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| Unknown Pleasures: Australian independent cinema A series of regular screenings featuring the best of Australian independent cinema, both classic and contemporary, with discussions with the filmmakers. Curators/presenters: Chris Luscri, Bill Mousoulis Assistant/videographer: Colin Hodson read more |
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INFO FOR SCREENINGS: Our main venue is the Thornbury Picture House, |
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Tuesday, June 20, time TBC (about 8:15) Dancing Shadows - Works by Erin M McCuskey Q&A with Erin M McCuskey, by Fagyn Gwyther-McCuskey
PROGRAM NOTES COMING LATE MAY
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Tuesday, Jan 10, 8:30 pm |
Films in screening order:
PART I: Super -8 & 1980s Tatlin (1990, 1 min, 16mm)
Bureau of Inverse Technology (1992, 7
mins, SD video, Betamax)
Otherzone (1998, 15 mins, 35mm Dolby Surround
Sound)
Of
course, from a Melbourne perspective both Puppenhead and Otherzone are of unique interest. Puppenhead because of John Flaus and Heinz
Boeck’s participation and its opening up of an international audience through
its break-out into the international film festival circuit that enabled Cox’s eventual
move to San Francisco. The sci-fi Otherzone, is populated with
luminaries from the Melbourne alt-art scene, a work predicting the digital
future, in which Cox has actively participated through his research into
immersive technologies.
As
Philip Brophy describes: "Otherzone is a short film based around ideas of speculative
sci-fi, cyber-culture and techno-visions of a dystopian future. Written and
directed by David Cox, it incorporates David's ideas along these lines and
issues, culminating in a rhetorical/allegorical narrative. The film also
experiments with contracted narrative form as inspired by computer games (a
theoretical area in which David works and researches). Added to this is his
early tests of how to integrate computer imagery and computer generated
sequences into a filmed environment."
In preparation for this event we recommend the interview recently published in Senses of Cinema to annotate this Journey: A Joyride Through Technological Change
That
interview ends with a comment on Julian Assange by Cox “The films of mine
that resonate, resonate for the same reasons what he’s done has resonated.
People feel they want to reveal what’s behind the curtain. And that’s really
what we’re all doing. The films are there to make the world clearer, not more
opaque, even if the methods they use are opaque.”
I
end this introduction with a textual quote David and Molly inserted into The
Secret History of Brisbane (2001)
Those who fail to
learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
First time tragedy,
second time farce.
Karl Marx
Dirk
de Bruyn, guest programmer
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Puppenhead |
Panoramicon
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Otherzone |
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Tuesday, Feb 7, 8:30 pm Intro and Q&A with John Hughes and Ivan Gaal |
Thanks to Gil Scrine, Antidote Films
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Over a decade in the making, John Hughes and Tom Zubrycki’s Senses of Cinema is a vibrant, essential document of Australian independent film practice that doubles as a comprehensive overview of over 60 years of Australian socio-political life, from the 1960s to the present.
At its centre is a long overdue investigation of the important role the Australian film co-operatives played within the cultural upheavals of the Left, a movement that – spurred by similar (if better known) interventions in London, Vienna and San Francisco – included the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op and Ubu Films, the Melbourne Co-op, the Sydney Women’s Film Group and the LGBT-focused One in Seven Collective. Driven by intersecting forces all at once collectivist, experimental, radical and interventionist, the Co-op movements captured vital events in our history, including worker’s rights, the women’s (We Aim to Please!), LGBTQIA+ (Homosexuality: A Film for Discussion) and Aboriginal (Ningla A-Na, Two Laws) rights movement, and the first ever Mardi Gras that culminated in violent police attacks on peaceful citizen protest (Witches and Faggots, Dykes and Poofters).
The roll call of film-makers involved in the Co-op movement is formidable – film-makers like John and Tom, Phillip Noyce, Gillian Armstrong, Essie Coffey, Margot Nash, Martha Ansara, Christine Johnston, Gillian Leahy, Bert Deling, Kit Guyatt, Peter Tammer, Ivan Gaal, Pat Fiske, Alessandro Cavadini and Carolyn Strachan, and producers including Jan Chapman. Challenging orthodoxies about the role of film-making in Australian society before being cruelly and deliberately quashed by reactionary forces (not least the state and federal screen agencies) in the late '80s and early '90s, the Co-ops speak to an ideal of what Australian cinema once was, and perhaps could be again.
As John Hughes himself says — A study of these collectivist institutions unsettle received narratives that tend to focus on feature films and prominent individuals. More granulated cultural memory can have a strategic impact. As we reformulate the past through presentation of forgotten and buried objects and re-examine the material culture – the films, technologies and political practices of an activist underground – these newly discovered pasts vie for a place in history.
Long overdue, Senses of Cinema is, in many ways, the culmination of two lifetime’s worth of investigation, study and reflection, crystallised in a primary document that is – or should be – utterly necessary viewing for anyone interested in the future of Australian film. [Chris Luscri] “A powerful capacity of documentary film is remembrance. For us, a guiding imperative of the Co-op has been to set out for emerging generations of filmmakers a history of Australian independent film culture in Australia that is a radical tradition, characterised by critical and compassionate creative ambition. If Senses of Cinema arouses curiosity among younger filmmakers of the digital era about the ‘invisible archive’ of analogue film and video made and distributed by dedicated and passionate young filmmakers around the Filmmakers Co-ops from the mid ‘60s to the mid ‘80s, the struggle over ten years to get the work out there will have been very worthwhile.”
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Ivan Gaal |
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Albie Thoms Sydney Co-op meeting 1973 (still Matt Bulter) |
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Tuesday, Mar 28, 8:10 pm Queensland Q&A with John Ruane & John Flaus, moderated by Jake Wilson. |
HD Restoration by Ray Argall
One the quintessential, widely acclaimed Australian films of the 1970s, John Ruane's superb Queensland builds upon the structures and possibilities of the miniature to ultimately craft something more mysterious and radically open-ended. Featuring the indomitable presence of legendary actor, broadcaster and critic John Flaus, Ruane adeptly uncovers the peculiar sense of everyday drudgery and quiet desperation that characterise the lives of many working men and women. Tonally precise yet seemingly affectless, Queensland indelibly captures – through recurrent, attenuated detail – what the director has called a ‘vanishing breed of Australians', a world more rigid, less bound to happenstance and chance than they are to the vagaries of the almost invisibly oppressive Australian cultural logic. From fractured affective relations to the lure of the big, coastal city – with its promise of endless sunshine and a laidback lifestyle – the struggles of Ruane's characters are eminently relatable. To seek an 'elsewhere' – however tenuously – is ultimately an heroic-pathetic goal. Theirs are as much acts of hope and defiance as they are silent, desperate screams against the unyielding, punishingly cyclical train of life. – Chris Luscri.
"Ruane's characters are familiar
Australians on the screen, acted upon rather than acting, waiting for something
to happen: Doug and Aub, sad workmates dreaming of making the break from the
Melbourne grind to Queensland sun. It is the romantic lure of escape that
occupies so many '60s and '70s "road" films... Ruane's wistful theme is
the fragility of relationships, goals and dreams. With the help of some
excellent playing by John Flaus, Bob Karl, Alison Bird and others, he touches
his people with a quality almost Chekhovian – at the no-hopers' end of the
social scale. We are actually made to care." – Colin Bennett, The Age,
26th July 1976
"A great example of down-beat everyday
realism, of struggling ordinary people. Made by the then student John Ruane
(who went on to make Death in Brunswick and other films), this also set the
template for the "hour-long" indie films that existed in Australian
cinema for the next 20 years or so. The actor John Flaus
Queensland's profile on OzMovies
John Ruane and Chris Luscri radio interview
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Tuesday, Apr 18, 8:20 pm Journey to the End of Night Q&A with Peter Tammer & Video analysis by Adrian Martin |
HD Restoration by Peter Tammer
After recently honouring various other of our Australian independent film elders (Ivan Gaal, John Flaus, Margot Nash, John Hughes), we now turn our attention to Peter Tammer, who has recently turned 80. Tammer has had an extraordinary career as both filmmaker and film teacher, forging his own path in both these domains, with his keen intelligence and determination. The result has been films that are truly individual and a group of students who were truly inspired by him.
Tammer's work has straddled various forms, but he has specialised in documentaries that are portraits of various people, letting the words and works of these people speak for themselves (A Woman of Our Time, Here's to You, Mr. Robinson, Flausfilm, The Nude in the Window).
Journey to the End of Night is probably the apotheosis of this technique, taking it to a deeply psychotherapeutic level. Bill Neave, a war veteran with PTSD, remembers back to his experiences of World War II in the early '40s, almost 40 years later. He seemingly channels, practically re-living, certain key incidents from the war, including harrowing moments of deaths and killings. Tammer intercuts these dark-night-of-the-soul monologues by Neave with diurnal prosaic scenes of Neave and his wife at home, doing ordinary household things. Tammer also brilliantly montages these documentary scenes with excerpts from the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and passages from the Bible. The formal play does not however disturb the main narrative, it in fact illuminates it.
Journey to the End of Night harks back to a time in Australian cinema when radical play with form was in the ascendant, culminating in the early '90s with works like Breathing Under Water (Susan Murphy Dermordy, 1992), The Refracting Glasses (David Perry, 1993) and even the misfire feature of the recently deceased Ross Gibson, Dead to the World (1991). It is safe to say though that Journey to the End of Night is probably the most rigorous and penetrating documentary in Australian cinema history, its radical form matched by its deep content. –Bill Mousoulis.
"What begins as seemingly a rambling train of thought from the mind of an aging man, soon becomes something much more. Peter Tammer’s film is a diary of sorts, spoken aloud some 40 years after the fact; a painful first-hand recollection of the horrors of war ... It’s a powerful portrait of a damaged man who has found himself, after war, caught in an endless battle with himself." – Glenn Dunks, "Sherpa and beyond: ten of the best Australian documentaries", The Guardian,
28th April, 2016.
"In one sense Bill Neave's is the single greatest performance in the Festival; in a more teasing sense, it seems of course scarcely a performance at all. By collapsing past and present, Tammer has created a remarkable sense of forty years of one man's life." – Brian McFarlane, Cinema Papers, August 1982.
Melbourne Film Festival 1982 - Award For Documentary Excellence
Australian Film Awards 1982 - The Jury Prize
Peter Tammer and Bill Mousoulis radio interview |
Trailer of the film:
Video analysis by Adrian Martin, presented at the screening:
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Tuesday, May 16, 8:20 pm Anak Q&A with Ribates and Tavis Pinnington, moderated by CJ Welsh. Anak is the debut feature of a major new voice in Australian film in writer/director Caleb Ribates. The film explores the complexities of migrating to a foreign culture as it slowly shapes the lives of a family of Filipino-Australians living in Melbourne. Ribates demonstrates a beautiful cinematic craft (long takes, fixed camera), as well as a gently perceptive eye full of sharp insights into the socio-racial landscape of contemporary Australia and its effects on a struggling household. (Chris Luscri) |
Exploring the complexities of migrating to a foreign culture as it slowly shapes the lives of a family of Filipino-Australians living in Melbourne, Anak represents the arrival of a major new voice in Australian film in writer/director Caleb Ribates.
Part of a new wave of first generation Filipino-Australian filmmakers that includes Lorenzo Benitez, Vonne Patiag and Unknown Pleasures favourite Matthew Victor Pastor (who here serves as associate producer), Ribates - making his feature debut - demonstrates both a bracingly literate approach to cinematic craft (long takes, fixed camera) drawn from the stately, naturalist rhythms of slow cinema masters like Hou Hsiao-hsien and Lav Diaz, as well as a gently perceptive eye full of sharp insights into the socio-racial landscape of contemporary Australia and its effects on one struggling household.
The result is a finely etched family drama of keenly observed insights and discoveries, never more moving than when training its richly empathetic gaze on the experiences of the youngest family member, Carlo (a touching performance by first-time performer Gabe Ramos, all of 6 years old at the time). The result is a striking and emotionally affecting film that stands proudly alongside other major Asian-Australian diaspora dramas like Tony Ayres’ The Home Song Stories and Clara Law’s Floating Life. – Chris Luscri.
"Ribates has empathy, an eye, and a sense of how to use actors – both children and adults – for their physical presences." – Jake Wilson, "The 15 movies to see at the Melbourne International Film Festival", The Age, August 3, 2022.
"Anak suggests Ribates – a VCA graduate and only 21 years of age – as a filmmaker of significant promise on the local scene, with a distinct artistic sensibility and a dedication to telling stories outside of Western culture. Offering a rare, unblinking insight into the struggle of Filipino-Australians within the socio-racial landscape, this micro-budget feature is at once visually striking and emotionally affecting." – "Melbourne International Film Festival program notes", July 2022.
Caleb Ribates and Chris Luscri radio interview
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