CELEBRATING AN AUSTRALIAN PIONEER OF GAY FILM STEPHEN

CUMMINS (1960-1994)

STEPHEN CUMMINS WAS AN AUSTRALIAN FILMMAKER, CURATOR, ARTIST AND CO-FOUNDER OF QUEER SCREEN. HE HAS LEFT AN INDELIBLE MARK ON GAY CINEMA.

To celebrate his influential career, The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) will feature all nine of Stephen Cummin’s short films that have been digitised, restored and remastered, including the award-winning Resonance, Elevation and Le Corps Imagé

Like so many others, Stephen’s life was cut way too short when he died of HIV-related lymphoma in 1994, but his legacy continues to be felt today.

Ahead of the screening, which will form part of the Mardi Gras Film Festival on tour, FUSE talked to Nick Henderson, the Assistant Curator from the NFSA.

FUSE: Why are queer film archives so important?

NICK: Film archives, and audiovisual archives more generally, are vitally important to the present and future, given that we’re living in an era in which audiovisual material is all-pervasive — dominating the various screens, speakers and devices that we increasingly use to interact with the world.

However, queer audiovisual material is often much harder to locate in mainstream archives, which haven’t always picked up on the queer subtext and made that discoverable through catalogue records; or, queer material is produced in an underground or experimental context, in which it is less likely to find its way into institutional collections, like the National Film and Sound Archive.

FUSE: What can the retrospective program of Stephen’s work teach us about Australian queer history?

NICK: Stephen Cummins’ work, from his first experimental Super 8 films through to the posthumous cinema advertisement addressing the AIDS industry, provides a unique snapshot of the issues and concerns that faced the gay community in Sydney, and particularly the gay male community, during the late 1980s and early 1990s — the height of the AIDS epidemic in Australia.

The AIDS epidemic arrived on the heels of gay liberation and gay law reform wins, which brought increasing public visibility on the gay and lesbian community. That visibility brought with it a heightened public fear with the advent of AIDS, fear of the gay male body and the spectre of the sex that gay men were having.

Stephen’s films explore the shifting politics of representation of the gay male body during the AIDS decade, from more formalist studies to more overtly political works.

After being severely bashed on his way home by a group of men, Stephen created the film Resonance (1991).

By David Blanco

FUSE: How did Stephen get into filmmaking?

NICK: Stephen got into filmmaking while a student at the Sydney College of the Arts, having enrolled soon after arriving in Sydney in the early 1980s from Armidale, where he grew up. Three of his student films are included in the retrospective, Breathbeat (1984), Blue Movie (1984) and Deadpan (1985).

Stephen’s films feature the human body, and particularly the gay male body, in movement, perhaps in part reflecting a sensibility drawn from the Sculpture Department in which filmmaking practice was housed.

FUSE: Can you tell us a bit about Stephen’s working relationship with Simon Hunt, and why was it important?

NICK: Stephen was a consummate collaborator, bringing together many of his creative colleagues, such as sound designer Simon Hunt and dancer Mathew Bergan, to produce works that were developed through the collaborative process rather than a singular directorial vision.

FUSE: Can you tell us about the restoration process of these films and why the NFSA has undertaken this project?

NICK: The process of bringing all of Stephen’s films back to the public view in digital format presented a range of challenges for the NFSA due to the variety of original formats, which included 35mm, 16mm and Super 8 film, as well as Betacam SP, cassette tape and slide film.

NFSA already held some master components, and working with Simon Hunt we were able to identify the location of the remaining master material to ensure we were working with the best source material.

Following the digitisation of the source material, Simon Hunt remastered almost all the audio tracks to accompany the films, and the NFSA undertook grading of a number of works in conjunction with Simon and cinematographer Brendan Young.

The NFSA saw an opportunity with both Sydney WorldPride and the 30th anniversary of Queer Screen to highlight Stephen’s body of work, which had largely remained out of public view for the last couple of decades.

As a filmmaker who produced experimental works, there are often less opportunities to showcase these works outside the festival circuit.

As Stephen was a co-founder of Queer Screen and a key figure in the queer film scene in Sydney in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was an opportune moment to showcase his work through digital restoration and remastering.