[Taj] is a representative example of the indie cinema that operates alongside the mostly government funded film of Australia. Filmed in urban Melbourne, the film shows an Australia that is so far removed from the Caucasian dominated cinema and television of the mainstream that the uninitiated may be surprised that it was filmed in Australia at all. Indeed, despite the authentically multi-racial populace of the Australian metropolis, and Melbourne’s trademark trams, first time director Winston Furlong seems to have taken as his artistic inspiration the parallel cinema movement of India to which [Taj] bears a close resemblance. The film’s protagonist Vijay(Mahesh Jadu) is an Indian writer who grew up in Fiji and now lives in Melbourne. Long disconnected from his culture, and even his own child from a dissolved marriage, Vijay is addicted to cocaine, gambling, cheap pornography and anything else he can find to block out his angst. A long way from the multicultural success stories of government propaganda, this is a gritty snapshot of vanity’s self-obsession and the self-destruction that inevitably must follow. (Russell EDWARDS)