John Cumming Retrospective, Artist Film Workshop, May 17, 2018

Nicholas Nedelkopoulos, who usually writes an entertaining review of Artist Film Workshop’s RetroOz screenings, was at the opening of the St. Kilda Film Festival on Thursday 17 May.

He suggested that since I was attending the RetroOz screening of John Cumming’s films on the same night, that I write a review from the perspective of someone who is profoundly hearing impaired.

I beg your pardon?

That’s pretty much the problem every time I go to a screening with a Q & A. It’s even worse when I’m the subject of a Q & A. I beg your pardon? Could you repeat that, please? I’m sorry, I didn’t understand. Could you write that down?

John Cumming, head of the Deakin University’s film and television department, is a natural raconteur who was obviously telling some wonderful anecdotes about the making of his trilogy of films Obsession, Recognition and Sabotage, which were made during the 1980s while he was studying drama and media at Rusden College (now Deakin).

My partner Andrea was able to silently repeat some of the things he said (it’s impossible to lipread from a distance) so I was not completely in the dark. But without subtitles, voices become a blur of noise with the occasional word understandable here and there so I’m only able to tell you I enjoyed watching the Q & A and John is a obviously a fount of wonderful stories and much hard-won wisdom.

Fortunately, while his films have dialogue, they’re told mostly through the visual medium. And what a visual feast they are!

Still from Recognition, as it played on the night.

I was able to discern the influences of Jean-Luc Godard and Pier Paolo Pasolini (particularly in Recognition), the early Jim Jarmusch (in Obsession and Sabotage where the influence of Godard can also be seen), and even a touch of Jorge Luis Borges – which surprised John when I told him about it.

He agreed with the influences of Godard, Pasolini and Jarmucsh, but Borges...??!! So I told him about a story Borges wrote (called “The Circular Ruins”) which contained the literary image of a naked man lying in a mystical circle inscribed on the ground. Recognition has an image almost exactly as Borges described.

John is one of those rare filmmakers who manage to combine experimental and avant garde styles with entertaining content. His films are narrative but narratively weird, constantly inventive, often funny, confronting, and always surprising.

I even thought I detected a touch of Ken Russell in Sabotage. But if I did, it was Ken Russell as seen through the peculiar prism of John Cumming’s own original creativity.

Along with Peter Tammer, John Cumming has to be one of my favourite Melbourne indie filmmakers from the 1980s.

We need more like these gentlemen.

David King is an international award–winning experimental filmmaker and video artist who lives with his partner and daughter on the coast of the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, Australia.