Tuesday, May 25, 8:00 pm.
Thornbury Picture House, house prices. Tickets here. SOLD OUT

Clay
(1964, 80 mins, Giorgio Mangiamele)

Q&A with Ettore Siracusa and Rosemary & Claudia Mangiamele.

One of the great pioneers of the Australian cinema, the late Italian-Australian film-maker Giorgio Mangiamele (1926-2001) stands as a kind of tabula rasa of the paths untaken in our national film culture. In Clay, a man on the run from police falls in love with the woman who shelters him. Increasingly fractured and enchanted, the film quickly loses any sense of narrative propulsion in service of pure atmosphere and environment. A visually ravishing film. (Chris Luscri)

With special thanks to Andrew Pike, Ronin Films.

Chris Luscri talks with Peter Krausz about Clay, Movie Metropolis radio show, May 22, 2021.

One of the great pioneers of the Australian cinema, the late Italian-Australian film-maker Giorgio Mangiamele (1926-2001) stands as a kind of tabula rasa of the paths untaken in our national film culture. Giorgio’s work exemplified the startling possibilities inherent in a visionary and poetic cinema, one that began in a lyrical style that drew from Italian neo-realism to comment on the complexities and traumas of Italo-Australian migrant life (Il contratto, 1953; The Brothers, 1958; The Spag, 1960-62; Ninety-Nine Percent, 1964) to later works that became increasing mythological in dimension, dense and dream-like. With Clay, one can see a shift from the social realist concerns of earlier works marked no doubt by the experience of personal trauma (racial and cultural), towards a fuller investigation of the film-maker’s interests in psychoanalysis, jazz, the avant-garde, experimental theatre and – peculiar for a first-wave European migrant – Eastern spiritualism. Shot over a seven-week period at Montsalvat artists’ colony in the Melbourne suburb of Eltham, Clay employs the simple narrative armature of a man on the run from police who falls in love with the woman who shelters him. Increasingly fractured and enchanted, the film quickly loses any sense of narrative propulsion in service of pure atmosphere and environment – as if a lost, silent classic of French Impressionism from the 1930s somehow collided with the more absurdist and surrealist wing of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s. Selected to compete for the Palme d’or at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival (only the second Australian film to receive that honour), Clay did more than just prefigure the Australian film revival of the 1970s – it paved a path for the notion of the director as artist within a particular cultural context that has always struggled with this notion. It is no surprise then to find that Clay has never received its proper due in Australia, from first release to the present, even with a beautiful full 35mm restoration by the NFSA in 2010, and subsequent retrospective screenings and DVD release through Ronin Films at MIFF in 2011. The truth of the matter is that Australian cinema does not quite know what to do with a film object like Clay, so rarefied, complex and troubling are its investigations of art-making, gender, sex, violence and the interior life of dreams and the Shadow that it remains somehow poised, frozen on the precipice of comprehension, like a waking dream, like a promise. This was clearly Giorgio’s design, and no one who has seen the film can forget its rhythms and textures, it's energies and vibrations. Quite visually ravishing like no other Australian film before or since. – Chris Luscri.

On Clay --

“In 1965, Clay was selected for Competition at Cannes, but that achievement was ignored in the headlong rush to promote the young and new. This haunted Mangiamele all his life. Of Clay, Variety wrote that ‘Visually it’s frequently a poem brought to life with some breathtakingly poignant and arty shots’, while La Cinématographie Française argued ‘Mangiamele has painted in his visual poem the story of an impossible love.’ In Australia, The Advocate said, ‘Mangiamele is one of the world’s master craftsmen in the art of film, a man who really knows how to use a camera to tell a story and whose photography is a joy’, and The Australian wrote, ‘Clay is a film of singular visual beauty, there is a poetry in the treatment, tact and sensitiveness in the direction’.”, Giorgio Mangiamele – Passionate Filmmaker, Scott Murray, Senses of Cinema, June 2001

“It’s Clay, I would suggest, that really embodies this different—and Mangiamele’s very characteristic—approach to cinema. Indeed, as soon as one begins to look more closely it becomes clear that, leaving to one side the migrant and social themes which he had treated in the earlier films, Mangiamele was here attempting quite self-consciously to create something analogous to that “cinema of poetry” that Pasolini was theorising (and practising) in this very same period.”, Giorgio Mangiamele’s Clay and the Beginnings of Art Cinema in Australia, Gino Moliterno, Screening the Past, Issue 32

“Opening with images of swamps and bushland processed in black-and-white negative and a dreamy voice-over by central character Margot – ‘why do I feel as though time has become crystalline … past, present, my own being; everything loses meaning’ – Clay has much more in common with European cinema of the time than mainstream English language movies. This is not surprising given Mangiamele’s background. Its gritty study of a fugitive on the run bears the hallmarks of Italian neorealism and the love story recalls the existential French cinema of directors such as Alain Resnais (who directed Last Year at Marienbad, 1962).”, ASO Notes on Clay, Richard Kuipers

"The intensity of Mangiamele's breathtaking vision recalls the work of Jean Cocteau and other French romantic poet/filmmakers, and signifies the appearance of a major art cinema talent, imbued with European cinema culture, who tragically never found an opportunity to find full expression of his vision after this one extraordinary feature.”, Ronin Films DVD Notes

Clay’s profile on OzMovies

Tuesday, April 27, 8:30 pm.
Thornbury Picture House, house prices. Tickets here. SOLD OUT

Boundless
(2018, 70 mins, Mark La Rosa)

Intro and Q&A with Mark La Rosa, by Jake Wilson (The Age).

This criminally neglected film from a couple of years back is the debut feature (after a number of mini-features) from the modest and underrated Melbourne indie filmmaker Mark La Rosa. A fascinating and beautiful film set in the Australian outback, it has a jigsaw narrative reminiscent of modernist directors like Resnais and Roeg (and indeed thematic parallels with Roeg's Walkabout). There is an understated joy but also sadness in this quite unique film. (Bill Mousoulis)

Starring Ciume Lochner and Jordan Fraser-Trumble

Boundless is a deceptively good film. It is an experiment of sorts, in line with various modernist films of the '60s and '70s by directors such as Nicholas Roeg and Alain Resnais, where the film would set something up, only to disrupt the flow with time-shifts or narrative-shifts. Boundless revels in such cinematic and formal play. On the one hand, the narrative of a young couple getting lost in the Australian outback is simple and clean, but on the other hand, La Rosa reconfigures it constantly as the film goes along. So we are left scratching our heads, as we follow the ambiguous narrative, with the main question "do they get found or do they remain lost?" hanging, and then, transcendentally, resolved in a metaphysical and cosmic way. Parallel stories? Alternate stories? Dream/nightmare flashes? In the end, it doesn't matter, as the film hits magnificent moments of beauty, joy and sadness, rich in their individual resonance. We may all end up specks of dust in this infinite universe, but each speck is a wondrous world in itself, in its brief flourishing. – Bill Mousoulis.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT: A few years ago, I began reading about the odd behaviour of the smallest observable things, how they can exist in multiple locations at the same time, and follow multiple paths at the same time. Since we are comprised of such particles, it follows that these bizarre goings on may be happening with our own lives, perhaps across multiple dimensions or universes. I began to wonder how a simple story could then be reshaped to reflect this new reality. Film lends itself to this theme particularly well, and there have been many fine examples over the years. Boundless is my contribution, something lyrical and mysterious, made with minimal means. – Mark La Rosa.

Jake Wilson interviews Mark La Rosa on Boundless, published in Pure Shit: Australian Cinema.

Bill Mousoulis talks with Peter Krausz about Boundless, Movie Metropolis radio show, April 2021.

Tuesday, February 23, 8:20 pm.
Thornbury Picture House, house prices. Ticket booking here.

Four of a Kind
(2009, 115 mins, Fiona Cochrane)

Intro and Q&A with Fiona Cochrane

Fiona Cochrane directs this dense and edgy psychological thriller with intelligence and clarity, making the wordy script (by Helen Collins, adapted from her own stage play called Disclosure) come alive in unexpected ways. Greatly assisted by the cast, Cochrane creates chilling portraits of sophisticated but ruthless women. Four of a Kind is an unusual mix of realism and dramatic subject matter, and is bold formally (a narrow structure) and thematically (breaking cliches). (Bill Mousoulis)

Hear Fiona Cochrane speak to David Griffiths on Heavy Cinema website, Feb 20, 2021.

Hear Fiona Cochrane speak to Peter Krausz on Movie Metropolis radio show, Feb 20, 2021.

“The actors — Louise Siverson, Leverne McDonnell, Gail Watson and Nina Landis — make the most of strong but demanding roles. There is something naturalistic about the surface of Four of a Kind, but it is also quite stylised, with a quietly dark vision of human capacities. A dialogue-driven work made on a low budget, there is nevertheless something effective about these constraints; Cochrane has used and embraced them to bring out the disturbing implications that underpin the tales.” – Philippa Hawker, Four of a Kind review, The Age, June 11, 2009.

“The narrative structure starts to interweave flashbacks into what happened (or what the characters claim happened) and a gradual slow-burn develops, making for intriguing watching, as we try to piece together the truth. As each scene leads cleverly to the next, showing the characters in a different role, the threads entwine and add layers to the story." – Bernard Hemingway, Four of a Kind review, Cinephlia website.

“Performances are all excellent, especially McDonnell's Gina who allows us to understand the journey from victim to perpetrator with great clarity. Universal in its appeal, but with special resonance to women, this seemingly simple film is deceptively complex, and lingers accordingly." – Louise Keller, Four of a Kind review, Urban Cinephile website.