘Nude Tuesday’ has been announced as Central Gala to complement the previously announced Opening and Closing Galas of ‘Aftersun’ and ‘After Yang’.
10 international feature films with over 50 female Directors or Co-Directors for the brand-new competitive section for ‘The Powell and Pressburger Award for Best Feature Film’.
The entirely in-person 75th Anniversary edition this year will include a dynamic programme of cinema screenings, live performances and industry dialogues in Edinburgh in the heart of the August festival season welcoming attending UK & international filmmakers to present their work.
Also in news – Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Luke Evans join animated Netflix film ‘Scrooge:...
Critically acclaimed gibberish comedy ‘Nude Tuesday’ has been announced as Central Gala to complement the previously announced Opening and Closing Galas of ‘Aftersun’ and ‘After Yang’.
10 international feature films with over 50 female Directors or Co-Directors for the brand-new competitive section for ‘The Powell and Pressburger Award for Best Feature Film’.
The entirely in-person 75th Anniversary edition this year will include a dynamic programme of cinema screenings, live performances and industry dialogues in Edinburgh in the heart of the August festival season welcoming attending UK & international filmmakers to present their work.
Also in news – Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Luke Evans join animated Netflix film ‘Scrooge:...
- 7/25/2022
- by Zehra Phelan
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
In-person Screenings
The Melbourne Film Festival will return to cinemas after two turbulent years caused by Covid-related disruptions – the city endured one of the world’s longest pandemic lockdowns – and will run Aug 4-21, 2022. It will open with powerful Australian-u.K.-Serbian-made first film “Of An Age,” by renown shorts director Goran Stolevski. Festival organizers pitch it as “a heart-meltingly tender, quintessentially Melbourne queer coming-of-age tale that will make you swoon from beginning to end.” The Mff is scheduled to close with another Aussie title, documentary “Clean.” Directed by Lachlan McLeod, it examines how so-called trauma cleaner Sandra Pankhurst responded to an unseen world with radical kindness. The festival has also teased some of the titles that it will program between the gala bookend events. They include: Kamila Andini’s “Yuni”; Ari Folman’s “Where Is Anne Frank”; John Hughes and Tom Zubrycki’s “Senses of Cinema”; Ulrich Seidl’s...
The Melbourne Film Festival will return to cinemas after two turbulent years caused by Covid-related disruptions – the city endured one of the world’s longest pandemic lockdowns – and will run Aug 4-21, 2022. It will open with powerful Australian-u.K.-Serbian-made first film “Of An Age,” by renown shorts director Goran Stolevski. Festival organizers pitch it as “a heart-meltingly tender, quintessentially Melbourne queer coming-of-age tale that will make you swoon from beginning to end.” The Mff is scheduled to close with another Aussie title, documentary “Clean.” Directed by Lachlan McLeod, it examines how so-called trauma cleaner Sandra Pankhurst responded to an unseen world with radical kindness. The festival has also teased some of the titles that it will program between the gala bookend events. They include: Kamila Andini’s “Yuni”; Ari Folman’s “Where Is Anne Frank”; John Hughes and Tom Zubrycki’s “Senses of Cinema”; Ulrich Seidl’s...
- 6/9/2022
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
There is a certain satisfaction in learning the stories of people who, through luck, circumstance or sheer grit, have ended up in precisely the right job. Australian director Lachlan McLeod’s “Clean” turns out to be just such a story, but here the job is trauma cleaning — that is, swabbing down crime scenes and suicide sites, clearing out inherited or repossessed houses, assisting the mentally and physically disabled with home maintenance and tackling the grimly fascinating phenomenon that is hoarding. Initially it’s unfathomable that anyone’s life experience could make them ideally suited to this extraordinary, specialist profession — much less to develop an entire philosophy around it. But that’s before we get to know Sandra Pankhurst, the founder of Melbourne-based trauma cleaning company Stc.
McLeod’s approach is at first a little coy, implying the film will be less about any one person than about the necessary but often harrowing services Stc provides.
McLeod’s approach is at first a little coy, implying the film will be less about any one person than about the necessary but often harrowing services Stc provides.
- 3/21/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Exclusive: UK sales firm Rocket Science has boarded world sales on Clean, the fly on the wall documentary from Lachlan McLeod (Big In Japan) which premieres in the Documentary Competition section at SXSW.
The movie is a close-up insight into the world of ‘trauma cleaning’ through the journey of larger-than-life business owner Sandra Pankhurst and the workers at Melbourne’s Specialized Trauma Cleaning Services. Below is a first clip.
Trauma cleaners’ clean spaces that no one else will touch – hoarder sites, meth-labs, murder scenes, deaths and suicides. They clean the homes of some of society’s most vulnerable people – the neglected, the lonely, the addicted, and the mentally unwell. When illness forces her away from her beloved trauma cleaning business, Sandra Pankhurst faces up to her traumatic past and begins a search for her birth mother. Meanwhile, her workers approach this difficult work with camaraderie and humor, bringing hope to...
The movie is a close-up insight into the world of ‘trauma cleaning’ through the journey of larger-than-life business owner Sandra Pankhurst and the workers at Melbourne’s Specialized Trauma Cleaning Services. Below is a first clip.
Trauma cleaners’ clean spaces that no one else will touch – hoarder sites, meth-labs, murder scenes, deaths and suicides. They clean the homes of some of society’s most vulnerable people – the neglected, the lonely, the addicted, and the mentally unwell. When illness forces her away from her beloved trauma cleaning business, Sandra Pankhurst faces up to her traumatic past and begins a search for her birth mother. Meanwhile, her workers approach this difficult work with camaraderie and humor, bringing hope to...
- 3/7/2022
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
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