Cinema Papers No.75 September 1989

COVER : A L IC E GARNER AND BEN MENDELSOHN IN LO VER BOY.

R E G I S T E R E D BY A U S T R A L I A P O ST P U B L I C A T I O N NO. VBÌ

H e a d i n g for the f u t u r e On July 4th 1988 we announced our independence. The day Atlab Australia seceded from its union with the Australian Television Network And now w e’d like to announce

On Monday March 6th, 1989 Atlab Australia will be operating from new, larger and more centrally located premises a t Artarmon.

Please note Our new address will be 47 Hotham Parade Artarmon NSW 2064, our phone number will be (02) 906 0100, Fax number (02) 906 2597 and Telex AA 170917 One thing hasn’t changed

And that's our com m itm ent to excellence.

For over 25 years we've been working with the film and television industry, supplying the kind of post production services that has m ade us one of the best in the business Not only in Australia - But overseas.

As we head for the future - You m ay rest assured we will continue to provide the equipm ent - the people and the dedication to perfection that is ATLAB.

âdlâb à u s lr d id v

Altab Australia. Fully integrated post production facilities for film and video including laboratory and sound mixing.

(MTV PUBLISHING LIMITED)

INCORPORATING

FILMVIEWS

SEPTEMBER

1989

NUMBER

75

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BRIEFLY: NEWS AND VIEWS

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SALLY BONGERS Interviewed by M ary Colbert

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THE TEEN COMMANDMENTS'W hy bother with the teen movie? by Adrian Martin

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AUSTRALIA ANIMATED Craig Monahan interviewed by Chris Brophy, Geoff Gardner, Paul Harris

COVER: ALICE GARNER AND BEN MENDELSOHN IN

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p u b l is h e r e d it o r

26

Patricia Amad

30 Fred Harden

[CHAIRM AN],

Natalie Miller, G il Appleton,

38

Nicholas Pullen

d e s i g n / f in is h e d a r t

Paula Amad

s u b s c r ip t io n s e d it o r ia l b o a r d

John Baxter

44

Ian Robertson

[USA],

Kathy Bail,

50

[C a n a d a ],

Annette Blonski, Raffaele Caputo,

55

Hunter Cordaiy, Stuart Cunning­ ham, Debi Enker, Brian McFarlane,

56

Bill Routt Peter Beilby,

Scott Murray, Philippe Mora Typeset on Macintosh

SE, disks processed by On The Ball PRINTING

Photo Offset Productions

d is t r ib u t io n

64

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FROM THE AUSTRALIAN FILM COMMISSION AND FILM VICTORIA

BOOK REVIEWS: Acting in the Cinema and M asters o f Starlight

Network Distribution

CINEMA PAPERS IS PUBLISHED WITH

FILM REVIEWS Sweetie by Anne-Marie Crawford and Adrian Martin; Dead Poets Society by Brian McFarlane; Bonza and Lover Boy by Lyn McDonald; Batman by Rod Bishop; Georgia by Paul Kalina; N ew York Stories by Raffaele Caputo

Adrienne McKibbins, John Nicoll,

t y p e s e t t in g

TV SCANNERS Television critics' ratings

Rolando Caputo, Felicity Collins,

f o u n d in g p u b l is h e r s

TECHNICALITIES Albert Digital Studios, and Underwater Housing,

by Fred Harden

Chris Berry,

Rod Bishop, Ron Burnett

FILM MATTERS / TAKING TIME OUT Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals,

by Hunter Cordaiy and Raffaele Caputo

Patricia Amad,

a d v e r t is in g

HOLLYWOOD MAVERICK Edward R. Pressman interviewed by Paul Harris

Ross Dimsey, Patricia Amad LEGAL a d v i s e r

BLOOD BROTHERS Scorsese, Schrader and the cult of masculinity,

by Lorraine Mortimer

MTV BOARD OF DIRECTORS

John Jost

LAMBERT TO THE SLAUGHTER M ary Lambert directs Stephen King, by John Baxter

Philippa Hawker

t e c h n ic a l e d it o r

FEAST OF EDENS Looking at Edens Lost by Liz Jacka

GEOFFREY WRIGHT'S LOVER BOY. SEE PAGE 59

69

PRODUCTION SURVEY

80

CENSORSHIP LISTINGS

•

CENTRE SECTION: CINEMA PAPERS READERSHIP QUESTIONNAIRE

COPYRIGHT 1989 MTV PUBLISHING LIMITED.

Signed articles represent the views of the authors and not necessarily that of the editor and publisher. W hile every care is taken with manuscripts and materials supplied to the magazine, neither the editor nor the publisher can accept liability for any loss or damage which may arise. This magazine may not be reproduced in whole or part without the express permission of the copyright owners. Cinema Papers is published every two months by MTV Publishing Limited, 43 Charles Street, Abbotsford, Victoria, Australia 3 0 6 7 .

Telephone (03) 4 2 9 5 5 1 1 . Fax (03) 4 2 7 9 2 5 5 .

Telex A A 3 0 6 2 5 . Reference ME ME 2 3 0 .

NEXT ISSUE ON SALE NOVEMBER 1

JOHN BAXTER is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles; ROD BISHOP is a senior

lecturer at Phillip Institute of Technology; CHRIS BROPHY is Publicity Officer at the State Film Centre, Melbourne; RAFFAELE CAPUTO is a freelance writer on film; MARY COLBERT is a freelance writer and researcher; JOHN CONOMOS is a freelance writer on film; HUNTER CORDAIY is a writer and lectures in Mass Media at N SW University; ANNE-MARIE CRAWFORD is a freelance writer on film; GEOFFREY GARDNER is Director,

Theatrical Distribution at Ronin Films, which is distributing Animated; FRED HARDEN is a film and television producer specializing in special effects; PAUL HARRIS is a freelance writer on film; LIZ JACKA is the author of several books on film; PAUL KALINA is a freelance writer on film; BRIAN McFARLANE is a principal lecturer in Literature and Cinema Studies at Chisholm Institute of Technology; ADRIAN MARTIN is a freelance writer on film; LYN MCDONALD is a freelance writer on film; LORRAINE MORTIMER lectures In Cinema Studies at La Trobe University.

^F^kwards and Nominations AM

NOMINATIONS

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

(Heaven Tonight); Chris Haywood (Emerald City); and Bogdan Koca

BEST FILM

(Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead)

BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM

Aphrodite Kondos (Georgia); Karen

Shadow Panic; Soul Mate; The Tenth

Everett (Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead);

Man; and Valley o f Desire

Dead Calm; Evil Angels; Ghosts... of

Rose Chong (W hatthe Moon SavV);

the Civil Dead; and Island

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

and Gary L. Keady (Sons o f Steel)

Dean Semler (Dead Calm); Paul

BEST SOUND

Nicholas Adler (Hunters); John

Murphy (Emerald City); Yuri Sokol

Craig Carter, Terry Rodman, Peter

Whitteron (Philippines, M y Philip­

(Georgia); and Sally Bongers

Fenton (Evil Angels); John Phillips,

pines); and Sally Bongers (Shadow

(Sweetie)

Roger Savage (Georgia); Ben Osmo,

Panic)

BEST DIRECTION Paul Cox (Island)', Ben Lewin (Georgia); Phil Noyce (Dead Calm); and Fred Schepisi (Evil Angels) BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Paul Cox (Island); Gene Conkie, Evan English, John Hillcoat (Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead); Gerard Lee, Jane Campion (Sweetie); and Ben Lewin, Joanna Murray-Smith, Bob Weis (Georgia).

Lee Smith, Roger Savage (Dead

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Calm); and Bronwyn Murphy, Dean

Robert Caswell, Fred Schepisi (Evil

Gawen, Rex Watts, Peter Clancy

Angels); David Williamson (Emerald

(Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead)

City); Terry Hayes (Dead Calm); and Abe Pogos (Compo)

MEMBERS PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE IN A FEATURE FILM

[AS ONLY FOUR FILMS WERE ENTERED IN THIS CATEGORY, ALL FOUR HAVE BEEN PUT FORWARD AS NOMINATIONS.]

Judy Davis (Georgia); Genevieve Lemon (Sweetie); Irene Pappas

Jill Billcock (Evil Angels); John Scott

(Island); and Meryl Streep (Evil

(Island); Richard Francis-Bruce

Angels)

(Dead Calm); and Stewart Young

BEST DIRECTION David Ogilvy (The Contract); David Knaus (Contradictions); Jinks Dulhunty (Crack in the Curtains); and Solrun Hoaas (Green Tea and Cherry Ripe)

Celia; Compo, Dead Calm; Evil Angels,

BEST ACTRESS BEST EDITING

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Vladimir Osherov (77?e Beat);

Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead; Emerald

BEST EDITING

City, Georgia; Heaven Tonight; Island;

Matthew Tucker (A Day and a Half);

Sweetie; Sons o f Steel; and What the

Denise Haslem, Tim Litchfield

Moon Saw

(Australia Daze); Rod Hibberd (Buried Alive: The Story o f East Timor); and

KODAK NON-FEATURE NOMINATIONS

(Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead) BEST ACTOR

Line Hiatt (Soul Mate) BEST SCREENPLAY David Swann (Bonza); David Ogilvy

Mike Bishop (Ghosts... o f the Civil

BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC SCORE

Dead); John Hargreaves (Emerald

Graeme Revell (Dead Calm); Nick

BEST DOCUMENTARY

City); Chris Haywood (Island); and

Cave, Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld

A Little Life; Confessions of a Simple

Need to Stand); and Barry Dickins

Sam Neill (Evil Angels)

(Ghosts... o f the Civil Dead); Paul

Surgeon; Joe Leahy's Neighbours;

(R u th ve n -A Poem o f Life and Dettol)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Dorothy Barry (Sweetie); Maryanne (Emerald City); and Victoria Longley

Graham (Grace) Walker (Dead Calm);

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Jon Darling (Sweetie); Kim Gyngell

BEST SOUND

Smeaton (Evil Angels) BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

(Celia)

and Philippines, M y Philippines

Grobowsky (Georgia); and Bruce

Fahey (Celia); Nicole Kidman

(The Contract); Steven Faux (No

BEST SHORT FICTION FILM

Tim Chau, Ralph Strasser (The Bear);

Bonza; The Contract, Crack in the

Liam Egan, Counterpoint Sound (Body

Curtains; and Lover Boy

Jon Dowding (Georgia); Neil Angwin

BEST ANIMATED FILM

(Island); and Chris Kennedy (Ghosts

Lucky Girl; Ratropolis; The Shadow-

... of the Civil Dead)

lands; and Still Flying

AU STR ALIAN FILM FINANCE C O R P O R A T I O N FUNDING DECISIONS

Work); Mark Ward, Robert Sullivan, Liam Egan (Crack in the Curtains); and Robin Anderson (Joe Leahy's Neighbours)

THE DENDY AWARDS FOR AUSTRALIAN SHORT FILMS GENERAL CATEGORY

JU LY: T E L E V IS IO N : JACKAROO Crawford Productions.

AUGUST: F E A T U R E : ISABELLE EBERHARDT Seon Films International. Producers: Ian Pringle, Jean Petit.

T E L E V IS IO N D RA M A : THE EILEEN JOYCE STORY

Australian Children’s Television Foundation Productions.

Producer: Antonia Barnard. MORE WINNERS Australian Children’s Television Foundation Productions.

Producers: Antonia Barnard, Margot McDonald. THE SAINT IN SYDNEY Templar Productions. Producer: Sue Milliken. SOUTH PACIFIC ADVENTURES Grundy Motion Pictures. Roger Mirams.

Cinetel Productions. Producer: Frank Heimans. THE GREAT TOA HOAX Kennedy White. Producer: Kate White. THIS LAND AUSTRALIA Sorena. Producer: John Maybey.

UP FOR ADOPTION Langdon Films. Producer: Martyn Langdon Down. WOMEN OF THE IRON ORE

An Ordinary Woman (Sue Brooks) FICTION CATEGORY Lover Boy (Geoffrey Wright) YORAM GROSS ANIMATION AWARD Still Flying (Robert Stephenson)

D O C U M E N T A R IE S : AUSTRALIA DANCES

FRONTIER Fraser Film and Video. Producer: Lilias Fraser.

DOCUMENTARY CATEGORY Contradictions (David Knaus) 16TH ROUBEN MAMOULIAN AWARD > • Contradictions (David Knaus)

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SPOLETO The Spoleto Film and Video Festival will be held at the State Film Centre, Melbourne, from September 15 to 21. The program opens with Michael Lehmann’s controversial teen film, Heathers.

Other films include Terence Davis’s trilogy o f Children, M adonna an d Child and Transfiguration . Davis did the acclaimed D istant Voices, Still Lives.

A section o f the festival is devoted to Pacific Issues, and presents recent works from Hawaii, Nuigini, New Zealand and Austra­ lia. Other sections include: Gay Film and Fringe Films from India.

In in the seminar series, topics cover: Male Order (homo-erotica and male images), Out o f the Ordinary (women, feminism and narrative), Lore and Order (indigenous approaches to media), and Recorder (film journalism and the analytical approach).

“How have women been represented among the six-guns, the saloons and the sagebrush?” enquires the sub-head on p.43 of C inem a Papers for March 1989.

The last place you’ll find out is in “Women Gone West”, the article which follows. To support her assertion that “writing about women in western films is a little like writing about women in Moby Dick”, Rose Lucas cites seven films. Seven, in a field of cinema which overflows with powerful roles for women. Early serials stars like Ruth Roland and Helen Gibson appeared in scores o f western chapter plays.

Why no mention o f them, nor o f Lillian Gish inThe Wind, Sjostrom’s grim picture o f a woman destroyed by the monotony and labour o f frontier life? (A film, incidentally, scripted by a woman, Frances Marion.)

How is any discussion o f women in westerns possible without a mention o f Dietrich in Rancho Notorious and Destry R ides A gain ? Or Johnny G uitar, with its final gunfight between Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge? What happened to Gene Tierney as the 1941 Belle Starr, Elizabeth Montgomery in the remake, or Ruth Roman as Belle Starr’s daughter? Doris Day as Calamity Jane and Jane Alexander in the 198 4 revisionist version (written by Suzanne Clauser, by the way). Why no mention o f The H arvey Girls, with Judy Garland as a frontier waitress and its classic all-woman bar-room brawl? Seven Brides fo r Seven Brothers, where sexual parity is meticulously observed. How about show-business western heroines? Monroe in A Ticket To Tomahawk (and R iv er O f No Return, i f it comes to that), Annie Oakley played by Betty Hutton in A n n ie Get Your Gun and Geraldine Chaplin in B uffalo B ill A nd The Indians. Sophia Loren in H eller in P ink Tights?

What about Faye Dunaway as an oilwoman in Oklahoma Crude, Fonda as a Forties rancher in Comes A Horseman, Raquel Welch in H an n ie Caulderi Then there’s the whole Howard Hawks canon, filled with powerful women who trade wisecracks and punches with the men, and mostly leave them standing: Joanne Dru in R ed R iver, Angie Dickinson in R io Bravo, Michelle Carey and others in E l Dorado - script by (Ms) Leigh Brackett.

Maybe it’s hard to find women in Moby Dick, but to miss the whale takes real dedication. Maybe Ms Lucas wasn’t looking?

John Meillon, who sadly died in August, in one o f his finest films, Peter Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris.

38TH MELBOURNE FILM FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM AWARDS THE GRAND PRIX CITY OF MELBOURNE AWARD FOR BEST FILM

THE HERALD AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY Body Work (David Caesar), Australia. $1,500 THE FRONT PAGE MANAGEMENT AWARD FOR BEST FICTION FILM AWARDED JOINTLY TO

Twilight City (Reece Auguiste),

The Third Wheel (writer-director

produced by the Black Audio Film

Adam Bernstein), New York, USA;

Collective, London. $4,000

and Lover Soy (writer-director Geoffrey

THE ERWIN RADO AWARD FOR BEST AUSTRALIAN FILM (SPONSORED BY

Wright), Melbourne. $1,500

FILM VICTORIA)

CERTIFICATES OF MERIT WERE

An Ordinary Woman (Sue Brooks).

AWARDED TO

$1,500 THE STATE FILM CENTRE AWARD FOR BEST CHILDREN'S FILM

Kitchen Sink (Alison McLean), New Zealand (Fiction); One Step Beyond (Naoto Yamakawa), Japan (Fiction);

RARG (Tony Collingwood), National

Lalala Human Sex Duo No. 1 (Bernard

Film & TV School, London.

Herbert), Canada (Experimental);

Distribution contract.

Shadow Panic, (Margot Nash) Australia (Experimental); RARG (Tony

THE KINO CINEMAS AWARD FOR BEST STUDENT FILM Life A t M a's (Stewart Carter), Swinburne Film & T V School, Melbourne. $1,000 THE SCHWARTZ PUBLISHING AWARD FOR BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM

Collingwood), U.K. (Animation); Rehearsals For Extinct Anatomies, (Brothers Quay), U.K. (Animation); The World Is Watching (Pater Raymont), Canada (Documentary); A Little Life (Deborah Howlett), Australia (Documentary)

Gentlemen (David Farringdon) United Kingdom. $1,500 THE HANIMEX-FUJI AWARD FOR BEST ANIMATION Breakfast On The Grass (Prit Parn),

SIN OF O M M ISSION The production company for the FFCfimded feature Riders on the Storm, listed in the July issue of Cinema Papers, is Dark

Sincerely, JO H N BA X TER

Horse Pictures.

Estonia, USSR. $1,500 C

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LEFT: MARGOT NASH'S SHADOW PICNIC, PHOTOGRAPHED

BY SALLY BONGERS

A

L L Y

cinematographer

G E R S particulaire

ARELY HAS AN AUSTRALIAN FILM CREATED SUCH A

Report

SENSE OF ANTICIPATION AS SWEETIE, PHOTOGRAPHED BY SALLY BONGERS AND DIRECTED BY JANE CAMPION. THIS EXPECTATION WAS FURTHER HEIGHTENED

by

C r e a t i n g a n i m p a c t is not new to Bongers and Campion.

Peel, a superbly crafted film made at the Australian Film, Televi­ sion and Radio School (AFTRS), won the Palm d’Or for shorts at the 1986 Cannes Festival. And their bold and quirky A GirVs Own Story was shown the same year in U n Certain Regard (with Pas­ sionless Moments and Two Friends). Bongers had already won for A GirVs an Australian Film Award for Best Cinematography in the non­ features section. This had signalled her first inroad into that maledominated domain.

Bongers has been nominated again in 1989, this time for Sweetie, which is the first 35 mm Australian feature to have been shot by a woman. Bongers is proud o f the nomination because “it sets a prece­ dent”. In an area where females experience great difficulties getting a job, a nomination is a bonus. She is very touched to be up there with the best in the field, but also level-headed. “I ’m not the first woman to deserve it. I f more women had been given the opportunity, the list would be much longer. But it does register a confirmation that you are really working in the area.”

Bongers’s confidence and determination have paid off. Inter­ viewed about future prospects after graduating from the AFTRS four years ago , Bongers was optimistic: “I ’m not worried. I f you stick to what you’re doing, you’ll get there. I don’t expect to be employed because I am a woman, but because o f the quality o f my work. It’s only a matter o f time.” She staunchly refused to compromise by working as a camera assistant in the lean times, because “it would have set me back at least five years.”

WHEN THE FILM WAS SELECTED IN COMPETITION AT

Mary

THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL THIS YEAR, AND CREATED A CONTROVERSY BY DAZZLING THE

Colbert

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CRITICS AND POLARIZING THE AUDIENCE. Today, Bongers is being acknowledged on her own terms - as one o f a new breed o f filmmakers determined to change the fabric and horizon o f cinema in this country. Along with Jane Campion and John Hill coat ( Ghosts... o f the C ivil D ead), her work bears the stamp ofbold statement. And at barely 30, that is quite an achievement.

Bongers and Campion share a common, and complementary, per­ ception o f film strongly influenced by art backgrounds. “Jane and I share the ideal o f making the visual side o f film as important as other aspects. We have a commitment to push ourselves in new directions.”

They are not interested in the big epic, but the little moments which shape lives; the interior which must be expressed through small gestures; the ordinary that becomes the extraordinary. Thus far, the little moments have provided the fabric for their films; stylistically the designs have been bold, confronting.

“I have to be bold about what I do. I don’t mean that the visual has to take over, but that it should enhance the meaning and make it stronger. Film language can express so much and I feel really driven to add that dimension.

“I don’t believe Australian films have visually challenged audiences much in the past; the cinematography is so restrained. The camera is used in a literal way, following actors from point to point (I call it ‘dotto-dot filmmaking’), tracking (which I love) and panning indiscrimiP

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ILLUSTRATIONS, CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT: FEAR OF LIFE (1984), WHICH BONGERS DIRECTED, SHOT AND EDITED. A GIRL'S OWN STORY (1983), THE SECOND FILM SHOT BY BONGERS FOR DIRECTOR JANE CAMPION, AND TWO FRAME ENLARGEMENTS FROM CAMPION'S SWEETIE (1989).

nately. There seems to be little ques­ tioning o f the reason for a particular shot: ‘What’s the best way to en­ hance the script at this point? Is this being expressed as fully as possible in visual terms?’”

Bongers strongly believes the power o f images and the visual aware­ ness o f the public are underestimated by most filmmakers. “Exposure to ads and video music clips has sharp­ ened audience’s visual responses.

They are acutely conscious o f visual clues - if not intellectually, then by instinct, and a gut reaction can be very powerful.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making films for a specific audience. I f we had taken the script of Sweetie and shot it conservatively, its original meaning would have been lost. You either make the film you conceived, or you don’t.

When you start compromising, you lose the essence, but if you make the film honestly, you come up with the most powerful material.”

Bongers and Campion were trying to break new ground by

“I don’t believe A u stra lia n film s have visually challenged audiences much in the past; the cin e­ matography is so restrained. The cam era is used in a literal way; follow ing actors fro m point to point, tracking a n d p a n n in g indiscrim inately. There seems to be little questioning of the reason fo r a p a rticu la r shot. ”

moving away from the traditional feature structure. They cut up the predictable shape into small sections o f little moments. The focus in the early part is on Kay (Karen Colston), a sombre and introspective bank clerk who enters a new relationship with Louis (Tom Lycos). But this relationship recedes into the background with the visit o f her sister, Sweetie (Genevieve Lemon), and the film becomes absorbed with the domestic family fabric.

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aI like using darkness to create

divide

a different shape to the fra m e, cutting it or m aking a slit down one side to create an irregu la rity ...

So much commercial product is overlit.

What are they all a fraid of?”

“We didn’t want our audience to be lulled into a feeling o f security.

It’s important to place them in different states o f mind, to be alert and questioning.” Bongers is speaking o f Sweetie, but also reflecting her general attitude to filmmaking. Liberation o f space and camera appears to be the motto: “You have 360 degrees and you can put the camera anywhere. It’s not that I want to be different for the sake o f it, I just don’t feel the need to be constrained by what’s been done in the past.”

A favourite means o f changing perspective is shooting high angles downwards. Bongers gives as an example from Sweetie where Kay is lying in bed after having observed Sweetie’s washing their father in the bath. The camera and audience look down on Kay’s face to register her shock and confusion. Had she seen a suggestion o f incest or just Sweetie’s naturally exuberant tenderness? “It is by far the most effective angle to convey that ambiguity”, explains Bongers.

Art has played a significant role in moulding her approach and was an integral part o f family life, her mother working as a potter. The only subjects Bongers enjoyed at school were art and its components, including still photography and the Super 8 club. “Without those I would never have survived school; they were its only redeeming features. The inspiration to become an artist was my central impulse: it is directly related to my filmmaking. I saw film as a way o f incorporating art with earning a living.

“I have always had a way o f looking at things that was different. In photography class at school, I always wanted to go to the extreme print on grade 5 paper, push film through five stops. I wasn’t consciously rebelling, but when I looked at other people’s work it seemed so much tamer. I tended to work from instinct a lot.”

Not surprisingly, Bongers was inspired by such ‘art’ filmmakers as Godard, Tarkovsky and Antonioni, who rebelled against traditional linear formats and sought a deeper level o f expres­ sion o f the inner self through images. She was impressed by their unconventional way o f looking at the world; their reversal o f relationship between people and subjects; the depersonalized perspec­ tive; the radical use o f space and time. The early films o f Antonioni, especially, influenced Bongers’s ideas on framing. From then on, it was a case of exploring her own.

Bongers maintains that the key to cinematogra­ phy is framing. “There are so many ways you can position or frame a shot to make a difference to meaning. But too many people lose inspiration when faced with the technology o f the process.

“I love setting frames and working out where things should be. When I ’m composing a frame, I like to start out with it empty and place things in it gradually, building up the layers till eventually it conveys everything the script requires. But it’s im­ portant for me to start with that clean slate.”

As much as possible, Bongers likes to create the C

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illusion o f depth by lighting deep into the frame and by choreograph­ ing the actors to and from the camera. She also loves a dark look and heaps o f contrast. “I like using darkness to create a different shape to the frame, cutting it or making a slit down one side to create an irregu­ larity, avoiding the traditional or classic rectangular frame. I don’t want to be afraid to bring in a lot o f darkness. So much commercial product is overlit. What are they all afraid of?”

Bongers admits she used to be terrified o f lighting in the early days, but on A Girl’s Own Story (made in third year at the AFTRS) she realized that if she seriously wanted to work in cinematography she would have to come to grips with it. Now Bongers finds “painting with light” one o f the most tantalizing aspects o f her craft. In fact, one avenue o f employment between projects is doing the lighting on music clips.

With Sweetie, Bongers’s work has entered a new phase and right now she feels passionate about pushing her cinematography further, especially on features. She loves the stimulation o f the collaboration process, with people acting as catalysts for each other, refining and improving ideas. She believes most filmmaking teams could collabo­ rate more strongly. “One o f the reasons I love working with J ane is that she responds so well to that process. I believe you make a stronger film that way.” It was the same on Margot Nash’s Shadow Picnic, for which Bongers has been nominated for Best Cinematography in the non­ features section.

“I need to be passionate about what I ’m doing. It’s easier to give a lot to a film if you can relate strongly to the script. I have a lot to offer and I don’t want to just sit back.”

Bongers would love to collaborate again with Campion, but realizes they both need to expand through separate experiences (Campion is currently in New Zealand directing a mini-series about

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a b o v e : t h e p y e f a m il y f r o m p e e l , t h e f ir s t c a m p i o n / b o n g e r s c o l l a b o r a t io n , a n d b elo w

: sa lly bo n g er s at w o r k

mentation. People working in traditional areas, such as commercial films, linear documentaries and predictable formats, were much more valued. “It was disappointing our work was not more appreciated.”

Significantly, it was at the AFTVRS that Bongers met a number o f people with whom she found an affinity o f aesthetics and filmmaking ideals. With some she would form important links, such as Campion. “As soon as Jane showed me the script for Peel, I was wrapped in i t . It was so succinct, so direct and simple.”

They found they shared many ideals - particularly to make films o f their own; original, modern films that were relevant to their generation.

When she elected to become a cinematographer, Bongers knew she was opting for a difficult course. But she wasn’t daunted by the male domination, the boys networking or the other obstacles and myths. She believed in her own ability.

Bongers has worked fairly consistently, but many o f the opportunities have been provided by networking with other women. “Women open doors to other women. Margaret Fink offered Gill Armstrong her chance to direct a feature; Jane Campion gave me mine to shoot one; and I employed Jane Castle as camera operator. But I didn’t compromise standards to give Jane the job because she is female; I believed she was the best person for it. It’s a matter o f trust.

“Perhaps men find it difficult to trust us in an area o f technical responsibility. A lot o f the time it’s not conscious discrimination but o f wanting to work with those you know and trust.”

As director o f photography on a feature, Bongers had a first-hand opportunity to disprove some o f the myths that prevailed about women working in technical areas. “According to one myth, women are not physically strong enough to carry and handle the heavy equipment required in filmmaking. But there is no substance to it.

There are so many people working on a feature [her own team had eight] that no one person has to carry it all. As D OP, I carried less stuff than ever before. Basically all I had to do was work with my light metre and my mind. Yet the myth prevails.

“Women have so much to offer camera or any area. There is no proof for it, but I believe there is an intuitive feminine aesthetic which can enrich everyone’s work. Till there is an equal share o f work, and as long as talented women are deprived o f the opportunities, it is everyone’s loss. Men can also gain from sharing the power.”

Generally Bongers is optimistic about the future. “I do feel there is a new era o f Australian filmmaking around the corner, with younger people like Jane and John Hillcoat coming through. They’ve been around for a while but now they are getting the opportunities to make features. This will influence the way films are made here and open another level which will affect all areas o f film and TV. When films such as Sweetie and Ghostscome out, they shake up the film environment and push ideas further. That is why they should receive support. They bring a much-needed freshness and boldness to the filmmaking climate.”

Janet Frame). “I believe you create your own opportunities; imagination is the only limit. I ’d love to have the opportunity to work m America with directors like David

Lynch ( Blue Velvet is one or the most significant films I ’ve seen; it has an amazing subtext and unexpected ways o f showing the dark side o f character”), David Byrne, Peter Weir and Errol Morris, who did The Thin Blue Line (“I love the way he used documentary material in a feature film way”). She would also like to work in Australia with John Hillcoat (“ Ghosts is such a powerful statement”). Concerned that all sounds too grand, Bongers adds, “I have a lot o f energy and ideas. I feel I have a lot to contribute.”

Meanwhile, Bongers is going to the New York Film Festival, where Sweetie is being shown, and is hoping to complete shooting a 60 minute experimental documentary, Evidence. Funded by the Austra­ lian Film Commission’s Creative Development Branch, it uses docu­ mentary in non-traditional ways, something she has been interested in since beginning film school. “I get inspired by the possibility o f discarding traditional linear forms and structures, and using documen­ tary characters like fiction ones, stylizing and controlling the film in a way similar to drama or a poem.” This is a technique Bongers has already used in the documentary, F ear o f Life, which she directed, shot and edited.

Prospects look quite bright now, but that hasn’t always been the case. She hated school and rebelled against the repression o f the system. “It wasn’t an active rebellion because I was so depressed about being there that I had very little energy. A lot o f the time I would just lie on the lawn and not talk to people - though that sort o f became in­ vogue. I had to fight the whole way to retain my identity, and I know I was a lot more stubborn than most. Because I refused to compromise, I emerged relatively intact.”

Bongers believes the repressive influence o f the education system stifles natural creativity and individuality. “We are all entitled to it and have it when we’re born, but it’s beaten out o f us along the way. I find individuality sadly lacking today.”

A supportive home environment was crucial to surviving the school years and has played a significant part in her career. “My parents exposed us to the arts, and encouraged independence and self suffi­ ciency. They gave us the confidence to take on whatever path we chose.

I feel privileged to have that home environment.”

Bongers was encouraged to do camera work by a lecturer at the West Australia Institute o f Technology, where she studied Art and Design. But at the AFTRS Bongers once more came into contact with institution which she believes attempts to control and mould its students. She admits it provided wonderful opportunities - “fantastic equipment”, etc. - but there was very little encouragement o f experi­

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1. Jan Kenny shot Fran on 16 mm before it was blown up to 35 mm.

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FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF. CAMERON (ALAN RUCK), FERRIS (MATTHEW BRODERICK) AND SLOANE (MIA SARA).

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HERE WAS A MOMENT, earlier this year, when both Time magazine and 7 T V ’s E ntertainm ent This Week leapt breathlessly to the conclusion that - sigh of relief - the decade o f the ‘teen movie’ was over. (O f course, teen movies have been around for ages, but the late 1970s began a boom period when the film market was per­ ceived to bepredominandy teenage.) Adults were, according to the demographics, start­ ing to go to the theatres again; and main­ stream cinema was, accordingly, attempting to ‘grow up’ once more, to reflect ‘mature’ preoccupations. Scarcely two weeks later, however, a Time reviewer was singing the praises o f Heathers, and dutifully noting the existence o f Richard Baskin’s musical Sing!

-th e two latest films about teenagers in high school; while Leonard Maltin on ETWwas coping, business as usual, with the latest re­ leases featuring Corey Haim, River Phoe­ nix, Winona Ryder and Patrick Dempsey.

The Death o f the Teen Movie was, shall we say, rather short-lived - a strange and quickly strangled critical catchcry prompted, no doubt, by a high degree o f wishful thinking on the part o f these rather wearily ‘adult’ pundits o f contemporary cin­ ema, with their often extremely middle-ground ‘liberal’ tastes.

O f course, for fans o f the ‘genre’ (a troublesome word, but we’ll stick with it for the time being), the teen movie never died, and is scarcely about to roll over. Sure, the much-hyped ‘brat pack’ of the early- to mid-1980s - the generation o f Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Andrew McCarthy and Ally Sheedy - has moved on, albeit in some cases rather uneasily, to adult parts; but another generation has quickly and unfussily, according to the relentless and implacable logic o f the market, taken its place (check out any issue o f Teen Dreams at your newsagent for quick confirmation o f this fact). In fact, there are always new ‘mainstream’ teen movies arriving at the theatres —many of which go completely unreviewed and unnoted by ‘professional’ newspaper film reviewers - including, recently, Shag, Fresh Horses, Mystic P izza, Loverboy and Some Girls.; not to mention all the usual hybrids o f the teen formula with other available genres such as horror, sci fi and action, a territory too vast to cover in this article.

But there’s a lot more to consider than just mainstream releases.

We must comprehend the formidable teen movie presence in virtually every other branch o f that increasingly complex and diffuse culture industry we call ‘the cinema’. First, how can one ignore, for instance, all the funky ‘arty’ teen movies from Europe and Asia, many o f them completely way out, which make it to our more enlightened film festivals or art-house cinemas - Japanese wonders like The New M orning o f Billy the K id , So What? and The Typhoon Club", or Euro­ rockers like Chantal Akerman’s Golden Eighties, or even Rohmer’s Boyfriends an d Girlfriends>Such films connect directly, and unasham­ edly, to the American ‘pop’ zest o f any John Hughes or Rob Reiner teen film you care to name. Even the grittier teen ‘issue’ films, more closely resembling the classic festival/art house bill o f fare (like 36 Fillette or Jean-Claude Brisseau’s The Sound an d the Fury) tend to have a querulous strangeness or a libidinal intensity to them which is endlessly disconcerting to mild-mannered, full-time film reviewers.

Second, how could an observer o f local independent film ignore the conspicuous fact that a strikingly predominant number o f films are

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THE TIME HAS COME, IN THE NAME OF THE TEEN M OVIE, TO OVERCOME A FEW RESISTANCES AND TO SETTLE A FEW SCORES...

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OK. The time has come, in the name o f the teen movie, to teen-oriented? At the recent St Kilda Film Festival, for instance, they overcome a few resistances, and settle a few scores. It’s not just a ranged all the way from naturalism o f The Invisible Girl and Passiona problem o f the newspaper reviewers, on their most visible and to the hi-jinx o f Crack in the Curtains and Smoke cEm ifT o u ’ve Got influential stratum o f the film culture sphere, ignoring the interests cEm, via the minimalism o f A fter Hours? Third, there are the wouldand achievements o f the teen movie; the problem spreads right be ‘cult’ teen films, those glamorous film s m audits, which are re­ through the middle stratum (serious, con­ claimed by repertory cinemas shortly after scientious magazines with a relatively broad their sadly non-eventful cinema release: IT'S NOT JUST A PROBLEM OF THE appeal like A m erican Film , Sight & Sound, Penelope Spheeris’ Dudes, William Richert’s NEWSPAPER REVIEWERS IGNORING THE Film Comment, Filmnews and Cinem a P a ­ A Night In theLife o f Jim m y R eardon, Sidney pers-, TV programs like SBS’ The Movie INTERESTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE Lumet’s R u nn in g On Empty.

Show), all the way to the specialist and aca­ TEEN MOVIE; THE PROBLEM SPREADS Fourth - and most abundant o f all - there demic spheres (magazines like Framework, are all those unknown teen wonders which RIGHT THROUGH THE MIDDLE STRATUM ...

Movie, C am era Obscura and Continuum; slum into the video store unheralded, undis­ ALL THE W AY TO THE SPECIALIST AND critical film programs on public radio). In covered, unwritten about virtually anywhere: ACADEMIC SPHERES. every site, we will find that the teen movie just lately, that list includes Sweet L orrain e, is regularly either: a. completely ignored Plain Clothes, Perm anent R ecord, The In (neither Sight & Sound nor Cahiersdu C in ­ Crowd, A loha Summer, M ade in USA, School em a has devoted a single feature article to the phenomenon o f the D aze, Promised L an d , Blueberry H ill, D oin ’ Time on Planet Earth, modern teen movie); or b. rhetorically dumped on as the odious H eartbreak H otel and Three O’clock High. Not all these films are mas­ ‘norm’ o f contemporary commercial cinema, even 1980s mass culture terpieces by any means, but all o f them are interesting and exciting in generally.

This position is tacitly reiterated (and never argued) every myriad ways - and collectively, they suggest that, if young teens are time a reviewer redeems such-and-such a film (say, Tim Hunter’s indeed deserting the theatres, they’re probably still getting their youth R iver’s Edge) as ‘not your average teen movie’, or laments that suchculture fix on their VCRs. I ’d definitely propose that any serious film and-such a director (say, Joan Micklin Silver) has plummeted to lover who has not completely rigor-mortified into ‘adulthood’ should making - horror o f horrors - a ‘teen flick’ (Keith Connolly’s favourite be pursuing that fix as well, along all possible lines o f film culture.

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term o f abuse in the film columns o f Melbourne’s The H erald). More elaborately, this position is established when, every few years, a major magazine like Film Comment, Cineaste or even P ositif devotes a few smart-arse feature pages to off-handedly dismissing the genre as bad art, and castigating it for its numerous ideological sins (sexism, racism, consumerism, etc).1 I should clarify two points at this early stage o f my polemic. First, I am fully aware that the term ‘teen movie’ stretches a long way - far enough to include a certain kind o f teen film which has no problem whatsoever garnering praise from reviewers and audiences o f polite middle-ground tastes. If we take ‘teen movie’ to signify any film which deals with the drama or comedy o f growing up in a specific social en­ vironment, then there are o f course a flood o f completely ‘respectable’ teen films which come to mind: Summer o f 42, My L ife as a Dog, Breaking Away, Gregory’s Girl, A Summer Story, Devil in the Flesh... or indeed, just about any Australian teen film (save Toung Einstein or W indrider) you care to name. M ull is a paradigm case: like the others mentioned, it is in a realistic or naturalistic mode, with a strongly specific ‘sense of place’; it registers as a distinctive, ‘personal’ film; it has individualized, psychological characters; it is reflective and serious.

Making necessary distinc­ tions, we could say that Mull’s ‘world view’, its tone (like that o f 36 Fillette), is tough and contemporary, whereas those films in the Summer o f 42 vein are more ‘autumnal’, wispy, whimsi­ cal, nostalgic; but still, I think, my strategic group­ ing holds. Tough and ten­ der, here, are two sides of the same naturalistic coin.

The acid test is this: how many people would instantly and unselfconsciously call M ull or My L ife as a Dog ‘teen movies’ - let alone ‘teen flicks’? From experience, I know that most people immediately move to separate and distinguish such ‘precious’ films from that hideous, amorphous ‘mass’ o f objects branded teen movies. (Own up, all those readers who choked when I cited that oh-so sensitive film F u n n in g On Empty above as a teen movie!) Well, that’s the mass I ’m talking about: everything from A n im al House and Porky’s to License to Drive and One Crazy Summer, all those sadly unloved films like Secret A dm irer, Joy o f Sex, Ju st One of the Guys, Willy Milly, Sixteen Candles, The Woo Woo K id , Nice Girls D on’t Explode, T u ff Turf, Better O ff D ead, The Legend o f Billie Jean and several hundred others, all at that video store near you. These are films which are, if not quite ‘disrespectable’ to all classes o f viewers, at least conventional and formulaic, standard popular culture entertain­ ment fare: full o f familiar plot and situation cliches, unashamed character stereotypes, patently unreal fantasy worlds; and essentially accommodating o f the dominant, patriarchal, capitalist ideology.

But I don’t really want to divide and conquer here. R iver’s Edge is certainly a tough, complex, naturalistic, disturbing film which can and should - be discussed extensively as a teen movie (Hunter certainly knows two or three things about the form); and Dudes is a flipped-out, intense, thoroughly artificial film bursting with the contradictions of its two dozen borrowed genres, which can also be equally extensively discussed as a teen movie. I ’m not resistant to including M ull in my critical system o f the teen movie, I ’m just heartily sick o f all those who can’t, or won’t, include Joy o f Sex in theirs.

Secondly, I am not claiming that no one has ever written enthusi-

ABOVE: FUNKY, 'ARTY' TEEN MOVIE: ERIC ROHMER'S BOYFRIENDS AND GIRL­ FRIENDS. BLANCHE (EMMANUELLE CHAULET) AND FABIAN (ERIC VIELLARD). CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT: 'RESPECTABLE' TEEN MOVIES: ROBERT MULLIGAN'S SUMMER OF 42 (WITH GARY GRIMES AND JENNIFER O'NEILL), LASSE HALLSTROEM'S M Y LIFE AS A DOG (TOMAS VON BROEMSSEN, ANTON GLANZELIUS), SCOTT MURRAY'S DEVIL IN THE FLESH (KATIA CABALLERO, KEITH SMITH), AND BILL FORSYTH'S GREGORY'S GIRL (GORDON JOHN SINCLAIR, DEE HEPBURN).

FACING PAGE TOP: KIM CATTRALL, BOYD GAINES AND NANCY PARSONS IN BOB CLARK'S PORKY'S: ONE OF THE AMORPHOUS 'MASS' OF OBJECTS BRANDED AS TEEN MOVIES. AND BELOW: RICKY (DANIEL SCHNEIDER) AND MONIQUE (DIANE FRANKLIN) IN THE UNLOVED BETTER OFF DEAD.

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FOR ALL [THE] DILIGENT RETRIEVAL OF ESPECIALLY GOOD AND INTERESTING TEEN MOVIES ... SOMETHING STILL REMAINS SAFELY CORDONED OFF, AND IT IS PRECISELY THAT DESPISED 'M ASS' OF ANONYM OUS TEEN MOVIES ... EVEN TEEN MOVIE FANS TEND TO PROCEED VIA A PUT-DOWN OF 'THE TEEN MOVIE' AS SUCH ... IN ORDER TO THEN ES­ TABLISH WHAT RISES WELL ABOVE THAT 'NORM '.

astically or sensitively about teen movies. You may have to look hard to find the good press - up the back o f some o f those ‘middle stratum’ magazines, where the more passionate reviews and commentaries lurk, saying what they can in a very small space (ala Cinema. Papers o f 19856) - but it does exist. Generally, though, I can’t help thinking that even the available defences o f the teen movie (or particular teen movies) fail to go far enough, and deeply enough, into their subject. And this takes us right to the heart o f why the teen movie is such a ‘problem’ for film writing at all levels.

From my observations, teen movie defenders tend to be critics whose critical consciousness was decisively formed either before or after the great explosion o f 1970s film theory - writers who (in sometimes subtle ways) are strongly ‘Sixties’ or ‘Eighties’ in their style of thought and their methodology, plus a few Seventies defectors who scrabbled for the open air once the theory machine got a little too shrunken and claustrophobic, opting for the more modest and ex­ ploratory space o f reviewing films for, say, Monthly Film Bulletin.

Magazines that are still in some senses strongly, doggedly tied to Seventies methodology and style (like Screen and Framework) have never paid the slightest attention to the teen phenomenon, and perhaps never will.

However, the critical methodologies o f the Sixties and Eighties are not necessarily much better when it comes to truly confronting the mass o f teen movies. Is it enough, for instance, to want to seek out (Sixties ‘film bu ff style) the unsung ‘masterpieces’ o f the genre, the undiscovered auteurs, or the films that display a knowing reverence for traditional Hollywood forms? Granted, it would be no small achieve­ ment to one day find FerrisBueller’sD ay Off, Fast Times a t Ridgem ont High, Reckless or Light o f Day promoted to a canonical position on one of those periodical ‘greatest films o f all time’ polls - remember, this is a world in which even a supposedly intelligent magazine like Cineaste regards Reckless as “too absurd to discuss”. And, to be sure, the teen movie has numerous auteurs, doing smart and evolving work within the form, who receive far too little serious attention: Spheeris, Martha Coolidge, Hunter, Marisa Silver...come to think o f it, even stalwart John Hughes has scarcely received his proper due in print. As for those especially knowing, taut, inventive teen movies treasured by buffs, those that can conjure a fond memory o f the old Forties romantic comedies or the Fifties teen rebel melodramas ... I wouldn’t dispute that Valley G irl and The Sure Thing (romance), or A t Close R ange and Over the Edge (rebellion) are worthy o f some special attention some­ where down the line.

But is this enough? Turning to the more intellectual buffs of CineAction! or Movie magazines - those who have absorbed some­ thing o f the Seventies theory revolution into their now politicized methodology o f ‘practical criticism’ - we find a slightly more sophis­ ticated take in relation to the teen movie. Still more or less on the track of especially ‘significant’ films and ‘intelligent’ directors, critics like Robin Wood (as in his book Hollywood fro m Vietnam to R eag an ) propose new criteria o f value: the teen movies truly to be treasured are now those that somehow ‘subvert’, or at least give a strong critical insight into, the dominant ideology. Thus, Risky Business produces a critique o f the capitalist success story; The Wanderers reflects the experience o f ordinary Americans slowly becoming politicized on the eve o f the Vietnam era; and Fast Times a t R idgem ont High (in Wood’s account) “construct[s] a position for the female spectator that is neither masochistic nor merely compliant”.2 I ’m still dissatisfied. For all this diligent retrieval o f especially good and interesting teen movies - by buffs political and apolitical something still remains safely cordoned off, and it is precisely that despised ‘mass’ o f anonymous teen movies. There are still plenty o f films that no one, it seems, wants to talk about. Think on it discovering masterpieces or auteurs, isolating ‘subversive’ or avant garde exemplars: aren’t such critical gestures just, at some level, fancy c

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ways of separating, once again, the supposedly ‘good’ from the sup­ posedly ‘bad’, the ‘precious’ from the ‘normal’, and ‘us’ (intelligent critics) from ‘them’ (the mass audience)? Even teen movie fans tend to proceed via a put-down o f ‘the teen movie’ as such - the common denominator teen movie, as it were - in order to then establish what rises well above that ‘norm’. It is rare - in fact startling - when Denis Wood, almost alone amongst writers on the teen movie, praises a film (in his case Corvette Summer) precisely because it is ‘normal’, average, unspecial; because it is, as he puts it, “as sand on the beach”.3 It is a little disappointing, really, that film criticism - even practical, buffy, movie-loving criticism - has got us so little o f the way in understanding the entirety o f cinema. What especially loses out, o f course, is what is known as ‘popular’ cinema - all that sand on the beach. This is a surprising fate when you consider the strong ‘populist’ impulse that was doubtless at the origin o f so many genre-based and auteurist projects o f the Fifties and Sixties (from Cahiers to Mono­ g ram ) - the impulse to encounter and understand, in a rush, all the energy and savvy o f the popular arts like Hollywood cinema and pop music, forms that were all-pervasive but conspicuously lacking from the official histories and theories o f art and aesthetics. This originary

impulse is clearly testified to by Peter Wollen when, in recently looking back on his 1968 book Signs and M eaning in the Cinem a that stood exactly on the cusp of old and new methodologies o f film criticism, he remarks that the Six­ ties uncovered a way o f “mapping the Hollywood cinema in-depth”, an engagement with ‘popular my­ thology’ that was “a gesture against.. .elitism ” .4 But the record suggests that Wollen, then as now (like so many others), is fooling himself. Most writers o f his period (such as Ray­ mond Bellour or Laura Mulvey) quickly migrated from the messy depths o f cinema to the more familiar and manageable surfaces.

Valuable general theoretical points about cinema and culture were made during the Seventies, but only, primarily, through the study of the preferred auteurs (like Hitchcock), the ‘transgressive’ films (like Toung Mr Lincoln) and the especially glamorous genres (like film noir). Cahiers critic Serge Daney, in the late Seventies, was rather candid about this drift: “We wanted to re-read Ford, not Huston, to dissect Bresson and not Rene Clair, to psychoanalyse Bazin and not Pauline Kael”5. This indicates that critics were unconsciously setting P

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at the massive ‘unrealism” o f the teen movie usually hums along with ‘these kids never do any schoolwork’, ‘there are no gays in teen movies’ and ‘all the adults are caricatures’.)

In a nutshell, you could say the form has virtually nothing going for it that would earmark it as worthy o f the attention o f your average critic. As a type o f cinema and a slice o f culture, it is largely conservative and conventional, often bears wilfully little direct relation to the real world, and is essentially content to simply amuse its audiences. It is not particularly postmodern (only insofar as everything these days logically must be); in fact, it is unquestionably the daggiest, the nerdiest, the most whimsical o f genres. It runs on a reduced ‘utopian’ impulse in comparison with the most florid, and most critically prized, main­ stream musicals or melodramas.

So why bother? Here are the reasons why I would choose to study the teen movie, from A m erican G raffiti to Say Anything-.

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It exists; it’s popular. So-called ‘youth culture’, within which the teen movie sits, is a big, important deal. This culture is not just (as it is too often delimited) ‘things (films, records...) pitched at kids’; it’s also Bill Murray and Purple P a in and Pee Wee Herman and rock ’n’ roll - anything that gives you (no matter your actual age) that ‘kick’ which is half ‘craziness’ (rebellion, vulgarity) and half innocence (optimism, idealism). It’s just too easy to score points by diagnosing the progressive ‘juvenilization’ ofpopular culture (as Thomas Doherty does in his otherwise useful book Teenagers an d Teenpics), whilst not grasping that at least half our total culture, now more than ever, is

rather strict limits - limits deriving, fundamentally, from their ‘taste’ - on what they were willing to find ‘interesting’-enough to spend time analysing.

The same process happens today, and the teen movie is one o f its prime victims. Taste, which seeks out the precious, quickly flees the norm. This is why, in many ways, the study o f popular cinema (or at least the type o f study which starts out from the films themselves) has advanced so little since the Sixties; why, for instance, most academic studies o f the horror genre never get past the same shallow pool o f ‘great’ filmmakers and ‘special’ tides. Even an exceptional writer like Andrew Britton (from the Cine Action!-Movie camp) abandons any potential for a complex and sophisticated ‘populist’, in-depth under­ standing o f commercial cinema when he leaps, every time, for the superior critical ‘value’ o f a Hitchcock, Sirk or Minnelli over the runof-the mill, convention-bound, ideologically determined Hollywood product.

However, there’s one last option. One might think that all this tasteful ‘selectivity’ on the part o f critics has been remedied by the sudden rise to prominence in the Eighties o f a certain ‘encyclopaedic’ kind o f writing devoted purely to the ‘popular’ genres - fanzines like, locally, F atal Visions, or books like Kim Newman’s N ightm are Movies (reviewed in Cinem a Papers 74), which do not hesitate to cover the whole ground o f their chosen topics. But, while the informative value o f such work is beyond dispute, one has only to peruse the brutally ‘normative’ judgements o f Newman’s book - the all-too-certain identification o f all that is apparently selfevidently ‘bad’ in cinema, such as directors who can’t direct, scripts that have no back­ bone, ideas that just don’t work or films that can’t get themselves together - to know that, for a new generation o f B-movie buffs, the definition o f ‘criticism’ has sadly shrunken to little more than what it has always been for the worst o f the newspaper hacks: an exercise in superiority, the power to bless what is com­ fortably good and damn what is uncomforta­ bly bad.

What is thereby lost in such criticism is any notion o f the cinema - even and especially popular cinema - as a place where risks can be taken, where experiments (sometimes inad­ vertently) happen, and where thrillingly un­ certain encounters between viewers and films should (and do) occur. Again, this is disap­ pointing and surprising in the light o f the thought that B-cinema, so often beyond the pale, excessive and surprising, surely demands and inspires a critical ap­ proach that can break free from the protocols imposed by the ideal o f a ‘norm’.6 Besides, the new wave fanzines are scarcely likely to sustain much contact with the dreaded teen movie. That is because, just as at the academic level, only certain genres are considered suitable material i.e., acceptable to taste. In the fanzines (see Michael Helms’ report in Cinem aP apers 73), it’s only the ‘dirty’ genres which ever really matter.

Thus, while it’s par for the course for these streetwise publications to extol the severe, perverse delights o f M aniac Cop, The H idden or Street Trash (and I salute them for it), I can’t imagine that modest, rather wholesome little teen films like Seven Minutes in H eaven, Crazy For Tou or Pretty In Pink are ever quite going to get the same nod o f subcultural approval. The teen genre is too ‘clean’ by h alf- a standard objection echoed on all the critical strata, for instance P ositif s Philippe Royeur scoffing that “these youths, clean and antiseptic, miraculously untouched by the great crises o f contemporary America, are com­ pletely ignorant o f Watergate and Vietnam”. (This predictable crack 14

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FACING PAGE: LAYNE (CRISPIN GLOVER) AND FECK (DENNIS HOPPER) IN TIM HUNTER'S R/VER'S EDGE, A TOUGH, DISTURBING TEEN MOVIE; AND AIDAN QUINN AS REBEL JOHNNY ROURKE IN RECKLESS, DIRECTED BY JAMES FOLEY AND WRITTEN BY CHRIS COLUMBUS. CINEASTE THOUGHT IT "TOO ABSURD TO DISCUSS". BELOW: PHOEBE CATES AND JENNIFER JASON LEIGH IN AMY HECKERLING'S FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. FOR ROBIN WOOD IT "CONSTRUCT(S) A POSITION FOR THE FEMALE SPECTATOR THAT IS NEITHER MASOCHISTIC NOR MERELY COMPLIANT". AND, A WHOLESOME LITTLE TEEN FILM: CRAZY FOR YOU. LOUDEN (MATTHEW MONDINE) AND THE GIRL OF HIS DREAMS (LINDA FIORENTINO).

necessarily, vitally ‘juvenile’. The teen movie, like other youth culture phenomena, is about survival, and a (very small, very fragile) means to survival.

So there’s the first noble, necessary task made possible by paying in-depth attention to the teen movie: an understanding o f youth culture in all its extensions and implications.

2. More particularly to do with the films themselves, and with the forms o f popular cinema, I believe we need to think again, and more comprehensively, about that mysterious thing called ‘entertainment’.

Most critics seem to assume they know what entertainment is, what it consists o f and how it works; critics like Robin Wood, once they’ve schematically redeemed a film like Fast Times for marxist-feminism, always add a feeble ‘yes, well, it’s also entertaining’ clause, which gets us precisely nowhere on that score. Yet the teen movie is a principal entertainment form, and it works through this fact at every second, on every level: emotional energy, gags, comedy o f manners, image-sound relations, actors animating their stereotypes, games with fictional premises, spectacular mixing o f genre elements... To supremely value, before really looking at the whole field, the dazzling teen movies of Foley, Reiner or Hughes is to risk missing the opportunity to under­ stand the very delicate interplay o f convention and invention in even the most apparently gross, least subtle popular films.

Chalk that one up for a hopeful future: a better, more complete theory o f popular entertainment.

3. As with any popular, commercial genre, the fun only really starts when you get that truly in-depth sense o f hundreds o f films bouncing/ feeding/ripping off each other, mutually creating each other in a network. At that moment, all distinctions between good and bad, accomplished and botched, coherent and incoherent movies start to break down - mercy! - or at least become less significant, less telling, less determining o f one’s critical system. This is reminiscent o f what Philip Brophy once said o f popular music: “even the fakest, stupidest, most negative example o f Rock or Pop does have something to tell us about Rock and Pop in general” .7 Naturally, since we’re talking about cultural significance, not cultural ‘worth’; and trying to grasp the flows and swirls o f culture rather than its qualitative ‘milestones’. Out with auteurs and masterpieces then, and while we’re at it, out with privi­ leged ‘authentic’ examples as well (as in: ‘M organ’s Cake is a true, real teen movie’); even the fakest, stupidest teen movie can be energetic and sublimely celebratory o f its own fakeness.

So that’s two more things at stake in a study o f the teen movie: a theory o f genre in popular film; and a mode, a working method, o f non-evaluative criticism, so sorely needed in these sourpuss times.

4. The teen movie has its own wonderful, stylized sense o f ‘the everyday’, and everyday life. Not necessarily your or my everyday life; but, in contrast to other movies and movie-types, a certain loose, tangled weave o f characters and events, an attention to incidents and relations o f working life, leisure life and family fife, an overall texture which registers as everyday-like. Within its fictions, the teen movie has a lot to say about accommodating to the everyday, about making it a tolerable place in which to five. This is certainly part o f the genre’s ‘conservatism’, but conservatism is itself something worth grappling with non-moralistically for a change; as Raymond Durgnat suggests, “an important job o f art is to register the way people actually experience things, as distinct from how the critic might wish them to do so”. 8 This is not to say, however, that the teen movie, with its reduced utopianism, is entirely static and free from complications or crises: on the contrary, the genre is full o f fascinating poignancies and stresses, all kinds o f quiet, daily palpitations o f the personal-social world. That, I suspect, is about half o f what makes it popular.

One for the road, then: an immersion in teen movies might sensitize us to all that is modest, fleeting, fragile in popular cinema, and popular culture. Does that sound so uneventful, so unpromising? Not to my ears, at any rate.

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I ’m well aware that I ’ve been using the teen movie here as a kind o f ‘case’.

One could just as well open up some o f the abovemarked areas - popular entertainment, genre, fan­ tasy and the everyday - by recourse to some other form; you name it. Or one could as easily pick fights with the going ‘schools’ and available methodolo­ gies o f film criticism direedy, without the need at all to wrangle over a con­ tested cinematic object, despised by one player, loved and defended by the other. But if the teen movie indeed provides a juicy, opportune case study, it doesn’t amount to just simply that: as itself, the teen movie has its own broad specificity, its own ‘aesthetic’, its own pleasure and its own history. Why bother with the teen movie? It exists, it’s popular.

What more reason do you need?

These ideas, and others, are developed at length in Adrian Martin’s booklet The Teen Movie: A n Introduction, to be published by Swinburne Institute o f Technology and the Australian Film Commission later this year.

NOTES 1. For typical put-downs o f the teen movie, see Armond White, “Kidpix”, Film Com ment, August 1985; Elayne Rapping, “Hollywood’s Youth Cult Films”, Cineaste 1/2, 1987/ 88; and Philippe Royeur, “Coca-Cola Kids”, P ositif307 , September 1986. Defences o f the genre are rarer (hence the piece you’re reading), but definitely see Denis Wood, “Seeing and Being” , Film Quarterly, Spring 1986, an article which looks like it was shoved into the ‘Letters’ section for daring to praise The Breakfast Club and Weird Science as truly political films.

2. The analyses I am referring to here are: Matthew Bernstein and David Pratt, “Comic Ambivalences in Risky Business", Film Criticism, Spring 1985; Susan Morrison, “Getting a Fix On the 60s: Philip Kaufman’s The W anderers Revisited”, CineAction! 12, Spring 1988; and Robin Wood, chapter 10 o f his Hollywood From Vietnam to R eagan, Columbia University Press, 1986. See also Bryan Bruce’s teen-related articles in most issues o f Cine A ction!.

3. Denis Wood, “As Sand on the Beach: Critical Commentary on Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood’s Corvette Summer", Jo u r n a l o f Popular Film a n d Television, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1979.

4. Peter Wollen, “Thinking Theory”, Film Com ment, August 1988.

5. T .L . French [Bill Krohn], “Les C ahiersdu C inem a 1968-1977: Interview with Serge Daney”, The Thousand Eyes 2, 1977.

6. The best statement on this is by William Routt, “Creature”, Stuffing: Film : Genre, 1987.

A different version o f this piece by Routt appears as “The Menace” in Substance 5 5 ,1 9 8 8 .

7. Philip Brophy, “Editorial (kind o f...)”, Restuff: Rock & P op Culture, 1988.

8. Raymond Durgnat, “Hollywood Turns to the Citizens Band”, Films, December, 1981.

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A N INTERVIEW W I T H C R A I G

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LEFT: DAVID ATKINSON'S COMPUTER ANIMATION, THE WHEEL (1989), MADE AT SWINBURNE.

Neighbours, Perfect Match, H om e an d Away and other such programs, which breed so-called normality but really inspire mediocrity.

To the animator and the fan, animation is close to music and poetry. You can do things that you couldn’t possibly get away with in live action, both in style and content. You can comment or satirize without necessarily offending anyone, while at the same time making people more aware. In A n im a ted , for instance, you see an incredible variety o f styles and subject matter, all of which reflect the many changes in our political and social attitudes.

Despite this, animation is still seen as a bit of a novelty - particu­ larly in Australia, where animation is judged on how it compares to Disney. In Europe and Canada it is considered an art form, and even in America people have broken with the Disney style and been accepted. For example, in cinemas today we are seeing the ‘cartoon movie’. By that I mean the filmmaking quality: R aiders ofthe Lost A rk, Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice and B atm an , which I can’t wait to see.

QUESTION: How did you approach making a film about animation in Australia?

C.M.: I didn’t really want to do a purely archival film, with a presenter.

I wanted to try and make a film which was much more layered. I conceived it on three levels. The first was the animation itself. Then come the filmmakers as individuals and, third, the group o f animators I organized to “do lunch”. That was a hoot. We set the camera up on tracks about 10 metres away and let them eat, drink and be merry. It was great fun and quite revealing.

QUESTION: There is an interesting comment in the film from Ann Jollife, when she says that she has never been in a room with more than three animators. It is a pretty solitary profession fiddling away with drawings, clay, paper or, nowadays, a computer.

C.M.: A lot o f the animators have this librarian feel to them. They are very quiet. I thought if we could get that quality on camera it would be good. One o f the things that comes across is that they are quite normal people.

QUESTION: Were you at all daunted by the amount o f research that faced you: the chasing o f rights, hunting for footage and so on?

C.M.: No, because I was very interested in the subject and very keen to make a film. I had been wallowing in music video and commercials for far too long. But every time I tried to get a film off the ground, I didn’t have much success. So, I decided to start doing the research myself.

Then other people became interested and the whole thing just gathered momentum.

QUESTION: Did you discover much material that you didn’t know existed?

C.M.: Yes. I wasn’t really aware o f the Owen Brothers, or o f Pat Sullivan’s relationship to Felix the Cat. And I certainly wasn’t aware of

HE AUSTRALIAN FILM INDUSTRY has for close to two decades occupied a respectable cultural position. Production has be­ come, within certain limits, quite stable. This can hardly be said, however, about the animation sector. Since 1912, when the first Australian animation was done by Harry Julius, through to the present, the animator’s lot has been one o f skimpy production standards, overseas domination, lack o f audience interest and a failure to have the art o f the animated film taken seriously by the wider industry.

There have been some triumphs: Bruce Petty’s Oscar for Leisure; Yoram Gross’s cracking the international market on his own terms and finally getting the Australian fauna up against the Northern Hemi­ sphere rabbits, ducks, mice, dogs and so on; and the Swinburne Film School’s using its ancient steam-powered equipment to churn out a bewildering collection o f new faces. But these victories tend to pale away alongside the tales o f woe, the aborted projects, the series never taken up and the films that simply never get shown.

Nevertheless, there is a marvellous story to tell about all those who battled away in their poorly equipped studios, or simply on their own.

And the threads o f this tale have been pieced together by Craig Monahan, a Film, Radio and Television School graduate and former producer o f SBS’s Rock A round the World. He spent two years on the research and uncovered people such as the Owen brothers and Harry Julius, who had long been forgotten, and went through to the present where animation is taking on a new lease o f life via the computer and the rock clip. Filming and editing took a further year.

The result is A n im ated, a film in which 75 years o f animation history is rolled into 80 breathless minutes. The film adopts an engagingly funny, slightly serious, sometimes off-the-wall approach to the assembly o f the material, eschewing the conventional history/ anthology concept. It races from 1912, when cartoons were done to comment on newsreel material, past Eric Porter, the Owen brothers, Bruce Petty, Yoram Gross and Alex Stitt, and on to the present o f Steve French, Bruce Currie and the computer video groups. It has lots o f Australian animals, though one may have trouble recognizing Willie as a wombat. All in all it is a singular contribution to reviving some moments o f Australian history which lay buried even deeper than most.

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QUESTION: Have you always been interested in animation?

CRAIG MONAHAN: Yes, though I never wanted to be an animator. But

it seemed to me you could do anything in animation if you had the the imagination.

I grew up with The Bugs Bunny Show, The Flintstones, The Jetsons and that style o f television. I was lucky: imagine growing up today with e

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The NFSA was able to put me onto some Harry Julius material.

It was part o f the news­ reel o f the day, the A ustralasian Gazette.

There are dozens of those in the NFSA, but they have only been able to preserve or copy a few. It’s all nitrate. It was a bit disappointing that the only ones I could get o f Harry Julius were the four or five that had been preserved. There are many more waiting to be done, when money becomes available.

QUESTION: Was there any material you couldn’t use because o f copy­ right problems?

C.M.: The Beatles was one. A few o f the episodes o f the TV series were done in Australia in the early Sixties. But we couldn’t use them because it would have cost too much money. As well, several American series from the Sixties, such as CoolM cCool, Beetle Bailey and K ra z y K a t, are owned by King Features, which would only let us use stills.

QUESTION: Was a series like The Beatles really Australian?

C.M.: Well, the scripts and voice tracks came from America. But that series, and others like it, did foster and train a new generation of animators.

On the other hand, the introduction o f television to Australia saw us start to lose some o f our national identity. We were tempted to ignore our own surroundings and there were subtle changes in our fives. I don’t think it is anything new to say that Australian television is a vehicle for cultural imperialism, whatever you may think o f the quality o f some o f it.

Before television, our animators used a tremendous amount o f the Australian flora and fauna, even if people followed the Disney style. At least they were drawing wombats, koalas, kangaroos and so on. But after television, when the stations could purchase US and U K product for a fraction o f the cost o f local material, we had to listen to American rabbits. It wasn’t until Yoram Gross in the 1970s that we got the return o f Australian characters.

QUESTION: There is a title at one point which reads ‘Hanna Barbera 1 9 7 2 -1 9 8 8 ’.

C.M.:Disney has bought Hanna Barbera Australia. It doesn’t have an animation studio in America. The only one it owns now is here. They are making things like Winnie The Pooh. All the layouts and boarding

Harry Julius or that Lloyd Rees used to work for him.

Bill Collins says in the film that the chances o f the early animators’ work being seen or exhibited in a fair and proper manner were very slim. H e’s right, because o f the exhibition and distribution cartels at the time and the fact that it was basically a hobby for these people.

There was no way that anybody could make a living purely from animation. All o f them had to do something else. The Owen brothers, for example, did titles for other newsreels or films, and also ran a graphic design studio. More or less it is the same today.

Many o f the great artists and illustrators of the time worked for Smith and Julius studios at some stage or other. The Julius studio, for instance, used to do a lot o f illustrations for The Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly. And if the people weren’t working directly for the newspaper, they would be working for Julius. He used to do ads for newspapers as well.

I love the way newspaper cartoonists can sum up 1,000 years, or what happened yesterday afternoon, in one drawing and caption. I think that animation on television could be used in the same way. At the end o f my film, I raise the question o f why animation isn’t used more for analysis on television, like it is with newspapers. Given Bruce Petty’s work, and Rubbery Figures, it is more than possible.

QUESTION: Another discovery for you was Dick Ovenden, who did K ing Billy.

C M .: Few people know anything about him. He worked for the Shell Company, and also did the odd illustration. He used to sell his paintings at the horse races on a Saturday morning. Apart from K ing Billy, the only other animation he did was a couple o f shorter things.

It was much more o f a hobby for him than the Owen brothers and people like them. His style is especially good for Australia at that time (c. 1933).

QUESTION: What was the reaction from the old animators when you begun hunting for this material?

C.M.: Most people thought the film would be a waste o f time because they had no idea that there had ever been an animation industry. A few people were very co-operative, but most didn’t know where I could start.

Initially, most o f the information came from my interviews with past and present animators. After this, the Australian Film Institute and Australian Film Commission scoured through their lists o f films and filmmakers, and I used their information to get hold o f newspaper material. Once I put together a coherent list, I contacted the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA).

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FACING PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT:

are down here, but they are painted and traced in Japan and MONITOR SHOWING HIS DOT AND THE other places.

BUNNY. (PHOTO: ROBERT MACFARLANE).

Who F ram ed Roger R a b b it?, HARRY JULIUS'S CARTOONS OF THE MOMENT (C. 1923) FROM THE AUSTRALASIAN GAZETTE. for example, was made by the DICK OVENDON'S KING BILLY'S FIRST CAR Disney studios, but it was done (C. 1953). AND BRUCE PETTY'S CAREFUL by freelancers all over the world, KOALA (1952), MADE FOR THE OWEN though mostly in England. There BROTHERS. ( IT WAS HIS FIRST JOB.) was an ad in Variety last week trying to get animators to go and live in Ireland to work for Disney.

QUESTION: How does the modern generation o f animators compare with their predecessors?

C.M.: The most obvious comparison is that filmmakers and animators continue to experiment and take risks and look for new ways to do things. But people still have to survive. As in the past, they have to do commercials, titles and whatever else. The only alternative is to get a job working for one o f the studios doing somebody else’s series or specials.

There was a 10- or 1 5 -year period when for a filmmaker to be making ads or somesuch was regarded as selling out. That’s changing and it is starting to go back the other way. And it’s something that is explored in A n im ated , because there is an argument about where craft finishes and art begins. I think you have to keep working so that you continue to learn and improve your craft while working towards the chance to do the projects you want to do.

Bruce Currie, whose animated films have received recognition around the world, has been doing openers for SB S. Steve French works on commercials in between producing some o f the punchiest and funniest animation around. It is the reality o f the animation industry.

I think it important to point out that, in my opinion, the most interesting work in content and style is coming from the Swinburne animation course, or indeed from those who have graduated from it and are now part o f the industry. Swinburne is unique in that it offers experience in not only conventional styles o f animation - i.e., cell, cut­

out - but also claymation and computer animation.

All o f these people, including those from Swinburne and in the mainstream, still suffer from not getting their films seen, the same problem Eric Porter and others had 40 years ago.

QUESTION: Do many animators have a great feature somewhere in the back o f their minds?

C.M.: Yes. But to make a feature-length animated film is very, very expensive, and it takes at least a couple o f years.

QUESTION: One area you raise near the end o f A n im ated is animation in rock videos.

C.M.: For a long time, music videos were seen as silly things by the community and television programmers, whereas young filmmakers knew from the start it was the only place where they could experiment.

It is terrific because musicians don’t like to be told what to do, and they are quite happy for you to do whatever you want.

Lucinda Clutterbuck’s and Lyn-Maree Milburn’s work, for ex­ ample, is light years away from conventional animation. They are two filmmakers in this country whose work in music videos is breaking new ground and is recognized around the world.

Music videos are an outlet for people who were going crazy because they didn’t want film to have rules. Now it’s gone full circle with every advertiser saying, “I want it to look like this music video I saw.” Now they all religiously watch MTV. I think you can also see the influence o f the music video in most areas o f cinema, such as editing, lighting and pacing.

QUESTION: Do you see music videos as the new tyranny, with Saturday morning cartoons being replaced by the M TV videos?

C.M.: When I think about the future o f animation on TV, I like to think positively. Programmers really have opportunities to use these arts, not just tolerate them on things like MTV. Animation doesn’t have to be seen as something for kids. Animation covers as many ideas and subjects as live action. We should be able to see some o f it. I feel that perhaps TV programmers don’t know how to handle it. TV can do anything now, so why not animation.

■

YORAM GROSS SITTING IN FRONT OF A

AUSTRALIA'S LEADING ANIMATION STUDIO. PRODUCERS OF THE BEST IN CHILDREN'S FEATURE FILMS. 62-68 Church Street, Camperdown NSW 2050 Sydney Australia

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Review by L iz Ja ck a

Feast of dens EDENS LOST:

AN ANTIPODEAN

BRIDESHEAD,

A BLUE MOUNTAINS DYNASTY, OR ART TELEVISION ?

DENS LOST is one o f the first o f the classy co-produced mini-series to emerge from Sandra Levy’s revamped drama policy at the AB C, although it has a long pre-ABC genesis. The project originated with producer Margaret Fink, and there is the usual story o f a long gestation period, difficulty in finding funding, and the ordeal gone through to bring this “masterpiece to the screen” (cf. My B rillian t C areer and For Love Alone). It is a co-production between the ABC, Margaret Fink, and Central Independent Television o f the U K - for the latter, the first production from its newly formed film arm to reach the screen.

Unlike most Australian mini-series, Edens Lost is carefully positioned at the high cultural end o f the market; it deliberately proposes itself as what John Caughie has called “art television” 1. It was publicized both here and in the U K as a prestige production; its subjectmatter was described as the “raw-edged” sexual and emotional conflicts o f an “elegant” upper-class family, promising beautiful images, stylish settings, lovely clothes and literate dia­ logue. The quote from Britain’s Time Out magazine, quoted in the ABC’s press kit, is typical: “High-class three-hour British/Australian adaptation ofSumner Locke Elliot’s novel o f class, clash and collapse ... Perfectly paced, stunningly shot and consistently compulsive ... mini­ series don’t come much better than this.” And as another extract from the press kit reminds us, with its “7.1 million viewers - Brideshead 3.25 million viewers”, comparisons with the landmark production o f Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited are inevitable.

There are a number o f parallels: both are adaptations o f well-regarded novels, both are stories about the privileged classes from the point o f view o f one from humbler origins, although, unlike the aristocrats o f Brideshead, the St. James family is merely well-off upper middle-class. Both are about the elegant facade o f a family being broken down and revealing the conflicts, hatred and downright pathology that exists within; both have glacially beauti­ ful matriarchs as central characters, both have rather gormless lower-class male protagonists who provide the voyeuristic identification point for audiences, and who, paradoxically, are the

ABOVE: ANGUS (BRUCE HUGHES) IS INVITED BY EVE ST. JAMES (JULIA BLAKE) TO STAY AT THE ST. JAMES HOTEL IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. NEIL ARMFIELD'S EDENS LOST. FACING PAGE: STEVIE (LINDA CROPPER) TERRORIZES HERSELF AND ANGUS AS THEY HURTLE DOWN A BLUE MOUNTAINS COAL STRIP.

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witnesses and interpreters o f the family secrets. Both exploit an psychological exploration (though with the occasional melodramatic audience’s fascination for spying on the upper classes and their strange, dei ex m achin e to precipitate psychological development, e.g. the perverse ways, both offer the delightful pleasure o f exploring dark and killing o f Cissie’s dog), and with much o f the content being conveyed alluring skeletons in cupboards. And both depend on a nostalgia for through mise-en-scene devices rather than directly. the loss o f times more leisured, more elegant, more measured, even if The question for a critic than is how to ‘read’ Edens Lost. Is it art fatally flawed. Everything about the style o f both - the legendary television, is it melodrama, is it high-quality soap? What do we make languor o f Brideshead, the loving preoccupation with decor, settings, o f this artful production o f a story o f a spoilt middle-class family and clothes, the stately pans and vaguely Debussian music in Edens Lost its agonies and tragedies during the years o f the Second World War? is elegiac, has a slightly bitter, yet somehow In some ways, the answer to the comfortable, even sentimental sense o f mourn­ question must lie in an approach EDENS LOST IS CERTAINLY UNLIKE AN Y OTHER ing for the loss o f a past that never quite existed. to the novel which is the source MINI-SERIES MADE IN AUSTRALIA ... IT RESEMBLES Margaret Fink has specialized in bringing material. It is surely interesting ART CINEMA IN ITS HELD-BACK EMOTIONAL TONE, ITS Australian classic novels to the screen: first to note how often Sumner Locke AT TIMES SOMEWHAT CRYPTIC NARRATIVE Miles Franklin, then Christina Stead, and her Elliot has been adapted for the EXPOSITION ... AND WITH MUCH OF THE CONTENT screen, compared with other next project is said to be Jessica Anderson’s BEING CONVEYED THROUGH MISE-EN-SCENE T irra L irm By The River. Although a produc­ Australian authors. The current DEVICES RATHER THAN DIRECTLY. tion for television, Edens Lost has a definite series follows the 1980 mini­ series o f Elliot’s 1977 novel cinematic flavour about it. As Caughie defines Water Under the Bridge and the 1983 feature version o f Careful, H e it, art television is precisely that area o f high-quality TV drama in which Might H ea r Tou (first published 1963). Edens Lost is in fact considered the visual rhetoric o f cinema dominates, rather than the scriptto be the continuation o f the autobiographical themes begun in dominated rhetoric o f television. Edens Lost is certainly unlike any Careful. In EdensLostxht young P.S. o f C arefulis replaced by a version other mini-series made in Australia, both in subject-matter and in style. o f the author’s persona in the character o f Angus (Bruce Hughes), the It does not have the rather literal televisual narrative style that young man left friendless and alone after his Aunt’s death, and invited characterizes the mini-series: it resembles art cinema in its held-back with a murmured, “Come to us” into the family by the alluring and emotional tone, its at times somewhat cryptic narrative exposition, the mysterious Eve St. James (Julia Blake). fact that it is entirely an ‘internal’ piece, based solely on inner C

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RIGHT: STEVIE AND COLONEL GABRIEL IMRE (EDWARD WILEY) FOR WHOM SHE LEAVES HER HUSBAND. FACING PAGE: AN OLDER ANGUS.

The screen adaptation follows the structure o f the novel fairly faithfully; like the novel it is structured into three quasi-autonomous parts, entitled ‘Angus’, ‘Bea’ and ‘Eve’ after the char­ acter from whose point of view each is told.

However in the novel there are slippages both o f viewpoint and thematic incident between parts which give it a slightly eerie feel o f echoes and layers o f memory. In one part we are given one fragment o f an incident: for example, Stevie’s ride on the ‘funicular’ with Angus (in Part 1) whose full import is only revealed when it is re­ remembered in Part 3.

It is a mixture o f realism and a more modern­ that she had a brief but non-sexual liaison with Heath at the time of ist set o f gestures - it has something o f the internal monologue struc­ his disgrace, Angus accidentally lets this information fall in front of ture familiar from W oolf or the Joyce o f P ortrait o f the A rtist as a Eve. This is the first major crack in the structure; Eve’s life-long work Young M an, notably in Elliot’s habit o f switching times in mid­ o f being the perfect wife, o f devoting herself to fulfilling Heath’s every sentence as a memory swirls up in the consciousness o f the character desire, is abruptly called into question, and in revenge Eve sends whose ‘voice’ is currently carrying the narration.

Cissie’s beloved dog to be put down. Only Angus knows the reason, A good deal o f the strangeness o f the novel has been ironed out by and it precipitates his disillusionment with the fantasy o f the St James not preserving these startling juxtapositions - only Eve’s culminating family’s perfection and his descent into cynical and sponging medioc­ narrative (o f her falling in love with Heath) is handled in a way that rity, although as subsequent parts reveal he can never quite separate juxtaposes past and present, but this is done byway o f the more normal himself from the family. Angus starts as the admiring, goggle-eyed and accustomed flashback technique, with the past being conveniently voyeur, and ends up in Episode 3 as the witness and interpreter o f the doubly marked for us by being photographed in the pseudo-antique final disintegration o f the family, or rather o f the family romance. sepia style o f the time.

Episode Two is Bea’s story, and occurs in Sydney at the end o f the The first part o f Edens Lost tells the story of Angus’s introduction War. Bea is now a successful writer o f radio soap opera, pen-name D .K to the St James family, and his infatuation with the cool Eve St James. (for “don’t know”) Durfee. Shattered by a bitter fight with Marcus, Eve tells Angus the story o f the judge’s disgrace which has led to the she has a brief affair with a visiting US officer, Corey Orcutt (Patrick family’s isolation in the Blue Mountains and to the judge’s delicate Quinn), urbane, sensitive and, unfortunately for Bea, mother-fixated. state, where the family humour him by inventing elaborate courtroom This Episode also updates us on Stevie’s situation: now married to the and literary games in which Heath (Arthur Dignam) can again play out dull suitor o f Episode 1, Bill Seward (Andrew Tighe), conveniently a kind o f parody o f his former judicial power. The family members are posted overseas, and the mother o f a daughter, Stevie is having an affair introduced: Stevie (Lynda Cropper), the eldest daughter, beautiful, with a wealthy but boring US army major, Gabriel Imre (Ed Wiley). spoilt, contemptuous, idle, with a vicious tongue; Bea (Victoria We also meet up again with Angus, now pompous Longley), the second daughter, and prematurely middle-aged, who has teamed up less beautiful, large, clever and EDENS LOST CAN BE SEEN AS A STORY OF THE with Lesley-Ann, and is planning to go mining in the too forthright for her own good; UNSATISFIABILITY OF FEMALE DESIRE, AND THE Northern Territory. Again, it is Angus who unwit­ and Tip (Yves Stening), the son, INABILITY OF THE WOMEN EVER TO ARTICULATE tingly plays his role o f shatterer o f family illusions, by ostensibly courting the unfortu­ THIS DESIRE. FOR ALL THREE OF THE CENTRAL revealing to Bea the reason why Eve had Cissie’s dog nate Lesley-Ann (Melanie Salo­ WOMEN CHARACTERS, EVE, STEVIE AND BEA, destroyed. mon) but also conducting a semi­ THERE IS THE PROBLEM OF BEING SILENCED...

But the episode belongs to Bea. Two major secret affair with Liesl (Fiona incidents structure it: the first is the phone conver­ Press), the Austrian maid, and even less reconciled than the others to the family conspiracy to preserve sation Bea attempts with Eve after her fight with Marcus, in which Eve Heath’s illusions. Finally, there are two significant hangers-on: Cissie does her usual trick o f refusing to hear anyone’s (other than Heath’s) (Jennifer Claire), Eve’s old friend, the ex-Rexona Girl, who, like all need or distress; the second is the night Bea finally spends with her US Eve’s other waifs and strays, has been collected and brought into the Captain in which, knowing already it will fall on deaf ears, she declares family, and who is part o f a strange reversed relationship whose surface her love for him, saying: “ ...nobody around me has ever said exactly structure conceals who is really dependent on whom; and Marcus what they mean and I ’ve never said exactly what I mean and there’s got (Philip Sayer) the sexually ambiguous and exquisitely sensitive hotel to be one time when you do, otherwise what’s it all for?” The Episode manager, who it turns out (rather implausibly) is Stevie’s one true love ends with Bea staggering out o f the hotel into the street, with the and the reason neither o f her subsequent marriages work. words o f the hotel manageress ringing in her ears, “D on’t ever show you face here again! ”, and finding the war has ended and that the street The structure o f Episode 1 is the most melodramatic, Cissie and is full o f what is for Bea mindless rejoicing, dancing and kissing. Bea Angus being the key figures. Like all outsiders in such fictions, Angus becomes the ear to everyone’s secrets, and after Cissie confesses to him lurches up the street, mouth gaping wide, apparently in shared 22

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lived in New York for more than 40 years: the novel, published from there in 1969 at the height o f Black Power, Women’s Liberation, the hippie movement and the “sexual revolution”, has the feel and style o f something written much closer to the time o f its setting - the 1930s and 1940s. It’s as if Elliot, in writing about a place he has not seen for 20 years, can only conceptualize it as it was then, and oddly the style o f writing and tone and sensibility o f the novel are fixed in that time too. Since the series is largely such a faithful adaptation o f the novel (with a few small but significant differences), it raises the same problem for a critic o f how to position oneself vis-a-vis a commentary on it. In some ways it is almost as anachronistic as, say Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which, in its film adaptation, was made so brilliantly, sharply and painfully contemporary, in spite o f its exquisitely authentic costumes and settings. Is it appropriate to take Edens Lost similarly seriously as a textual object, or better simply to dismiss it as high-class soap opera, or to read it in the superficial way the critics and publicists did, as being simply a slightly titillating look at upper middle-class perversions (a la the Blue Mountains drawing-room melodramas o f the McDonagh sisters).

In spite o f the series definitely proposing itself in both o f these ways, I believe that on balance, it is possible to see something more interesting and more contemporary than this in it. The following reading o f Edens Lost does depend on a supplementation o f the television text by a reading o f the novel; in the television version certain themes more fully developed in the novel remain latent and barely hinted at, and the complexity o f mise-en-scene is not sufficient to fill the gap left by overt narration. This leaves the television text at times rather cryptic and ultimately empty.

In particular, Eve’s crucial final monologue has the feeling o f anti­ climax about it - a feeling in the audience of, “So What?”, when it should be both the explanation and the culmination o f the tragedy that has gone before.

jubilation, although really, as we know, in wordless grief for this love, and all love, permanently lost. The soundtrack o f cheering drowns out any utterance o f hers.

I f Episode 1 is the most gothic and melodramatic in structure and tone and Episode 2 the most naturalistic, the third is the most concentrated and formally rigorous. Apart from an early passage comprised o f a number o f quick short scenes which establish the recent history o f the main characters, all o f it consists o f a couple o f long sequences, the first o f which explores Stevie’s current state o f mind, and the second o f which is a long monologue in which Eve finally explains her marriage, her family and herself to the ubiquitous witness, Angus. The Episode is set after the war: Heath has died, Stevie has abandoned husband and daughter to marry Gabriel Imre and has taken up residence with him in a stately and luxurious Long Island mansion, where Eve is on a long visit, the purpose o f which is undoubtedly to help patch up a failing marriage. Eve, as usual, is too frozen in her own detached self-construction to be any help to anyone.

Stevie is depicted as a perennially dissatisfied, petulant child (she calls Gabriel “daddy” just as Eve has previously so addressed Heath), contemptuous and bitchy as ever, until one night during dinner Gabriel explodes, “Stephanie - just tell me what you want?” (shades o f Freud’s famous “What do women want?” ) and departs the mansion for ever. Eve decides to make a hasty departure now that things have become messy, and when Angus rounds on her and accuses her o f being cold and unfeeling, Eve finally insists on telling her story: “I must tell you about Heath St fames.”

Sumner Locke Elliot is a strangely anachronistic author. He has

THE FEMININE / HYSTERIA / SILENCE Since there is no doubt that hysteria has a strong affinity with femininity, just as obsessional neurosis has with masculin­ ity, it appears probable that, as a deter­ minant o f anxiety, loss o f love plays much the sam e p a r t in hysteria as the threat o f castration does in phobias and fear o f the super-ego in obsessional neurosis.

FREUD, “INHIBITIONS, SYMPTOMS AND ANXIETY”, SE, VOL. XX P. 143 (MY EM PHA­ SIS).

We might say that the Absolute Woman, in culture, the woman who really repre­ sents femininity most effectively ... who is closest to femininity as prey to mascu­ linity, is actually the hysteric ... he makes her image for her!...The hysteric is a divine spirit that is always at the edge, the turning point o f making. She is one who does not make herself.... The hys­ teric “ makes - believe” the father...

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H ELEN E CEXOUS, “CASTRATION OR DECAPITATION”, SIGNS, VOL. 7, NO. 1, 1981, P 47

Edens Lost is a women’s picture, in several senses. It is fill] o f women characters: even though Angus is in some sense the central character in a structural sense because o f his role as outsider/witness /inter­ preter the series begins and ends in a circular movement (characteris­ tic o f the women’s film2), the circle closed by the repetition o f Angus’s first meeting with Eve, and her murmured invitation, “Come to us.”

But it is the women who are central to the symbolic level o f the narrative: pre-eminently Eve, the mother, the archetypal eternal femi­ nine, then the daughters, Stevie and Bea, the all-important Cissie, and Lesley-Ann. Heath, the father, the judge, should be the patriarchal centre o f the narrative, and o f course hermeneutically he has a primary role, because it is Eve’s originally pathological relationship to Heath that is supposed to explain the family saga, and to account for all the pathology which follows. But like the oddly impotent patriarch o f Meet Me in St Louis, Heath is a failed patriarch; he has in some sense lost the power o f controlling speech since he has been displaced from his public role as judge, and he is suffering from some sort o f mysterious psychotic condition (manic-depression?). All the other men in the scenario are either coarse buffoons (Gabriel Imre, Bill Seward) or mother-fixated and thus emotionally crippled (Corey Orcutt) or hidden behind a bisexual mask which distances him from emotional in­ volvement (Marcus).

Edens Lost can be seen as a story o f the unsatisfiability o f female desire, and the inability o f the women ever to articulate this desire. For all three o f the central women characters, Eve, Stevie and Bea, there is the problem o f being silenced - Eve by Heath’s unspoken prohibi­ tions and desire for a screen on which to project his own desire, Stevie by the fact that she appears to be constantly speaking in a language no one can understand, and Bea by the constraints o f the familial and societal bans on honest expression.

Eve can only succeed in her desperate bid to snare Heath for a hus­ band by literally remaining silent. She wins Heath from her rival, the “pretty vivacious girl” by betraying no hint o f emotion or demand.

The attitude to women in Edens Lost is highly ambivalent: on the one hand the women characters are the most interesting, the most beau­ tiful, they are admired for their style, wit, sensibility; their inability to articulate their desire or find fulfilment with their flawed men is explored sympathetically. On the other hand, the original sin o f the whole story is a failure o f mothering; Edens Lost is full o f bad mothers.

Eve is the ultimate bad mother: she in effect abandons her children to devote herself to her great life’s work - that o f becoming Heath’s ideal; the children’s only role is to help preserve Heath’s illusory world. Eve’s tragedy is supposed to be that this great project was entirely mis­ guided; Heath looks her straight in the eye as he is dying and says to her with his last breath, “Not you.” Stevie is also a bad mother: she abandons her own daughter, Miranda, to follow her lover to America - but Stevie, as Angus explains to us, is to be understood, if not forgiven, because she herself has suffered from bad mothering. Bea continually attempts both to obtain mothering from Eve and to mother her; when Cissie leaves, Bea says to her mother, “Never mind”, but Eve, with her most impassive look, says, “Never mind what?” And Bea has the misfortune to fall in love with a mother-fixated man, a man so attached to mother that he is unavailable for any other attachment.

The less-developed character o f Tip, the son, also has a particular relation to the mother. He abandons Lesley-Ann and the family values and snobbery to marry, beneath his class, the perfect Austrian Hausfraumother, Liesl, who proceeds to stuff him full o f dumplings and strudel.

Significantly, Angus is the only character who is motherless (even Lesley-Ann has a mother who, Cissie hints, has a drinking problem); having lost his own mother at birth he has never known one. But having no mother is not much better than having a bad one. So for Sumner Locke Elliot, are the Edens that are lost the perfect union with the mother, ever sought but never found? And what do we make o f the tag on the novel (quoted in the T V version):

CEXOUS, OP. CIT., P. 49

Eve’s interpretation o f Heath’s desires has made her into a creature o f stone, unable to see anybody or anything except her own image which, putting herself in Heath’s place, she constantly adores. In her final monologue Eve explains: “I became neutral by degrees, I became all greys, I watched myself become a periphery around his edges; I sat as cool as stone...” In Episode 3 Eve is constantly shown gazing into mirrors, and admiring herself; there is the extraordinary scene in the aeroplane toilet where she looks in the mirror and laughs almost in ecstasy. In the T V version this is left as an act o f pure narcissism; in the novel it is accompanied by an interior monologue which refer to her “feeling o f appalling excitement and joy at being summoned, wanted... roused from the dead.” Eve constantly performs herself as in perfect control o f every movement, every desire, even when alone, as in the scene o f Episode 3 where she slowly dresses for dinner in a white wool dress. The camera captures in close-up the putting on o f the earrings, the belt, the brooch, each action performed with the measured perfection o f a strange ritual.

Stevie’s hysteria is to demand too much, to drink too much, to let her vicious tongue run on and on, to destroy people and things; so Stevie is in a sense too noisy, but she too is never heard. At the end of Episode 3, she says almost the only real things she’s said in the whole I

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THE MOTHER / THE ABANDONED CHILD / EDENS LOST

“ Silence: Silence is the mark o f hysteria ... what talks isn’t heard because it’s the body that talks, and man doesn’t hear the body.”

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series; to Angus’s bafflement she says: “O f course you don’t get the point; nobody ever gets the point; no-one has ever got the point of me.”

Bea’s hysteria is to retreat into the fantasy world o f her soap operas, o f imagined desires and danger in strange exotic places. When she actually falls in love with Corey her soap opera imagination dries up; she cannot summon the fantasies. When Corey leaves she roams the streets during the Victory Celebration with her ecstatic or agonized face looking up (towards the camera in the sky), her mouth gaping with a repeated word that is drowned out by the sound o f the celebration but which the novel reveals as “Nothing. Nothing.”

Without the hysteric there’s no father.....She is given images that don’ t belong to her, and she forces herself, as w e’ve all done, to resemble them.

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“ Where the apple reddens Never pryLest we lose our Edens, Eve and I .”

ROBERT BROWNING, A WOMAN’S L A S T WORD

NOTES 1. John Caughie, “Rhetoric, Pleasure and ‘Art Television’”, Screen, Volume 2 2 , No. 4,

1981, pp 9-31 2. See Tama Modleski, “Time and Desire in the Woman’s Film” , C in em a Jo u rn a l, 23 No. 3. Spring 1984, p. 23.

EDENS LOST: directed by Neil Armfield. Producer: Margaret Fink. Script: Michael Gow. Executive producers: Sandra Levy (A BC), Ted Childs (Central). Photography: Geoffrey Simpson. Editor: Bill Russo. Composer: Alan John. Cast: Julia Blake (Eve), Arthur Dignam (Heath) Lynda Cropper (Stevie), Victoria Longley (Bea), Jennifer Claire (Cissie), Bruce Hughes (Angus), Melanie Salomon (Lesley-Ann), Fiona Press (Liesl), Yves Stening (Tip), AndrewTighe (Bill Seward), Philip Sayer (Marcus), Patrick Quinn (Corey), Ed Wiley (Gabriel).

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REPORT

a r y L a m b ert w o r k s out of a re tro fitte d T w e n tie s b u ild in g in W e st Los A n g e le s c a lle d s im p ly O .

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K eith H a rin g a n d

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E x p re s s io n is t p o ste rs d e c o ra te the w a ll s . A nd th e r e 's no a ir co n d itio n in g / ju st a la rg e fa n . In the s h a d o w s / a c lu ste r of h o n o u rs/ in clu d in g a

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p e r s p e x a n d a G o ld e n Lion of V e n ic e w ith its p la q u e still u n e n g ra v e d / g a th e r d u st.

G la m o u r is not the p o in t.

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BAXTER

LIKE H ER O FFICE, Mary Lambert is unexpected: quiet, small, pale, with unsettling light green eyes. Maybe it’s the whoosh o f the fan, but the southern burr to her voice also seems more pronounced with acquaintance: “I ’m ” comes out “ahm” and “time” as “tahm”. M ore obvious than these, however, is her steely control. Lambert has directed only two features, Siesta (1 9 8 7 ) and P et Sem atary (1 9 8 9 ), but, taken with her rock videos, which include Sting’s We’llB e Together Tonight, and many for Madonna, including B orderline and this year’s L ike a Prayer, with its controversial Christian h— iconography, it’s a solid body o f work.

R B (She also directed one episode o f the T V series Tales From the Crypt, and started work on Under the Cherry Moon, taken over by its star, Prince, with disastrous results.)

Lambert left Helena, Arkansas, for the Rhode Island School o f Design (R ISD ) the year National Guardsmen shot four students at Kent State. “It was a crazy time to be going to college and to art school. There was no discipline on the campus at all. It was all revolution, Power to the People, performance art. You could blow up balloons and let them loose and say it was a painting.”

At R ISD , David Byrne was creating performance art and forming Talking Heads. (The band’s bass and drummer, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, are still Lambert’s close friends.) Some o f the tuition was as radical as the extra-curricular activities. Aphotography lecturer forbade the use of brand-name chemicals. “He told us m ™ Kodak was a corporate pig, teaching us there was only one way to see colour.

We processed the film and made the prints, but we used things like piss and Jello. It was a great way to think, though it didn’t really help you get a job when you graduated.”

Lambert left with a painting degree, a taste for Wenders and Herzog, and an ambition to make short, personal films. She edited for Boston TV station W G BH , then migrated to Los Angeles, joining a friend’s special effects company. “I did animation and illustrations for different kinds o f film graphics. Then some computer graphic work, a small amount o f set design and art department-type things. But I quickly realized I ’m too messy.”

Looking for film work in Hollywood is never easy. “Sometimes I feel like the Fuller Brush Salesman, pounding the pavement, having meetings. ” And being a woman didn’t help. “I never believed that anything was going to hold me back, and certainly not my gender. I come from a great tradition o f southern womanhood; man, those women run the place down there.

After the Civil War, the men were all gone; the women just took it on, without apologies and without complaints. I have great role models in my mother and my aunts and my grandmothers. These wonderful women worked hard, loved everybody, didn’t complain, had a sense o f humour, laughed, made other people happy, did their work.

Only recently have I begun to feel that sexism does exist, in a big way.

Most men really want to give you a chance —as long as you’re not in any way threatening them.”

Lambert finally got some T V commercials. “It isn’t the quick route into directing feature films the way it is in England. The commercials in this country were not sexy, funny, hip little narratives. It was a time o f big economic boom. Products were products, and you sold them like products.

I ’m directing television commercials now again, and it’s changed a lot in 12 years. The industry here is so highly evolved, so compartmentalized and unionized, and the big studios have a very specific way they like to make P

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movies, and very specific guidelines for how a movie goes through production and how much money it has to make and what kind o f markets it’s aimed at. It’s all so over-thought-out that they’re usually looking for a director who fits a specific profile.”

From commercials, it was a short step into music videos. “This was what I ’d been doing at art school: little short, kinky films to music. I ’d been waiting 10 years for this to happen. I thought that when they came out with laser discs there was going to be a market for the kind of stuff I really enjoyed doing. It didn’t happen and nobody wanted short films, so I gave up on it.

Then I turned around one day and there they were.”

Lambert’s first music video was for Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz aka The Tom Tom Club. It was based on As Above, See Below, a cut from their Genius o f Love album. “It used almost documentary-style club footage to tell this slightly mystical story about the LA club scene.

I shot in very grainy black and white because I didn’t have any money for lights or film. I was met by incredible opposition by managers of the record companies. Everyone thought music videos had to be in lush colour, just like a feature film or a commercial. And now everyone’s doing it.”

Rock videos pose novel problems. “When you’re shooting a narrative film or a commercial, you shoot the footage, then cut it to the rhythm o f the images. I f it takes so long to walk across a room, and it feels good, you leave it long. When you have a song that you’re working with, maybe there’s a short musical break - a guitar riff or something - and it’s just perfect for that walk across the room. But if the riff is 10 seconds long and she doesn’t get to the door until 11.5 seconds, it’s awkward. You have to edit it very tightly in your head before you shoot it.”

Like a Prayer is Lambert’s favourite video so far. “It’s a combina­ tion o f everything I ’ve learned about filmmaking, about telling a story.

And I really like the song. It said some fairly radical things that were fun to say, and were done in a big, national way, with some money to back it up. There was a lot o f controversy: that it was anti-religion, sacrilegious. That made me smile, because I think that was just racism in disguise. What really upset people was the portrayal o f a saint as a black man and the sexual thing between a white woman and a black man.”

Videos got Lambert into Linder the Cherry Moon, an unhappy ex­ perience from which she emerged with the determination to make her own kind o f films. From that came Siesta.

Shot in Spain, and based on the cryptic novel by Patrice Chaplin, Siesta follows professional dare-devil Claire (Ellen Barkin) as she flees the biggest stunt o f her career, a free dive over Death Valley, to go to Spain, and the lover/mentor she abandoned years before.

The significance o f what happens to Claire in Spain isn’t immedi­ ately clear. She wakes up at the end o f an airport runway in a blood­ stained red dress, cadges a lift from a priapic cab driver (Alexei Sayle at his weirdest), falls in with a group o f mindless trendies, including photographer Kit (Julian Sands) and heiress Nancy (Jodie Foster, with a convincing Kmghtsbridge accent), and finally tracks down ex-lover Augustine (Gabriel Byrne), only to be stabbed —to death, we assume - by his vengeful wife (Isabella Rossellini).

Lambert fills the film with baroque imagery o f Claire fleeing in her red dress through the gaudy Madrid day, coupling with Augustine in the sun-stunned hours o f the siesta and falling in dreamy slow motion towards the desert from a plane. As in the video o f Like a Prayer,

ABOVE: IN A DREAM STATE: CLAIRE (ELLEN BARKIN) LOST IN SPAIN IN HER BLOODSOAKED DRESS. MARY LAMBERT'S SIESTA; AND, GAGE (MIKO HUGHES) IN PET SEMATARY, A LITTLE BOY, BUT WITH THE SOUL OF A MONSTER. FACING PAGE: JUD (FRED GWYNNE), THE OLD GAFFER, IN PET SEMATARY.

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THE BO O K'S VERY FRIGHTENING AND YOU CAN'T QUITE PUT YOUR FINGER ON W HY. IT'S LIKE A DARK, SPO O KY PAINTING ... I HAD THIS STRONG VISUALIZATION OF IT IN MY MIND ... IT'S VERY SPARE. IT'S ABOUT ARCHETYPAL IMAGES AND ICONS AND INSTITU­ TIONS: THE FAMILY AND DEATH. I KNEW I COULD DO IT AS SOON AS I READ IT. MARY LAMBERT ON PET SEMATARY

the house and the road and the hill and the path and the mother and the father and the daughter and the son and the old man. It’s very spare. It’s about archetypal images and icons and institutions: the Family and Death. I just knew I could do it as soon as I read it.”

The stiff, solemn formality o f 18 th century New England naive portraits o f children acts as a sinister counterpoint to the 20th century freedoms o f Pet S em atary- and when Gage is raised from the dead by his grieving father, he reappears as a knowing little adult from such a painting, complete with adult hat and cane.

The portraits were Lambert’s idea. “Children are frightened o f the strangest things - a lot o f the time by portraits, particularly those primitive New England creepy pictures where people are very stiff and death-like in their pose. Children are frightened o f iconography: inanimate objects that represent animate objects. They’re still trying to figure out why one cat moves and one cat doesn’t.

“I had to think o f a way to make that little boy scary when he came back. Because he’s so beautiful and such a precious child I did not want to use a puppet. We did a lot o f sketches o f what he might look like after the truck had run over him, and he just looked more and more like an old baseball or a watermelon that had been cracked open and badly put back together again. It wasn’t scary; it was just ludicrous. I felt the saddest and most terrifying thing would be to see this little boy come back as a little boy\ but with the soul o f a monster.”

Pet Sematary is both a critical and commercial success, a rare outcome for genre movies. But rather than do more horror films, Lambert is directing a new video for Debbie Harry, and her next feature project is back in the rock world as well: a version o f Pamela Des Barres’s scandalous confessions o f her days as a groupie, I ’m With the Band.

Lambert acknowledges “The book has its tabloid side: how big people’s cocks are, and how many stars she’s slept with. We’ll have some o f that in there, but the thrust o f the movie is more like Diner: it’s about a group o f young women at a crisis point in their lives, that point being the Sixties, and the milieu being rock ’n’ roll before it became an industry.” The steel comes back into Lambert’s green eyes and the Arkansas burr disappears. “It’s going to explore some aspects o f a society I know a lot about.”

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wounds open and close miraculously, churches and angels abound, and there’s a sustained sense o f mysticism and transcendence. The film’s dislocated flashback narrative wasn’t to the taste o f most critics, but Siesta’s visual power and its pumshing sense o f obsession transcend the often tortuous narrative.

Lambert found the script by accident in someone’s dressing room and fell in love with it. It came to her when Michelangelo Antonioni pulled out. “I determined that I was going to make a very personal movie in spite o f the fact that everybody told me not to do it. I knew there was going to be a limited audience for it and that some o f the objectives were going to be very difficult to achieve. But I still wanted to do it and I ’m very glad I did. Its failures are the failures o f naivete and lack o f experience. Nothing in it was done to please somebody else or to seduce an audience. It was an honest effort.

“I do so much enjoy the dream state, and expressionistic ways of conveying an idea. I thought I could tell the story in a non-linear fashion and involve people in their own subconscious feelings, draw­ ing them into the story that way. I wanted to create a dream state within the film that would allow the audience to accept what was happening on the screen and go with it, and learn the story in that way rather than the traditional way. I didn’t realize how hard it would be in a piece that length to fulfil my obligations to the audience. I think there are places where it’s very successful - the scenes between Claire and Nancy, for instance, which are very dreamlike.

“I wanted to do this whole movie from the point o f view o f the unconscious, o f a woman who may or may not be dead. And all the people she meets are basically angels or manifestations o f herself. I believe all the people in your dreams are just different aspects o f your own personality that you’re attempting to understand.

“One way o f looking at Siesta is that it’s the last 10 seconds o f her life. It’s the way her life flashes in front o f her as she’s dying. Most dreams take 10 or 15 seconds to happen, but I ’m sure everyone’s had a dream they thought must have gone on all night. Your unconscious is a great storyteller.”

Pet Sematary was an odd film to follow such a debut, but perhaps inevitable, given Lambert’s preoccupation with dream states and the imagination. One o f the best adaptations yet o f a Stephen King chiller, it displays the King trademark o f horror erupting from the conventional. No dungeons, no clanking chains: just a couple o f country houses, one occupied by an old gaffer, Jud (Fred Gwynne), and the other by the family o f a young doctor, Louis (Dale Midkiff), and a strip o f two-lane blacktop between.

But down the blacktop barrels a succession o f oil tankers. Periodically they flatten some dog or cat, which kids bury in the woods, at the end o f a narrow path to which the fog always seems to cling: the path to the old pet cemetery. But Jud takes Louis to an even older Indian graveyard further up the hill. I f you bury something there, he warns, it comes to life again, and very nastily too, as we find out when first the little boy’s cat is run over, then Gage (Miko Hughes) himself.

“The book’s very frightening and you can’t quite put your finger on why.

It’s like a dark, spooky painting. After I ’d read the script [by King], I had this strong visualization o f it in my mind - o f C I N E

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P U R I T Y , M A S C U L N I T Y A N D T HE F L I G H T F ROMT H N THE ALREADY INFAMOUS ‘dream’ sequence o f Martin Scorsese’s

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My principal anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless

The Last Temptation o f Christ, an English-accented nymphet angel/tempter tells Jesus that she doesn’t want his blood. He need suffer no more pain; he has done enough. He is not to look back at the others, at that barren place o f suffering, o f crucifixion, he is being led to a new lush space, a garden o f love and domesticity. Earlier in the desert, a woman/tempter/snake had asked him why he was trying to save the world, had told him to save himself and find love. She, the evil one, has signified the amoral, the selfish, the fleshbound. She is all that is opposite to struggle and transcendence. On the one hand, she hasn’t a clue why a man endures, indeed embraces, hell to reach some unknown heaven. On the other hand, she will do what she can to stop him from getting there, to keep him in the realm o f the sensuous, the perishable. She signifies mortality.

Whatever else it does, The Last Temptation o f Christ is perhaps most interesting for the image o f masculinity it reveals and advocates.

It is an image shared and shaped by the film’s director, Martin Scorsese, one o f its writers, Paul Schrader, and Nikos Kazantzakis, whose book inspired the film. These men’s ideas o f what it is and what it takes to be a man are inextricable from their conception o f what is needed to reach God. Their model o f masculinity is embedded in a strong cultural and socio-political edifice. Yet it is always threatening to dissolve, as transparent and fragile as a bubble liable to burst at a touch. It is a dualist model in which fear o f women and desire for male purging and purification are fundamental. Though the model is Christian in its origins, comparisons can be made with otherwise alien traditions o f beliefs and practices. A thorough anthropological excur­ sion would reveal related preoccupations in a variety o f cultures, but perhaps the most illuminating example comes from Melanesia. On the island o f Wogeo, as the story is told in Ian Hogbin’s The Island o f Menstruating M en f all males, when they attain maturity, regain their ‘purity’ by the practice o f inducing artificial ‘menstruation’. Using the claw o f a crayfish or crab, a man will induce an erection by thinking about a desirable woman or by masturbation and then gash his penis to induce profuse bleeding. In many parts o f Melanesia, men are thought to have cultural power while women have a more basic, potent and polluting biological capacity. Male bloodletting might be thought o f as an expression o f menstrual envy, an appropriation, by harsh and dangerous means, o f a female function.4

battle between the spirit and the flesh.

Within me are the dark immemorial Forces of the Evil one, human and pre-human; within me too are the luminous forces, human and pre-human of God - and my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.1 NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS

I know perfectly well that death is invin­ cible. Man's worth, however, lies not in victory but in the struggle for victory.

I also know this - which is more difficult.

It does not even lie in the struggle for victory. Man's worth lies in one thing only - in this - that he live and die bravely without condescending to attempt any recompense. And I also know this third requirement which is more difficult yet. The certainty that no recompense exists must not make our blood run cold but must fill us with joy' pride and manly courage .2 NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS

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jR e p o r t by Lorraine Mortimer

M ARTIN SCORSESE is convinced that there is a desire for blood sacrifice, which is primal and universal (though the anthropological evidence for 30

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this is more ambiguous than he allows). Blood is the life force, the the crackling surface o f the film. It is a love which must be spoken in essence.5 In civilized religion this sacrifice is represented in the com­ expressions like, “You Dumb Fuck” . By The Last Temptation this love munion. In his own films, culminating in Taxi Driver, he has dealt can be spoken more clearly.11 In R agin g Bull, Jake’s wife, with her more with less ‘civilized’, literal blood sacrifice.

Lana-Turnerized sexuality, is provocation, a source o f jealousy and rage. She causes him to have an erection during a period o f abstinence Pauline Kael called her review o f R agin g Bull (written by Paul before a fight. He struggles and comically beats it. For Scorsese, Schrader and Mardik Martin, who also wrote M ean Streets with mortification o f the flesh is important. Discipline, associated with Scorsese) “Religious Pulp, or The Incredible Hulk”.6 She complains mortification, is important.12 And well before The Last Temptation that Scorsese, a great director when he does not try so hard, has got these are associated with women. Mary Magdalene is everywhere. “movie making and the Church mixed up together; he’s trying to be “You never had the courage to be a man”, she tells Jesus in the brothel the saint o f the cinema”. 7 Scorsese’s Jake La M otta’s life, she notes, in The Last Temptation when he will not succumb to his feelings for was a ritual o f suffering. He is continually washed in his own blood. her, to their mutual attraction. She just does not understand. The Scorsese, a master o f movement and energy in cinema, does not care brothel here is a kind o f grim metaphor. It is the place where men who about the fights - it is the punishment, given and received, with which would be Gods spend time - so they can suffer.13 he is obsessed. Scorsese, she suggests, does not want us to like Jake. He wants us to respond, on a higher level, to his energy and pain. “He L et US NOW go from the brothel with the beautiful harlot to the wants a disreputable lowlife protagonist; then he suggests that this metaphorical garbage heap, the ‘open sewer’ which is New York in man is close to God, because he is God’s animal.” The film’s brutality, Taxi Driver. Scorsese, as mentioned above, spoke o f primal feelings Kael concludes, is mystical, it’s “the kind o f movie that many men must concerning bloodletting and sacrifice being still present today. There fantasize about: their macho worst-dream movie”.8 was a lot o f that, he said, in Taxi Driver. For Travis Bickle, the film’s Looking back to R agin g Bull after making The Last Temptation, disturbed protagonist, to be righteous Scorsese says he got to understand and correct, the only answer was to be more about himself while making that THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST IS PERHAPS the wrath o f God - the Old Testament film, the correlation o f suffering and MOST INTERESTING FOR THE IMAGE OF MASCULINITY God. Harlan Jacobson noted that be­ life, religion and a whole number o f IT REVEALS AND ADVOCATES... (THIS) MODEL OF tween them Schrader and Scorsese “have things. It was a matter o f guilt, o f how MASCULINITY IS EMBEDDED IN A STRONG CULTURAL defined the nut as the last man left with much punishment you would take, AND SOCIO-POLITICAL EDIFICE. YET IT IS ALWAYS a vision”. (He suggests too that Christ, “which goes directly into the suffering THREATENING TO DISSOLVE, AS TRANSPARENT AND in The Last Temptation, “is shaken from of Jesus ... that’s what I always FRAGILE AS A BUBBLE LIABLE TO BURST AT A TOUCH. the same tree as all o f Scorsese’s previ­ thought”.9At the end o f R agin g Bull, IT IS A DUALIST MODEL IN WHICH FEAR OF WOMEN ous nuts”14.) Throughout Taxi Driver, it is as though Jake La Motta(Robert AND DESIRE FOR MALE PURGING AND PURIFICATION we are invited to share Travis Bickle’s De Niro) is imprisoned, physically, in ARE FUNDAMENTAL. alienation and moral disgust which an excess o f flesh which he cannot builds to a climax and explodes in a transcend. There is a lot o f it and purifying violence.

Travis, says Paul Schrader, seeks escape, to shake off Schrader, Martin and Scorsese do not give him his own voice. In his mortal chains and die a glorious death. The elevation, the redemp­ typically cine-literate flourish, he speaks Marlon Brando’s lines from tion, the transcendence he is seeking is, according to Schrader, that o f On Thewaterfront. The fleshbound, lowlife boxer/petty entrepreneur an adolescent - he’s simply striking out. Travis, Schrader told Pauline has become abstraction, he has been labelled with spirituality. He is the Kael, was him without any brains.15We should take what Schrader says civilized artist’s representation o f sacrifice. seriously.

He is one o f those artists whose work, you feel, reveals so Robin Wood speaks about the “homosexual subtext” in R agin g much about himself. Yet he clearly articulates what you think you have Bull. But there is something a litde poignant about his desire to traced, what you have uncovered. Again, his predicament is on the appropriate the film as a progressive, critical text.10 The proposition o f surface, in the contradictory, dual texture o f his work. men loving men, this time in a literal brotherhood, is in fact right on C

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the way he wants, getting paid for it, getting respect, having “beaten the system”. If, however, he were “everybody’s pawn, if I was Travis Bickle, the triumph would have to take another course, probably a violent one”.19 As it was, Schrader says he was obsessed with guns for self­ destructive reasons:

In a 1976 interview with Schrader, Rick Thompson suggested that the asceticism o f Taxi D river was so strong that even Scorsese’s busy style did not overcome it. That asceticism, says Schrader, was essentidly in the script: What I think happened was that I wrote an essentially Protestant script, cold and isolated, and Marty directed a very Catholic film. M y character wandered in from the snowy wastelands o f Michigan to the fetid, overheated atmosphere o f Marty’s N ew York ... Protestantism has a more individualistic, solipsistic righteous quality. The Catholic thing is more an emotional, communal flurry. When you walk into a Protestant church, you feel as if you’ve walked into a tomb; in a Catholic church, people are talking, there are priests, candles, a whole different atmosphere. Travis’ personality is built as if it were a Protestant church, but everything around him is acting differently. Both Marty and I have very strong religious back­ grounds, so I don’t think that’s an incorrect interpretation.16

An interesting thing about guns, which my shrink pointed out to me and which pertains to T axi D river, is that all my suicidal fantasies are exactly the same: they all involve shooting m yself in the head. I never fantasize about jumping o ff a building, or taking pills, or using a knife. The shrink pointed out that I believe all the demons are in my head; the fantasy is to get them out o f there. I have those evil, bad thoughts in there - it’s my Calvinist background. So when I have fantasies, they’re all about my blowing those evil thoughts out o f my head, and then I’ll be all right. So it isn’t even like dying: it’s getting that shit out o f my head.20

Scorsese had wanted to become a priest but also, from early days, loved the cinema. Schrader graduated from Calvin College. His adolescent consciousness, he told Thompson, was defined by the church and family structure. Movies, forbidden when he was younger, v ere an adult aberration. He grew up, he said, facing questions like

Toward die end o f the interview he tells o f the ‘great fantasies’ he had and still maintains about converting the world. When his devout father bemoans his fate, Schrader tells him that he did become an evangelist, just one o f a different sort.

By pointing to the articulation o f Schrader’s concerns, I do not want to lose the feel, the experience o f the film T axi Driver. Here, I think, Schrader and Scorsese create some kind o f religious argument about transcendence while conjuring up a very concrete, hyper­ physical world. They are rather like the Jesuit priests in James Joyce’s P ortrait o f the A rtist as a Young M an. They evoke hell for their young male audience precisely by enumerating and magnifying their desires, terrifying them with the promise o f eternal punishment involving the very substances o f their fleshly longings. The effect o f T axi D river, like that o f a retreat, builds up as it progressively presents further layers of the “open sewer”, “full o f filth and scum” that Travis inhabits.

Sometimes, he tells the presidential candidate, when he travels in his cab, he can hardly take it. He can smell it, he gets headaches it’s so bad.

We too feel Travis’s lonely New York hell. It is fetid, sticky; black youths throw raw eggs over the windscreen o f his cab, the slim envelope o f protection from the filth. And we know there is no real protection. Travis’s cab, his mind, is penetrated, invaded by the filth.

People fuck in the back seat; each time he returns the cab to the garage, he says, he has to clean the come off the back seat, some nights he cleans off the blood.

Travis, himself, says Schrader in his script:

“what if you die tomorrow ...?” He was always thinking o f spiritual questions, even in his private thoughts, “rather than thinking about getting laid or becoming a football star”.17 After a period o f manic depression and alcoholic dissolution which led to hospitalization, the metaphor for Taxi D river came to him.

Travis Bickle was the:

has the smell o f sex about him: sick sex, repressed sex, lonely sex, but sex nonetheless. H e is a raw male force, driving forward toward what, one cannot tell ...21

While Travis moves towards a redemptive violence, he listens im­ passively to threats a psychotic passenger (played by Scorsese) makes about his wife as he watches her in an apartment he says she shares with a Unigger”- He will kill her with a .44 Magnum pistol. The passenger - “You must think I ’m real sick, huh? A real pervert.” - a symptom of the city, responds to his wife’s betrayal and miscegenation with the threat o f blowing away her “pussy”, her defiling, offending part.

Travis’s vision is broader. “Someday the rain’ll come and wash all the scum off the streets”, he says early in his diary. He would rid the city o f all pollution.

He begins his transfiguration. He gets in shape. The city has ruined his body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. His television transmits lies, more pollution. The candidate, Palantine, says the

absolute symbol o f urban loneliness. That’s the thing I ’d been living; that was my symbol, my metaphor. The film is about a car as the symbol o f urban loneliness, a metal coffin.18

In real life as well as in his films, Schrader says he is concerned with redemption. He believes in purging, in a kind o f transcendence through contemplation or action. Taxi D river, he has said, takes the European existential hero and puts him in an American context. He lashes outwards. While Schrader shares Travis’s “real need to triumph over the system” , he sees himself as giving and working pretty much 82

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FACING PAGE: POOL HALL SCENE WITH CHARLIE (HARVEY KEITEL) AND TWO OTHERS, IN MARTIN SCORSESE'S MEAN STREETS. THIS PAGE: TOP: JESUS (WILLEM DAFOE) AND FOLLOWERS IN SCORSESE'S THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. BELOW: TRAVIS (ROBERT DE NIRO) AND BETSY (CYBIL SHEPHERD) IN SCORSESE'S TAXI DRIVER.

But Travis’s lonely pre-destined Protestant had tried to “become a person” and make human contact; he didn’t believe in “morbid self­ attention”, as he says in his diary. He tells Iris that what she is doing is nothing for a person to do. She is part o f the filth and must be saved from it.22 And it is with another female, a woman his own age, Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), that he tries to make contact. She was wearing a white dress, he says, and we see, “she appeared like an angel out o f this filthy mess. She’s alone, they ... cannot ... touch ... her ...” As Schrader admits, De Niro makes Travis; he brings a character together from his and Scorsese’s related but disparate visions. We believe and empathize with him in his cries for contact. But Betsy is a cool beauty in a hot body. In Travis’s first vision, her loose white dress moves softly, in slow motion. When she goes on their date, as we see her new white outfit, bordered in black, unbuttoned low at the neck and clinging across her body, we can understand why Travis, in his anomic and inept divine foolishness, spoils everything by taking her to “adult” movies. Betsy, like the candidate she works for, is spiritually bland. Insulted by his gesture, she rebuffs him, refusing all contact. In the end, Travis realizes how much she is “like the others ... cold and distant. And many people are like that - women for sure.”23 SCHRADER'S VISION OF LOS ANGELES in A m erican Gigolo is also

“excremental”.24 It is marked by a profound dualism. Here the centre o f moral value and eventually o f spirituality is Julian(Richard Gere), a male prostitute who gives pleasure to older women neglected by their husbands. Unlike those who surround him, Julian knows he is hustling, selling himself for fine clothes, a fine apartment, the appear­ ance o f class. In a loveless environment, he gives a facsimile o f love. The people are beginning to rule. We, the people, know the right road, says film’s strongest censure is reserved for Leon, a black gay pimp who the voice o f hollow, amoral populism. Travis destroys his television. dwells in the neon underworld, tries to get Julian to “do kink” (which The honorably discharged marine becomes God’s warrior.

Julian refuses) and sleeps with young, pale, blond boys. Leon gets what Here’s a man who would not take it anymore ... a man who stood up is coming to him. Julian also gets what he deserves: he is redeemed by against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit - here is someone love, love which has nothing to do with sex, love expressed through who stood up. [Travis voice-over] the barrier of prison walls - truly spiritual love. 25 A m erican Gigolo, if appealing, does not come close to the vibrancy Travis’s first victim is a black supermarket thief whom he shoots. o f a Scorsese film. It is more purely a Protestant story with its sensuous While we know Travis is mad, we are reminded he is a point of charge coming primarily from its righteous “sanity” in a world without judge­ music, its photographed beautiful ment when, in one o f the film’s most violent SCHRADER SAYS HE IS CONCERNED WITH objects, cars, clothes, furnishings,- and moments, the supermarket owner extracts REDEMPTION. HE BELIEVES IN PURGING, IN A KIND Julian in his “unwired” beauty. Mich­ revenge upon this thief and all others by OF TRANSCENDENCE THROUGH CONTEMPLATION elle, with whom Julian finally auains cold-bloodedly bashing the immobilized OR ACTION. TAXI DRIVER, HE HAS SAID, TAKES THE spiritual contact, is played by Lauren youth with an iron bar.

EUROPEAN EXISTENTIAL HERO AND PUTS HIM IN Hutton. Hutton used to be the De Niro’s tender, fragile Travis, with his AN AMERICAN CONTEXT... WHILE SCHRADER Revlon Ultima II girl - she signifies edge o f neurotic desperation, becomes a SHARES TRAVIS'S "REAL NEED TO TRIUMPH OVER the cosmetic world. She is now ag­ jerky, robot warrior as he kills those who do THE SYSTEM", HE SEES HIMSELF AS W ORKING ing, she would soon be like the other not deserve to live. The offenders are slaugh­ PRETTY MUCH THE W AY HE WANTS, GETTING PAID neglected, middle-aged matrons if tered and he is bathed in blood which drips Julian did not save her.

FOR IT, [AND] GETTING RESPECT... from his hand as he puts his gun to his head Neil Sinyard has suggested that in a suicidal gesture when the police arrive.

Schrader’s success is attributable “to the creative use o f his critical fac­ Blood covers the brothel stairs, the walls; Travis has fulfilled his ulty and a commercial deployment o f his Calvinism”.26 When Schrader destiny. Earlier, he told Iris (Jodie Foster), the teenage prostitute, that suggested that Taxi D river was a rich piece o f juvenilia with “no there had never been any choice for him. Earlier still, when he had tried maturity except at the talent level”, he compared it to a rough, first to speak his turmoil and loneliness to fellow cab driver “Wizard”(Peter adolescent work o f Dostoevsky, A R aw Youth.27 Sinyard suggested Boyle), he was told to go out and get drunk, to get laid, “you got no Schrader might be called a “Junk food” Dostoevsky: choice anyway, we’re all fucked.”

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Like Dostoevsky, he is violent, melodramatic, relig­ ious and profoundly conservative. Like the Russian master also, he uses the tawdry formulae o f crime fiction to erect massive psychological dramas about self-tormented people who struggle furiously be­ tween heaven and hell, and who find redemption through suffering and sacrifice.28

I f Schrader has the taint o f the market-place about him, Nikos Kazantzakis certainly does not.

Kazantzakis, we know, was a spiritual man, quoted by statesmen, emulated by modern young men in their quest for a new spiritual life. For Kazantzakis - indebted to Christ, Buddha, Marx and Nietzsche - Christ was the supreme model o f the man who struggles.

Scorsese strongly acknowledges his debt to Kazantzakis, for his “neurotic” and “psychotic” Jesus, a Jesus who was more “shocking” but more “accessible” than others, whose human nature did not frilly understand the divine role it had to play.29 Kazantzakis desired freedom and sanctity. The hero and the saint were mankind’s supreme model.

His own writings, he has said, were only a means to aid his struggle for deliverance. He invoked “great figures who had successfully undergone the most elevated and difficult o f all evils”, wanting “to gain courage by seeing the human soul’s ability to triumph over everything”.30 The inscription on Kazantzakis’s grave reads: “I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything. I am free.”31 Interestingly, Schrader quoted from Kazantzakis something he had appended to the outline o f The Last Temptation ofC hristto remind evervbody what the film was about: “It is not God who will save us. It is we who will save God by battling, by creating and transmuting matter into spirit.”

Kazantzakis, says Schrader, sees God as an extension o f human experience. There is more to it than this. Schrader notes a kind of “pseudo superman kind o f thinking” in what Kazantzakis says. It is we who in struggle will transmute matter into spirit and bring God down from heaven. Says Schrader neatly: “That’s Kazantzakis - it’s also ... heresy.” Again, he quotes the writer: This book was w ritten because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death - because all three can be conquered, all three INTERESTINGLY, have already been conquered.32 SCHRADER QUOTED

There is something very familiar about the notion o f the great figure who is arrogant in the face o f the realities o f pain and death, proud and joyful, not because o f the pleasures o f everyday life, but because o f his own elevation. The great figure is an ascetic warrior male. If the Nietzschean superman was one crucial model for Kazantzakis (who, his English translator suggests, adopted a series o f “saviours” throughout his life quest), Buddha, like Christ, was for

FROM KAZANTZAKIS SOMETHING HE HAD A P­ PENDED TO THE OUTLINE OF THE LAST TEMPTA­ TION OF CHRIST ... "IT IS NOT GOD W HO WILL SAVE US. IT IS WE WHO WILL SAVE GOD BY BATTLING, BY CREATING AND TRANSMUTING MATTER INTO SPIRIT."

Kazantzakis “a superman who had conquered matter”.33 While the conflict between flesh and spirit might last until death, through struggle, men might meet God, “the summit o f immateriality”.34 Christ says Kazantzakis, invites us to take his ascent, “following in his bloody tracks” .35 I f we are able to follow him we must have a profound knowledge o f his conflict, we must relive his anguish: his victory over the blossoming snares o f the earth, his sacrifice o f the great and small joys o f men and his ascent from sacrifice to sacrifice, exploit to exploit, to martyrdom’s summit, the Cross.36

Christ, says Kazantzakis, conquered “the invincible enchantment o f simple human pleasures” .3/ Women, o f course, are a part o f the “blossoming snares o f the earth”. Translator P. A. Bien notes that during a period o f ascetic fervour - as part o f Kazantzakis’s untiring search for “his true father, his true saviour” - he stayed in an ancient Macedonian monastery where not only human females but even cows and hens were excluded.38 As Scorsese remarked - and his film is true to the idea - Christ’s last temptation was not power or sexuality, but the temptation to give into the human side o f his nature and five like us (“us”, in this instance, being patriarchal males, fathers o f families). A man who would be a God is not only threatened by the sticky sexuality o f women, the involuntary excitement caused by women, a visceral response within himself which he cannot master. Woman - like the sea, fire and the odours o f the world - is a constant reminder o f human fragility, perishability, decay and death. Domesticity, the passing sensuous and emotional enjoyment o f children offering “recompense” and “hope” in the face o f human finitude, is also a temptation to the warrior ascetic who would be God. In Scorsese’s film, Christ asks his mother Mary “Who are you? ” He has no mother, no family, only a father in Heaven.

Belief in a heavenly, super-cultural Father can help us distance ourselves from the knowledge that we are fleshly, finite beings, born, in blood and pain, o f other fleshly beings - women. Women remind us that we are human. Scorsese and his brother artists and intellectuals

IMAGES OF WOMEN: FACING PAGE: VICKIE LA MOTTA (CATHY MORIARTY) IN SCORSESE'S RAGING BULL THIS PAGE. TOP: MARY MAGDALENE (BARBARA HERSHEY) IN THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. BELOW: IRIS (JODIE FOSTER) IN TAXI DRIVER.

be a bringer o f the Word, he has always taken the idea o f love very seriously, the idea o f creating “a kind o f conglomerate o f love”.41 He was trying to understand loving and forgiveness. To apply this in his own life was very hard and he thought that, doing The Last Temptation, he could explore this problem through Judas’ eyes with his inability to “turn the other cheek”: .. he’s speaking for a lot o f us ... We want to do it but it’s very hard to do and we know that basically in order to live together in this world we’re going to have to learn how to do th at... And so I think to that extent I ’ve started to maybe scratch a little o f the surface o f it. I don’t purport to be able to do it myself, but ... I ’m beginning to understand a little more how one should live.42

Yet in The Last Temptation Schrader’s and Scorsese’s conglomer­ ate o f love” is cold. In earlier Scorsese films, we could feel the exhilaration of the love/hate relationships. Jonathan Rosenbaum argues that the Kazantzakis/Scorsese depiction o f Jesus, wrestling with the human side o f his nature as he comes to terms with the God within Him:

are concerned with the imma­ terial, spiritual father/creator with whom men might be re­ united if they suffer enough.

The ambiguous power o f the excluded female is wholly ap­ propriated.

Richard Corliss, admiring o f Scorsese’s “ballsy” adapta­ tion o f The Last Temptation, suggests that Scorsese knew that Kazantzakis’s story could be the ultimate buddy movie.

For 15 years he had been di­ recting secular drafts o f it. It is during Jesus’ period o f delusion/dream - brought down from his destiny on the cross by the angel/temptress - that he hangs around with women and children. When Mary Magdalene dies, she tells him that “there is only one woman in the world, one woman with many faces. This one falls, the next one rises.” He joins Mary o f Bethany and her sister Martha, having children with Mary and being given leave by the angel/temptress to join the sister in her room and make love to her: “There’s only one woman in the world, go inside.”39 In this period o f soft, gushy remission from his vocation, Jesus is swamped in femaleness - he grows old in it. He is ready to die. But at last his buddies come to save him - and us - for the masculine, for greater, higher things.

Peter comes in and pushes aside the child/nymphet. Climatically, Judas arrives.40 In the Kazantzakis/Scorsese scenario, Judas was a loyal, loving man ordered by Jesus to betray him. Now he is angry.

Jesus was the traitor. His place was on the cross. What business did he have with these women and children? You broke my heart... We held the world in our hands ... You took me in your arms and you begged me ‘Betray me’ ... I loved you so much.”

Here is love. Earlier in the film, Jesus and Judas sleep sweetly, calmly together. Christ kisses John the Baptist, for a long time, on the lips. Here is love again. True warmth and affection is something shared by men. And it depends on the exclusion o f women.

Scorsese says he wanted to make The Last Temptation to “get to know Jesus better” . While he did not intend, in the film, primarily to C

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leaves little room for any developed sense o f community, and just as little space for love as anything more than an abstraction.43 I DID NOT MENTION EARLIER that Pauline Kael’s complaint that Rapfinp Bull mixed up the Church and movie-making came after that mixture had, for her, gone sour. In her review o f Mean Streets, she says: In Scorsese’ s vision, music and the movies work within us and set the terms in which we perceive ourselves. Music and the movies and the Church. A witches’ brew.44

Her celebration o f Mean Streets captures what is great in Scorsese.

The film “has its own unsettling, episodic rhythm and a high-charged emotional range that is dizzyingly sensual” .45 Near the beginning of the film when Charlie (Harvey Keitel) goes into the bar, “the camera glides along with him as he’s drawn toward the topless dancers on the barroom stage.” We the audience, says Kael, share his trance. We become participants and it is in a cinema which is refreshingly nervous, impure, dirty and alive - a bit like life. Here we become intoxicated.

Cinematography, music and performance all activate M ean Streets'.

It’s as if these characters were just naturally part o f an opera with pop themes. The music is the electricity in the air o f this movie: the music is like an engine that the characters move to. Johnny Boy, the most susceptible, half dances through the movie ... 46

Kael, in her own small masterpiece bouncing off from Scorsese’s, manages to touch on the abandon, the delirium with which De Niro’s Johnny Boy charges the screen. The “intensely appealing De Niro, here a “beautiful nut”47, doesn’t just act, says Kael, “he takes off into the vapors”.48 David Denby also enthused about Scorsese’s “violent sincerity”, his unpatronizing depiction o f his characters, life o f “crazy restless­ ness” . Denby saw Charlie’s and Johnny Boy’s “edgy, murderously unstable love for each other” holding the film in tension.49 The male characters’ energy had no goal or purpose - it was just there, present, like the hypnotic irresistible city to whose “rottenness” we are drawn.

Denby speaks about the allowance o f space to the Mean Streets characters, the connection between techniques o f improvisation and the extension o f their expressiveness. The mood o f dialogue, he notes, is “almost ecstatically high pitched”.50 Yet he suggests that while P

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1 1 . 1 Cannot deal with The C olor o f M oney here but I recommend Jimmy M cD onough’s review, “Raging Balls”, in F ilm C om m ent, V ol.23. N o.3, May/June 1987. H e suggests: “Fast Eddie is the most spectacular closet case Scorsese has created to date. Check out his scenes with Vincent, then look at the ones with Janelle; Eddie gets his pool cue up for the kid, but he doesn’t have the balls for his old lady. The heart o f M oney is a tortured, tentative love story: iceman Eddie and young stud V in cen t... The sexual undercurrent o f M oney is truly uncomfortable. It is a world where the men would definitely rather be with the boys - this is male bonding gone berserk.” Eddie’s and Vincent’s women, M cDonough notes, “stand o ff to the side like props” ( p.74).

12. See interview with Corliss, op. cit., p.38.

13. See Michael Henry’s interview with Scorsese in P o sitif N o.3 3 2 , October 1988. Here he talks about Kazantzakis, the representation o f women and carnal pleasure, and his own and Paul Schrader’s inability to free themselves from associating sexuality with “quelque chose de reptilien, de honteux, d’ignoble” ( “something reptilian, shameful, ignoble”) (p .l 1). In The L ast T em ptation, the tattooed Mary Magdalene is linked with reptiles and, during Jesus’ temptations in the desert, the serpent speaks with her voice, but Scorsese says that reptiles do not represent woman, they represent carnal pleasure.

14. See “You Talkin’ to Me?”, F ilm C om m ent, V ol.24, N o.3.

September/October 1988, pp.32, 33.

15. See Richard Thompson’s “Screenwriter. T ax i D riv er’s Paul Schrader”, interview with Paul Schrader, F ilm C om m ent, Vol.12, N o.2 , March-April 1976.

16. ibid., p.13.

17. ibid., p . l l .

18. ibid., p.9.

19. ibid., p.14. Schrader does not only relate closely to Travis Bickle. In an interview with David Thomson, he says o f the John Heard character in C a t People: “I recognized that what I had here was an intellectual, older Travis Bickle. This is me and this is my Calvinistic notion o f the postponement o f pleasure and the kind o f sanctity o f sex where you can really only be in love with something better.” See “ C ats. Paul Schrader interviewed by David Thom son”, F ilm C om m ent, Vol.18, N o.2, March-April 1982, p.51.

20. Interview with Richard Thompson, op. cit. p.19.

21. ibid., p.12.

2 2 . Travis wanted to know Iris’s name. Just as “innocently” , he had wanted to know the name o f the woman serving candy at the porno movies where he goes on his own. This woman, taking his persistent request as harassment, calls the manager. Much o f the character for Iris, Schrader tells Thompson, was rewritten from an underaged, “junkie” prostitute, with “a concentration span o f about 2 0 seconds” whom he had picked up when he was feeling “particularly blue” in a bar in New York (ibid., p.13).

23. Michaei Dempsey suggests that Scorsese and Schrader abandon too easily the possibility o f a relationship between Travis and Betsy or any other woman. “For reasons that may be as much intellectual and emotional as commercial, they prefer the certainty o f blood to the chance o f love.” See his review o f T axi D river in F ilm Q uarterly, V ol.29, N o.4, Summer, 1976. Robin Wood sees Betsy, Travis’s “angel”, as “an ideological construct, a figure o f almost total vacuity whose only discernible character trait is opportunism” . ( H ollyw ood fro m V ietnam to R eag an , Columbia University Press, New York, 1988. p. 52). In T axi D river's cynical coda (a prelude to The K in g o f C om edy}, Travis’s fame as a media hero impresses Betsy. She is now interested in him. The interest is not reciprocated.

24. See Neil Sinyard’s “Guilty Pleasures: The Films o f Paul Schrader” , C in em a Papers, N o.41, December 1982. p.511.

25. The coda in A m erican G igolo is a direct tribute to Bresson’s Pickpocket.

26. op. cit., p.510.

27. Interview with Thompson, op. cit.. p.9.

28. Sinyard speaks o f Schrader’s edge o f prurience and repression. I think that Scorsese shares this in relation to gays, blacks and women. It is at the level o f the film, rather than o f particular characters, that this is expressed.

29. SBS Interview.

30. Nikos Kazantzakis, quoted in SBS documentary.

31. ibid.

32. Quoted in SBS interview by Schrader, slightly different word order here as in Prologue to The L ast T em ptation, p.9.

33. See Translator’s Note, p .511, in edition cited in Note 1.

34. Kazantzakis, Prologue, p.8.

35. ibid., p.8.

36. ibid., p.8.

37. ibid., p.9.

38. op. cit., p.510.

39. In the /Wti/interview, Scorsese says he does not know if Kazantzakis shared this point o f view or whether he wanted to put us on guard against the ruses o f Satan (op. cit., p . 11).

40. Ian Penman suggests that the disciples “come over like a debating society Wild Bunch” .

See “Good Morning Jerusalem”, The F ace, October 1988, p.129.

41. Interview with Corliss, op. cit. p.38.

42. SBS Interview.

43. Rosenbaum also argues that the “use o f females throughout The L ast T em ptation to signify only motherhood and temptation [o f the male] suggests that if anyone should be objecting to this film, it is women o f all denominations rather than fundamentalists o f both sexes.” See “Raging Messiah”, The L ast T em ptation o f C hrist, Sight a n d Sound ,V ol.57, N o.4. Autumn, 1988.

44. See “Everyday Inferno”, in R eelin g, Warner Books, New York, 1976.45. ibid., p.235.

46. ibid., p.242.

47. ibid., p.238.

48. ibid., p.40.

4 9 . See “Mean Street’s: The Sweetness o f Hell”, Sight an d Sound ,V ol.43, N o .l, Winter 1973-4, p.48.

50. ibid., p.50.

51. ibid., p.50, my italics.

52. op. cit., p.237. Charlie passes his fingers over the flames o f Church candles, he puts his finger to a burning match and, finally, appears to plunge his hand into the flame o f his uncle’s restaurant stove. Travis, in T ax i D riv er, makes a fist over the flame o f his stove, readying himself for his vengeance.

53. ibid., p.236.

DE NIRO IN SCORSESE'S RAGING BULL

Scorsese uses improvisation to make his people sound as free as possible, he’s in trouble when he has an actor who can’t pull it off. Amy Robinson, he says, has an impossible role to begin with. She is Charlie’s “adoring epileptic” girl friend Theresa. Her anxiety and self-con­ sciousness in the semi-improvised scenes, he suggests, makes her character seem unnecessarily pathetic - “not even on the same existen­ tial plane as the ecstatic m ale talkers”} 1 Denby could be speaking o f the place o f women in Scorsese films generally. They do not share in the networks o f ambivalent and ambiguous emotional affinity. They do not fig u re in a way we might care for them. Dramatic interest is not bestowed upon them. The films and their fabulous energy belong to the men. By the time o f the more static The Last Temptation o f Christ, with its heavenly promise, the sweet and lively hell o f M ean Streets, with its visceral and immanent ecstasy, is almost lost. I don’t think that Denby or Kael saw the threat that was there even in M ean Streets, the possibility that all that energy might in the end be put a t the service o f asceticism. Kael saw Charlie torment himself “like a fanatic seminarian.”52 She also suggested M ean Streets had “a thicker textured rot and violence than we have ever had in an American movie, and a riper sense o f evil.53 But she thought that the film was a “blood thriller in the truest sense”, referring to the capacity o f film to link itself to “common life”, to go “below the polite level” which Graham Greene (and Grierson and Tynan) spoke about.

Scorsese, however, was concerned with BLO O D , blood sacrifice, blood which signified things above this world. Theresa tells Charlie he should help himself first when he is burdened with her cousin Johnny Boy’s divine and self-destructive foolishness and wants to help him. St Francis o f Assissi had it all down, he knew, Charlie tells her. “What’re you talking about?” she asks uncomprehendingly, womanly. “St Francis didn’t run numbers.” And while Charlie can make love to her, can even care, he cannot commit himself to her. He dreams one night he is about to make love to her. He is just about to come. He comes blood. The Heaven/Hell bent hero dreams his masculinity - and there is no space in the dream, in the quest, for intercourse with women.

NOTES 1. From the introduction to Scorsese’s The L ast T em ptation o f C hrist. Reproduced here as in Nikos Kazantzakis, Prologue to The L ast T em p tation ,Faber and Faber. London, 1988. p.7. Translation by P. A. Bien.

2. Quoted in N ikos K azan tzakis. SBS documentary directed and produced by Kostas Assimacopouios, 14 November 1988.

3. See The Islan d o f M en struatin g M en: R elig ion in Wogeo, New G uin ea, Chandler Publishing Company, Scranton, 1970.

4. See also Gilbert H. Herdt’s R itu als o f M anhood: M ale In itia tio n in P apu a New G uinea, University o f California Press, Berkeley, 1982; Michael Allen’s M ale C ults a n d Secret In itia tio n s in M elanesia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1967; and Bruno Bettelheim’s Sym bolic W ounds, Puberty R ites, an d the Envious M ale, Collier Books, New York, 1955.

5. See interview with Richard Corliss, “Body ... And Blood”, F ilm C om m ent, V ol.24, N o.3, September/October, 1988, p.42.

6. T akin g I t A ll In , Marion Boyars, London,1986.

7. ibid., p.110.

8. ibid., p.lll.

9. SBS Interviews with Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader in The South B an k Show, produced and directed by Nigel Wattis. SBS, 14 November 1988.

10. See “The Homosexual Subtext: R ag in g B u lT , The A u stralian Jo u rn a l o f Screen Theory, 15/16,1982. The title o f his piece, Wood tells us, comes from Scorsese himself: “ ...h e told me ... that though he was not aware o f it while making the film, he now saw that R ag in g B u ll has a homosexual subtext”(p.59). Wood sees the film as “among the major documents o f our age: a work single-mindedly concerned with chronicling the disastrous consequences, for men and women alike, o f the repression o f constitutional bisexuality within our culture” (p.66). Wood also, I think rightly, speaks o f the film’s “relentless and near-hysterical intensity”(p.59).

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c h o o s e - to f l y AUSTRALIAN

AN EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF PRESSMAN, TAKEN BY THE STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHER, HURREU.

Interview

by

Paul

H a rris

EDWARD R. PRESSMAN IS HOLLYW OOD'S RESI-

DENT MAVERICK PRODUCER. WITH NEARLY 30 FEATURES UNDER HIS BELT IN

JUST 20 YEARS (INCLUDING BADLANDS, DESPAIR, PLENTY, GOOD MORN-

ING BABYLON AND WALL STREET), PRESSMAN POSSESSES AN UNUSUALLY

KEEN UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IS REQUIRED TO NAVIGATE THE MIDDLE

GROUND BETWEEN ART AND COMMERCE IN THE SO-CALLED NEW HOLLY-

W OOD. RECENTLY, PRESSMAN WAS IN AUSTRALIA AS A GUEST OF THE AUS-

TRALIAN FILM, TELEVISION AND RADIO SCHOOL.

You entered the film industry in the 1960s as the Hollywood studio system was in an advanced state o f decay, with the traditional, power o f the producers and studio heads passing into the hands o f independent producers. p r e s s m a n : At the high school I attended in New York there was a teacher of modern European history, Philip Perlstein, who used films in his classes. We were shown titles like The Blue Angel, Cabinet o f Dr. C alig an and Maedchen In Uniform.

A friend o f mine, Johnny Olstreicher, indoctrinated me with the films o f Ingmar Bergman and the French New Wave, a school o f filmmaking I was very attracted to at the time.

When we started out as a filmmaker, my partner, Paul Williams, and I had become friends with Bert Schneiderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s group at BBS Productions [Easy Rider, q u e s t io n :

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Five Easy Pieces] which was then making a major impact on the film community. We all subscribed to the theory that films could change the world and thus felt that we were in touch with the currents o f the time. q u e s t io n : Your first feature film as a producer, Out O f I t (1 9 6 9 ), details the high school culture clash between an intellectual type and a jock, the latter played by Jon Voight.

Why was the film’s release delayed? p r e s s m a n : The film was shot in 1967 and after completion was sold to United Artists (UA), run at that time by David Picker. Jon Voight had been cast in M idnight Cowboy, which United Artists felt may be a winner, so our film was put on hold until after Cowboy’s release. Maybe they felt that our film could hurt Cowboy but that Cowboy could help ours.

We then made an agreement with UA to make our second feature, The Revolutionary (1970), based on a novel by Hans Königsberger (A Walk With Love A n d D eath), again with Jon Voight. Because it was a bigger investment on UA’s part, they decided it would be better to release The Revolutionary first, which they did. But by the time they got round to considering Out O f It, the film had dated and become a period piece, with the result that it went out on a double bill with The Christine Jorgensen Story.

After The Revolutionary, Paul was considered one o f the brightest, up-and-coming filmmakers and was even looked up to for a brief period by Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma as their mentor. Warner Brothers offered him any project o f his choosing and he elected to go with D ealing or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1 9 7 2 ) , but this choice eventually undermined Paul. He was going through a lot o f changes and was always on the crest o f the cultural force o f the moment. For example, after The Revolutionary was completed he visited Eldridge Cleaver in Morocco.

During D ealing he started to experiment with drugs. In casting sessions people would come in and show how much they knew o f this culture and how well qualified they were to be in the film.

Paul had met a relatively unknown actor named Bichard Dreyfuss whom he thought would be good in a part, but he was bypassed in favour o f an actor who was a bigger name at the time, Robert F. Lyons ( Getting Straight). But he proved inadequate.

When we realized that a mistake had been made, we had the choice o f going to Warners and telling them that we had made a $15 0 ,0 0 0 error o f judgement, and risk losing the whole movie, or ploughing ahead with what we had. We chose the latter course, which proved to be a valuable lesson for the future. q u e s t io n : How did you become first acquainted with writer-director Terrence Malick? p r e s s m a n : Through Paul Williams, who had gone to Harvard with Terry and Jacob Brackman. He had been trying to set up Badlands (1973) for some years and had the full endorsement o f people like Arthur Penn.

After B adlands and Days O f H eaven (1978), Terry spent several years working on a biographical screenplay about Thomas Edison and another script about farmers in contemporary Texas which he deliv­ ered to Paramount under a long-term legacy left by the former company president, the late Charlie Bludhorn. Terry had an aversion to the social context o f Hollywood and wanted no part o f it. q u e s t io n : Three directors o f photography are credited on Badlands, but the film’s visual style is remarkably consistent. p r e s s m a n : The late Brian Probyn established the look o f the lighting and the interiors but was taken ill, exhausted by the heat, the long hours and Terry’s idiosyncrasies. On several occasions I can recall Brian shooting with the slate upside down as a form o f protest in a disagreement with Terry about methods o f orthodox coverage and matching shots. When Brian left, there was a big crisis on set and Tak Fujimoto, Brian’s assistant [later to be DOP on several Jonathan 40

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uemme reatures mcmunig ivxeivm rxna JOLUwurn,, ovrnu-mng vvnu- <uiu M arried To The Mob, and John Hughes’ FerrisBueller’sD ay Off], took over on the understanding that he would be working only on an interim capacity while we searched for a new DOP [Steven Larner].

Amazingly, despite the input o f these different hands, the film looks remarkably seamless. q u e s t io n : With the diversity o f projects that you produce, how difficult is it to physically oversee them? Oliver Stone describes you in this respect as a “hands-off producer”. p r e s s m a n : Oliver, at this stage o f his career, is at the peak o f his game and is a totally responsible individual who keeps to the schedule and, in that sense, is a producer’s dream. He doesn’t waste time, is very efficient and there is no bullshit.

But going back to our first collaboration, The H a n d (1 9 8 1 ), I was very much a hands-on producer. Our relationship has evolved in sub­ sequent years to the point where now he is very experienced. It can be a problem overseeing films when you have more than one in product­ ion at a given time. When this does occur it is due to factors beyond my control. Michael Flynn, who has been working with my company for six years, acts as a right hand. I also employ line producers and this helps ensure a continuity between projects.

I have reached a critical point in my career where I am faced with the decision as to whether I should expand or contract. I must admit that film producing is a very seductive activity in the sense that I can make films happen that I want to see made. q u e s t io n : Is there any method in which you assess properties? p r e s s m a n : It is not very systematic. Normally script departments seem A

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NUMBER 13 { JULY 1977) Louis Malle, Paul Cox, John Power, Jeanine Seawell, Peter Sykes, Bernardo Bertolucci, In Search O f A nna.

NUMBER 14 (OCTOBER 1977) Phil Noyce, M att Carroll, Eric Rohmer, Terry Jackman, John Huston, L u ke’s K ingdom , The L ast W ave, B lue F ire Lady.

NUMBER 15 (JANUARY 1978) Tom Cowan, Francois Truffaut, John Faulkner, Stephen Wallace, the Taviani brothers, Sri Lankan cinema, T he Irishm an , The C h an t O fJim m ie B lacksm ith.

NUMBER 16 ( APRIL-JUNE 1978) Gunnel Lindblom, John Duigan, Steven Spielberg, Tom Jeffrey, The A frica Project, Swedish cinema, D aw n!, P atrick.

NUMBER 17 (AUG/SEPT 1978) Bill Bain, Isabelle Huppert, Brian May, Polish cinema, N ew sfront, The N ight The Prow ler.

NUMBER 18 (OCT/NOV 1978) John Lamond, Sonia Borg, Alain Tanner, Indian cinema, D im boola, C athy’s C hild.

NUMBER 19 (JAN/FEB 1979) Antony Ginnane, Stanley Hawes, Jeremy Thomas, Andrew Sarris, sponsored documentaries, B lue Fin. NUMBER 20 (MARCH-APRIL 1979) Ken Cameron, Claude Lelouch, Jim Sharman, French cinema, My B rillia n t C areer.

NUMBER 22 (JULY/AUG 1979) Bruce Petty, Luciana Arrighi, Albie Thoms, Stax, A lison ’s B irthday NUMBER 24 (DEC/JAN 1980) Brian Trenchard-Smith, Ian Holmes, Arthur Hiller, Jerzy Toeplitz, Brazilian cinema, H arlequ in .

NUMBER 25 (FEB/MARCH 1980) David Puttnam, Janet Strickland, Everett de Roche, Peter Faiman, C hain R eaction , Stir.

NUMBER 26 (APRIL/MAY 1980) Charles H. Joffe, Jerome Heilman, Malcolm Smith, Australian nationalism, Japanese cinema, Peter Weir, W ater U nder The B ridge.

NUMBER 27 (JUNE-JULY 1980) Randal Kleiser, Peter Yeldham, Donald Richie, Richard Franklin’s obituary o f Alfred Hitchcock, the New Zealand film industry, G ren d el G rendel G rendel.

NUMBER 28 (AUG/SEPT 1980) Bob Godfrey, Diane Kurys, Tim Burns, John O ’Shea, Bruce Beresford, B ad T im ing, R oadgam es.

NUMBER 29 (OCT/NOV 1980) Bob Ellis, Uri Windt, Edward Woodward, Lino Brocka, Stephen Wallace, Philippine cinema, C ruising, The L ast O utlaw .

NUMBER 36 (FEBRUARY 1982) Kevin Dobson, Brian Kearney, Sonia Hofmann, Michael Rubbo, Blow Out, B reaker M orant, Body H eat, The M an From Snowy R iver.

NUMBER 37 (APRIL 1982) Stephen MacLean, Jacki Weaver, Carlos Saura, Peter Ustinov, women in drama, M onkey G rip.

NUMBER 44-45 (APRIL 1984) David Stevens, Simon Wincer, Susan Lambert, a personal history o f C in em a Papers, S treet K ids.

NUMBER 46 (JULY 1984) Paul Cox, Russell Mulcahy, Alan J. Pakula, Robert Duvall, Jeremy Irons, E u reka Stockade, W aterfron t, The Boy In The Bush,A W om an Suffers, S treet H ero.

NUMBER 47 (AUGUST 1984) Richard Lowenstein, Wim Wenders, David Bradbury, Sophia Turkiewicz, Hugh Hudson, R obbery U nder A rm s.

NUMBER 48 (OCT/NOV 1984) Ken Cameron, Michael Pattinson, Jan Sardi, Yoram Gross, Bodyline, The Slim Dusty M ovie.

NUMBER 49 (DECEMBER 1984) Alain Resnais, Brian McKenzie, Angela Punch McGregor, Ennio M orricone, Jane Campion, horror films, N iel Lynne.

NUMBER 50 (FEB/MARCH 1985) Stephen Wallace, Ian Pringle, Walerian Borowczyk, Peter Schreck, Bill Conti, Brian May, The L ast B astion, Bliss.

NUMBER 38 (JUNE 1982) G eoff Burrowes, George Miller, James Ivory, Phil Noyce, Joan Fontaine, Tony Williams, law and insurance, F a r East.

NUMBER 51 (MAY 1985) Lino Brocka, Harrison Ford, Noni Hazlehurst, Dusan Makavejev, Em oh R uo, W inners, The N aked C ountry, M ad M ax: Beyond Thunderdom e, R obbery U nder A rm s.

NUMBER 39 (AUGUST 1982) Helen Morse, Richard Mason, Anja Breien, David Millikan, Derek Granger, Norwegian cinema, National Film Archive, We O f The N ever N ever.

NUMBER 52 (JULY 1985) John Schlesinger, Gillian Armstrong, Alan Parker, soap operas, T V News, film advertising, D on’t C a ll M e G irlie, For Love A lone, D ouble Sculls.

NUMBER 40 (OCTOBER 1982) Henri Safran, Michael Ritchie, Pauline Kael, Wendy Hughes, Ray Barrett, My D in n er W ith A ndre, The R etu rn O f C ap tain In vin cible.

NUMBER 53 (SEPTEMBER 1985) Bryan Brown, Nicolas Roeg, Vincent Ward, Hector Crawford, Emir Kusturica, New Zealand film and television, R etu rn To Eden.

NUMBER 41 (DECEMBER 1982) Igor Auzins, Paul Schrader, Peter Tammer, Liliana Cavani, Colin Higgins, The T ea r O f L iv in g D angerously.

NUMBER 54 (NOVEMBER 1985) Graeme Clifford, Bob Weis, John Boorman, Menahem Golan, rock videos, W ills A n d Burke, The G reat B ookie R obbery, The L an caster M iller A ffa ir.

NUMBER 42 (MARCH 1983) Mel Gibson, John Waters, Ian Pringle, Agnes Varda, copyright, Strikebou nd, The M an From Snowy R iver.

NUMBER 43 (MAY/JUNE 1983) Sydney Pollack, Denny Lawrence, Graeme Clifford, The D ism issal, C arefu l H e M ight H ear Tou.

NUMBER 55 (JANUARY 1986) James Stewart, Debbie Byrne, Brian Thompson, Paul Verhoeven, Derek Meddings, tie-in marketing, The R ig h tH an d M an, B irdsville.

NUMBER 56 (MARCH 1986) Fred Schepisi, Dermis O ’Rourke, Brian Trenchard-Smith, John Hargreaves, stunts, smoke machines,D ead -E n d D riveIn , The M ore Things C han ge, K an garoo, Tracy.

NUMBER 58 (JULY 1986) Woody Allen, Reinhard Hauff, Orson Welles, the Cinémathèque Française, The F rin g e D w ellers, G reat E xpectations: The U ntold Story, The L ast F ron tier.

NUMBER 59 (SEPTEMBER 1986) Robert Altman, Paul Cox, Lino Brocka, Agnes Varda, The AFI Awards, The M overs.

NUMBER 60 (NOVEMBER 1986) Australian Television, Franco Zeffirelli, Nadia Tass, Bill Bennett, Dutch Cinema, Movies By Microchip, O tello.

NUMBER 61 (JANUARY 1987) Alex Cox, Roman Polanski, Philippe Mora, Martin Armiger, film in South Australia, D ogs In Space, H ow ling III. NUMBER 62 (MARCH 1987) Screen Violence, David Lynch, Cary Grant, ASSA conference, production barometer, film finance, The Story O f The K elly G ang.

NUMBER 63 (MAY 1987) Gillian Armstrong, Antony Ginnane, Chris Haywood, Elmore Leonard, Troy Kennedy Martin, The S acrifice, Landslides, P ee W ee’s B ig A dven tu re, Jilte d .

NUMBER 64 (JULY 1987) Nostalgia, Dennis Hopper, Mel Gibson, Vladimir Osherov, Brian TrenchardSmith, Chartbusters, In sa tia b le.

NUMBER 65 (SEPTEMBER 1987) Angela Carter, Wim Wenders, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Derek Jarman, Gerald L ’Ecuyer, Gustav Hasford, AFI Awards, P oor M an’s O range.

NUMBER 66 (NOVEMBER 1987) Australian Screenwriters, Cinema and China, James Bond, James Clayden, Video, De Laurentiis, New World, The N av ig ator, W ho’s T h at G irl.

NUMBER 6 7 (JANUARY 1988) John Duigan, George Miller, Jim Jarmusch, Soviet cinema- Part I, women in film, shooting in 70m m , filmmaking in Ghana, The T ea r My V oice Broke, Send A G orilla.

NUMBER 68 (MARCH 1988) Martha Ansara, Channel 4 , Soviet Cinema Part I I, Jim McBride, Glamour, nature

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SOLVEIG DOMMART1N JEAN-PIERRE GORIN NZ FILM ARCHIVE WENDY THOMPSON ANTONIONI MICHAEL LEE

and home video releases, as well as educational, management training, health and safety and ‘how-to’ programs. Also listed are all new acquisitions available for free borrowing from Government film libraries.

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PRICE: The Guide is published three times a year. One year’s NUMBER 123 AUTUMN 1985 The 1984 Women’s Film Unit, The Films of Solrun Hoaas, Louise W ebb, Scott Hicks, Jan Roberts NUMBER 124 WINTER 1985 Films for Workers, Merata Mita, Len Lye, Marleen Gorris, Daniel Petrie, Larry Meltzer NUMBER 125 SPRING 1985 Rod Webb, Marleen Gorris, Ivan Gaal, R ed M atild as, Sydney Film Festival NUMBER 126 SUMMER 1985/86 The Victorian Women’s Film Unit, RandeUi’s, Laleen Jayamanne, Lounge Room Rock, The Story o f Oberhausen NUMBER 127 AUTUMN 1986 AFTRS reviews, Jane Oehr, John Hughes, Melanie Read, Philip Brophy,Gyula Gazdag, C h ile: H asta Cuando?

NUMBER 128 WINTER 1986 Karin Altmann, Tom Cowan, Gillian Coote, Nick Torrens, David Bradbury, Margaret Haselgrove, Karl Steinberg, AFTRS graduate films, Super 8, Pop M ovie NUMBER 129 SPRING 1986 Reinhard HaufF, 1986 Sydney Film Festival, Nick Zedd, Tony Rayns, Australian Independent Film, Public Television in Australia, Super 8 NUMBER 130 SUMMER 1986/87 Sogo Ishii, Tom Haydon, Gillian Leahy, Tom Zubrycki, John Hanhardt, Australian Video Festival, Erika Addis, Ross Gibson, Super 8, C am era N atu ra

NUMBER 131 AUTUMN 1987 Richard Lowenstein, New Japanese Cinema, Ken Russell, Taking a Film Production Overseas, Richard Chataway and Michael Cusack

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cinematography, Ghosts O f The C iv il D ead, Feathers, O cean, O cean.

NUMBER 69 (MAY 1988) Special Cannes issue, film composers, sex, death and family films, Vincent Ward, Luigi Acquisto, David Parker, production barometer, Ian Bradley, P leasu re Domes.

NUMBER 70 (NOVEMBER 1988) Film Australia, Gillian Armstrong, Fred Schepisi, Wes Craven, John Waters, A1 Clark, Sham e Screenplay Part I. NUMBER 71 (JANUARY 1989) Yahoo Serious, Film Finance Corporation, David Cronenberg, Co-productions, The Year in Retrospect, Philip Brophy, Film Sound —the role o f the sound track, Toung E instein, Shout, The L ast T em pta­ tion o f C hrist, S alt S aliv a Sperm a n d Sw eat

NUMBER 72 (MARCH 1989) Charles Dickens’ L ittle D orrit, Australian Science Fiction movies, Survey: The 1988 Mini-Series, Stop Making Scents: Aromarama, Ann Turner’s C elia, Fellini’s L a dolce v ita, Women and Westerns NUMBER 73 (MAY 1989) Special Cannes Issue, Phil Noyce, Franco Nero, Jane Campion, Ian Pringle, Frank Pierson, Australian films at Cannes, Production Barometer, Pay TV , Film Finance, Fanzines NUMBER 74 (JULY 1989) Kylie Minogue’s first film The D elinquents, Australians in Hollywood, Chinese cinema, Philippe Mora, Yuri Sokol,Twins, T rue believers, Ghosts... o f the C iv il D ead, Sham e screenplay ■

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The B ack o f Beyond Catalogue is extensively illustrated with more than 130 photographs, indexed, and has full credit listings for some 80 films.

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LEFT, TOP : FRED SCHEPISt DIRECTS TRACEY ULLMAN (CENTRE) AND MERYL STREEP ON THE SET OF PLENTY. PRESSMAN WAS THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER. MIDDLE: ONE EUROPEAN PICTURE EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY PRESSMAN WAS RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER'S DESPAIR. VOLKER SPENGLER, DIRK BOGARDE AND ANDREA FERREOL BOTTOM: MARTIN SHEEN IN WALL STREET. THIS PAGE: EDWARD PRESSMAN AT THE AFTRS (PHOTO NINA LANDIS)

advertising. A similar arrangement existed on H a lf Mo on Street(1986). to act as expensive procedures for turning down screenplays. One ad­ Financing options are constantly changing and I try to keep ahead o f ministrative decision I learnt from De Laurentiis is that you don’t need the game. When German tax shelters were in vogue we managed to use big story departments because ultimately you have to make decisions this avenue for Despair (1978) and D as Boot (1982). yourself. Ron Shelton [B u llD u rham ], a bright writer, headed my story The studios control the video and cable markets, but they are department. He was ideally placed to assess realistic dramas but would powerless to prevent globally ambitious companies from getting in on not have been an ideal choice to read a science fiction idea. In some the act. As an independent, I see an opportunity to align myself with ways it makes more sense to show a project I have expressed an interest these international forces, while still working through the studios in in to friends like Stone or De Palma, who are filmmakers dealing with the American market. It doesn’t make sense to compete in the US a specific type o f genre. theatrical market as Dino, New World and Weintraub have found out We do employ a fellow in our company who is in charge o f creative at great cost. I can thus operate through the studios but as an alliance affairs, but that is really an administrative position which helps me to with these international entities. be polite with submissions that are sent in. q u e s t io n : It seems that you are susceptible to a certain kind o f criticism I don’t look for scripts that way. In fact, I find it difficult from critics who attach a moral superiority argument to the intrinsic responding to a screenplay, regardless o f the quality, without mentally worth and integrity o f low-budget features as opposed to higher placing it in the context o f a filmmaker. budget films.

I f a filmmaker is smart and wants to tackle a specific project, he or PRESSMAN: It’s a kind o f reverse snobbery that is manifested when she can convey a valid way to approach the subject. I like to back one certain people look down on the popular success and public acceptance vision and go with it all the way without having to second-guess myself. o f home-grown hits like the Mad Max series, Crocodile Dundee 2n d My natural inclination is to approach the decision process in the same Toung Einstein. These films are not abnormalities but are representa­ manner as I did when I began making films in partnership with Paul tive examples o f what original filmmaking can accomplish in the world Williams. A true collaboration does not involve making easy divisions market. between the creative and the business deci­ q u e s t io n : As an independent producer you sions. It can be a really enjoyable process o f have prided yourself on anticipating trends learning together. rather than following them. For example, q u e s t io n : You backed Steve Dejarnatt’s first Conan the B arb arian (1982) ushered in a feature, Cherry2 0 0 0 (1988), a futuristic scisword-and-sorcery cycle that continues to fi genre piece, which was not released in the this day, but are you also accused o f commer­ US despite the marquee value o f Melanie cial opportunism yourself by others?

Griffith. p r e s s m a n : B adlan ds was released at a time p r e s s m a n : The head o f distribution at Orion, when Thieves Like Us and Sugarland Express Joel Resnick, really didn’t like the film. were coming out. Similarly, The Revolution­ Strangely enough, when we showed Cherry ary was released at the same time that The 2000 to people at Universal, they offered to Strawberry Statem ent was playing. You be­ buy it and screen the film in 800 cinemas. I Once again w e are faced come a victim o f these coincidental circum­ tried to negotiate a deal between the two stances and learn to live with it. I am cur­ companies, but Orion wanted more money with the polarity of art and commerce with rently preparing a film version o f the futuris­ than Universal was willing to pay. tic comic strip, Ju d g e D redd [which has been T o prove their prophecy was correct, the implication being that you are either in in development for more than three years], the film was opened in a small Texas town. just as B atm an , Dick Tracy and Watchmen It was certainly a playable movie and I fail to one camp or the other. By its very nature, are entering the marketplace. I like to think see why it was buried. Australia was one o f that Ju d g e DrediUs sensibility is somewhat the few international markets where the filmmaking is a synthesis of both these different from that o f films like B atm an and film received any playdates, but the ad elements. It's a collaborative medium more similar to M ad M ax or RoboCop. campaign was dreadful. q u e s t io n : How do you react to the criticism q u e s t io n : Do you find that the studios are involving enormous capital and diverse that you are merely a dealmaker? still pushing their marketing strategies p r e s s m a n : To be called a dealmaker implies a towards the so-called ‘youth market’ at the functions... I don't enjoy going out and degree o f detached, economic motivation. expense o f adult audiences?

Many o f the projects I have completed are p r e s s m a n : Recently a wave o f films has been raising money, and I certainly don't do it completely illogical in business terms and released to good figures [Beaches, Cousins, were not what could be classified as sure-fire Bull Durham^ Good M orning Vietnam, D ead as my personal kick. business deals. Once again we are faced with Poets Society\ that are aimed at a more the polarity o f art and commerce with the mature market, so maybe the distributors implication being that you are either in one camp or the other. By its have woken up to the fact that the yuppie audience is ageing. There is very nature, filmmaking is a synthesis o f both these elements. It’s a definitely an appreciation for stylistic virtuosity, especially when it can collaborative medium involving enormous capital and diverse func­ attract talent as in the case o f director, Tim Burton [Beetlejuice, tions. To get any film made involves making a deal which can get very B atm an]. complicated, but it’s a means to an end. I don’t enjoy going out and q u e s t i o n : In the continuing battle to raise funds, do you think that raising money, and I certainly don’t do it as my personal kick. there are now wider options in the area o f creative financing, especially q u e s t io n : One collaboration that holds a special fondness for you was with the emergence o f video, cable and record companies into the the David Byrne feature, True Stories ( 1986). business? p r e s s m a n : The making o f True Stories was a great learning process for p r e s s m a n : When I was involved with Plenty (198 5), I recall that a group both o f us. David learned the basic fundamentals o f film technique and o f horse-racing fans from Texas actually provided a letter o f credit to created the film in the process o f making it, rather than merely ensure that Fox would not incur any deficit whatsoever in the C

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recreating what was in the script. He allowed himself the freedom and the flexibility to play with the material and, in the process of editing, it changed enormously. It was a very exciting intellectual process, totally original and it looked at the medium in a manner that was totally fresh. q u e s t io n : Looking to the future, what has happened to your planned collaboration with Kenneth Anger on an adaptation o f Hollywood Babylon? p r e s s m a n : Several treatments were written but the main problem here lies in the complex idea o f creating a cinematic equivalent to the books that would somehow illustrate the underside o f Hollywood’s history.

We toyed with the idea o f recreating scenes, such as the infamous Fatty Arbuckle party, but this could be dubious. q u e s t io n : You are also planning a collaboration with Japanese director, Juzo Itami [ The Funeral, Tampopo]. p r e s s m a n : I am hoping to undertake a project with him that would be shot in America and Japan. It mainly depends on when he is ready as we have been discussing it for two years now. q u e s t io n : And what about working with Jean-Jacques Beineix? p r e s s m a n : We have developed a script with him called The T ear O f The Gun, which is about the Red Brigades and the kidnapping of Aldo Moro. After spending a lot o f money and time with the writer he chose, he decided not to go ahead with the project. The script has now been rewritten and we hope to make the film in conjunction with English producer, Eric Fellner [Sid A nd Nancy] and are currently looking for a new director. Despite these problems, Beineix is a filmmaker I would very much like to work with. q u e s t io n : Kathryn Bigelow just recently directed Blue Steel for your company. p r e s s m a n : Blue Steel'is an action thriller with an obsessional undercur­ rent that owes more to F atal A ttraction than the Dirty Harry movies.

Kathryn had previously worked with Oliver Stone on a project about street gangs in East LA which never came to be. One o f the main reasons I became involved with Kathryn before the release o f her

previous feature, N ear D ark, was that I had heard from several sources that she was an unusual talent. q u e s t io n : Finally, with all this film activity I am surprised to hear that you and Brian De Palma are planning a stage venture together. p r e s s m a n : Brian and I are very keen to stage a version o f Phantom O f The Paradise in New York. Paul Williams has composed a special score with a dozen new songs. Brian was all set to go when he was offered the film o f The Bonfire o f the Vanities. Someday it will happen.

FILMOGRAPHY

19 6 9 19 7 0 19 7 2 19 7 3 19 7 3 19 7 4 19 7 8 19 7 8 19 7 9 19 8 0 19 80 19 8 1 19 8 2 19 8 2 19 8 3 19 8 5 19 8 6 19 8 6 19 8 6 19 8 7 19 8 7

Out o f It (Paul Williams) - producer The Revolutionary (Paul Williams) - producer Dealing (Paul Williams) - producer Badlands (Terrence Malick) - producer Sisters (Brian De Palma) - producer Phantom o f the Paradise (Brian De Palma) - producer Despair (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) - exec, producer Paradise Alley (Sylvester Stallone) - exec, producer Old Boyfriends (Joan Tewkesbury) - producer H eart Beat (John Byrum) - exec, producer Victoria (Bo Widerburg) - exec, producer The H and (Oliver Stone) - producer Conan the Barbarian (John Milius) - exec, producer Das Boot (Wolfgang Peterson) - exec, producer Pirates o f Penzance (Wilford Leach) - exec, producer Plenty (Fred Schepisi) - exec, producer Crimewave (Sam Raimi) - exec, producer H a lf Moon Street (Bob Swaim) - exec, producer True Stories (David Byrne) - exec, producer Cherry 2000 (Steve Dejarnatt) - exec, producer Good Morning, Babylon (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani) - exec, producer

19 8 7 19 8 7 19 8 7 19 88 19 89 19 89

Masters o f the Universe (Gary Goddard) - producer Walker (Alex Cox) - exec, producer Wall Street (Oliver Stone) - producer Talk Radio (Oliver Stone) - producer Paris by Night (David Hare) - exec, producer Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow) - producer

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For further information write or telephone Dawn Swane RADA , ASMA, Principal and Founder

Australian Film Commission

The Film Development Division of the Australian Film Commission wishes to advise applicants to the Creative Development Fund, Special Production Fund, the Script Unit and the Documentary Development Fund that new application and assessment procedures have recently been introduced and that new guidelines outlining these changes are now available.

The traditional application process for many forms of financial assistance, with cut-off dates for applications, has now been replaced by a more flexible approach to assessment and decision-making. Applicants are now invited to apply at any time for script development, pre-production assistance, production grants and production investment.

COPIES OF THE NEW GUIDELINES ARE AVAILABLE FROM

Sydney: 8 W est Street, North Sydney N SW 2060 Telephone (02) 925 7333 Toll Free (008) 22 6615 Fax (02) 922 2264 Melbourne: 185 Bank Street South Melbourne V ic 3205 Telephone (03) 690 51 4 4 Toll Free (008) 33 8430 Fax (03) 696 1476

INSTITUTE FOR CULTURAL POLICY STUDIES Division of Humanities, Griffith University (with the support of the Australia Council and the Australian Film Commission)

SEMINAR: MORAL AND PECUNIARY RIGHTS 8 - 1 0 December 1989, Brisbane The seminar will bring together members of the legal, media and arts communities in discussion of moral rights and royalties. Particular attention will be given to information on the current national and international state of these rights.

Speakers will include • PROFESSOR JANE GINSBURG, School of Law, Columbia

University, N ew York: on the current situation of moral rights in the U.S. and on the colorisation of black and white films.

• SAM RICKETSON, author o f THE BERNE CONVENTION, 18861986: on Australia's international obligations under that treaty

• A member of the working group on U.S. Adherence to the Berne Convention: on the American media industries' resistance to moral rights protection.

Attendance is limited to 100 participants.

The seminar director is DAVID SAUNDERS. For information contact Sharon Clifford, Administrative Officer, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland. 4111.

Telephone: Tuesday - Friday 9.00am to 4.00 pm (07) 275 7772 Fax (07) 275 7730

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1 ND

HUNTER

MELBOURNE

FILM

FESTIVALS

REPORT

CORDAIY

> Film Matters The 1 9 8 9 S y d n e y F i l m F e s t i v a l FILM FESTIVAL ARTICLES DESERVE A POETIC OPENING, SOME GESTURE TOWARDS DRAWING BACK A VELVETED CURTAIN. THEIR SUBJECTS ARE THE CINEMATIC EQUIVALENTS OF MAGIC ELIXIRS: WE LOOK TO THEM TO CURE OUR MALADIES, AND WEAR THE EXPERIENCE AS AN AMULET TO WARD OFF BANAL VISIONS ON SCREENS LARGE OR SMALL IN THE COMING YEAR. BUT THEN THE POETRY SHOULD BE PUT ASIDE

T IS COMMONLY SAID that film festivals in Australia have an important role in support­ ing or augmenting the local distribution patterns by bringing new films to the attent­ ion o f local distributors. And while it is true that several o f the films screened at the Sydney Film Festival are being released in Australia (including The Vanishing, H igh Hopes, S alaam Bombay and Hibiscus Town), it could be argued that festivals also highlight precisely what is not being distributed in Australia. They show us what we’re missing because part o f their attraction is the rarity value o f the films screened - radical, exotic, esoteric.

What’s at stake is something very precious: a film culture. The influence festivals have on film culture is varied but vital, and includes the inspiring o f local writers, directors, designers, actors; discussions with visiting directors (ranging from audiences to industry profession­ als and film bureaucrats); and critical reception ofimages by audiences and the culture press. Without festivals we’d only see our own films (or other versions o f them from California) and have a narrow critical perspective from which to assess cinema. In these times, the possibility o f such parochialism has already appeared on the horizon as the industry becomes an officially incorporated monolith and diversity o f cultural criticism is under threat. The danger is uniformity, on screen and page. Therefore, the responsibility o f any film festival is weighty, and, though the tasks I have just assigned to it may only be partially achieved, this report looks towards those ideals in its judgements.

The familiar structure o f the Festival has been maintained by its new Director, Paul Byrnes, with a main program o f films in the State cinema (referred to in this article), and a program o f documentaries, short films and forums in the smaller State Two cinema. The Festival also maintained its short film awards, now sponsored by the Dendy Cinema (see separate list), which were presented on opening night. I f the audience was looking for indications o f a new style to the Festival, then Paul Byrnes attempted to give it with his speech, in which he wanted the Festival to demonstrate that a film was more than enter­ tainment, that watching these films was a form o f freedom o f expres­ sion which at that time was being cruelly crushed on the streets o f Beijing, and, lastly, to give the Festival a slogan, he wanted the Festival to show that “film really does matter.”

I

BECAUSE FESTIVALS ALSO DEMAND OUR ATTEN­ TION AS PRINCIPAL FORUMS ON THE CURRENT STATE OF WORLD CINEMA. THEY SHOULD SHOW US VISIONS FROM OTHER CULTURES AND METHODS FROM OTHER PRODUCTION STRUCTURES. It is difficult to decide if this dichotomy occurred because better quality films were not available (there is, after all, a discernible cycle in which some years produce, by coincidence, a better ‘crop’ than others), or represents poor selection choices. This assessment is made even harder by the fact that Paul Byrnes took up his position only five months ago, limiting the time and scope o f the films for selection. Any Festival needs a year to be assembled, and a fairer judgement can be made after next year’s. The best features shared a depth o f vision, wit and an exploration o f human values. In this category were Someone to Love, Turmoil, The Vanishing, H igh Hopes, Summ er Vacation 1999 and Tabataba.

Henry Jaglom’s Someone to Love is a film about Americans on the make, and Orson Welles holding court. The two threads intertwine as a group o f actors gather on St Valentine’s Day in a soon-to-bedemolished LA theatre. Posing as a filmed investigation into their loneliness and the difficulty o f keeping any relationship viable, Someone to Love is also concerned with the difficulty o f art. Jaglom plays a director who manipulates all for the sake o f his film, once turning away from a seemingly sincere moment with his girlfriend to ask the camera operator if the shot was good. On stage the ‘characters’, including Welles’s companion, Oja Kodar, talk about love and life (“ life’s never better than Leave I t To Beaver’’’), making cumbersome plays for each other (“ Shall we have major sex later?” ) and try to escape Jaglom’s ever-present 35 mm eye ( “Who do I have to fuck to get O U T o f this movie?” ). Welles, speaking from ‘the cheap seats’, comments teasingly on language, acting and love. This is his last screen performance, and appropriately he takes over the proceedings by the sheer force and bluster o f his experience and wisdom.

Mike Leigh’s H igh Hopes clearly shows that if a similar meeting were held on his set, the outcome would be radically different.

Patiently digging away at Thatcherite Britain, Leigh’s film obviously

(TEXTS, PSYCHOLOGY, VISIONS)

The feature films screened this year were polarized between inspired (and inspiring) visions, and lack-lustre, often self-indulgent narratives.

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LEFT: ORSON WELLES HOLDS COURT WITH HENRY JAGLOM IN JAGLOM'S SOMEONE TO LOVE. BELOW: IVEN'S AND LORIDAN'S TALE OF THE WIND.

Jean-Luc Godard’s Keep Your R ight Up (in which he asserts that any creation these days is a miracle), Claude Chabrol’s Women}s Business and Rene Clair’s superb 14 July. French cinema has been funda­ mental to the development o f film meth­ ods and criticism, and if this Festival had a major flaw in its programming it was the weak and timid tribute to this his­ tory. A more rigorous choice from a longer fist that might have included Pagnol, Vigo, Renoir, Carne, Demy, Rohmer, Truffaut, Rivette ...

(THE WIND, THE PAST, THE PRESENT)

Documentaries had a particularly strong presence this year. All except for the confused and confusing John Duigan’s Bitter R ice confirmed cinema’s concern for the human condition.

Marcel Ophuls’s H otel Terminus: The Life an d Times o f K laus B arbie and Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan’s A Tale o f the Wind were the most notable. Ophuls’s film was a masterly study o f Klaus Barbie largely through the words (excuses) o f his American and South American protectors. The film has moments o f the most terrible memories, and a dark irony (soon after the war Barbie hid in the house o f the Brothers Grimm) which continually asserts the need for filmmakers to continue documenting this history. This need was poignandy shown in Voices fro m the A ttic: when Debbie Goldstein returned to Poland from America to revisit her family home, a fresh swastika had been painted on the door.

On other continents, Peter Raymont’s The World is Watching detailed presence o f American news crews in Nicaragua and their processing of news for prime-time US television news, exposing the tenuous fink those programs have with real events. By contrast, Joris Ivens, who dedicated his life to filming the reality o f events, turned to a more poetical vision in A Tale o f the W ind, which is a pursuit o f the invisible, from Chinese desert to mountain top and film studio. Sadly, this was his last film.

cares for its characters caught in an uncaring society. His film charts the changes now overtaking Britain through a close and tender study o f a family so obsessed with petty squabbles that ‘big’ issues come as a pleasant relief. High Hopes has a refreshing black humour which could have been distributed more widely through other films screened this year.

George Sluizer’s The Vanishing is a film which will undoubtedly provoke audiences when it is released. Chosen by the Australian Film Critics’ Circle as “Best Film” (in contrast to the audience, which selected Salaam Bombay), Sluizer’s film is an entrancing study o f the psychology o f murder. It is not afraid to confront its audience with the possibility that a murderer may act from the coldest o f calculations. The Vanishing was the most disturbing, uncomfortable film shown at the Festival, yet it also had some o f the most effectively compelling images and the most tighdy structured script. Like its central character, Sluizer’s film seeks perfection in everything.

Away from Los Angeles and Europe, there is another cinema which was sparsely represented this year. The three films o f note, from countries as diverse as Japan, India and Madagascar, were impressive for their inventive narrative structures and production values in the face o f immense restrictions (Dr Bhabendra Nath Saika’s Turmoil, for example, like last year’s Catastrophe, comes from Assam and represents radical independent filmmaking from that province). Shusuke Kaneko’s Summer V acation l999, which has already received the new director award from the Japanese Film-makers’ Union, sub­ verts the traditional gender roles o f Japanese theatre, while Raymond Rajaonarivelo’s T abataba was a moving exploration o f the anti-colonial revolt in Madagascar in 1947. It shows the effects o f the war on villagers rather than events from the front-line: men leave to become heroes, the village suffers from marauding soldiers, propaganda leaflets from each side float down the river.

(OUT OF THE PAST, THE FUTURE BRIEFLY)

The Festival continued to show restorations, this year screening John Ford’s She Wore A Yellow R ibbon ,D .W . Griffith’s Way Down East, and David Lean’s Lawrence o f A rabia, which, to borrow from Rene Clair,

(FRENCH CINEMA)

The Festival presented a celebration o f French cinema to mark the Bicentenary o f the Revolution. Three films (Magali Clement’s JeanneSH ouse, Jean-Claude Brisseau’s The Sound an d the Fury and Francois Dupeyron’s A Strange Place fo r a Meeting) were shown on a special ‘tribute’ night, and, along with the opening film, Michel Delville’s L a Lectrice, proved that France is quite capable o f making films as shallow and trite as any other country. The real tribute was scattered elsewhere in the program and included 46

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shows how a cinema which “pins down the fleeting aspect o f people and things, in the end falls victim to the time it challenged”.

Lean’s film is a handsome anachronism, a study o f enigmatic character as hero which details Lawrence’s actions without revealing the strong motivating reasons (political or psychological) for so much beautifully filmed dramatic behaviour. Whatever the motives for rereleasing restored films, their impact on film history will be significant and festivals are likely to be the main venues for presenting such important historical texts.

Briefly, three short films which exemplified the best o f a promised future for cinema: Norman Hull’s Out o f Town , Alison Maclean’s Kitchen Sink, which was voted Best Short by the Festival audience, and Geoffrey Wright’s Lover Boy . Hull’s film confirms what we learnt in H igh Hopes, namely that the new Britain can be an unfriendly place where those with their feet caught in holes are more likely to be beaten up than helped. Wright’s featurette, one o f the few Australian films o f consequence in this Festival, quickly escapes a rather standard opening to develop an imaginative tale o f love across the generations. Such films are often the beginnings o f careers in features, and are the most difficult to produce and market, especially at the beginning o f a professional life. The role o f the Australian Film Commission in developing these careers was central to Peter Sainsbury’s presentation o f the Ian McPherson Memorial Lecture. While he said that “without the AFC there would not be any real site for the systematic support of new Australian talent or o f its skilled personnel, and without that there would be no real industry”, the AFC has been under review for the past six months. In effect, with the massive structural changes in the industry (Film Finance Corporation et al), the AFC is also at the crossroads, and in real need o f redesign.

Peter Sainsbury identified some o f the bureaucratic obstacles that have clearly hindered creativity (“before too long what you find is that creative endeavour is being administered and managed and it’s not

RAFFAELE

being supported”). The result can be, “with some very notable exceptions, a whole raft o f pretty boring movies” . Though the review is still taking place, the way forward seems to be a reduction in the dominating role o f policy to allow greater flexibility in the workings o f the AFC at all levels. I f this can be sustained, then the AFC may be able to resist the noticeable push for conservative cultural consensus rather than diversity.

(LAST WORDS)

One o f the most significant screenings at the Festival was the four hours o f advertisements ( “LaNuit des Publivores” ). The program was sold out, and, if one is looking for cultural indicators for these times, this program, which brought a new audience to the Festival, is important. Sadly, the same enthusiastic response cannot be reported for Australian features which, again, were absent, and clearly one o f the new Festival Director’s tasks will be to coax Australian films back to the Festival screen. By building and expanding on a Festival ‘culture’, audiences may also be encouraged to stay longer and view with more cultural tolerance some o f the films rashly perceived as ‘difficult’ (Greg Araki’s The Long Weekend, for example). There is a need for more special programs (a retrospective o f American avant-garde film, for example); and the near absence o f African films was very noticeable, and regrettable, especially after the successful AFI season last year.

Lastly, the most fundamental change the Festival needs to make is a closer commitment to Asian and Oriental cinema. The 1986 program convened by T ony Rayns remains one o f the most culturally influential events at a recent Sydney Festival. As the industry and film culture enters what might be kindly called a ‘period o f readjustment’, the Festival has the opportunity, and challenge, to maintain the breadth and depth o f our cinematic experience. Soigne ta Droite!

1. From How Film s a re M ade, London, 1953. Trans. Vera Traill, published in F ilm : A nthology, edited by Daniel Talbot, Berkeley, 1967.

CAPUTO

^Taking Time Out 3 8t h M e l b o u r n e F i l m F e s t i v a l 1 9 8 9 HE 38TH MELBOURNE FILM FESTIVAL - let’s

fashion ads o f the late Fifties or early Sixties. Yet with her duplicated figure resembles a cut-out, and her image frozen in grey is like a pho­ tocopy. All the same, her style o f dress, her gesture, her look, her very comportment speaks o f good taste, o f social grace, o f distinction, o f gentility. In short, o f a lifestyle that is bourgeois.

Forming the background o f the collage is a street and building which one cannot specifically place, though one can recognize it in a general sense as “European” . Discernible in places is rubble gathered up against the building; it is reminiscent o f images o f a war-torn city.

The building appears time-worn, decaying and unstable - its architec­ tural fines are mismatched, and part o f the building looks as though it is about to crumble. Slightly off centre, and as though it protrudes from the building, is the Astor Theatre’s neon sign, and to the left, as though tenuously suspended, is an acutely ornamental blank screen with the word “coming” displayed at its crest. It too appears as if it is about to topple.

It’s the image on the cover o f the Festival program - a photo­ collage originally tided “Occidental Tourist” by Melbourne-based photographer Chris Barry. In this case, however, the “Occidental Tourist” is reconstructed in order to fine the work directly within the context o f the Festival - the neon sign and the blank screen are two o f the added, distinctive marks o f and for the Film Festival.

take time out from the Festival proper and begin at a place which could signal traces o f an undisclosed characteristic o f the Festival; but, because undiscl­ osed, it comes at you as a kind o f word or thought in abeyance o f another time, a kind o f purposeful, residual after-effect.

Among the ensemble o f disparate and disconnected images re­ tained from the Festival, one which stands out is o f a woman who accentuates a particular pose within a particular setting, and it leads one to affirm a particular position in relation to the Festival. But this image does not belong to that o f the moving image, instead it forms part o f a photo-collage. The woman situated at the bottom far left o f the frame has her arm and hand extended and is gesturing in a somewhat affected manner. She leans back only slightly, and with her face in three-quarter profile she glances off to the left o f the frame. Her neck is long; one could say, aristocratic. She wears an evening dress, closely fitted, with a stole draped over her extended arm. Just over to the right and extending across to the edge o f the frame, this same image is repeated a number o f times along the foreground, except the gesturing arm is cut off. This woman is very familiar, her pose and posture no doubt one has seen before. She is a representation o f a representation. She is most likely a model in a pose characteristic o f C

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I f we can speak o f an original and an altered work then both compositions are visually striking, and aesthetically pleasing, though this is not our immediate concern; nor is the notion o f origin, for the fact o f collage already makes the notion o f origin irresolute, it is always a work in itself and an altered work at the same time. But, insofar as the “Occidental Tourist” existed prior to the Festival, what becomes important here is not only that a particular image was selected and placed within the Festival context or that the Festival subsumes this work for its own purposes, but also that it was necessary that in some way that the Festival be identified and placed within the work itself.

Certainly, without the distinctive marks one could wonder about the choice o f image, although in one respect, the markers function to shift aside any such questioning. It is because o f the markers that some kind o f conception o f the Festival becomes especially anchored, but, on the other hand, there is another time and place, another context, which is that within the frame o f the photo-collage. Though, more precisely, one should say time is taken out, there isn’t a sense o f an unfolding, but o f time in abeyance, and a spatializing effect o f dravan g back within the frame.

The result is that Barry’s collage curiously reinvokes and speaks of an amorphous, adjectival, listless, second-hand collection o f ideas that the Festival more than often invokes: the unconventional, the new, the cinema o f taste and quality, the rediscovered masterwork, and at the heart o f these is the unspoken term, “Europe”. That is to say, an idea o f Europe, and “Europe” in this context cannot stand for anything other than a bourgeois ideal. In respect o f the collage, however, owing to the fact that the Festival needed to be located within it, one could say the Festival no longer forms the context for something else; instead, the photo-collage reverses the order o f things and (re)contextualizes the Festival. Thus, what is original is second-hand, what is more is only more o f the same, what is new is old and decaying.

It’s as if there are two perspectives in agreement with one another, yet one is tending to turn against the other by using the other’s own frame o f reference.

CHET BAKER IN BRUCE WEBER'S LET'S GET LOST, A JAGGED DENSITY OF TEXTURES.

smouldering effects o f either extreme close-ups or fidgety hand-held shots. There’s a kind o f movement o f texture replacing texture in this film, and in all this there’s a search for Baker. But it doesn’t seem possible to extricate Baker from it, he forms a part o f it, he gets lost within it. Oddly enough, one could probably place it next to Nick Broomfield’s D riving Me Crazy, essentially because the kind o f madness both these films prevail upon is a genuine, everyday kind.

HIT AND RUN

Now, if we could proceed further on a one-on-one basis, matters would be easy, but no such luck. The Festival this year was such a hodge-podge o f programming that it seemed to reflect a cultural policy based on a hit-and-run mentality. The retrospectives, for instance, were incredibly varied: the films o f Mike Leigh, the restored 1930 sound film The B a t Whispers, Fritz Lang’s The B ig H ea t and Nick Ray’s In A Lonely Place, an Indonesian film The Ronggeng Dancer, the National Film Board o f CanadaTribute, and finally the George Kuchar retrospective.

Programming retrospectives implies that there is an importance in re-calling these films, a significance in looking back at them even if for the first time. Therefore, they should share a special and equal status.

Yet, their position in the program suggests otherwise. The Kuchar and Leigh retrospectives were in the companion program at the State Film Centre. The others were all featured as part o f the main program, yet there were some significant disparities: the Canada Tribute had a onceonly weekday screening at noon; The Ronggeng D ancer a once-only Saturday morning screening; The Big H ea t and In A Lonely Place also had a once-only screening, but an evening session where all patrons had to buy separate tickets. But what is the context for having these films as retrospectives? With The B ig H ea t and In A Lonely Place, for instance, what, apart from their being new 35mm prints, is the rationale for their screening and for the way they were screened? It’s a question I cannot begin to answer without being offensive.

However, what’s worse than the inconsistencies o f the program is the overall mediocrity o f the entire program. Usually in past years there is at least a handful o f feature films that makes the event something o f an event, though this year there is not one which can be said to eclipse a set o f others. Instead, they seem to be all set in one long monotonal strip. (Though in closing, I feel the need to at least nod toward two short documentaries: a student film titled L ife A t M a’s and David Caesar’s Body Work. ) The Festival, despite its complementary and sometime courageous excursions from the main program, will always be something o f a white elephant event because it’s so deliberately a showcase for a particular kind o f film culture without wanting to be either deliberate or particular about it, and, even more so, because this is seemingly non-ideological.

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ONE ON ONE FILM FESTIVAL

This said, one may wonder what film would fit the image o f the Festival perfectly. I f there were a perfect Festival film this year it would have to be Ian Pringle’s The Prisoner o f St Petersburg . As the program notes state, Prisoner is “imbued with an unmistakably European sensibility”.

But it’s something less than a sensibility. In essence, this film is a garish journey into a kind o f metaphysics o f how to be a European filmmaker.

Though it seems Pringle isn’t interested in being a filmmaker; he wants to be a/the “director”. Quote marks are essential here.

Prisoner concerns the deluded, existential wanderings o f a trio of supposed misfits through the after-dark streets o f Berlin. At the centre o f this trio is Jack (Noah Taylor) whose sense o f reality is possessed by 19th-century visions, his mind crazed by the literary imagination o f Gogol and Dostoyevsky. With the madman character at its centre, Prisoner is in a way an ode to German expressionism. But it’s an expressionism gone flat, for the sense o f madness or alienation that it wants to evoke has to be carried by an oppressive use o f black-andwhite photography and overdetermined acting gestures. And the problem is that this is all it can ever be - overdetermined and oppressive - for it only calls attention to itself, it’s an exalted rather than an expressive style. It’s a deluded sensibiity which believes that a few overdone, basic devices such as shooting at oblique angles in chiaro­ scuro effect is the hallmark o f an expressionist visual style.

On a one-on-one basis, if there were a sort o f stab-in-the-back companion piece to Prisoner o f St. Petersburg I would have to say it would be Bruce Weber’s documentary feature on Chet Baker, L e t’s Get L ost. Perhaps it’s a superficial comparison, but through Weber’s use o f black and white photography in settling the brooding, timechiselled looks o f Baker (dressed mostly in black) in the often coolwhite, tilted, oblong compositions, L et’s Get Lost could be retided L e t’s Go C razy .

It’s a documentary, sure, but there’s still every chance o f roman­ ticizing Baker in the way that Pringle romanticizes the alienated.

Weber’s compositions and style are not affected to the point that they become cliche, but rather form a jagged density o f textures by shifting from, say, the glamour shots o f an enormously photogenic Baker o f the Fifties, to compositions made up o f sharp contours and lines, to the 48

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K e e p in g it a li v e to the last second

• Digital Film Sound at Albert Studios BRUCE BROWN AND RUSSELL DUNLOP HAVE LEARNED THEIR CRAFT FROM THE BEST FILM POST-PRODUCTION PEOPLE IN THE BUSINESS, SUCH AS THREE-TIME ACADEMY-AWARD-WINNER MARK BERGER (A PO CA LYPSE NOW ) AND TOMLINSON HOLMAN, CHIEF AUDIO ENGINEER AT LUCASFILM AND HEN Bruce and Russell show visitors to Albert DESIGNER OF THE THX SYSTEM. YET, BRUCE Studios their demo reel AND RUSSELL STILL CONSIDER THEMSELVES AT (with eight inserts o f them at work taken on their video 8), you realize that they are learning from these top sound mixers by working back­ THE BOTTOM OF THE LEARNING CURVE. wards; learning from listening and analyzing the work o f the best film

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soundtracks released on VHS. The reel has segments from commer­ cially available surround-encoded tapes o f RoboCop and Poltergeist, with examples o f their own work that echoes the same technically ac­ complished mixes. The surround sound leaps around the walls o f the mixing suite, and the digital audio quality from the big monitor speakers sent shivers through me.

For sometime after leaving, I was juggling the arguments for sprockets versus video and digital, but I am left with the feeling that the changes they are making to the way we are accustomed to work are inevitable. The other feeling I had was that I wanted to write about them because they honestly expressed fun and enthusiasm for creative filmmaking.

BACKGROUND, MUSIC

Russell was the first to joke about it, when I talked about friends I have with home-video sound decoders and surround speaker systems in their living rooms, and o f being trapped into sitting for hours listening to the latest features at full volume as they show off the equipment. “I don’t mind, because I can watch movies all day, every day. I have hundreds o f them. I sometimes think I ’ll end up like Howard Hughes watching Ice Station Zebra. I like pictures, and once I got involved with a few bits and pieces, I started to really analyze things. And you know how that destroys the innocent way o f looking at movies. It’s like the joy o f just playing music compared to having to record it; something goes out o f it.”

Russell had been playing drums in bands for years with people like Renee Geyer. From session playing he decided that he’d try the other side o f the microphone with Bruce. They started to produce albums together for Mental as Anything, John English and Kevin Borich, work they modestly call “reasonably successful”. They put out some o f their own records “using bodgy names, as a bit o f fun”.

While it was often fun, it became tiring. “After ten or so albums”, as Russell said, “it was becoming repetitive, like doing a stage show every night. So, we decided to get into the pictures.” Having done a lot o f T V commercial music tracks, they liked the feeling that with film there was always something to learn, and that it was somehow more ‘professional’. This is, Russell believes, “probably because there is so 50

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much more at stake on the initial punt. You can possibly afford to lose $5 0 ,0 0 0 on a record, butyou can’t make a movie for that. The pressure to deliver good work is stimulating.”

The combination o f their equipment and engineering talent seems to be appreciated. They mixed the music for Crocodile D undee at the studio and, after supplying the final tracks, they received a letter from the film’s American music editor saying, “Whatever you got goin’, don’t change it.” A lot o f people have commented on the wide stereo image on Dundee as being very noticeable in the theatre.

SPROCKETS? WHAT SPROCKETS?

Gently advancing, they did another feature where the voice-overs, music and mix have all been done under the one roof. It was the sci fi/ music/horror feature, Sons O f Steel. The film’s director, Gary Keady, enjoyed working in an environment familiar to his music background.

There is still some scepticism about mixing to video but on the whole the Americans have embraced the idea, Bruce believes. “There is a producer coming out to do a series who wants to work that way, re­ alizing that it’s cheaper and faster. It saves the director driving some­ where to check the music and then driving somewhere else to then hear the effects laid up. He can walk around here and keep his eye on it.”

And it seems to help improve the liaison between the departments.

Russell admits that there is a lot o f irrational resistance to the move to mixing to video, going digital and not using sprocketed magnetic tracks. “There’s a bit o f the Boogeyman about it all, like when digital came in and people said, ‘I can hear the top end squaring off.’ And in some instances you could, but the new range o f equipment is so good you can’t hear it. And you only have to listen to some old analogue stuff to find it sounds like listening through thirty feet o f water. The digital clarity is unmistakable, if that’s what you’re after. A lot o f people say they like tape compression, and I don’t mind it either... on drum kits! ” Russell agrees that, “A lot o f people are sceptical, until they sit down and see what we’ve done ... and how rapidly. They seem impressed.

“The other thing they comment on is the avoidance o f all the dubbing o f the sprockets, and being able to keep it all contained in a A -P

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digital format. It is also an advantage to have a minimal amount o f people working on their job, instead o f the usual cast o f thousands working in the sound department. I get stories from blokes that have had to mix in the normal type set-ups where they get it down to as few tracks as they can and yet there is still some mystical aura about the guy who shoves up and down the eight knobs.”

I asked if they thought it was just mystique applied to the need to mix in a large theatre environment. Russell answered, “A lot o f people think that unless you have a big theatre you’ll lose some o f that perspective, and they could be right, but if the audio end o f the mix is inferior, then you lose what you might pick up. And most o f the set­ ups in theatres are pretty antiquated anyway.”

The process they have followed to make sure that their tracks work in theatres also shows the strange mix o f expertise and enthusiasm.

Ted Albert, ‘the boss’ and owner o f the studio, has a theatre under­ neath his house. It has 35mm CinemaScope, with one o f the pioneer multi-track film audio devices, a discrete four-track magnetic unit. He also has prints o f significant movies like A round the World in 80 Days.

Bruce describes the big theatre as about the same size as Colorfilm’s mixing theatre and they used to try out their first mixes in it. But their main experience came “when initially we played videos that have all the encoded material on them and copied the sound. We found movies that had soundtracks we liked and tried to match how they had done them.”

head.

“It’s pretty controllable, but there are times when the encoder goes haywire, as when it’s writing it down, and suddenly the rear speakers burst into life and everything’s pouring out the back.” He laughed about “the few frightening moments until you get it set properly” .

There is some rivalry between manufacturers o f the surround sound system and quite a few recent movies have had UltraStereo mentioned in the credits rather than the familiar Dolby logo. Although Dolby Labs did the early work in designing the system, they lease the units per project and will not sell them.

UltraStereo started in California making units to compete with the Dolby CP50 decoders in theatres, and through their success began to make encoders. Russell explains that theirs is a modified theatre playback system “that fits into a road case and works very well. When we got it I fed tones and pink noise into the different channels and just kept it going round in circles. When I took it to Colorfilm I could see they were impressed by the lack o f bleed from front to back and between left and right. I don’t know if it’s better than the Dolby, but it seemed to be completely compatible. And it saves the five to six thousand dollar licence fee for Dolby, which is probably not a big part o f the budget, but it means the producer can spend it elsewhere.

“I don’t know how they got around the Dolby patents, but the local Dolby agent was going to leave his D S4 unit in here until his London office heard that we had the UltraStereo and they pulled it out.”

ANALOGUE TO DIGITAL

Although they have always had Fairlights in the music studios, about a year ago they bought a Series III Fairlight CMI that they found worked well as a sound effect track laying device. It also fitted well into the overall move o f the studios towards being fully digital, and it gave them the idea that the facility might be attractive for film people.

Having already had experience with sound and picture interlock with commercials, they believed by using video “we didn’t need sprockets. ” When Russell and Bruce mentioned getting a Dolby or UltraStereo encoder unit, Ted Albert agreed. They purchased a Sony video projector and put a rear-projection screen over the window into the main studio. With an UltraStereo unit, they then had the ability to

THE HARDWARE

The desk is a 56 channel SSL standard console that they are having modified to match the one at Lucasfilm for which SSL has designed a special panning system for the surround sound. With the modification, switching it to quad automatically switches all the buses to the correct channels. The output is to one or more o f their four Sony PCM 3324 Digital multi-track tape recorders, machines that are building a big following in the industry.

“They’re excellent”, Russell believes, “but film people say, ‘What if you want to slip something a few frames?’ Or they want to add or chop something. ‘What do you do without sprockets?’, they ask. That happened quite a few times with the last film and it is just a simple matter. We can lock any number o f the Sony tape machines together via their own C TL (control) track, and, when it is synchronized to the picture, transfer all the sound to a new 24 track tape with the new sequences added or re­ moved.” This can be done any number o f times without los­ ing quality on successive gen­ erations because o f the digital format.

Bruce explained the final part o f the process. “We trans­ fer the encoded tracks onto a U-matic PCM. Because the 24 track Sony Digital machines are basically video machines, you can put video colour black onto them and they can be phase-locked to the video machine. We cart the machine over to Colorfilm and they feed a Pilotone 50hz signal from a Nagra into the U-matic video input. You hear the U-matic slew and it phase locks, and then they transfer it to mag. You can actually go direct to the neg if you are confident, but they usually like to run it as a double head to check that the transfer is correct.”

There was a hint in his voice that there was some resistance to change when he said, “I ’m sure that there was more than a little suspicion about these rock and rollers being able to get it right.”

THE 56 CHANNEL SSL STANDARD CONSOLE MODIFIED FOR SURROUND SOUND.

provide full surround sound.

“The UltraStereo”, Russell explains, “is a Dolby pinch except you can buy it. It encodes in one signal the four final tracks o f the mix.

Mainly music/ dialogue comes from the centre, then there is centre left and centre right which are used for panning sound. You never get a true stereo image on anything, although it can go from one side o f the screen to the other, and at the threshold o f the mix it throws the sound to the rear speaker. That’s when the chopper goes roaring over your c

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there are differences between a sampled sound SONS OF STEEL like the Fairlight, which is in BAM , and a With such a big equipment investment, I direct-to-disk recording where you can’t asked if they believed that the savings in time manipulate the disk recording. They can do a made the costs comparable to conventional few things like fade, and as the SSL has six methods. Bruce offered their work on Sons o f tracks you can do a bit o f a mix. With the Steel as an example. “The final mix on Sons o f sound effects as samples in RAM on the Steel came from one twenty-four track, and we Fairlight, they can be fired off at any point. did the it in about four days because o f the pre­ And you also have all the power o f the ma­ mixes. We had actually mixed it once before "THE FINAL MIX ON SO N S OF STBBL CAME nipulation. Pitch change, bends on them, and when they wanted to take it to last year’s edit them. Russell used it to do footsteps by Cannes Festival. They rushed in and said, FROM ONE TWENTY-FOUR TRACK, AND WE sampling three or four footsteps, putting them ‘Let’s mix it now.’ That was just mayhem DID IT IN ABOUT FOUR DAYS BECAUSE OF THE in RAM, copying them and then lay all the because we had two twenty-four tracks run­ PRE-MIXES. WE HAD ACTUALLY MIXED IT ONCE steps up in sync, with changes in their pitch ning and I just put the limiter on the end and and levels. That’s something that the disksaid, ‘Here we go.’ After Cannes, they came BEFORE WHEN THEY WANTED TO TAKE IT TO based recording machines can’t do.” back and we then did it properly.

LAST YEAR'S CANNES FESTIVAL... THAT WAS When the studios were busy and Bruce “As an afterthought, they said that they needed to cut dialogue, he used to put the wanted stereo for the overseas market. They JUST MAYHEM BECAUSE WE HAD TWO AudioFile in the boot o f his car and take it took only three hours to do, because you put TWENTY-FOUR TRACKS RUNNING AND I JUST home on the weekend. He said, “I ’d sit there the reels up and turn the automation on with PUT THE LIMITER ON THE END AND SAID, with headphones on and actually edit the the dialogue switched out and just let it run. dialogue and replacement dialogue sequences I ’m sure that would have been a bigger drama 'HERE WE G O .' AFTER CANNES, THEY CAME together, even sampling a bit o f ambient with film reels.”

BACK AND WE THEN DID IT PROPERLY." sound and laying it up with the new bits. Most “Sons o f Steel had pop music tracks as well - BRUCE BROWN times you don’t need to see picture because as scored, mainly synthesizer, music. As well you know it’s in sync. Ih ad aB etam axV C R to there were four sound effects tracks, some watch it and the AudioFile just reads code and incidental stuff and the dialogue tracks. These fires off at the right points. It saves all that laborious splitting up o f were all grouped so that you only had to control about four faders, dialogue tracks on magnetic into separate reels and laying up ambient rather than having a monstrous console with four men hanging on it. sound in the gaps. Often the scenes will be replaced later and all you With automation it is all so controllable, and by only one person. It are doing is providing a reference. O f course, on film it’s pretty cheap seems strange to me that so many o f the mixing set-ups, even many in to have a couple o f spools and an Auratone speaker. We are using the States, don’t use automation on their desks. It seems so old world.” equipment that costs a couple o f hundred grand, but I believe that we DIGITAL, TOTALLY DIGITAL do it so much quicker, and only split things when it’s necessary.”

The time soon came on the production when they moved even further FACING THE MUSIC towards the digital. Bruce had begun doing the dialogue replacement Bruce knows that it is difficult for people to get the feel o f the theatre, with a multi-track synchronized to the video, and quickly discovered even when they are mixing in a room that they were happy to use for that the process ‘gave him the horrors’. All synchronizers take some music. He also tells o f some o f the mistakes they made at first, by time to lock up and the delay between takes throws the actors’ timing treating the mix like a music session where they would wind up the off. Bruce’s solution was to get a totally digital sampling recorder volume for the bits they liked and then had trouble finding levels. I called AudioFile. Instead o f two tape machines having to stabilize, the commented that that seemed to be a common approach to musicians AudioFile tracks the video constantly. even producing music tracks for T V commercials.

To use it, Bruce explains, “You just run the video a few times for “The fact that Gary Ready also came from a music background the actor and then spool the video back a few seconds before the line meant that we were all in it, so that when a song came on we had it loud and run it. The AudioFile will save as many takes as you like and its and then when the dialogue came in it was dropped back. The first mix samples are all time-code related. Before the actor left I ’d sit down and we rushed to get the film to Cannes, we didn’t see it until there was edit them all together, stringing the best ones into one complete scene. a print done and it was gone. (Gary was waiting at Colorfilm at six We maybe had to go back and record something that wasn’t what we o’clock for the print and was on a plane an hour later with the reels wanted or if the sync was a bit out. Usually you would just slip under his arm.) individual words and then lock it up and dump it onto the multi-track.

“When we heard it later we cracked up, a half dozen o f us went to “Most o f the actors in SonsofSteelwc re amateur but the profession­ a cinema out at Hornsby and there was the six o f us sitting in the middle als that we used were just knocked out by the speed o f working that o f the theatre. In the scene where they went into the cave where the way. While it was hot in their minds they were back at it. I can monster was, we suddenly had all this water noise coming out o f the remember standing once in a big theatre watching post syncing being done to film and thinking how laborious it was. We did stuff where the surround speaker that was so loud that you couldn’t hear the dialogue!

But we’ve learnt a lot.” actor was in and out in half an hour because you could say, ‘That was right but you were just a bit early on the whole delivery’, and quickly And they are both still optimistic about the future. Bruce believes that, “Our record industry is no different to our movie industry. We slip just that bit into sync. are going along in a similar vein and, just as our records have started “We were just about to buy an AudioFile, but they were in the to take off overseas, so will our movies on a more regular basis. order o f $ 1 5 0 ,0 0 0 , so we said hang-on, let’s see how the movie thing goes and I ’m glad we did. Now there are about five other manufactur­ Australians can make a dollar go a lot further than other people. We have to get the result. ers o f audio ‘work stations’ as they’re called, all with different software “W e’ve just signed for another film that’s got a pretty good budget approaches but basically doing the same job. I ’ve kept track o f them and when Fairlight said that they were doing a direct-to-disk version, and an American pre-sale. W e’ve sat down with the sound recordist to we bought all the hardware for it although we knew that the software work out what equipment’s compatible and what we can pitch in to needed some work. It cost about $40,000 to upgrade and then they make it all work better on-site. Again, it’s the difference between the young guys on the way up and those who have been around for years. went bankrupt!”

For those experts, I would never presume to tell them how to do it, but Kym Ryrie and Peter Vogal have managed to resurrect Fairlight, and Bruce, like a lot o f other musicians, is glad to hear that they are in the end, if we can make the recordist’s work sound better, we all look back. The disk-based post-production system is slated for release at the good. And digital is the way to go. I think that having the ability o f keeping it alive to the last second is pretty exciting. a October AES Show.

“All these manufacturers are pushing them for sound effects. But 52

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• N ew Perspex Underwater Housing for Arri II NDERWATER CAMERA HOUSINGS available for

say, ‘Fine’, and just call for a pan left or right.”

Being able to change the speed control on the Arri III required the ability to move the small knurled knob under the camera. Instead, Ian opted for the electronic speed control but didn’t want to put it underneath as the camera with 4 0 0 ft magazine in place already sat up quite high. Any modifications to the device would have taken away its instant compatibility. Ian was on a shoot in the U.S. “when I went to Burns and Sawyer and they had a second-hand variable-speed control unit. It was only crystal at 24 and 25 frames, but for the purpose it was fine. It had a long accessible shaft that we incorporated into the design and it will push the new Arri Ills to 125 fps.”

The weight and displacement was also carefully worked out.

“There is no use”, Ian explained, “in having a housing that when the camera is added will sink to the bottom. It has turned out to need about two to three pounds o f extra weight to hold it down, and that’s with an anamorphic, two batteries and the variable speed. Each time you change lenses you have to make some adjustment, and I like it to be slightly negatively buoyant.”

There are expensive video connectors available for underwater but Ian was sceptical o f fitting something solid to the housing that was to be continually plugged and removed. They came up with the alterna­ tive o f putting a port in the side with an O-ring and physically running the cable through this with the O-rings and brass fittings. “When you use the cable you put the port on and clamp it, and run the cable up to the surface. There is a dummy port if you don’t need the split. The option we are developing is for the operator to also use a video monitor as a viewfinder.”

As well as all that, it is made to sit on the tripod, has follow focus and iris adjustment, and takes a 9.8 mm Kinoptic lens, which, Ian says, looks terrific and believes is unique in the housings available in Australia.

The housing is available through Ian Jones, pictured below with the said piece o f equipment.

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rental are not common as most cinematographers who specialize in this work have their own custommade gear. Locally, I only know o f the A1 Giddings housing that was made for The Deep, which only takes an Arri IIC and you have to nominate Panavision spherical or anamorphic lenses. Samuelsons has a number o f fibreglass cases that have been built with Sammies by local camera people. Most o f these are for the ARRI III but are limited to 200 ft magazines. Speed changes also require the camera to come out of the housing and they use the fighter and shorter-life Arri SR batteries. There are some metal casings that allow you to go down to about eight feet, but they seem very clumsy.

Ian Jones, Melbourne Steadicam operator and cameraman, be­ lieved that there was an area for developing a commercially acceptable housing that overcame these limitations. The result can be judged from the photos and from its use on Trouble In Paradise and The Hunting.

Ian explained that he wanted to have a video split available. “That caused some problems because I liked the idea o f the orientable viewfinder used at 45 degrees instead o f having an eyepiece at the rear o f the housing. Working that way means you are tucked in closer to the camera, which gives you more control.”

The answer came about six months ago in the new video split that works with the orientable door, and, with the assistance o f Cameraquip, Ian was able to include this in the final construction. “Samuel­ sons has helped me a lot”, Ian said, “as the camera is capable o f taking the C series anamorphic lenses from 30mm to 100mm. They used E series lenses on The H unting and they fitted in” .

Ian felt that Boulevard Films appreciated the video split ability.

“Because it was a main unit shoot, I was set up in the pool and they could come across, put their people in the pool, shoot it and walk away.

The director and DOP didn’t have to get into the water, which often is the only way to get a feel for it. They could look at the monitor and

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THE GEOLOGICAL AND MINING MUSEUM

Albert Digital

(INCORPORATING THE MINERALS & ENERGY INFORMATION CENTRE) CAMPBELLS COVE

TH E ROCKS, SYD N EY The “Mining Museum” in The Rocks area is under­ going a major refurbishment, both o f its historic home and o f the exhibitions to be presented.. The project is a jo in t venture of the NSW Department of Minerals and Energy and the private sector.

The new “Mining Museum ” with its interactive threedimensional and realistic exhibits will be dynamic and exciting. It is aimed to make the Museum an educational centre and a showcase for our wealth of Mining Exhibits, as well as appealing to a broad range o f visitors of all ages.

M ulti-track Recording Facilities Featuring Sony 2 4 tra c k digita Irecording in all studios Specialising in post synch film production and ultra-stereo surround dolby mixing for th e a tre

AUDIO VISUAL D I R E C T O R /P R O D U C E R The Museum invites expressions o f interest from prospective Director/ Producers who could provide consulting and technical services: • Skilled in the direction and production o f AV material • Co-ordinate and supervise the production of animated shorts / video footage / computer graphics from script development and edit through to 1" master tapes • Be able to work closely with, and contribute to, an existing team of researchers, curators, designers and audio, lighting and photographic specialists • Experience in the development and creation of lively educational A V material would be an advantage • Experience with hard disk/card storage of data would also be advantageous

Fairlig ht CMI S e rie s III 9 Rangers Road Neutral Bay NSW 2 0 8 9 Business Hours: (02) 9 0 9 3111 After Hours: Studio One: (02) 9 0 9 3151 Studio Two: (02) 9 0 9 3 8 8 7 Studio Three: (02) 9 0 9 3 6 2 0 Studio Four: (02) 9 0 9 3 6 0 9

MORE INFORMATION AND WRITTEN APPLICATION SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO:

MS JENNI LUCOCK GIBBON HAMER & ASSOCIATES PROJECT MANAGERS 1 LEE STREET, SYDNEY, NSW 2000 TELEPHONE (02) 211 3122 FACSIMILE (02) 281 2434

Fax (02) 9 0 9 3 0 3 5

35mm Underwater?

No Problem

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TOTAL TUITION IN FILM, TELEVISION AND SPECIAL EFFECTS MAKE-UP Specially designed for those who wish to work professionally in the Film and T.V. industry.

This course includes high fashion for photography, cover girl, straight corrective for studio lighting, character make-up, old age stippling scars, burns, facial deformities, bald cap-making, classical period and various racial make-ups.

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CONTACT ROGER BUCKINGHAM TELEPHONE (02) 9 1 8 8741

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WAR AND REMEMBRANCE

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Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Barbara Hooks Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Barbara Hooks Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

TV SCANNERS W ILL APPEAR IN EVERY SECOND ISSUE OF CINEMA PAPERS. TV CRITICS WERE GIVEN NINE PROGRAM S TO RATE BETWEEN 0 - 10 (10 BEING THE OPTIM UM RATING) AND THEY COULD ADD­

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Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Barbara Hooks Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

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Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Barbara Hooks Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

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ITIO NALLY NOM INATE AND RATE A TITLE OF THEIR OW N CHOICE. THE MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

CHINA BEACH CRITICS AR E: PAM ELA CASELLAS (THE WEST AUSTRALIAN), BRIAN Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Barbara Hooks Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

COURTIS (M ELBOURNE HERALD), MIKE HARRIS (THE BULLETIN), BAR­ BARA HOOKS (THE A G E), KAREN LATEO (THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH), ROBIN OLIVER (SYDNEY M O RNING HERALD), DENNIS PRYOR (THE A G E), KEVIN SADLIER (THE SUN-HER ALD), GERRI SUTTON (DAILY MIRR O R ), AND PAUL WICKS (THE COURIER M AIL).

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Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Barbara Hooks Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Barbara Hooks Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

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Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Barbara Hooks Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

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THE POWER THE PASSION

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Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Barbara Hooks Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

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Pamela Casellas, J a c k The R ip p er - 9; Brian Courtis, The B ig G ig - 8; Mike Harris, Wiseguy - 3; Karen Lateo, R oseann e - 7; Robin Oliver, B lin d Ju stice - 8; Dennis Pryor, B lin d Ju stice - 8; Kevin Sadlier, J a c k The R ip p er - 8; Gerri Sutton, First Born - 8.

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THIS ISSUE: S W E E T IE , D EA D P O E T S S O C IE T Y , B O N Z A , L O V E R B O Y , B A T M A N , G E O R G IA AND N E W Y O R K S T O R IE S

ABOVE: KAY (KAREN COLSON): ETHEREALITY AND SUBLIMATED DESIRES, IN JANE CAMPION'S UN­ COMMONLY HAUNTING SWEETIE.

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SWEETIE ANNE-MARIE

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ANE CAMPION’S Sweetie is an uncom­

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monly haunting Australian feature film. It takes more interesting risks, more consistently, than virtually any other Australian feature of recent memory, even independent-minded ones like T en der H ooks or M ull. Doubdess, what makes it interesting to us is what will damn it in the eyes of some others: a certain all-pervading tone and quality of irresolution, indefinition, uncertainty. It’s a: film that in­ deed (to use the precious parlance of opinionmongers) ‘doesn’t work’, doesn’t hold to­ gether. It’s the opposite of the ‘organic’ film, a work in which style, theme and narrative mutually support and express each other.

Sweetie forever multiplies its themes, and drifts in such a way that it constandy displaces its centre of interest. Thus, the film steadfastiy resists that brutal condensation, casually per­ formed by reviewers and eamesdy recomc i

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mended by scriptwriting manuals, down into a single, simple, three-sentence ‘narrative image’ or statement of thematic intent.

Campion’s own comments on what the film is ‘about’, in interviews and elsewhere, are in fact as numerous and diffuse as they are curi­ ous. But perhaps one of her remarks provides a general, ‘spiritual’ orientation: “I... felt in­ tuitively that I wanted to do something modern... something about the Eighties” ( C in em a P apers , May 1989). As in the works of a recent generation of Americans - Jar­ musch, Wang, Cox, Lynch - what seems to matter most to Campion is the successful evocation of a certain contemporary sensibil­ ity, a particular tone, relating to, the ‘feel’ of modem life, how individuals perceive it in affective terms. If this sensibility risks courting a fragmentation and wayward drifting at the very heart of the film and its construction, then so be it: how else to portray a world defined, at a fundamentally banal and every­ day level, by alienation, irresolution and inco­ hesion?

Sweetie focuses, in a great Australian tradi­ tion, on the lives o f ‘ordinary’ people, whilst (thankfully) managing to avoid the canonical film-school approach o f ‘suburban grotesque’, with its petty, satirical tone o f moral superior­ ity. It quizzically weighs up deep, subterra­ nean human (and mystical) impulses against determinedly uneventful surface interactions and outcomes. There is, amidst the banality, a giddy sense o f semi-hallucination, as if the characters are asking themselves, somewhere inside: Is this really happening to me? M ore­ over, it is as if the significance o f any single event may well be lost on the characters them­ selves - for this is a world in which ‘meaning’ holds little sway, in which a search for meaning could never really pay off.

Thus Sweetie poses delicate problems for audiences or critics who would fixate on its array o f ‘themes’, its coagulated meanings.

The film suggests a system o f perception which involves an interest in age old, universally human questions, but in a way that is not absolute, still open to relativity, chance, ab­ surdity. The themes are many - but they neither explain the film (and its emotional effect) satisfactorily, nor do they form a par­ ticularly cohesive, articulated pattern in them­ selves.

The film is, from one angle, about women and female sexuality. Sweetie clearly divides the world o f women from the world o f men.

It is the women - Kay (Karen Colston), Flo (Dorothy Barry) and Sweetie (Genevieve Lemon) - who invariably get things moving, who take action and force change, while the men - principally Louis (Tom Lycos) and Gordon (Jon Darling) - accordingly let them­ selves be passively moved around. On a deeper level, the film suggests two dialectically op­ posed feminine archetypes - the witch-like Kay, with her secrets and superstitions, her ethereality and sublimated desires, contrast­ ing starkly with the brute force o f Sweetie’s obstinate and unrelenting libido, her absolute dependence on male love.

From another angle, the film is a ‘comedy o f remarriage’. This term has recently been used to encompass all those stories that deal with the human problem o f whether couples (not necessarily married in the legal sense) can rekindle a deep, binding love that has gone somewhat cold or awry after the first flames o f passion and/or commitment. There are two ‘remarriages’ at stake in Sweetie - Kay and Louis’s, Gordon and Flo’s. From this inter­ pretative point o f view, Sweetie’s character function is to be the catalyst - if not the sa crificia l scapegoat - that enables these couples to renegotiate their relationship; she is the ‘carnivalesque’ figure who turns the normal world upside down in order that it possibly be renewed, re-evaluated. Interestingly, Sweetie is here not so much an eternal feminine force, as a traditionally masculine mythological one - the angel/devil figure, like Terence Stamp in Pasolini’s T eorem a or Sting in B rim stone a n d T reacle , who exits from the tale as mysteri­ ously and abruptly as he/she entered it, hav­ ing wreaked an ambiguous destruction. The end-point o f ‘remarriage’ in Campion’s film is

extremely tentative and fragile, once again haunted by ambiguity, as is Sweetie’s final transcendental affirmation: “Love me with all o f your heart...” .

Sweetie is also about family life. This level o f meaning is more ‘grounded’ and thus less allegorical or mythological than the others.

The film has much to do with the cluttering emotional ‘baggage’ that people carry around in their everyday lives. It suggests the inescap­ able hell o f family life, and the painful inevita­ bility o f children mirroring the complexes o f their parents. Sweetie, in this structure, has another set o f functions. She is the one who has been most irremediably screwed up by this particular nuclear family - complete with a suggested father-daughter incest dependency.

But paradoxically, as one who is experienced by the other characters as more burden than victim, it is her death which allows a sense o f release, or momentary relief, from the hell o f family life.

The film has a very special plot structure which encourages the ‘drifting’ o f any inter­ pretation. Owing something, perhaps, to the loose ‘road movie’ structures o f the 1970s, Sweetie deliberately possesses no narrative centre, no single, motivating, driving force.

The film plumbs the ‘aleatory’ idea that both life and narrative are (or should be) at the mercy o f sudden moves and interruptions that inaugurate unexpected trajectories: someone knocks on the door and moves in for good; a phone call from interstate prompts an un­ planned journey/holiday. Doubtless discon­ certingly to some tastes, the film lurches through a series o f large-scale displacements, and every new ‘move’ seems to relocate the­ matic possibilities. (Perhaps only the bizarre ‘outback’ section o f the film is too elliptical and hallucinatory to be accommodated in any reading!) More than most films, Sweetie tanta­ lizes one with the question o f ‘where it’s coming from’ .

The style o f Sweetie , particularly its visual style, is in many respects a level unto itse lf- a perpetual, floating, quasi-autonomous ‘event’ like everything else in the film. Here, Campion reaches the height o f her experimental risk taking: for no comparable Australian feature has had the same courage to so utterly jettison the conventions o f a ‘classical’ or mainstream shooting style. Campion’s pictorial style is already unmistakeable, perhaps even rigidly so: the eye-popping, static compositions which place a close-up head in one corner, while some weirdly angled expanse o f space fills the rest o f the frame; the bright, minimal, hardedge colour configurations; the dappling o f a few fragile beams or speckles o f light in a dark interior.

This choice o f style is risky because it forfeits so much in ‘classical’ terms: in ‘atomizing’ each character, each shot, each scene into separated little blocks or cells, it effectively rules out the possibilities o f a ‘flowing’ miseen-scene, dramatic moments that carefully swell up and die away, and ensemble acting.

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effect, but is rather flatly laid on, lacking in modulation or complexity. What the overall style achieves, however, is certainly rewarding: strange, modern rhythms; a truly unusual tone; and an irregular flow which is both pleasingly calm and even, but full o f tiny moment-to-moment surprises. Amidst all o f this, there is a hushed, often silent, mysterious soundtrack, where elements such as the a cappella songs come to play an ambiguous, shifting role: perhaps an ironic commentary on events, perhaps expressive o f deep yearnings, perhaps just an odd textural, affective touch.

Tellingly, Sweetie has failed to be nominated in either ‘Best Screenplay’ or ‘Best Direction’ categories in this year’s AFI Awards. It thus joins the line o f very interesting low-budget features that have attracted general disap­ proval or indifference from the mainstream o f our beloved ‘industry’. Yet it is precisely be­ cause these maligned films contradict the industry’s mediocre norms - the liberal no­ tions o f worthy content, the hopelessly insuf­ ficient understandings o f classical form - that they should be highly prized. In a very modest sense these films are ground breaking. The flat and homogenous landscape o f Australian cinema is disturbed by their incongruous presence. We might cautiously hope that this growing body o f films, whose only common creed is heterogeneity and difference, might generate some movement in the dried-up mainstream.

Directed by Jane Campion. Producer: John Maynard. Screenplay: Jane Campion, Gerard Lee. Director of photography: Sally Bongers. Edi­ tor: Veronica Heussler. Production designer: Peter Harris. Music: Martin Armiger. Sound: Leo Sulli­ van. Cast: Genevieve Lemon (Dawn/Sweetie), Karen Colston (Kay), Tom Lycos (Louis), Jon Darling (Gordon), Dorothy Barry (Flo), Michael Lake (Bob), Andre Pataczek (Clayton). Produc­ tion company: Arena. Distributor: Filmpac. 35 mm. 97 mins. Australia. 1989.

s w e e t ie :

DEAD POETS SOCIETY BRIAN

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H ERE IS a LONG and honourable tradi­ tion o f films about the life-enhancing eff­ ect o f dedicated teachers, stretching back at least 50 years to Goodbye Mr. Chips ( 1939) and surfacing as recently as S tan d a n d D eliver (1 9 8 8 ). Peter Weir’s new film, D ea d Poets Society , awakes echoes o f many such films, as well o f others such as Lindsay Anderson’s If...

(1968), Larry Peerce’s A Separate P eace (1973) and Weir’s own P icnic a t H a n g in g R ock (1974) which call into question a whole oppressive system o f education. D ea d Poets Society is a film with a rich intertextuality: as well as the films and genres already referred to, it includes Weir’s G allip oli , another study o f young lives thwarted and harmed in the process o f their being opened up, and Robert Cormier’s threat­ ening novels o f teenagers in conflict with the key institutions o f their lives, not to mention Dickens’ H a r d Times.

My point in invoking these other names is not to suggest that D ea d Poets Society lacks a distinctive flavour but that it is texturally enriched by the resonances it sets up. In

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CHARLIE (GALE HANSEN) PLAYS THE SAXOPHONE AT A SECRET MEETING OF THE DEAD POETS SOCIETY. PETER WEIR'S DEAD POETS SOCIETY.

relation to Weir’s own films, there are clear elements o f continuity: the romantic and sexual burgeoning at odds with the institutional pressures o f the college in P icn ic , the pain o f innocence betrayed in G allip oli , in thematic terms; the counterpointing o f visual and aural beauty with the threat o f events in both and in Witness. Ravishingly lit by John Seale, Weir’s most frequent cinematographer, the beauty of the fall shading into winter in D elaware (stand­ ing in for Vermont) takes the breath away. But it is not merely beautiful, not merely pictorial: it is part o f the film’s drama that it should look as it does, for it provides a powerful contrast with the regime associated with Welton Acad­ emy where whatever is natural is in the process o f being repressed. The image o f the boy Todd (Ethan Hawke) vomiting in the snow encapsulates the opposition at the film’s heart; so too do those shots o f flights o f birds in graceful ascent, reinforcing our sense o f the constricted lives the school wants to engen­ der.

Where Appleyard College and Hanging Rock signified the two controlling principles at work in P icn ic , in D ea d Poets Society it is the Academy and the cave, the meeting place for the eponymous society, which symbolize the conflicting responses to life at the film’s heart.

The banners which are borne into the opening assembly for the autumn term spell out the four watchwords o f Welton: tradition, hon­ our, discipline and excellence: and, shortly afterwards, these are good-naturedly paro­ died in the bedroom o f one o f the boys. They are more seriously called into question by the arrival ofEnglish teacher, J ohn Keating (Robin Williams), a former Honours graduate o f the Academy who carries the film’s notion that education should change lives. Change and enhance\ivts. Keating’s credo is: “ C arp e diem .

Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary.”

Williams, more restrained than usual, proj­ ects convincingly the inspired, charismatic image the role needs to account for Keating’s effect on the boys. He is entirely acceptable on a personal level, less so on the professional level. That is the fault o f the writing (and Tom Schulman’s screenplay is often locally very sharp): the notions o f life-enriching teaching is romantic but not necessarily false. However, it needs to be shown rather than merely as­ serted. The glimpses we are given o f Keating’s classroom methods are enough to establish him as someone who might be able to teach literature. There is a vertiginous 360° shot o f Keating’s attempts to get Todd to open up in class which tells us something about his psy­ chological insight but there is nothing comp­ arable to show how he might make a Shakespearean sonnet accessible to the class.

This quibble registered, it must be said that Keating and the idea o f the Dead Poets Soci­ ety associated with him and its cave meetingplace work satisfactorily on a structural level.

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That is, they stand clearly for one half o f the central narrative opposition: that ofliberating impulse to self-expression, on the one hand, and the deadly weight o f parental and school expectations on the other. About half-way through the film one begins to feel its points are being too easily made. The rest o f the Academy’s staff are either cynical or stiffly conventional, if not indeed sadistic like the principal (Norman Lloyd); the parents too eagerly acquiesce in the Academy’s cramming ideals; only Keating, the students’ friend, understands.

Then, rather suddenly and unexpectedly, the film’s tone deepens and darkens. When Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard) tells Keat­ ing that he has defied his father’s wishes and gone on with his performance o f Puck in A M idsu m m er N ig h t’s D re a m it seems briefly as if the conflict for Neil has been too easily solved, as if Keating’s influence has been too clearcut. The play is performed with touching youthfulness and seriousness, the boy’s father watches from the back o f the theatre, and the outcome is family conflict wrought to tragic pitch.

In the last movement o f the film following Neil’s death, what Weir (and Schulman) have done is to give melodrama its head in the most gratifying way. Weir has always seemed drawn by the possibilities o f melodrama (particularly in The T e a r o f L iv in g D angerously) but he has never surrendered so whole-heartedly to its lure as he does here. As Academy and parents close ranks looking for a scapegoat, they settle on Keating and his dangerous libertarian val­ ues and the film moves towards a powerfully moving climax.

This climax, which resists the more obvious heroicizing possibilities for Keating, makes exultantly clear the positive influence his cata­ lytic presence has had on the boys. As they farewell him, the frame composition ensures their dwarfing o f the impotently bullying prin­ cipal. It is one o f the great melodramatic endings o f recent years: not only does it pro­ C

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vide a heightened and simplified upsurge o f emotion when it is needed, but it insists that we engage with its moral judgments. There is nothing equivocal here. Guilt and innocence have separated themselves out for our scrutiny and our endorsement o f the film’s recognition o f their difference. Keating may be leaving Welton but through him some o f the boys have won an important battle and the film concludes on their announcement o f victory.

Looking back over the film from this vantage point, one can forgive tendencies to dawdle and to over-simplify. The end, literally, justi­ fies the means and one feels that nothing has been wasted, that everything feeds into that triumphantly confident final movement.

It’s not necessary to be a card-carrying auteurist to be interested in the continuities and development ofW eir’s career as a director. By any criteria, he is one o f the most gifted filmmakers thrown up by the new Australian cinema. He has always had a strong visual sense; he has always been responsive to milieu, to atmosphere; and in D e a d Poets Society he has strengthened his narrative grasp by trust­ ing the impulse to melodrama. He has un­ ashamedly sought to move and exhilarate his audience and - for at least one o f its number - has achieved his purpose. d e a d p o e t s s o c i e t y Directed by PeterWeir. Produc­ ers: Steven Haft, Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas.

Associate producer: Duncan Henderson. Screen­ play: Tom Schulman. Director of photography: John Seale. Editor: William Anderson. Production designer: Wendy States. Music: Maurice Jarre.

Production design: Wendy States. Cast: RobinWilliams (John Keating), Robert Sean Leonard (Neil Perry), Ethan Hawke (Todd Anderson), Josh Charles (Knox Overstreet), Gale Hansen (Charlie Dalton), Dylan Kussman (Richard Cameron), Allelon Ruggiero (Steven Meeks), James Waterston (Gerard Pitts), Norman Lloyd (Mr Nolan) Kurtwood Smith (Mr Perry), Carla Belver (Mrs Perry).

Touchstone Pictures in association with Silver Screen Partners IV, in association with Witt-Thomas Pro­ ductions. Distributor: Roadshow. 35m m .l28 mins.

USA. 1989.

BONZA, LOVER BOY l y n M cDo n a l d WO NEW Australian films, David Swann’s B on za, and Geoffrey Wright’s L over Boy , are vivid examples o f the essential difference between film and current TV drama.

Both films show simple Australian, but uni­ versal, themes o f family, relationships and the agony o f it all. With a lot o f subtle innovation, they are perceptive about absolutely normal and accepted social frameworks and behav­ ioural rituals.

B on za is a bizarre vision o f family life seen through the eyes o f a dog. Its sharp humour viciously pierces the traditional unit with mother as houseslut (so torn she waltzes with the family dog after taking him on a dinner date), and dad as Nazi dictator (ordering his son to be a dentist). The son sings rock operas (to Bonza the dog crowned in thorns) and the sister tries to get her head together after returning from overseas (where she went to get her head together).

The symbolic death o f Bonza draws the family together in war then peace around the grave; the narrative obnoxiously allowing Bonza to rise from the dead. The script reads like a joke and this director has sure control over his material as he explodes myths about human nature in a way that the whingeing concerns o f T V series or most pop clips never achieve.

L over Boy is like a delicate chocolate with a soft centre. The yearning core o f it might have occurred anywhere, but North Altona, Aus­ tralia, isn’t bad. This is an (ultimately) inap­ propriate love relationship between a young boy and an older woman. The heat between Mick (Noah Taylor) and Sally (Gillian Jones) is in action from the beginning and never lets up. It’s the painful impossibility o f such a perfectly understandable and perfectly real­ ized liaison which makes fine drama.

Failing turning such an idea into a blue flick or an episode o f N eighbours , the film requires deft directorial insights and skilled acting. The supporting cast never fails the leads here. The script puts the sex scenes first and the conse­ quences build the pace thereafter. It is a charming recipe o f subplots that never spoil the flavour. Director Geoffrey Wright subtly explores scenes with dramatic angles and light­ ing that, along with the art direction, always exude a sense o f time, place and season, as well as narrative positioning.

In Lover Boy , as in B on z a , the concepts being explored are slight but the execution (of both) charge these with significance. Take something simple like a domestic scene in suburbia, a representative social situation, and bleed it for meaning. Lover Boy never sucks itself dry. B on za strikes incessantly like an angry snake.

Where B on zais sort o f retro-surrealism with a bit o f 1950s (or is it ’70s?) nostalgia and a good, sharp dose o f ’80s hit-me-with-theraw-visual-truth, Lover Boy is poignandy re­ flective in its seductive dissection o f charac­ ters’ feelings and the inevitability o f their situation.

The male/husband figures in L ov er Boy and

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B on za fare very badly. It is no accident that these men are thick-set, heavy, dark and thick o f thought. The women are allowed some lyrical respite. These films are about the new way; no longer are children seen and only patronizingly heard. In Bon za, the son (played flamboyandy by Peter Rowsthorn) and his sister (Susie Dee) are the source o f destruction o f the great family he. In L over Boy it is 59 minutes o f climax as a teenager braves the zone o f adult love and sex with a woman three times his age.

Both films exploit the use o f light(ing) and camera direction for atmosphere that speaks.

In B on za , our dog’s-eye-view o f the situation makes sure we react via the bizarre. In L over Boy , we are invited to see what is going to happen before it does. Gillian Jones’ loving Madonna-whore Sally is always provocatively dressed and we wait for Mick’s reaction, as she does. In this film the love/sex scenes are indeed blue as are the fight scenes at the end.

Like the son’s vile nightmare sequence in B on za , there is a sense that the psychological is out o f control, as when Mick approaches a night service station to beat his lover’s exhusband. Mick’s death scene is then drawn out with drips o f rain, abstract sharp edges and half frames, and we don’t have to see to know

what will probably happen. Sally wakes and goes out to find her young lover, but misses his dying form in the dark and returns inside, allowing us to experience the simplest possible suspense which purely serves to recapture the tragedy o f this tiny, fragile relationship. When Bonza dies after swallowing some o f mum’s pills (which her traumatized son has stolen for his own use), we’re moved (everything is still too bizarre to be crying), but, most impor­ tant, from Bonza’s eye view from the coffin, and then from above, we are drawn to assess what we have learnt about the family until now.

Both B on za and L over Boy are tributes to what drama really is - the exploration o f conflict. Neither fall into the trap o f thought­ less resolution. B on za uses traditional narra­ tive as a source o f humour and powerful idiosyncrasy. L over Boy feels no embarrass­ ment about resting on gentle, spare, unso­ phisticated human exchanges. And both films have used a camera like a weapon or an indige­ nous tool instead o f like a T V or tourist video flatpack, probing instead o f panning., Had these filmmakers exchanged their origi­ nal material for each other’s, it is alarming to think how they may have flaunted their origi­ nal styles. More please.

ABOVE: LOVERS MICK (NOAH TAYLOR) AND SALLY (GILLIAN JONES) IN GEOFFREY WRIGHT'S LOVER BOY. LEFT: BONZA IS THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION AT HER BIRTHDAY PARTY. WITH FATHER (PETER GREENE) AND SON (PETER ROWSTHORN) IN DAVID SWAN'S BONZA.

Directed by David Swann. Producer: Debo­ rah Hoare. Screenplay: David Swann. Director of photography: Leigh Parker. Editor: Ken Sallows.

Production designer: Len Barratt. Sound recordist: Phillip Healey. Music: A1 Mullins, Paul McWaters.

Cast: Peter Green (Ted), Maureen Edwards (Bev), Susie Dee (Katherine), Peter Rowsthorn (Terry).

Production company: Bonza Productions. Dis­ tributor: AFI. 16 mm. 27 mins. Australia. 1988. bo n za

Directed by Geoffrey Wright. Producer: Daniel Scharf. Screenplay: Geoffrey Wright. Direc­ tor ofphotography: Michael Williams. Editor: Grant Fenn. Production designer: Judy Borland. Sound: Mark Tarpey. Music: Joh Clifford White. Cast: Noah Taylor (Mick), Gillian Jones (Sally), Ben Mendelsohn (Gaz), Daniel Pollock (Duck), Alice Garner (Rhonda), Peter Hosking (Lex), Beverley Gardiner (Mick’s mother). Production company: Seon Films. Distributor: AFI. 16 mm. 57 mins.

Australia. 1989. lo ver bo y

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LEFT: BATMAN (MICHAEL KEATON) PROTECTS PHOTO­ JOURNALIST VICKI VALE (KIM BASINGER) AS HE FIGHTS OFF THE JOKER'S GOON S IN GOTHAM CITY. TIM BURTON'S BATMAN.

BATMAN ROD

T

BISHOP

H E 12-YEAR-OLD in front o f me in the

B a tm a n queue is discussing the difference between the Caped Crusader and Superman.

“Batman’s rad!”, she declares without hesita­ tion. “H e’s got no special powers, he just uses regular stuff to waste The Joker.”

Nobody in this suburban Los Angeles queue is prepared to argue. After all, this B a tm a n fan is probably a local crack dealer with an AK47 hidden under her Madonna t-shirt. And, besides, she has a point.

Batman’s toys are hardly “regular stuff1, but they are, after all, just cars, aircraft, metal gadgets and trick wires. Superman has the supernatural powers, but keeps trying to make out he’s just a regular guy. Batman, on the other hand, is basically a regular guy trying to make out that he’s supernatural.

Perhaps because o f this, Batman (Michael Keaton) suffers from angst. His Teutonic posturings and wistful gazes into the heavens signal a desire to transcend his own mortality.

He is a Batman that is closer to the human heart, perhaps, and nearer the reality o f the human condition.

This view o f Batman has drawn criticism.

The complaints from Batman buffs about the casting o f the film have appeared everywhere from USA T oday to The W all Street Jo u rn a l.

Most believe Keaton contravenes the very id e a o f Batman. Film critics have picked on The Joker’s trashing o f Gotham City’s Art Gallery as “irresponsible filmmaking ... [that] ... may lead to copycat behaviour”. Some mothers and gays have joined forces in decry­ ing the absence o f Robin - the mothers fearing kids would have nobody to identify with, and the gays because the film has been stripped o f homoerotic content.

The film is, o f course, beyond such sectional criticism. The merchandising o f Batman para­ phernalia alone is expected to nett more than $300 million. Trade magazines in the U.S. 60

have claimed a “100% awareness factor” for the film - theoretically every man, woman, child (and bat) in the U.S. was aware o f the film’s debut. After the first 14 days and a gross o f $225 million, there seems little reason to doubt this claim.

More than a film, B a tm a n is an Event, an escapist fantasy effortlessly capitalizing on the Bat iconography embedded into the race memories o f anyone touched by American culture.

Gotham City is portrayed as a vast, expres­ sionist urban jungle, its darkness broken only by pools o f light, smoke and mist. Anton Furst’s design is influenced as much by F.W. Murnau as it is by Fritz Lang, the legacy o f these German Expressionists evident in the understated, meticulously detailed produc­ tion sets.

Batman’s nemesis is the gangster Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson), whose facial disfigurement turns him into The Joker, a maniac avenging himself on every living person in Gotham City.

Even Batman’s love interest, Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), is incidental to the escalating, head-to-head battle being fought in the streets and airspaces o f Gotham by two men aspiring to the stature o f legends, or gods.

Michael Keaton plays Bruce Wayne as a vul­ nerable neurotic, trapped in a world he re­ gards as abnormal, even alien. As Batman, Keaton is a solitary introvert haunted by child­ hood trauma. And in Batgear, he’s all jerks and stiff-necked poses, his mind tunnel-visioned in its quest to conquer all Evil.

As usual, Nicholson seems to have all the best fines. And he sets a new standard in ‘overthe-top’ performance; prancing, dancing, strut­ ting and posing, his crazed dementia appar­ ently fed by the Prince songs on his ghettoblaster.

Even his kaleidoscopic clothes can’t detract from his finest moment: the gleeful desecra­ tion o f an art gallery. In the end, The Joker is just plain pissed the Bat has got better toys.

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As narrative fantasy, B a tm a n has more than its fair share o f flaws to detract from its robust achievements: scenes where the action lacks credibility, or the character motivation is strik­ ingly illogical, or the faults in the comic timing unnecessarily slacken the pace.

Tim Burton’s previous films, B eetleju ice and Pee W ee’s B ig A d v en tu re , had similar prob­ lems, but his direction is always good enough to regain control over the material.

Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren’s script is similarly uneven. The promises o f psychologi­ cal expositions o f the characters are over­ whelmed by the state-of-art set design and the pyrotechnic effects.

By the time B a tm a n reaches its Vertigoinspired conclusion, it has lost much o f its initial drive, yet the residual effects o f its high points elicit respect and admiration from most o f its audience.

As homage it aims way too high, and is unable to match the standards set by similar films like Georges Franju’s Ju d ex . But it takes risks and gambles, and that’s more than one can say for In d ia n a Jon es a n d The L ast C rusade, Ghostbusters I I or S ta r Trek V. Tim Burton shows a more daring and confident approach with his ambitious screen version o f the Caped Rodent, and for most o f B a tm a n his gamble pays off.

BATMAN Directed by Tim Burton. Producers: Jon Peters, Peter Guber. Executive producers: Benjamin Melniker, Michael Uslan. Co-producer: Chris Kenney. Screenplay: Sam Hamm, Warren Skaaren.

From a story by Hamm, based on characters cre­ ated by Bob Kane. Director of photography: Roger Pratt. Editor: Ray Lovejoy. Production designer: Anton Fürst. Supervising art direction: Les Tomkins.

Music: Danny Elfman. Songs: Prince. Supervising sound editor: Don Sharpe. Cast: Michael Keaton (Batman), J ack Nicholson (J ack Napier/The J oker), Kim Basinger (Vicki Vale), Robert Wuhl (Alexan­ der Knox), Pat Hingle (Commissioner Gordon), Billy Dee Williams (Harvey Dent), Michael Gough (Alfred), Jack Palance (Grissom), Jerry Hall (Al­ icia), Lee Wallace (Mayor), Tracey Walter (Bob).

Production company: Guber-Peters. Distributor: Roadshow. 35mm. 126 mins. USA. 1989.

GEORGIA PAUL

KALINA

NYBODYWHO HAS ADMIRED the works

o f writer and director Ben Lewin will, un­ doubtedly, be keen to see his first locally-made theatrical feature, G eorg ia , which Lewin dir­ ected and co-scripted (with Joanna MurraySmith and Bob Weis).

Lewin is probably best known for his work in television, in particular for the mini-series The D u n er a Boys, an AB C tele-feature A M atter O f C onvenience, three episodes o f The M i­ g r a n t Experience and the serial R a ffer ty ’s Rules, which he is credited for devising, as well as writing and directing a one-hour pilot. (His filmography also fists The M exican R ebels, a “British cowboy film”, and The C ase o f C ruelty

to P raw ns , a comedy drama for Thames TV, winner o f a Silver Boomerang for best televi­ sion film at the 1979 Melbourne Film Festi­ val.)

A notable trademark o f Lewin’s work is his ability to create colourful, quirky, unconven­ tional characters, and to place narrative en­ tirely at their service. With little more than a handful ofless-than-glamorous characters and the vivid backdrop o f St. Kilda, A M a tter O f Convenience thrives on modest means as a rollicking, and fairly amoral modern romance.

Even in The D u n era Boys, based on an extraor­ dinary event o f World War II when a shipload of European Jews arrived in Australia but were mistaken as Germans, the broad historical canvas did not overshadow the characteriza­ tions. With its cool and detached perspective, it satirized cherished notions o f nationalism, in the process pillorying the social and legal institutions the fledgling colony had inher­ ited. In this way, the highly-principled but bureaucratically-constricted judge Michael Rafferty, the principal character o f R a ffe r ty ’s Rules , gives further vent to these notions, the first few seasons o f the show, it should be said, a finely-tuned ensemble piece.

These observations, however, are merely to illustrate the unexpected departure Lewin has made with G eorgia. A mystery-cum-thriller, G eorgia seems to be not only a strange match of talent to a project, but an uneasy marriage of disparate genres and influences, from R ashom on and Blow Up to any number of Hitchcock themes.

Nina Bailley (Judy Davis) is on the thresh­ old o f a challenging career as an investigating lawyer, when she moves into a new apartment - a fancy, New York-style loft overlooking Port Phillip Bay. On her first night there, she discovers a photograph o f a woman holding to the camera a small baby. Later that night, an BELOW: NINA (JUDY DAVIS) IS ATTACKED BY THE STALKER IN HER APARTMENT. BEN LEWIN'S GEORGIA.

invitation to a retrospective exhibition o f photographs by Georgia White is slipped under her door.

Nina attends the exhibition, where she is intrigued by the photos on show: a murder victim slumped in a blood-splattered bath; a policeman, later identified as Le Mat (Marshall Napier), inspecting the scene; the infamously shady property developer and businessman Karlin (John Bach) trying to shield himself from the photographer; a brooding self-por­ trait o f the photographer.

Nina is confounded, however, when she recognizes her ‘mother’ (Elizabeth (Julia Blake) and Elizabeth’s lover Lazio (Alex Menglet) in these photos. After confronting Elizabeth, Nina learns that Georgia White was Nina’s mother. Some say Georgia committed suicide; others say she was pushed into the water and drowned.

Nina sets forth to investigate her mother’s death. Starting with Elizabeth, then Lazio, she tracks down Le Mat, who has since been taken off the police force, and finally meets the elusive Karlin. Their stories unfold through flashback sequences, creating a conflicting and contradictory picture o f the episodes lead­ ing up to the fatal moment o f Georgia’s death.

Episodically moving between the cocktail party, where smashingly debonair couples tangoed while Georgia drowned, and Nina’s present investigations, the film strives to draw as many parallels as it possibly can between Georgia and Nina. Aside from having the same actress play both parts, visual links are made between the view from Nina’s apart­ ment and that from the house where Georgia died. But the parallel soon becomes strained and, in any case, something o f a lost opportu­ nity. Nina’s career, boldly investigating tax fraud, is dropped early in the film, making redundant an obvious similarity between Nina and Georgia as women who knew too much.

The relationships o f the characters in that ambiguous past, one quickly learns, were founded upon duplicity, deceit, betrayal, and their corresponding emotions: lust, anger, longing. Twenty years or so later, each shud­ ders at the barest mention o f Georgia’s name, guardedly and coyly making their confessions to Nina.

The characters remain shrouded in secrecy, suffocating in the burdens o f the past, and little is revealed. Red herrings abound. Might not Karlin, who it is suggested was having an affair with Georgia, be Nina’s father? Did the fact that Georgia met Elizabeth when she snapped a candid shot o f Elizabeth kissing her lover Lazio on the beach (all the while being married to Karlin) have anything to do with taking her in? Much is suggested in G eorgia , but teasingly left unanswered.

By implication the viewer finds out how Georgia died, but the characters themselves remain sketchy, essentially one-dimensional.

The stilted characterizations occasionally veer toward caricature. The pivotal scene where Nina confronts Elizabeth about her mother is cumbersome and overly mannered, particu­ larly when Nina’s dialogue runs along the lines of, “Am I supposed to have an emotional crisis C

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right now? I want to do the right thing.”

Neither are the characters particularly engag­ ing, making it difficult to really care about their suffering, or the outcome.

A major sub-plot involves a stalker, pre­ sumably the person who planted the photo­ graph and invitation in Nina’s apartment, but possibly also someone associated with the tax fraud cases Nina investigates (though this im­ plication is made redundant when the stalker demands negatives o f Georgia’s photographs).

The stalker is glimpsed early in the film, peer­ ing up at Nina’s flat, and, later, behind the wheel o f a car in the parking lot where Nina has parked. In one unfortunate scene, how­ ever, Lazio is attacked while he takes a shower (surprise, surprise) by the mystery stalker brandishing a knife and demanding the nega­ tives. The next day, Lazio tells Nina, who notices the bruises on his face, that he has to go away for a few days. He is dispensed from the film.

The allusion to Hitchcock was apt, though very foreseeable, but Hitchcock wouldn’t have let go quite so easily.

GEORGIA Directed by Ben Lewin. Producer: Bob Weis. Screenplay: Ben Lewin, Joanna-Murray Smith, Bob Weis. Based on an original idea by Mac Gudg­ eon. Director of photography: Yuri Sokol. Sound recordist: John Phillips. Editor: Edward McQueenMason. Production designer: Jon Dowding. Mu­ sic: Paul Grobowsky. Cast: Judy Davis (N ina/ Georgia), Julia Blake (Elizabeth), John Bach (Karlin), Marshall Napier (Le Mat), Alex Menglet (Lazio), Louis Fiander (Scarlatti), Roy Baldwin (Librarian), Robert Meldrum (Alex), Production company: Jethro Films. Distributor: Hoyts, 35 mm, 92.5 mins. Australia. 1989.

NEW YORK STORIES RAFFAELE

CAPUTO

ARTIN SCORSESE’S “Life Lessons”, the

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first in the trilogy o f mini-features that make up New York Stories , employs an iris effect which, because it so consciously high­ lights the act o f looking, underscores the implosive, zeroing-in style that pervades much o f Scorsese’s cinema. Like the figure o f Lionel Dobie (Nick Nolte), who fetishizes certain parts o f the body o f his assistant-muse, Paulette (Rosanna Arquette), in particular her ankle, Scorsese is a fetishist o f the objects, gestures and overall surfaces o f the visual field his camera is trained on.

The iris device can be employed in two ways, either by opening out from a detail, or by closing in on one. In “Life Lessons” it’s put to use in both ways, but at two particular mo­ ments in the film (not surprisingly, they are the opening and closing stages o f the film), yet with a different function each time.

As the film opens there is a whole series o f themes which successively open out from a number o f objects: a half-emptied bottle of brandy, a set o f paint-encrusted brushes, a cassette player that Lionel often zoops-up in a frenzy o f activity, a tube o f paint that Lionel then accidentally steps on with a force that has its bluey substance shoot out rather than cream. The device functions to isolate these various elements from the rest o f the frame, 61

TOP: LIONEL (NICK NOLTE), THE FETISHIZING ARTIST, AND HIS ASSISTANT MUSE, PAULETTE (ROSANNA ARQUETTE). MARTIN SCORSESE'S 'LIFE LESSONS', PART OF NEW YORK STORIES. LOWER: A MODEST RETURN TO THE GENRE OF NEUROSIS: SHELDON (WOODY ALLEN) AND LISA (MIA FARROW) IN ALLEN'S 'OEDIPUS WRECKS'. NEW YORK STORIES.

draws attention to them, makes them central, and thereby asks what is the invisible link between them. Not content-wise, but stylewise, their formal link: a pattern o f fragment­ ing and opening out which creates an emo­ tional or tonal suggestiveness that no dialogue could provide. This pattern permeates the space and character with a sense o f nervy, obsessed, bottled-up energy that’s about to open out.

It’s in line with the abstract expressionism o f Lionel Dobie’s art, and in particular the canvas he is working on at the film’s start. Life and art get inextricably intermingled at this point - the progression o f the painting paral­ leling the turbulent, obsessive, frustrating (they don’t sleep together) relationship Lionel has with Paulette. The final iris effect at the film’s close affirms this, because it works as a way o f summing up, the iris tunnelling in rather than opening out. At his exhibition opening, the blackness tunnels toward a spot at the far end o f the gallery, and isolates Lionel with another Paulette, a young, hopeful artist whom he 62

offers to take on as an assistant while at the same time fetishizing select parts o f her body.

(It’s not an irony that they’re standing be­ neath the painting he was completing in the final weeks of his relationship with Paulette.

Yet, there appears to be a comic sense to all this with the suggestion that the whole process is going to repeat itself. And, without being overly simplistic, it is sexual frustration which is at the heart o f Lionel’s creative urges, the nature o f his violent brushstrokes and col­ ours.)

Perhaps this is expressed with greater inten­ sity in an earlier scene, a scene which has a frontal shot o f Lionel, bare chested and spot­ ted with paint, gazing somnabulistically out and over the camera, apparently at the canvas he has been working on throughout the night.

But then a cut to a medium-long shot reveals Lionel standing in the centre o f the studio, his back to the camera, the canvas to the right of frame, and his body turned to the left staring up at the small loft-within-a-loft where Paulette resides, and where she has just engaged in love play with a talented young painter. He stares up at the small enclosure in the same way that he has been staring at his canvas. This is what was meant by Scorsese’s ability to zero-in even at a distance.

It would seem facile to say that Scorsese’s musing over the nature o f creativity has as C

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much to do with filmmaking as it has with painting, but it seems that Scorsese’s manner o f enveloping filmmaking with painting tends to point beyond “Life Lessons”. Think o f the way La Motta pounds the life out o f the “pretty boy” in R ag in g Bull, and then the image shifts to a slow-motion, point-of-view shot o f his wife in the audience. Maybe the way Scorsese cuts and connects different shots - the ring and the audience, for instance makes him something o f a painter: the colli­ sion o f these contrasting spaces is to a degree pictorial.

In comparison, the other two segments o f New York Stories pale, especially Coppola’s.

“Life Without Zoe” is a fluffy, fairy-tale-like adventure that’s a modern variation o f de Maupassant’s “The Necklace”. Coppola has o f late taken to fairytale-like allusions but they have never been so lightweight, and don’t seem to coalesce with Coppola’s largely theat­ rical cinematic style. There’s always the sense o f things being staged in Coppola’s films, and it certainly does not seem to suit the con­ densed form.

Finally, in all fairness, Woody Allen’s “Oedi­ pus Wrecks” is charged with a nervy, frus­ trated, maddening sensibility. But this is to do with character rather than composition of spatial elements, as it is in “Life Lessons” . The title says it all. It gives Woody direct lineage to Jerry Lewis, if anyone had doubts, though it’s without the “vulgarity” - there’s no trom­ bone voice about to blast out “M-MA”. No, the hammering, retching voice in this little comedy belongs to ma herself. “Oedipus Wrecks” certainly appears as a summation o f Allen’s comedy, but one couldn’t say it’s a high point. It’s a genuine and modest return to the genre o f neurosis and self-pity, and selfpity spells self-parody. And that’s a good sign.

NEW YORK STORIES Producer: Robert Greenhut.

Directed by Martin Scorsese. Pro­ ducer: Barbara De Fina. Screenplay: Richard Price.

Director of photography: Nestor Almendros. Edi­ tor: Thelma Schoonmaker. Production designer: Kristi Zea. Sound: James Sabat. Cast: Nick Nolte (Lionel Dobie), Rosanna Arquette (Paulette), Patrick O ’Neal (Phillip Fowler), Jesse Borrego (Reuben Toro), Steve Buscemi (Gregory Stark), Peter Gabriel (Himself), Illeana Douglas (Paulette’s friend), l if e WITHOUT ZOE Directed by Francis Cop­ pola. Producers: Fred Roos, Fred Fuchs. Screen­ play: Francis Coppola, Sofia Coppola. Director of photography: Vittorio Storaro. Editor: Barry Malkin. Production designer: Dean Tavoularis.

Sound: James Sabat. Music: Carmine Coppola; Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Cast: Heather McComb (Zoe), Tafia Shire (Charlotte), Giancarlo Giannini (Claudio), Paul Herman (Clifford), James Keane (Jimmy), Don Novello (Hector), Selim Tfifi (Abu), Carmine Coppola (Street musician), Carole Bou­ quet (Princess Soroya). Oe d ip u s w r e c k s Directed

by Woody Allen. Producer: Robert Greenhut.

Executive producers: Jack Rollins, Charles H. Joffe.

Screenplay: Woody Allen. Director of photogra­ phy: Sven Nykvist. Editor: Susan E. Morse. Pro­ duction designer: Santo Loquasto. Sound: James Sabat. Cast: Woody Allen (Sheldon Mills), Alia Farrow (Lisa), Julie Kavner (Treva), Mae Questel (Mother), Marvin Chatinover (Psychiatrist), Jessie Keosian (Aunt Ceil), George Schindler (Shandu), Bridgit Ryan (Rita), Edward I. Koch (Himself). A Touchstone presentation of a Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe production. Distributor: Road­ show. 35 mm. 123 mins. USA. 1989.

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THIS ISSUE: A C T IN G IN TH E C IN E M A , BY JAMES NAREMORE; AND M A S T E R S O F S T A R L IG H T : P H O T O G R A P H E R S IN H O L L Y W O O D ,

BY DAVID FAHEY AND LINDA RICH

ACTING IN THE CINEMA James Naremore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988, hb, rrp $47.95

JOHN C ON OMOS “Paint my eyes on my eyelids, and I’ll walk through it.”

- ROBERT MITCHUM

HE QUESTION OF film performance has up to recent times - say, till the end of the Seventies - been marginalized in film theory and criticism. Since then a small analytical literature has been gradually built up around this complex, fascinating problematic. What is clear from this literature is that when we try to theorize in a meaningful general way about performance, we are confronted by many

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conceptual difficulties. To begin with, when we talk about film acting, does it differ in any significant way across genres? If there are important critical differences to be noted, why is this so? What we can say at this early stage of analysing screen performance is that it needs the same kind o f detailed emphasis that ques­ tions o f film narrative structure have received over the past 20 years. This is absolutely essential before we can make sensible, in­ formed statements about its nature.

Performance is a central part o f our appre­ ciation o f the many different genre films that constitute American narrative cinema: the western, film noir, melodrama and comedy.

When we study genre films, we should con­ sider more than just questions o f visual style, thematic oppositions, and narrative structure.

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We need to explore the reasons why perform­ ance is an underdeveloped topic in genre studies. Recent genre commentators have been discussing (albeit in a fleeting manner) the broad generic conventions o f performance by looking at the situation o f the actor as subject within a film. As Richard De Cordova sug­ gests, it is necessary to concentrate on gener­ ating a general understanding o f performance apropos o f its role within the economy o f genre cinema.1 To come to terms with the complex dynamic nature o f film performance in the light o f its rich, diverse traditions o f radio, vaudeville, theatre, television, popular music and the cinema itself, we have to adopt a more productive comparative approach to the issue o f performance and genre. I f we are to shift performance from its current status as a “catch-all category”, as De Cordova states, to a more desirable status as “an object o f theory”, then we are obliged to ask more systematic questions about how performance functions across genre.2 Someone who has been asking fruitful, openended questions about the cultural, historical and theoretical dimensions o f film perform­ ance has been James Naremore in his im­ mensely readable and suggestive new work titled A cting in the C inem a 3 (1 9 8 8 ). It is a richly detailed analysis probing the expressive nuances, emotional intensities and socio-cultural determinations o f film acting. His criti­ cism is informed by a phenomenological approach which uses the basic concepts o f classical and contemporary film theory, as well as the writings o f influential non-film theorists like Stanislavsky, Brecht and the ‘Chicago School’ o f social anthropology. In particular, he shows how different approaches to acting have certain ideological implications about art, culture and society. In addition, Nar­ emore is able to demonstrate how screen performance is linked to the presentation o f self in society. To do this he adroitly uses Erving Goffman’s sociological ideas about personality, self and character being con­ structed by everyday role-playing. Naremore is refreshingly candid about the conceptual problems facing anyone who wishes to talk about performance in the age o f mechanical reproduction. He acknowledges from the outset that movie actors exist as agents o f narrative and thus cannot be discussed as if they were operating in a vacuum independent o f the many performative traditions and crafts that surround and shape them.

FACING PAGE: CARY GRANT AND KATHERINE HEPBURN, TWO OF THE STARS ANALYSED IN NAREMORE'S BOOK, HERE IN A PUBLICITY SHOT FOR BRINGING UP BABY. RIGHT: ROGER THORNHILL (CARY GRANT) AND EVE KENDALL (EVA MARIE SAINT) IN ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S NORTH BY NORTHWEST.

Naremore is keen to show his readers how our experience o f watching movie performers depends not only on pleasure that can be obtained from storytelling, but also from the pleasure that comes from watching their bodies and taking delight in expressive movement, enjoying familiar performing skills and taking an interest in actors as ‘real people’. All these significant aspects o f performance have been described by Stephen Heath as being related to the idea o f the human body in the cinema as a fragmentary, elemental lure for the viewer: “The body in films is also moments, intensi­ ties, outside a simple constant unity o f the body as a whole; films (contain) bits o f bodies, gestures, desirable traces, fetish points - if we take fetishism here as an investment in a bit, a fragment, for its own sake, as the end o f the accomplishment o f a desire.” 4 For Naremore, talking about performance - in terms o f pass­ ing subtle gestures, fragments o f the actor’s costumes in relation to mise-en-scene and the body, shifting vocal inflections and body rhythms - is like “wrestling with Proteus”.5 For what is at stake here is one o f the most crucial problems o f contemporary film theory and criticism: how best to talk about the ever­ present and changing visual, psychological and cultural complexities o f performance ?The attempt to use the right kind o f language in describing and analysing these elusive quali­ ties is complicated by the fact, as Naremore points out, that the movements, inflections and gestures o f actors in a movie are “pre­ sented in gradations o f m ore and less - subtle degrees o f ever-changing expression that are easy to comprehend in the context o f a given film but difficult to analyse without falling back on unwieldy tables o f statistics or fuzzy, adjectival language” .6 This problem applies to the spectrum o f film performance, irrespective of any theoretical emphasis, from the Meyerholdian approach as exemplified by the sub­ lime Buster Keaton - where the body is an instrument for finely modulated acrobatic skills - to the Stanislavskian notion o f acting repre­ sented by Marlon Brando, where the actor is encouraged to perform more or less naturally, letting facial expression or gesture stem from deeply felt emotion.

What I propose to do at this juncture is to deal with Naremore’s general theoretical framework that is used to analyse film per­ formance in the context o f television, every­ day life, theatre and popular culture. The author deploys a wide frame o f reference in talking about the ideological assumptions involved in certain performances in American mainstream cinema and the movies o f Euro­ pean directors like Godard, Bresson and Wenders. In addition, taking my cue from the excellent detailed readings o f star performers like Lillian Gish, Charles Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, James Cagney, Katharine Hepburn, Marlon Brando and Cary Grant that are lo­ cated in the second section o f the book, I wish

to talk about Grant’s performance in N orth

By Northwest (1 9 5 9 ), stressing his huge im­ portance as one of Am erican cin em a’s consummate actors.

Grant, like other great stars such as James Cagney (an acto r whose acrobatic skills and improvisatory abil­ ity to control the screen place him with Grant in the major vaudevillian realist mode o f acting), James Stewart, Burt Lancaster, the cool loner R obert Mitchum, the highly gifted but often over­ looked Barbara Stan­ wyck, and the reliably in tellig e n t R o b e rt Ryan, all shared the common capacity to appear both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. It is interesting to note how all these immaculate performers have contrib­ uted in substantial terms to noir acting. As in melodrama, performance in film noir can be seen as the expression o f inner emotional states o f the characters as represented through elements o f the mise-en-scene. All seven per­ formers are notable for their immeasurable, expressive codes and stylized, peculiar move­ ments. Some o f them, such as Stewart, Mitchum, Ryan, Lancaster and Stanwyck, have the performative ability to convey disenchant­ ment and vulnerability - two key emotional states for film noir. From Cagney’s white-heat nervous energy and Ryan’s smooth appear­ ances concealing a twisted interior, we can trace a certain trajectory o f noir performance that emphasizes a violent psychopathology, it is embodied in the performances o f such tal­ ented actors as Richard Widmark, Lee J. Cobb and Laird Cregar, for example, and in contem­ porary performers like Harvey Keitel, the late John Cazale and the impressive James Woods.

For Naremore, film performance consists o f “five codes” ofperformance: (a) the boundary code (this refers to the framing or cueing process that takes place between the per­ former and his or her audience); (b) the rhetorical code (the rhetorical conventions which control the ostensiveness o f the per­ former, his or her position within the perform­ ing space and mode o f address to the audi­ ence); (c) the expressive code (this denotes a series o f expressive techniques that govern things like posture, gesture and voice, and regulates the body as an index to age, gender, class, and ethnicity); (d) the harmonic code (which is a logic o f coherence allowing actors to seem more or less in step with changes in the story, more or less in character, and more C

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or less “true to themselves” ); and (e) the anthropomorphic code (which is a mise-enscene that shapes performance through make­ up, clothes, and the inanimate objects with which the actor comes into direct contact).

These so-called codes have been utilized throughout the book in a flexible non-dogmatic fashion avoiding the reductionist ex­ cesses o f past film theory in certain quarters o f Anglo-American scholarship. Naremore es­ chews jargon for jargon’s sake and deploys these codes in a creative discursive manner in all four chapters of the book’s first part. In­ deed, he applies them when appropriate to the close readings o f individual actors that follow in the second part o f A ctin g in the C in em a.

More important, Naremore’s systematically productive treatment o f film performance is mapped onto history, technology and the politics o f spectacle.

The final section, “Film as a Performance Text”, makes rewarding reading as he shows how R e a r W indow (1954) and The K in g o f Com edy { 1983) depend on the theme o f per­ formance; utilize complex acting styles, cast­ ing techniques and rhetorical strategies; and depend on the audience’s familiarity with the star system. R e a r W indow is especially inter­ esting in the way Naremore analyses the tex­ tual and performative dynamics o f the movie in accordance with Hitchcock’s view o f the actor as “the man [sic] who can do nothing extremely well”.7 To test his definition o f the screen actor the director had his protagonist (Stewart) immobilized with a broken leg in a wheelchair. Thus Stewart, in his position of voyeuristic impotency, is emblematic o f the movie viewer, as well as a metaphor for the film actor.

As to the question “What is acting?”, Nar­ emore, following the ideas o f Goffman and Kristeva, sees all forms o f human communica­ 65

tion as involving behaviour. At its simplest, this concept o f human behaviour signifies the transportation o f everyday existence into a theatrical realm. Whatever the form o f human exchange, it essentially concerns the notion o f a performer’s communicating with an audi­ ence. Therefore, at its most sophisticated, we have a form o f film and theatre acting which is an art dedicated to “the systematic ostenta­ tious depiction o f character, or to what seven­ teenth century England described as ‘per­ sonation’ ”.8 In the wake o f certain film theo­ rists like John Ellis, Naremore sees filmed performance as being structured by the socalled “photo effect”, which is a delicate ten­ sion between preservation and loss, presence and absence.

The author’s treatment o f film acting incor­ porates the by-now-familiar triple articula­ tion which lists the three most important de­ termining factors in shaping stardom as: (a) the ‘real’ person o f the actor; (b) the persona which is constructed about stars through publicity and their association with certain types created by the system o f genres; and (c) their particular parts within individual films.

In other words, the star is an amalgam o f actor, part and persona as mediated through genre.

Naremore examines seven legendary stars and all point to the same phenomenon o f cultural and textual dynamics: their names circulate through publicity, everyday language and biography; each one o f them represents an ideolect: that is to say, a set o f performing attributes that is systematically underlined in movies and sometimes copied by impression­ ists like Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) in The K in g o f Comedy. I f we see a film as centr­ ing on the issues, fame, celebrity and myth, then we need to ask ourselves the following questions:Where does the actor end and the character begin? How much does perform­ ance ‘writes’ the character? And, How much is performance an illusion created by our fasci­ nation with actors and celebrity? Some o f us may even believe that actors do write or con­ struct the movies in which they appear. To cite Joe Gillis (William Holden) in Sunset B oulevard (1950): “People don’t know that somebody actually writes the picture. They think actors make it up as they go along.”9 But even if they do make some contribution to the construc­ tion o f characters in a movie, asks Naremore, how do we recognize their work ifit is grounded in their own bodies? To echo the author’s ref­ erence to Yeats, how7 do wo separate the dancer from the dance?

Finally, I wish to examine briefly how the author skilfully anatomizes Cary Grant’s per­ formance o f self-reflexive understatement in N orth by N orthw est { 1959). Naremore treats the movie as a complex text o f delicately orchestrated performative dynamics highlight­ ing Grant’s star persona as one o f Holly­ wood’s most glamorous and sophisticated lovers since the early Thirties, when he ap­ peared in several Mae West mo\ies. What we encounter in this particularly fecund reading o f Grant’s performance, in terms o f his par­ ticular good looks, brilliant light comedy timing skills and highly recognizable iconic

traits, is the central concept o f the star as spectacle. In the overall economy o f the movie, w7e are shown how Grant’s star image is based on his tremendous talent for verbal and physi­ cal agility. Grant w7as cinema’s enduring per­ sonification o f elegance, wit and sophistica­ tion. What we notice in Naremore’s account o f Grant’s precisely timed minimalist acting style is the author’s spectatorial delight in experiencing the playful self-reflexive dialectic between Grant’s supple body, dapper clothes and his celebrated persona o f a Hollywood matinee idol who aged gracefully and was always known for his relaxed assured screen performances. What motivates this particu­ larly fine negotiation o f Grant’s dexterous performance in N orth By Northwest is Nar­ emore’s sharp feel for Grant’s Kuleshovian style o f acting. Grant is more concerned with mechanics than with feeling. Everything for this actor depended on athletic skill, timing and the awesome capability o f mastering small, isolated reactions. Hitchcock understood this clearly. Grant’s performance is structured on the actor’s unsurpassed ability to comprehend classical film rhetoric. Naremore is especially good on delineating how Grant’s performa­ tive skills rely on his ability to run, walk, climb, and execute everyday actions in a graceful manner. Above all, the movie’s visual dy­ namic, cultural codes and rhythm have been

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shaped by Grant’s performance o f clearly defined and perfectly executed uncomplicated small actions. It is a performance typical of Grant, in that it celebrated a contagious zest for life. You just know that Grant had fun in making N orth By Northwest. It is as clear as the three faces chiselled in the side o f Mount Rushmore. The last words shall go to David Thomson: “It is only natural that his very best works - his most complex, amusing, but un­ settling pictures - are both studies in Holly­ wood fun, and in the particular delight there is (or was) in making films.”10 NOTES

1. Richard De Cordova, “Genre and Performance: An Overview”, in Barn7 Keith Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader, Austin, The University of Texas Press, 1988, pp.129-139.

2. ibid., p.129.

3. James Naremore, Acting in the Cinema, Uni­ versity of California Press, Berkeley, 1988, hb, rrp $47.95.

4. Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema, Bloom­ ington, Indiana University, 1981, p.183.

5. Naremore, op cit., p.2.

6. ibid., p.2.

7. Alfred Hitchcock, “Direction”, (1 937) quoted in Naremore, p.34.

8. Naremore, ibid., p.23.

9. ibid., p.157.

10. David Thomson, “Charms and the Man”, Film Comment, Feb. 1984, p.64.

MASTERS OF STARLIGHT PHOTOGRAPHERS IN HOLLYWOOD

David Fahey and Linda Rich Columbus Books, London, 1988, 288 pp, rrp $47.95 ADRIAN

MARTIN

Every light has a point where it is brightest and a point toward which it wanders to lose itself completely. It must be intercepted to fulfil its mission, it cannot function in a void. Light can go straight, penetrate and turn back, be re­ flected and deflected, gathered and spread, bent as by a soap bubble, made to sparkle and be blocked. Where it is no more is blackness, and where it begins is the core of its bright­ ness. The journey of rays from that central core to the outposts of blackness is the adven­ ture of drama and light - JOSEF VON STERNBERG, FUN IN A CHINESE LA UNDRY.

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T IT LE LIKE M asters o f S tarlig h t might

conjure a book solely devoted to what we have come to think o f as Hollywood ‘glam­ our’ photography: the luminous faces o f the great stars, swathed in an ethereal, lyrical ab­ straction. This book certainly contains some o f the finest examples o f the glamour genre, but its brief is in fact much wider: “Photogra­ phers in Hollywood”, as the sub-tide puts it. witheringly old-fashioned terms ofin dividual This means that, although the book’s central ist ‘vision’; accordingly, the personal anec­ emphasis is on portraiture, and its stylistic dotes, reminiscences and revelations o f the evolution, there are two other vast, and sig­ photographers involved seem to count more nificant, areas into which the editors stray: the than any other possible critical consideration. ‘film still’, and photojournalism.

In general, the text, in its glosses on the M asters o f S tarlight is in many respects one photographers and images included, rarely o f the finest books o f its kind. Photographic rises above the somewhat hype-ridden cliches o f an ancient form o f ‘fine art-speak’. O f the specialists and connoisseurs will certainly not work o f Ruth Harriet Louise, for instance, we be disappointed by it. The images used in the book derive from an exhibition at the Los read: “Although her subjects seldom looked Angeles County Museum o f Art, the result o f directly into the camera, they seemed to proj­ work undertaken over a six-year period by the ect themselves into it nonetheless.” Photogra­ Hollywood Photographers Archives. Editors phers tend to be especially praised when their style corresponds to honoured movements in Fahey and Rich, both among the founders o f painting or design, particularly o f the ‘mod­ the Archives, ensure not only a decent, repre­ sentative spread o f Hollywood photographers ernist’ variety: Will Connell is described as creating “precise, hard-edged images with (a truly rare thing in books o f this kind); they sharp, constructivist design”; Bert Longworth also uphold the highest standards o f photo­ graphic reproduction, using only original prints is credited with exploring a “photo montage” made from the original negative or transpar­ style.

O f course, what quickly disappears from ency shot by the photographer. this book, as a result o f such a desire to round Although well-known film writer Mitch up some select photographs for the corral of Tuchman is thanked for providing “critical di­ fine art, is any sense o f Hollywood photogra­ rection” to the project, the introductory essay phy as an often exhilaratingly anonymous, by the editors contains very little that re­ convention-bound, hokey, corny, cliched form sembles film, or photography, criticism. Be­ in short, as popular culture. Not primarily a yond a very useful outline o f the history o f the form o f s e lf expression for artists (although I area, Fahey and Rich, as spokespersons for the don’t doubt it functioned as such for some Archives, are mainly concerned to claim H ol­ photographers at an explicit or subterranean lywood photography as ‘art photography’. level); but a channel, like everything else in This they do with no small amount o f earnest­ mass entertainment, for cu ltu ra l expression. ness and zealotry. For instance, they rewrite Thus, you will read nothing in M asters o f the doctrine o f auteurism for their own ends Starlight, as you might in more truly ‘critical’ by claiming, territorially, that only their cho­ books like Alfred Appel’s Signs o f L ife, about sen heroes truly deserve to be thought o f as au­ the different ‘codings’ o f gender in these pho­ teurs or artists within the studio system: “in tographs (and the often wild variations on the the aura o f their golden years the still photog­ given codes); nothing about Hollywood’s racial raphers o f Hollywood assume a role somehow or class stereotypes, and how they are ‘per­ more exalted than their colleagues in the formed’ via modelling gesture and visual com­ movie-making business because their accom­ position; nothing to do with any o f the issues plishments are more clearly the product o f and speculations concerning image, narrative, their own abilities, less evidently the result o f spectacle and much else that arise irresistibly collaboration.” (p.28) from these wonderfully glossy pages. At its Thus is art - and artistry - defined in the C

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FACING PAGE: THE MARRIAGE OF LIGHT AND HOLLYWOOD'S TRANSCENDENTAL MYTHOLOGY OF THE 'STAR': EUGENE ROBERT RICHEE'S PHOTO OF TALLULAH BANKHEAD (C. 1932). ABOVE: RICHARD C. MILLER'S PHOTO OF JAMES DEAN AND ELIZABETH TAYLOR DURING A WEEKEND BREAK IN THE FILMING OF GIANT. (1955) (THE ISSUE OF 'LOOK' DEAN IS READING FEATURES TAYLOR ON THE COVER AS 'MOTHER OF THE YEAR'.)

limit, this kind o f old-fashioned artspeak can only gesture, with a feeble sociological air, towards the ‘spirit’ or the ‘obsessions’ o f those times long gone that are captured so truthfully and artfully by the great photographers.

However, one doesn’t really need this text as a guide through the images themselves, and it is in these images that the fascination o f the book truly resides. As well as giving us the ‘greats’ - George Hurrell, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Edward Steichen, e t a l - M asters o f S ta r­ light covers others, further back, like Arthur Rice and Witzel, who receive only the slightly creepy bio-line “birthplace and life dates unknown” ! In keeping with many art-angled histories o f the area, the story seems to end in the early 1970s - here represented by Douglas Kirkland’s colour portraits o f Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper. Fahey and Rich, to their credit, are not as fanatically ‘purist’ as some others are in delimiting their subject (the famed photo-anthologist John Kobal, for example, tends to pour scorn over almost every strain and tendency in Hollywood photography beyond the 1940s). Nonethe­ less, in their search for photographic ‘art’ particularly via ‘star’ portraiture - they pull up shy o f a few extremely interesting areas.

I mentioned at the start o f this review three large categories o f Hollywood photography: glamour, film still, and photojournalism.

M asters o f Starlight, as can be expected, has no problems accommodating the first category.

The genre o f glamour portraiture was, after all, a perfectly, elegantly ‘formalist’ paradigm.

The technical elaboration o f light as the essen­ tial basis, the life and death (so to speak) o f any 67

GLAMOUR: PETER BASCH'5 IMAGE OF BRIGITTE BARDOT ON THE SET OF LES BIJOUTIERS DU CLAIR DE LUNE (1959).

photographic image, still or moving - the subject that so obsessed Josef von Sternberg marries exacdy with Hollywood’s transcen­ dental mythology o f the ‘star’ as he or she who attracts light (and adoration), who shines and illuminates the darkness. Such a poetic vision - displayed so well in this volume by Arthur F. Kales’ portrait o f Thomas Meighan, or Eu­ gene Robert Richee’s photo o f Tallulah Bankhead - governed not only Hollywood still photography o f the 1920s and ’30s, but also the more romantic and melancholic modes of cinema during the same period: Borzage, Sternberg, Hathaway’s P eter Ibhetson.

The book is rather wary o f claiming the film still genre as ‘art’ in quite the same fashion.

This is perhaps because what is known in the industry as ‘production stills’ - various restag­ ings or distillations o f scenes from a film in production - are more nakedly promotional in nature, and more frankly parasitic on moving pictures, than glamour portraits. They are often also, as is their nature, a lot crazier and more vulgarly spectacular - more like popular movie culture - than glamour shots. A whole generation o f today’s ‘post modern’ artists, from Cindy Sherman in America to Robyn

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their strangest, they quietly detonate the whole idea o f a ‘subject’ at their centre o f focus.

Many o f these images, pole vaulting as they do into the heart o f the irreality at the tangled phenomenal surface o f events, are completely ¿^centred, not only pictorially but ‘spiritu­ ally’, in their mood and tone. They hurl the viewer around, from one border o f the frame to the next: just what is it that you are meant to be seeing here?

O f course, in exploring such terrain, L ife style photojournalism prefigured new, postclassical forms o f cinema, which work through the distended, lazily exploded narratives o f the ‘road movie’, and the pictorial textures o f odd actuality: the films of, among others, Monte Heilman, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, Robert Frank, who moved from still photography to cinema (most recently C an dy M ou n tain with Tom Waits and Bulle Ogier, as yet unseen here), and Dennis Hop­ per (see his photographic collection O ut o f the Sixties). And photojournalism’s arrival an­ nounced the historical moment at which ‘starlight’ could no longer be the centrifugal, seductive force holding together an art, a culture, or an industrial dream factory like Hollywood. Perhaps the ‘golden years’ pre­ ceding that break-up were only short lived, almost illusory, anyway. Our nostalgia for that time is rendered rich indeed by a book as sumptuous as M asters o f Starlight. m

Stacey locally, has re­ discovered, and taken off from, the nameless fictional intrigues and com p osite stylistic strategies inherent in literally thousands of these film stills. Fahey and Rich touch on this whole area in their se­ lection o f wonderful images relating to Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford in G ild a , Broder­ ick Crawford in D own Three D a rk Streets and Robert Montgomery in The E a r l o f Chicago. Yet even here they clearly favour photographic artists (Robert Coburn in the first two in­ stances, Laszlo Willinger in the third) who abstract and purify their material - who make it less like Hollywood and more like art.

Photojournalism - o f the sort pioneered and virtually trademarked by L ife magazine in its heyday - also sits a little uneasily within the terms o f this collection. This genre ushered into the domain of Hollywood photography a whole new pictorial texture - contrivedly ‘messy’ at times, weirdly angular and dis­ torted, full o f strange compositional vectors, harping on a certain note o f disconnectedness and alienation. Many o f the fine ‘reportage’ photographs in this book - such as those by Phil Stern and John Swope - capture these qualities strikingly. Fahey and Rich tend to thematize such images in the predictable ways - as revealing the ‘truth’ o f actors in their un­ guarded moments away from the camera, or o f the filmmaking process itself, ‘behind the scenes’ in old Tinseltown. Perhaps attempting to forge a continuous ‘tradition’ from glam­ our photography to photojournalism, the book tends to favour the portraiture o f this period with certainly an inordinate amount o f shots o f Marilyn Monroe, by many different hands.

(Some mythologies indeed die hard.)

Yet photojournalism, it seems to me, looks away from both the Hollywood cinema o f its time, and the strictures o f ‘Hollywood pho­ tography’ as suggested by this book. The ‘subject matter’ o f these images is no longer Hollywood (its stars or its world) because, at

CAMERA TRUCKS •

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BOOKS RECEIVED THE ACTOR AND HIS TIME John Gielgud, in collaboration with John Miller and John Powell Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1989, pb, rrp $24.99.

A revised and updated edition o f Gielgud’s 1979 autobiography which coincides with his 85 th birthday.

CULT MOVIES THREE Danny Peary Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1989, pb, rrp $24.99.

A sequel to Peaty’s two earlier books. There are 50 new tides, ranging from such respect­ able classics as D r. Strangelove and Psycho to the X-rated C a fe Flesh.

MARILYN MON AMOUR THE PRIVATE ALBUM OF ANDRE DES DIENES

Andre des Dienes Sidgwick & Jackson, London, pb, rrp $26.99.

A chronological collection o f mostly-unseen stills (all black and white) o f Marilyn, by the LA-based Hungarian photographer. An un­ usually comprehensive view o f one person’s emotional and physical changes over 17 years.

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BUSES

FEATURES

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ALMOST ALIEN

Production co.

Entertainment Partners Producer James Michael Vernon Director R olf de Heer Scriptwriter Peter Lofgren Assoc, producer Penny Wall Photography Martin McGrath 1st asst director Don Cranberry Editor Pippa Anderson Casting Forcast Publicity Lionel Midford Synopsis: A T V weather forecaster goes through a mid-life crisis when he discovers, after 18 years o f marriage and two children, that his wife is an alien.

BREAKAWAY

Prod. co.

Breakaway Films Pty Ltd/ Ukiyo Films Pty Ltd Dist. company Smart Egg/Cinema Enterprises Ltd Don McLennan Producers Jane Bailantyne Director Don McLennan Scriptwriter Jan Sardi Photography Zbigniew Friedrich Greg Apps Casting Synopsis: When Joey (prisoner on the run) takes Reginald (accountant) as his hostage, he gets more than he bargained for.

THE PHANTOM MOVIE

Phantom Films Pty Ltd Prod. co.

Producer Peter Sjoquist Ken Shadie Scriptwriter Lee Falk Based on comic by Grace Walker Prod, designer Exec, producer Bruce Sherlock Mark Turnbull Assoc, producer THE STARS ARE UPSIDE DOWN

Prod. co.

Soundstage International Ltd Australian T.V .

Dist. company Network Ltd.., B .B.C .

Acquisitions, B .B .C . Enterprises, Grasshopper Productions Tibor Meszaros Producer Mario Andreacchio Director Joy Whitby Scriptwriter Based on novel by Gabriel Alington Hannah Downie 8c Exec, producer Tibor Meszaros Joy Whitby Assoc, producer Robert Cocks Prod, supervisor Studios Soundstage Australia Limited Tracks Grasshopper Productions Movielab Laboratory $ 1 .4 million Budget 92 mins Length 16mm Gauge Synopsis: The story o f Tavy, a 16-year-old English servant girl, who finds love and a challenging new life in m id-19th century Australia.

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FEATURES PRODUCTION BEYOND MY REACH

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Producer Writers Director Line producer Photography Prod. Executive Prod. Manager

Peter Boyle Frank Howson Frank Howson Philip Dalkin Dan Burstall Barbi Taylor Peter Bilcock Lynn Howson Lesley Parker

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Mel Dykes John Shea Wardrobe standby Andrew Short Wardrobe assts Julie Frankham Props maker Warren Kelly Sue Maybury Props buyers Paul Dulieu Harry Zettel Standby props Special effects Visual Effects Pty Ltd Scenic artist Ray Pedler Danny Burnett Construction mgr.

Construction foreman Phillip Worth Karin Whittington Sound editors Nicholas Breslin Editing assistant David Grusovin Stunts coordinator Guy Norris The Stunt Agency Stunts Still photography Jim Townley Sara Probyn Runners Alan Long Annie Wright Unit publicist Catering Feast Film Catering Studios Warner Village Roadshow Studios -Queensland Colorfilm Laboratory Length 110 mins Gauge 35 mm Kodak Shooting stock Cast: Bryan Brown (Cooper), John Clarke (Sheedy), Deborah Unger (Littell), George T akei (T akahashi), Nicholas Eadie (Keenan) Synopsis: War crimes trials on Ambon Island in 1946.

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Receptionist Location manager Unit manager 1st assist, director 2nd assist, director 3rd assist, director Prod./Unit runner Continuity Focus puller Clapper/Loader Camera assistant Sound recordist Boom operator Gaffer Best Boy Generator op.

Grip Grips assistant Costumer designer Standby wardrobe Wardrobe assistant Make-up Hair Production designer Art director Props buyers

Deborah Samuels Belinda Williams Amanda Kelly Anne Cashin Annette Nevill Ralph Price Michael Batchelor Brian Giddens Peter Voeten Rob Visser Andrew Power Kay Hennessy Peter van Santen Paul Tilley Ross Williams John Phillips Stephen Vaughan Rob Young Peter Moloney Roy Pritchett Ian Benellack Arthur Manousakis Jeannie Cameron Marion Boyce Sue Armstrong Jose Perez Loli Sanchez Tel Stolfo Bernadette Wynack Murray Kelly Daryl Mills Set dresser Trish Keating Brian Lang Standby props Asst, buyer Hamish Alderson-Hicks Safety/Stunts New Generation Stunts Co-ordinator/Safety Archie Roberts Artist van driver Frank Mangano Mu/Wr bus driver Alan Boyd Lloyd Milne Unit gen. driver Bandaide Caterer Publicity Lionel Midford Stills photographer Greg Noakes Peter Carrodus Editor Alan Woodruff Asst, editor Peter Thornton Edge numberer Craig Carter Sound editor Dialogue editor Livia Ruzic James Harvey Sound assistant Casting Liz Mullinar Casting Cast: Terri Garber (Terri Nielson); David Roberts, Alan Fletcher, Nicholas Hammond.

Asst grips

FLYNN

Executive producer Producer Scriptwriters

Peter Boyle Frank Howson Frank Howson Alister Webb Director Brian Kavanagh Photography John Wheeler Line producer Barbi Taylor Prod, executive Lynn Howson Production manager Tatts Bishop Prod, co-ordinator Amanda Crittenden Finance Belinda Williams Accounts asst.

Simone Higginbottom Exec, producer assist.

Anne Cashin Location manager Chris Odgers Unit manager (Melb) Rory Hogan 1st asst director Carolynne Cunningham Mark Chambers 2nd asst director Prod./unit runner Derek Richards Shirley Ballard Continuity Sound Recordist John Rowley Boom operator Chris Roland Grip (Melb) Robbie Hansford Rod Short Grips asst (Melb) Jack Lester Grip (Cairns) Gary Shearsmith Grips asst (Cairns) Costume designer Rose Chong Standby wardrobe Gail Mayes Lloyd James Make-up artist Vivian Rushbrook Hair Prod, designer Brian Dusting Art director Hugh Bateup Rolland Pike Props buyer Set dresser Hamish Alderson-Hicks Colin Robinson Daryl Porter Standby props

BLOOD OATH

Prod. co. Blood Oath Productions P/L Charles Waterstreet Producer Co-producer Annie Bleakley Stephen Wallace Director Scriptwriters and Denis Whitburn Producers Brian Williams Russell Boyd Photography Scound recordist Ben Osmo Nick Beauman Editor Prod, designer Bernard Hides Line producer Richard Brennan Prod, coordinator Bernadette O ’Mahony Helen Watts Prod, manager Hugh Johnston Unit/location mgr.

Prod, secretary Chris Gordon Prod, accountant Moneypenny Services/Gill McKinlay Liane Lee Accts assistant Chris Webb 1st asst director Henry Osborne 2nd asst director Maria Phillips 3rd asst director Linda Ray Continuity Casting Alison Barrett Casting Camera operator David Williamson Focus puller John Platt Clapper/loader Richard Bradshaw Ray Brown Key grip

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Sweet Seduction Caterer (Melb) Cathy Trout Caterer (Cairns) Lionel Midford Publicity Greg Noakes Stills photographer Casting Liz Mullinar Casting Tim Lewis Editor Peter McBain Asst, editor Peter Thornton Edge Numberer Cast: Guy Pearce (Flynn).

Synopsis: Action-packed and humorous look at the other side o f Flynn’s persona.

LINDA SAFARI

Prod. co.

Soundstage Australia Limited UAA Dist. company T ibor Meszaros Producer Laszlo Ujvari Animation director Joan Ambrose Scriptwriters Tibor Meszaros Peter Jeffrey Joan Ambrose Script editor Coper, Gat 8c Based on novel by Rozgoni Sandor Polyak Photography Sound recordist Ric Curtin Geza Paal Editor Prod, designer Sandor Polyak Composers K. Peek R. Szikora C.S. Bogdan G. Berkes M. Fenyo A. Bodnar G. Szentmihalyi Assoc, producer Robert A. Cocks Exec, producer Hannah Downie Prod, supervisor David Downie Prod, managers Endre Sik Janos Juhasz Prod, secretary Allie Conley Prod, accountants Robert Sharpe Sandor Antalne 1st asst director Miklos Katalin Casting Watermelon Valley Productions Storyboard Janos Katona Character designer Janos Katona Music performed by Kevin Peek Ric Curtin Sound editors S. Kalman Mixers Ric Curtin S. Kalman Animation Hollo Laszlo Film Studio Opticals Hungarian Film Laboratory Studios Soundstage Australia Limited Hollo Laszlo Film Studio Hungaroton Tracks Laboratory Hungarian Film Laboratory' Length 90 mins Gauge 35mm Shooting stock Eastmancolor Synopsis: A story o f intrigue, adventure, mystery, action and romance, combining humour and heroism with rock’n’roll music for all ages. The heroine is Linda, a police officer with Interpol. She is well known for her Tae Kwon Do and her linguistic skills.

Several stories operate simultaneously and the protagonist always wins against great odds, without guns, in her fight against organized international crime and terrorism.

THE MAGIC RIDDLE

Prod. co.

Yoram Gross Film Studio Dist. co.

Beyond International Group Producer Yoram Gross Director Yoram Gross Scriptwriters Yoram Gross Leonard Lee

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Assoc, producer Sandra Gross Guy Gross Music Storyboard Ray Nowland Prod, supervisor Jeannette Toms Prod, manager Rod Lee Length 80 minutes Gauge 35 mm Cast: Robyn M oore, Keith Scott Synopsis: An enchanting story which borrows characters and events from popu­ lar fair}' tales and weaves them into one charming and suspenseful tale o f love, mystery and mirth.

SELL US YOUR UNEXPOSED FILM STOCK SHORT ENDS - RECANS - UNOPENED STOCK Ring Nichola Wharton STEADI SYSTEMS PTY LTD

FEATURES POST PRODUCTION

405 Sussex St., Haymarket NSW 2000 Tel. (02) 281 6033 or (02) 438 1541

THE DEUNQUENTS

Prod, company Dist. company Producers

The Delinquents P/L Greater Union Alex Cutler Michael Wilcox Chris Thomson Director Mac Gudgeon Scriptwriters Dorothy Hewett Lex Marinos Prod, consultant Clay Frohman Based on novel by Criena Rohan Andrew Lesnie Photography Sound recordist Paul Brincat Editor John Scott Prod, designer Laurence Eastwood Composer David Bowie Executive producers Greg Coote John Tarnoff Graham Burke Line producer Irene Dobson Prod, coordinator Sharon Miller Prod, manager Rosslyn Abemethy Unit manager Phil Urquhart Location managers Colin Oddy John Watson Prod, secretary Rebecca Coote Prod, accountants Lea Collins Dianne Brown Base liaison Trish Wallace 1st asst director Colin Fletcher 2nd asst director Toby Pease 3rd asst director Emma Schofield Continuity Jackie Sullivan Producers’ assistant Rebecca Coote Casting Forcast (Michael Lynch Rae Davidson) Extras casting Jane O ’Hara Unit assistant Gabrielle Dunn Focus puller Colin Dean Clapper loader Lyddy Van Gyen Key grip Robyn Morgan Asst grip Robbie van Amstel Gaffer Simon Lee Third electrics Peter Bushby Fourth electrics Glen Court Boom operator Alex Paton Art director Rob Robinson Asst art directors Diaan Wajon Tim Ferrier Michelle McGahey Costume designer Bruce Finlayson Make-up Judy Lovell Asst hair/make-up Yvonne Savage Costume supervisor Sandi Cichello Wardrobe asst Marilyn Brent Standby wardrobe Julie Barton Props buyer David McKay Standby props John Osmond Special effects Ray Fowler Choreography Lorry d’Ercole Set decorator Lissa Coote Scenic artists Ray Pedler Peter Collias Carpenters Drew Young Gary Wilson Dave Franks Bruce Fletcher Set construction Phil Worth Asst editor Liz Goldfinch Musical coordinator Christine Woodruff Set finishers Dave Driffin Desmond Keena Wayne Truce Dialogue editor Greg Bell

Fax (02) 211 5252

Your complete Negative Matching Service including • Time Coding onto 8" Floppy Disc • Super 16mm • Syncing Neg or Pos Rushes • 16mm & 35mm Edge-Coding Service (“Rubber Numbering”) • Tight deadlines our speciality V . * 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if required.

Contact Greg Chapman

Tel (02) 439 3988 Fax (02) 437 5074 105/6-8 CLARKE ST., CROWS NEST NSW 2065

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\CH RIS ROWELL PRODUCTIONS US

110 W est Street, Crows Nest NSW 2 0S5 Australia

Phone: (0 2 )9 2 2 -3 1 4 4 ) Fax: [02] 957 5001) Modem: (0 2 )9 2 2 7642

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Soundage Sound editor Raj Oakley Editing assistant Ashley Grenville Fx editor Bob Hicks Stunts coordinator Gerald Knight Action vehicle coord.

Barry Peake Still photography Greg Allen Best boy Alan Long Runner Shane Minslow Rushes runner Fiona Searson Unit publicist Dennis Davidson Sc Assoc.

Denni Gordon Catering Studios Warner Roadshow Studios Colorfilm Pty Ltd Maxed at Colorfilm Pty Ltd Laboratory $10 million Budget 100 minutes Length 35mm Gauge Agfa Shooting stock Samuelson Camera equipment Film Services Australia Pty Ltd Completion guarantors The Completion Bond Co. Ine. Cast: Kylie Minogue (Lola), Charlie Schlat­ ter (Brownie), Desiree Smith (Mavis), Todd Boyce (Lyle), Angela Punch M cGregor (Mrs Lovell), Lynette Curran (Mrs Hansen), Melissa Jaffer (Aunt Westbury), Bruno Lawrence (Bosun).

Synopsis: Set in the Fifties, The Delin­ quents is a love story that follows the grow­ ing relationship between Lola and Brownie, two young teenagers on the run.

DOT IN SPACE

Yoram Gross Film Studio Pty. Ltd. Yoram Gross Producer Yoram Gross Director John Palmer Scriptwriter Associate producer Sandra Gross Animation director Athol Henry Guy Cross Music Prod, supervisor Jeanette Toms Prod, manager Rod Lee Asst, editor Stephen Hayes Length 80 minutes Gauge 35mm Cast: Robyn Moore, Keith Scott.

Synopsis: D ot finds her way into an Ameri­ can spaceship which lands her on a wartorn planet o f Rounds and Squares.

Prod, company

HUNTING

Exec, producer Producer Director Scriptwriter Photography

Peter Boyle Frank Howson Frank Howson Frank Howson David Connell Dan Burstall Line producer Barbi Taylor Prod, executive Lynn Howson Prod, manager Lesley Parker Prod, co-ordinator Deborah Samuels Finance Belinda Williams Accounts assistant Christine Hodgson Assist, to exec. prod.

Anne Cashin Receptionist Annette Nevill Location manager John Shur Unit manager Hamish Alderson-Hicks 1st asst, director John Powditch 2nd asst, director Brett Popplewell 3rd asst, director Rob Visser Production/unit runner Lisa Hohenfels M/up W / R van driver Paul Egan Artist van driver David Holloway Continuity Jenni Tosi Focus Puller Greg Ryan Clapper/loader Terry Howells Camera attachment Warik Lawrence Underwater photog.

Ian Jones Assistant David Lindsey Sound recordist John Rowley Boom operator Christopher Roland Gaffer Rob Young Best boy Peter Moloney Genne operator Roy Pritchett Grip Ian Benallack Grips assistant Arthur Manousakis Standby w'ardrobe Aphrodite Kondos Wardrobe co-ord Margot Lindsay Standby wardrobe Jeannie Cameron

Make-up

Amanda Rowbottom Lloyd James Hair Pam Murphy Jay Liebowitz Production designer Jon Dowding Art director Bernadette Wynack Props buyers Keith Hanscombe Danielle Conroy Set dresser Victoria Rowell Standby props Brian Lang Armourer/Spfx Film Guns Pty Ltd Safety/stunts New Generation Stunts Officer Archie Roberts Caterers Keith Fish Trio Catering Catering assistant Ken McGregor Publicity Lionel Midford Stills photographer Greg Noakes Editor Philip Reid Asst, editor Peter McBain Edge numberer Peter Thornton Sound editor Craig Carter Dialogue editor James Harvey Casting Greg Apps Liz Mullinar & Associates Cast: John Savage (Michael Bergman), Kerry Armstrong (Michelle Harris), Jeffrey Thomas (Larry Harris), Rebecca Rigg (Debbie McCormick), Rhys M cConnochie (M r Stockton), Ian Scott (Holmes), Stephen Whittaker (Roberts), Guy Pearce (Sharp), Nicholas Bell (Piggott), Stacey Valkenburg (Young Michelle).

DOCUMENTARIES CHOCOLATES, GIANTS AND PEACHES ROALD DAHL LIVE IN MELBOURNE

Prod, company T V Ed Productions/ Min. o f Education Victoria Producer Lily Steiner Director Lily Steiner Camera Noel Penn Audio Anthony Artmann Editors Mark Williams Lily Steiner Prod, assistants Jayne Catterina Judi Latham Synopsis: This series o f three programs was recorded live at the Dallas Brooks Hall during Roald Dahl’s recent visit to M el­ bourne. He recalls anecdotes, reads from his books, and answers questions from the children in the audience.

COVER TO COVER - ROALD DAHL

Prod, company TV Ed Productions/ Min. o f Education Victoria Producer Lily Steiner Director Lily Steiner Camera Noel Penn Audio Anthony Artmann Editors Mark Williams Lily Steiner Prod, assistants Jayne Catterina Judi Latham Synopsis: The ‘Cover to Cover’ series looks at children’s authors and illustrators. This program was recorded during Roald Dahl’s recent visit to Australia.

DOWN FROM DARWIN

Prod. co.

Producers

Ordinary Miracle Pictures Bruce Ready Brenton Harris Tony Le Maistre Director Mike Sexton Scriptwriter Bruce Ready Photography Brenton Harris Prod, manager 50 mins Length 16mm to 1 " video Gauge Synopsis: A look at the top end o f Australia and remnants o f World War II. GIANTS OF TIME

Prod, company Dist. company Producer Director Scriptwriter Photography Sound recordist

Juniper Films Juniper Films John Davy Tristram Ian James Wilson Nadine Amadio Garry Maunder Ralph Steele

Synopsis: A celebration o f humanity, wis­ dom and the spirit o f old people.

Morrison, Joan Carden.

Synopsis: A series o f documentaries about: Choreographer, Graeme Murphy; Writer, Tom Keneally; Composer, Peter Sculthorpe; Jazz virtuoso, James Morrison; Artist, Brett Whiteley; and Opera Singer, Joan Carden.

HANDMAIDENS AND BATTLEAXES

Prod, company Producer Director Scriptwriter Photography Sound recordist Editor Prod, designers

Silver Films Rosalind Gillespie Rosalind Gillespie Rosalind Gillespie Laurie Mclnnes Bronwyn Murphy Diane Priest Edie Kurzer Dianne Reynolds Composer Felicity Foxx Prod, manager Adrienne Parr Prod, assistant Joanna Frew 1 st asst director Elizabeth Statis Camera assistant Felicity Surtees Gaffer Jamie Egan Make-up Angela Bodini Title designer Leigh Whitmore Budget 5 198,000 Length 52 mins Gauge 16mm Shooting stock Kodak Synopsis: A film about how nursing develand demanding profession. This has led to a crisis in the profession worldwide.

INTRODUCING THE CAFETERIA IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMME

Prod, company

Massive Media & Entertainment Massive Media 8c Dist. company Entertainment Craig Reardon Producer Craig Reardon Director Scriptwriter Stephen Downes Prod, assistant Michelle Royal Sharon Thorne Producer’s asst Lighting camera Darryl Foulds Matthew Romanis Camera assistant Viv Macgillicuddy Make-up Length 10 minutes Shooting stock BVU Cast: Mark Mitchell, Kim Gyngell Synopsis: Comedy Co.m panÿ s Mark Mitchell shows food service staff how to improve the nutritional value o f their foods through a specially designed program.

IN MORAL PANIC

Prod. co.

Cinetel Productions P/L Dist. company Devillier-donegan Enterprises USA Producer Frank Heimans Director Frank Heimans Scriptwriter Paul Rea Photography John Thornton Sound recordists George Weis Hugo De Vries Synopsis: In M oral P anic examines the social history and psychology o f punish­ ment, comparing Australian methods with those overseas.

MARBURY... MORE THAN JUST A SCHOOL

Prod, company Producer Director Photography

Prod, company

Don Featherstone Productions RM Distributers Dist. company Don Featherstone Producer Malcolm McDonald Directors Don Featherstone Patrick Taggart Jon Ossher Christina Wilcox Kim Batterham Photography Ray Henman Pieter de Vries Erika Addis Max Hensser Sound recordists David Glasser Grant Roberts Rob Stalder Bronwyn Murphy Suresh Ayyar Editors Tim Wellburn Quentin Johnson David Maitland Denise Hunter Graham Tardif Composer Martin Guinness Assoc, producer Judy Featherstone Prod, coordinator Anne Clifford-Smith Prod, accountant Kate Dennis Focus pullers Andrew Birbara Felicity Surtees Danielle Wiessner Asst, editors Dimity Gregson Steve Worland Soulla Alexandrou Negthink Neg matching Danielle Wiessner Sound editor (Graeme Murphy film only) Atlab Laboratory Kerry Jenkin Lab. liaison 51.3 million Budget 6 x 5 5 minutes Length 16 mm Gauge Kodak 7 2 9 1 / 7 2 9 2 / 7 2 9 7 Stock Cast: Graeme Murphy, Tom Keneally, Peter Sculthorpe, Brett Whiteley, James

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UNDER SOUTHERN SKIES

Our Secret Australia Prod, company Dist. co.

Beyond International Group Mark Falzon Producer Michael Edols Director Synopsis: Takes the viewer on a journey o f discovery and explores how man lives and moves within his fragile environment by combining the beauty and uniqueness o f our plant life with the natural elements that created this vast land we call Australia.

WITH FLYING COLOURS

Prod, company AFTRS William Fitzwater Exec, producer Sara Hourez Director Camera operator Chris Fraser Sara Hourez Editor 20 minutes Length Betacam to 1 " Gauge Synopsis: People with disabilities can compete on the same level as the rest o f the community and achieve success. Some with flying colours.

Original Films Simon L. Edhouse Simon L. Edhouse Michael Kelly Gerald Thompson Simon Edhouse WORDS AND SILK Peter Felstead (Formerly IN LANDS OF ESCAPE) Kris Nizamis Producers John Cruthers Sound recordists Kyriaki Maragozidis Philip Tyndall Des Keneally Director PhilipTyndall Mike Balakof Simon Edhouse Scriptwriter PhilipTyndall Photography Brendan Lavelle Editor Tania Nehme Composer Timothy Edhouse Sound recordist Greg Gurr Ray Bosely Asst editor Deborah Van Gyen Editor Catherine Birmingham Neg. matching Chris Rowell Productions Music performed by Timothy Edhouse Assoc, producer Joanne Bell Sound editor Yvonne Van Gyen Prod, coordinator Timothy Doyle Camera assistants KatinaBowell Mixer Peter Biggs (ABC Adelaide) Peter Falk Opticals Colorfilm Title designer Simon Edhouse 2nd unit photography Peter Falk Mixed at ABC Adelaide Music performed by Moonee Valley Drifters Laboratory Colorfilm Gerald Murnane Budget S 130,000 Sound editor Ray Bosely Length 52.5 minutes Gauge 16mm and one-inch master Narrator Gerald Murnane Stock Agfa X T 125 and X T 320 Still photography David Peterson Paul Smith Cast: The principal, Margaret Langley, and the teachers and students o f Marbury Graphics Dirk De Bruyn Mixed at Film Soundtrack Australia School.

Synopsis: Marbury was established in 1970 Laboratory Cinevex as an alternative school. The primary pur­ Budget S I 30,000 pose was to create relaxed and friendly Length 80 Minutes learning conditions free o f punishment.

Gauge 16mm The film examines Marbury as it was seen in Shooting stock Fujicolor 1971 and looks at what the school has Financing Creative Initiatives Program Film Victoria Creative achieved in the 18 years since then.

Development PARENT/TEACHER INTERVIEW SKILLS Australian Film Commission Prod, company T V Ed Productions/ Synopsis: The real and imaginary world of Australian writer Gerald Murnane.

Min. o f Education Victoria Producer Lily Steiner ZAFARI ART/WHAT IS ART? Director Lily Steiner (WORKING TITLE) Synopsis: A drama that focuses on communication skills necessary for successful Prod, company Feral Films and interaction during parent/teacher inter­ Original Films views in skills.

Producer Simon L. Edhouse Director Simon L. Edhouse PARENTS HELPING CHILDREN TO READ Scriptwriters Simon L. Edhouse Prod, company T V Ed Productions/ Harry Photocopy From an original Min. o f Education Victoria idea by Producer Lily Steiner Simon Edhouse Director Lily Steiner Harry Photocopy Synopsis: A drama that aims to provide Michael Polyester Photography parents and relatives with useful insights Gerald Thompson and ideas for helping children who are Michael Kelly learning to read.

Simon Edhouse Sound recordist Mike Bakalof TALES OF HELPMANN Editor Simon Edhouse Prod, company Don Featherstone Prod, designer Zafari Art Productions Pty Ltd Composer Simon Edhouse

INNOVATORS IN AUSTRALIAN MUSIC & ART(Working Title)

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RPTA Dist. company Don Featherstone Producer Don Featherstone Director Alan Sievewright Scriptwriter Martin Guinness Assoc, producer Atlab Laboratory Kerry Jenkin Lab liaison 5 3 8 2 ,0 0 0 Budget 55 mins Length 16 mm Gauge Synopsis: Film about Sir Robert Helpmann.

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Tania Rosenzvveig Chris Rowell Productions Music performed by Wipe-outs Zafari Art Footsteps Still photography Mark Process Animation Michael Polyester Title designer Original Films/Zafari Art Laboratory V FL Lab.liaison Bruce Braun Budget S54 ,0 0 0 Length 3 0-40 mins Gauge 16mm and one-inch video Shooting stock 7291 and 7 2 9 7 Cast: Michael Polyester, Harrv Photocopy, ex-major Pete Smith (themselves), Cvril Colour, Dave the Plastic one, Miro Dver, Peter Broadcast, Deborah Hattam.

Synopsis: An examination o f radical cult artists Harr,' Photocopy and Michael Poly­ ester o f Zafari Art. The film documents their colourful and often outrageous ex­ ploits, ending with the blowing up o f an American car painted in US military col­ ours in the middle o f the Australian desert.

Zafari targets the media and Aust/US rela­ tions with comic originality.

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MYTHS & LEGENDS

Prod, company Television Dist. company Television Producer Director Scriptwriters

Australian Film, 8c Radio School Australian Film, 8c Radio School Julie Hannaford Dana Rayson Sylvia Johnson Dana Rayson Photography' Dana Rayson Sound recordists Mark Cornish Paul Neeson Editor Wendy Chandler Prod, designer Trish Ryan Composer NSW Conservatorium o f Music Exec, producer Tom Jeffrey Assoc, producer Elisabeth Knight Prod, manager Julie Hannaford 1st asst director Bronwyn Coupe Casting Joy Sargant Camera operator Peter Borosh Costume designer Suska Make-up Vanessa Brown Chloe Musical director William Motzing Music performed by NSW Conservatorium o f Music Still photograph}’ Karen Borger Animation Dana Ravson Studios Australian Film, Television 8: Radio School Laboratory Colorfilm Ply Ltd Lab. liaison Martin Hoyle Budget S 145,000 Length 10 minutes Gauge 35 mm Shooting stock Fuji Cast: Edward Jowsev (Christo), Luke Carroll (Jack), Shane Tickner (Hamish), Derrin Seale (Charles).

Synopsis: Christo and Jack are the best o f friends. Together they explore and treasure hunt in their fantasy playground - The Wasteland. When Charles and Hamish attack the boys and escape with their loot, Jack consoles his young friend with a stop,' based on an aboriginal legend. The story comes to life through Christo’s imagina­ tion and Charles and Hamish suffer the consequence o f their greed.

THE PURSUED

Prod, company Australian Film, Television & Radio School Dist. company Australian Film, Television & Radio School Producer Bronwyn Thompson Director Rex Cramphorn Scriptwriters Rex Cramphorn Kim Spinks

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EVERYBODY Horacio Quiroga Gauge Videotape Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd KymVaitiekus Synopsis: A video to explain to employers Dist. company Film Australia Pty7 Ltd Ricky7Price the benefits o f encouraging their employ­ Exec, producer Paul Humfress Carmen Galan ees to serve in the Defence Reserves.

Director Richard Ryan Melody Cooper Scriptwriter Richard Ryan Jim Cotter THE BOMB IN YOUR BACKYARD Photography JulianPenny MarielBerosProd, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Sound recordist Sid Butterworth Don Colantonio Producer Geoff Barnes Editor RayThom Deborah GreenResearcher Emma Gordon Vanessa Brown SueScottExec, producer JanetBell Prod, coordinator Prod, manager Ron Hannam Mojgan Khadem Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan Unit manager AdrianPicker Shauna Wolfson Prod, secretary Jane Benson Location manager NicholasCole KymVaitiekus Prod, accountant Waldemar Wawrvzniuk Prod, accountant Elizabeth Clarke Tim Thomas Marketing/promotion John Swindells AdrianPicker Stuart Green Publicity' JaneGlen 1st asst director Emma Gordo IanBosman Length 4x1 hour2nd asst director 3rd asst director NicholasCole MarkCornish Synopsis: An essay series on blind preju­ Continuity' SianFatou Tina Cowper-Hill dice and justifiable fear.

Casting Faith Martin Melody Cooper Tania Creighton Lighting camera JulianPenny COLOURS Camera operator Callum McFarlane Steve Courtley/ Prod, company Film Australia Pty' Ltd Key grip Gar)7Lincoln Cineffects Dist. company Film Australia Pty' Ltd Gaffer Jonathan Hugh Carpenter KenManning Producer Paul Humfress Electrician ChrisRodm Armourer Bob ColbvDirector John Michael Rogovvski Editing assistants NicholasCole Scriptwriter Boom operator Noel Quin John Michael Rogovvski Mixer RickyPrice From an idea by John Michael Rogovvski Art director Madeleine Murray Still photography David Kirk Make-up LesleyRouvr Photography AlikeAtwell Best boy Geoff Downes Lesley Rouvr Sound recordist DavidWhiteHairdresser Wardrobe Madeleine Murray Laboratory Atlab Editor Geraldine Crown Lab. liaison KerryJenkin Props Leanne Cornish Composer Guy Gross Asst editor Nigel McKenzie Budget S 90,610 Choreography Victoria Taylor Length 30 mins Stunts coordinator Bernie Ledger Stephen Page Gauge 16mm Publicity7 Jane Glen Exec, producer Paul Humfress Shooting stock Fuji Marketing John Swind Prod, manager Ron Hannam Cast: Greg Saunders (Theo), Colin BaCatering KateringComp Prod secretary LoriWallace trouney (Lucas), Gillian Jones (Rachel).

Laboratory Colorfilm Prod, accountant Elizabeth Clarke Synopsis: A man’s delusion that he is being Lab. liaison Martin Hoyle Prod, assistant Madeline Murray followed attracts another man to follow 1st asst director Adrian Pickersgill Length 1 x 30 minutes him. The complicated game that ensues Gauge 16mm Camera assistant Peter Coleman binds the pursuer to the pursued until it is Key grip PeterDoigShooting stock Eastmancolor hard to tell which is which - a strong need Cast: Paul Smith, Richard Huggett, Lisa Gaffer Jonathon Hughes creates and sustains an opposite need - the Hensley, Rachel Beck, Rani Lockland, Alex Art director Gary Whitelaw madness is contagious.

Make-up StevenKellyMorcos, Michael Butcher, Cecelia Yates.

Wardrobe ClarenceChai Synopsis:To provide the Chaplaincy branch SPARKS Tech, director Matthew Dorno f the Australian Defence Force with a Prod, company Australian Film, counselling film to promote discussion on Varilite operator PeterLothian Television & Radio School Publicity7 JaneGlen social issues and drug abuse.

Producer Prue Adams Marketing John Swindells Director RobertKlenner Catering The Katering Company HISTORY OF DISEASE Scriptwriter CatherineZimdahl Length 25 mins Prod, company Film Australia P/L Based on idea by Catherine Zimdahl Dist. company Film Australia P/L Gauge 1" video Photography KrivStenders Cast:VictoriaTaylor, Stephen Page (Danc­ Scriptwriter Dr Norman Swan Prod, designer StavrosEfthymiou Exec, producer Janet Bell ers) 1st asst director Bronwyn Thompson Synopsis: Man lives in a world o f light and Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan Casting JoySargant Prod, secretary Jane Benson colour. This film will focus on the various Lighting camera KrivStenders human attributes o f colour, using dance, Prod, accountant Waldemar Costume designer Stavros Efthymiou music, lighting and sets.

Wawryzniuk Sound editor MichaelWebster Publicity7 Jane Glen Mixer MichaelWebster COMMUNITY SERVICES & HEALTH Marketing John Swindells Tide designer StavrosEfthymiou Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Length 4 x 1 hour Mixed at AFTRS Producer JanetBell Synopsis: A look at the important role Budget S I 77,374 Scriptwriter Stephen Ramsey disease has played in human history, even Length 30 minutes Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan more important than the art o f healing or Gauge 16 mm Prod, secretary Jane Benson the development o f medicine itself.

Synopsis: Chaos, insomnia, labels, cups, Prod, accountant Waldemar medication, institutionalisation and opera Wawryzniuk HOW WONDERFUL - Sparks is a journey through life in a Prod, assistant Jane Benson Prod, company Film Australia Pty7 Ltd halfway house for young people who Publicity' JaneGlen Dist. company Film Australia Pty7 Ltd have been in psychiatric hospitals.

Director Marketing John Swindells Lynn Hegarty Length 5x5 mins Scriptwriter Lynn Hegarty FILM AUSTRALIA PTY LTD Synopsis: Five five-minute programs for Script editor Helen Steele Exec, producer the Department o f Community7 Services Bruce Moir ARMY RESERVE EMPLOYER MOTIVATION and Health about polydrug use.

Prod, manager John Russell Prod, company Film Australia Pty' Ltd Prod, secretar}7 Kathy Grant Dist. company Film Australia Pty7 Ltd ERNIE DINGO’S AUSTRALIA Prod, accountant Simon Lenthen Producer Sonia Humphrey Prod, company Publicity7 Film Australia Pty’ Ltd Jane Glen Director Matt Scully Marketing Dist. companyFilm Australia Pty7 Ltd Martin Wood Scriptwriter Richard Ryan Producers Maurice Murphy Length 58 minutes Photograph}’ Ross King Gauge Ernie Dingo 16mm Sound recordists Ken Hammond Director Maurice Murphy Synopsis: An offbeat and comic look at Rick Creaser Scriptwriters Richard Walley pregnane}7 in the life o f a modern career Editor Jacqueline Walker woman.

Ernie Dingo Exec, producer Paul Humfress Exec, producer Janet Bell Prod, manager Ron Hannam Prod, manager INTERVIEW OF A SUSPECT Catriona Macmillan Prod, secretary Lori Wallace Prod, secretary Prod, company Jane Benson Film Australia Pty Ltd Elizabeth Clarke Prod, accountant Prod, accountant Waldemar Wawrzyniuk Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Prod, assistant Katrina Fanscali Publicity Producer Jane Glen Sonia Humphrey Camera assistant Peter Coleman Marketing Scriptwriter John Swindells Richard Ryan Marketing John Swindells Marketing Synopsis: Our culture is your culture. A John Swindells Laboratory Video Film Company series o f comedy blackouts that Ernie calls Synopsis: A film commissioned by the Lab. liaison Mark Farrow “vvhiteouts”. Produced for the Depart­ Military Police, designed to instruct those Length 10-12 minutes ment o f Aboriginal Affairs. newly assigned to the Unit in interviewing

Based on story by Photography Sound recordist Editor Prod, designer Composer Prod, manager 1st asst director 2nd asst director 3rd asst director Continuity Casting consultant Lighting camera Camera assistant Key grip Gaffer Boom operator Make-up Wardrobe Standby props Special effects

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Catering Gerry Billings/The Shooting Prod, accountant Elizabeth Clarke Party Publicity Jane Glen Mixed at Film Australia Marketing John Swindells Laboratory Atlab Australia Length 2 x 20 minutes KAKADU PUPPETS (w orking title ) Lab. liaison Ian Russell Synopsis: Two 20-minute films designed Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd MANAGER ON THE CASE Length 9 4 mins to instruct those newly assigned to the unit Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Gauge 16mm in interviewing and interrogation techniques Director MichaelBalson Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Cast: Doris Younane (Sharon Reeves), Brian appropriate to the military circumstances in Director Richard Sattler Photography John Hosking Vriends (Steve Reeves), Bruce Venables which they will be applied.

Sound recordist MaxHensser Scriptwriter Steve Johnson (The Builder), Paul Coolahan (The Devel­ Editor MichaelBalson Prod, designer Louella Hatfield oper).

MORTGAGE Exec, producers Bruce Moir Exec, producer JanetBell Synopsis: A real-life look at the Australian Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Tristram Miall Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan Dream o f home ownership.

Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Prod, coordinator Glenda Carpenter Floor manager KatrinaFanscali Director BillBennett Prod, manager John Russell Prod, secretary Jane Benson Scriptwriter BillBennett NATIONAL PARKS (w orking title ) Prod, secretary Kathy Grant Prod, accountant Waldemar Wawrzyniuk Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Photography SteveArnold Prod, assistant/ Prod, accountant Simon Lenthen Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Sound recordist Max Hensser Still photography Carmen Ky vision switcher Margo Pulsford Director Mark Gould Editor Sara Bennett Publicity Jane Glen Director’s assistant Juliet Phillips Mark Gould Exec, producer BruceMoirScript/research Marketing Martin Wood Lighting camera Jonathon Hughes Exec, producer Bruce Moir Prod, coordinator Jo Anne McGowan Make-up Michelle Myers Laboratory Video Film Company Prod, manager John Russell Prod, manager Hilary May Wardrobe Juliet Phillips Length 50 mins Prod, secretary Kathy Grant Film Australia prod, Publicity JaneGlen Gauge 16mm Prod, accountant Simon Lenthen manager John Russell Marketing John Swindells Synopsis: A documentary for television Jane Glen Prod, secretary KathyGrantPublicity Catering The Katering Company illustrating the Marionette Theatre o f Marketing MartinWood Prod, accountant Elizabeth Anderson, Studios Film Australia Australia’s innovative puppet play, K a k a d u , Length 20 minutes Reel Accountants OB facilities Hoyts Television from first draft to opening night. Inspired Betacam 1st asst director NikkiLongGauge Length 15 minutes

by Bill Neidje’s book, K a k a d u m a n , the Synopsis: A video showing the types, aims 2nd asst director Ifca Dragicevic Gauge 1" video puppet play, written by Aboriginal play­ and uses o f Australia’s National Parks.

Continuity AlisonGoodwin Cast: Carol Willesee (case manager), Ste­ wright Vivian Walker, brings Bill Neidje’s Casting Forcast ven Tandy (administrator), Vicki Luke message to the stage in a lively production NELL IN NUGGET END Lighting camera SteveArnold (rehab counsellor), Russell Crowe (store aimed at a wide family audience.

Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Camera assistant AdrienSeffrin man/employee) Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd 2nd unit photography John Lomax Synopsis: A film for COM CA RE which is LIGHTHOUSES Producer Janet Bell Tony Wilson a humorous look at how the new case Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Director Richard Sattler Gaffer SteveCarter manager system will work in Common­ Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Scriptwriter Katherine Thomson Boom operator Mark Van Kool wealth agencies to administer rehabilita­ Researcher Ian Walker Prod, designer LouellaHatfield Wardrobe Ruth Bracegirdle tion programs for injured workers.

From an idea by Maritime Operations Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan Asst editor Mary Jane St. Vincent Division - Department o f Floor manager KatrinaFancsali Welch MILITARY POLICE Transport & Communications Vision mixer MargotPulsford Neg matching ChrisRowell Film Australia Pty Ltd Prod, company Exec, producer Bruce Moir Prod, secretary JaneBenson Music composed by Michael Atkinson Film Australia Pty Ltd Dist. companyProd, manager John Russell Prod, accountant Waldemar Wawryzniuk Sound editor Mary Jane St. Vincent Paul Humfress Producer Prod, secretary Kathy Grant Director’s asst JulietPhillips Welch Richard Ryan Scriptwriter Prod, accountant Simon Lenthen Casting/research JulietPhillips Still photography Jim Townley Paul Humfress Exec, producer Publicity Jane Glen Make-up/Hair MichelleMyers Publicity Jane Glen Ron Hannam Prod, manager Marketing Martin Wood Marketing Martin WoodPuppet/set construction Alan Manning Lori Wallace Prod, secretary Length 20 minutes

techniques, appropriate to the military cir­ cumstances in which they will be applied.

Gauge 16mm Synopsis: Documentary on the Lightstation system, its technology and history.

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Publicity Jane Glen Marketing John Swindells Catering Katering Co. Studios Film Australia O B Facilities Hoyts Television Post Production Tram Broadcast Length 24 minutes Gauge 1 " video Cast: Kim Valentine and puppeteers: Sean Steinmuller, Adrian Norman, Murray Raine and Ross Browning.

A puppet drama for the Austra­ lian Electoral Commission which explains the preferential voting system to upper primary school children via a fantastic voy­ age to an abandoned amusement park.

Synopsis:

PLAYMAKERS/MUSIC MAKERS

Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Producer Janet Bell Researcher Mary Colbert Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan Prod, secretary Jane Benson Prod, accountant Waldemar Wawryzniuk Publicity Jane Glen Marketing John Swindells Length 2 series o f 4 x 20 mins Gauge Video/film Two series for upper primary school children which look at the world o f theatre and music through the roles o f the practitioners.

Synopsis:

PRE-SCHOOL HEALTH VIDEOS

Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Yoram Gross Studios Pty Ltd Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Researcher Judy Menczel Exec, producer Janet Bell Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan Prod, accountant Waldemar Wawryzniuk Publicity Jane Glen Marketing John Swindells Length Various Gauge Video Cast: Noni Hazlehurst

Synopsis: Animated videos featuring Noni Hazlehurst to help pre-schoolers cope with health problems.

A SENSE OF IDENTITY

Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Producer Sonia Humphrey Researcher Tracey Maurer Exec, producer Paul Humfress Prod, manager Ron Hannam Marketing John Swindells Length 30-40 minutes The changing role o f Aboriginal women and the social developments against which these changes have occurred. The film aims to educate the general public on the important role and community devel­ opments that have involved Aboriginal women and to give Aboriginal women a sense o f identity.

SPECIAL EDUCATION MAGAZINE

THE UNFAIR GO?

Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Producer Paul Humfress Scriptwriter/research Jebby Phillips Exec, producer Paul Humfress Publicity Jane Glen Marketing John Swindells Length 30 mins Gauge Video A proposed 30-minute non­ broadcast television magazine to be dis­ tributed to schools for young people with conversational or intellectual disabilities.

Film Australia Pty Ltd Film Australia Pty Ltd Paul Humfress Ian Munro Con Anemogiannis Steve Windon David Knaus Greg Lowe Preston Clothier Alex McPhee Bronwyn Murphy Sound recordists Don Connolly Leo Sullivan Scott Montgomery Ken Hammond Robin Archer Editors Denise Haslem Paul Humfress Exec, producer Ron Hannam Prod, manager Con Anemogiannis Unit manager Lori Wallace Prod, secretary Elizabeth Clarke Prod, accountant Neg. matching Kut the Caper Jim Conway Musical directors Colin Watson Gary O ’Grady Sound editor Helen Martin Editing assistants Harriete McKern Mixers G eoff Stitt George Hart Narrator Jim Downes Jane Glen Publicity Marketing John Swindells Adab Australia Laboratory Kerri Jenkins Lab. liaison Length 6 x 30 minutes Gauge 16mm Shooting stock Eastmancolor A proposed series o f six pro­ grams that would raise issues to increase the audience’s anxiety, make viewers aware o f the many welfare problems that exist and suggest alternative systems o f dealing with the problems o f the underprivileged both within Australia and overseas.

Synopsis:

Synopsis:

TO ABSENT FRIENDS

Prod, company Dist. company Producer Director Scriptwriter From an idea by Photography Sound recordists

Film Australia Pty Ltd Film Australia Pty Ltd Paul Humfress Peter McLean Paula Dawson Paula Dawson Ross King Howard Spry Rodney Simmons Noel Cunnington Exec, producer Paul Humfress Prod, managers Alison Wotherspoon Ron Hannam Neil Cousins Prod, accountant Elizabeth Clarke Prod, assistant Michael Rogowski Robyn Peterson Camera assistants John Scott Gaffer Jonathon Hughes Jane Glen Publicity Marketing John Swindells To A bsent Friends traces the concept and construction ofPaula Dawson’s most recent work, a fully functional barroom. All reflective surfaces will be her holographic images, reconstructed from a past New Year’s Eve event. The final envi­ ronment is an exploration o f memory at work and the infinite quality o f time.

THE SNOWY • THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE POWER

Film Australia Prod, company Dist. company Film Australia Stephen Ramsay Director Siobhan McHugh Based on book by Photography Joel Peterson Sound recordist Robert Stalder Douglas Howard Editor Exec, producer Bruce Moir Assoc, producer Siobhan McHugh John Russell Prod, manager Prod, secretary Kathy Grant Prod, assistant Jean Moyes Publicity Jane Glen Marketing Martin Wood 60 minutes Length Gauge Betacam Mark Perry Asst editor A television documentary which tells the story o f the people who built the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme.

Synopsis:

Synopsis:

Prod, company Dist. company Producer Director Scriptwriter Photography

Synopsis:

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■ U N IT T R U C K S ■ T R A C K IN G V E H IC L E S ■ A L L - T E R R A IN V E H IC L E S ■ G E N E R A T O R T R U C K S 74

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Steve Carter StewartGreenBest boys John Bryden-Brown Trish Ryan Tim Lloyd Trish RyanSound recordist Mark Van Kool Boom operator Rachel Pilcher Quentin Hole Prod, designer Sara Hourez Tony Raes Art director Louise Willis Michelle McGahey Asst, art director Casting Shauna Wolfson Ian Allen Props buyers Studio AFTRS Bill Booth Mixed at AFTRS James Cox Length 1hourStandby props David Joyce Art dept, assistant Gauge Betacam Laurie Dorn Construction manager Synopsis: A ction R eplay is a continuing Mike Carroll Carpenters playback o f a comedy o f dramas involving Steve Blatchford sexual incompatibilities and warfare in per­ Peter Collias Set painter sonal relationships. The action constantly Louise Wakefield Costume supervisor returns on itself and leads the six characters Caroline Suffield Standby wardrobe down different roads (over twenty-five Lesley Rouvray Makeup/hair super years), o f their own choosing, to other Debbie Lanser Makeup/hair artist possibilities.

Chris Murray Special effects Steve Courtley DOT AND THE KANGAROO TV SHOW Brian Bums Armourer Prod, company Yoram Gross Film Glen Boswell Stunt co-ordinator Studio Pty Ltd/ George Mannix Beyond International Group Safety report Producer Yoram GrossCast: Linda Cropper (Lucinda), Burt C oo­ Director Yoram Grossper (Gustav), Andrew Clarke (Lt. Andrews), Peter Baaske (CommanderSpier), Bill Kerr Assoc, producer Phil Gerlach (Scotty Quinn), Jonathan Biggins (Private Synopsis: D ot and the Kangaroo, two Murray), Rob Baxter (Sgt. Barry), Vincent loveable stars from the famous D ot a n d the Ball (Col. Foster), Alfred Bell (Minister), K an garoo feature films, romp through the Paul Smith (Private Reed). world and report about the planet we live Synopsis: The rivalry between two friends in. Fifty-two programs o f information, over Lucinda is further complicated when entertainment, live action and fun for kids they find themselves on different sides and adults alike. during World War I.

Key grip Art director Costume designer Make-up Publicity

UNIT PREPARATION FOR MOVEMENT

Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Producer Sonia Humphrey Director G eoff Barnes Scriptwriter G eoff Barnes Photography Kerry Brown Sound recordist Leo Sullivan Editor Sue Horsley Exec, producer Paul Humfress Prod, manager Ron Hannam Prod, accountant Elizabeth Clarke Prod, assistant Emma Gordon Marketing John Swindells Length 1 x 2 0 minutes Gauge 1" video Shooting stock Betacam Synopsis:To educate those with the re­ sponsibility o f the procedure necessary for ensuring the successful movement o f Army Units from point A to point B, in good order with all equipment in one piece.

THE WITNESS

Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Film Australia Pty Ltd Dist. company Sonia Humphrey Producer Scriptwriter Richard Ryan Marketing John Swindells Synopsis: A 2 0 minute film commissioned by the Military Police assigned to the Unit in interrogation techniques appropriate to tiie military circumstances in which they will be applied.

CHILD PROTECTION FILM

Exec, producer Rachel Dixon Gail Sullivan Scriptwriter Length 30 minutes Gauge Video Synopsis: T o promote a responsible and informed response to child maltreatment among professionals who work with children.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & THE LAW

Ann Darrouzet Tony Wright Fritz Hammersley Sue McCauley 18 minutes Length BV U Gauge Synopsis: This video is concerned with domestic violence, focusing on the legal options available to victims.

Exec, producer Scriptwriter

ELDERLY CITIZENS SAFETY

Exec, producer Rachel Dixon Anamaria Beligan Scriptwriter Entreg Pty. Ltd. Production Co. Colin Skyba Director Michael Vann Editor Chris Reed Photography Paul Hellard Sound Recordist 12 minutes Length Betacam Gauge Synopsis: T o assist senior citizens to cope with traffic as pedestrians, drivers and users o f public transport

NEW SOUTH WALES FILM AND TELEVISION OFFICE INVESTING IN PEOPLE

Production co.

W oolloomooloo Productions Producers Peter Cox Corrie Soeterboek Director Peter Cox Harold Lander Scriptwriter Prod, manager Mary-Joy Lu Robert Gibson Editors Stephen Dunn Lighting Grant Watson Cameraperson Robert Lish Sound Ruth Bracegirdle Art direction Frame Set & Match Post production 19 minutes Length Gauge Betacam to 1 " Synopsis: The Maritime Services Board o f NSW, working closely with the Labor Council o f NSW and various unions, has established an injury prevention and reha­ bilitation program to help injured staff return to normal work as soon as possible.

This video outlines the rehabilitation pro­ gram and shows it in action through ex­ amples ofinjuries which might occur in the workplace.

NATURE’S SENTINELS

Production company

Accolade Communications Producer Sandra Alexander Peter Smith Director Peter Smith Scriptwriter Prod, assistant Mark Logan Editors Deborah Reid Stuart Armstrong Lighting Camera Martin McGrath Frances Smith 1Graphics Arthur Dignam Narrator 2 2 minutes Length Gauge 16 mm Synopsis: The Lord Howe Island region is a World Heritage area, administered by the Lord Howe Island Board. The island is o f great value for nature conservation, education, research and passive recreation. This video shows the special nature o f the island as well as its geology and its history.

JACKAROO

Production co.

Exec, producer Producer Director

Crawford Productions Ian Bradley Bill Hughes Michael Carson Assoc, producer/ Prod, supervisor Vince Smits Jan Pontifex Casting Publicity Susan Elizabeth Wood Synopsis: A four-hour mini-series, Ja c k a roo is the story o f a wild Australian stockman, a part-Aboriginal jackaroo whose bitter family struggle for power and land erupts in the blistering heat o f the West Australian outback.

Script editors Prod. co.

South Australian Film Corp.

Jock Blair Exec, producer Producer Jan Marnell Gus Howard Supervising producer Deborah Cox Scriptwriter Story editor Peter Gawler 2x2 hours Length 16mm Gauge Synopsis: On a remote southern island the world has forgotten Katie looks only for acceptance and fulfilment as a doctor and a woman. Instead she finds an impossible love.

WILDLIFE - CORPORATE STRATEGY

Prod, company Producer Director Scriptwriters

Tandem Productions Marta Sengers Michael Ewers Ian Charles Gavin Gatenby John Dengate Narrator 17 minutes Length Betacam to 1 " Gauge Synopsis: Produced for the National Parks and Wildlife Service o f New South Wales to inform staff o f the aims and objectives o f the Service in the years 1989 to 1991 and provide a history o f the service which places it in a wider social context. , ,

RIVER MANAGEMENT

VEHICLE OCCUPANT SAFETY

Rachel Dixon Exec, producer David Taft Scriptwriter 1 0 -1 2 minutes Length BV U Gauge Synopsis: T o illustrate the ways in which vehicle occupants are at risk, whilst demon­ strating the means to increase vehicle occu­ pant safety with emphasis on restraint use.

ACTION REPLAY

cameraperson Camera operators

AFTRS William Fitzwater Sara Hourez Sara Hourez Fay Weldon Fay Weldon Trish Ryan Keiran Usher Angela Meloni Louise Willis; Denise Ingham Ken McSwaini Ken McSwaini Lighting Jonathon Ogilvie Paul Kolsky Dana Rayson Frank Vidinha

N E M A

Exec, producers Prod, supervisor Prod, coordinators Prod, manager Unit managers Prod, secretary Prod, accountant Prod, assistants

THE PRIVATE WAR OF LUCINDA SMITH

Prod. co.

Resolution Films Pty Limited Revcom Limited Dist. company Geoffrey Daniels Producers Ray Alehin Ray Alehin Director Scriptwriter Peter Yeldham Prod, manager Dennis Kiely Prod, co-ordinator Caroline Bonham Prod, secretary Monica Sims Prod, accountant Cynthia Kelly Asst, accountant Caitlyn Stevens Danielle Taeger Bus. Affairs Location manager Val Windon Phil Rich 1st asst, director John Meredith 2nd asst, director Jennifer Couston 3rd asst, director Continuity Larraine Quinnell Peter Hendry DOP Roger Lanser Camera operator Focus puller Robert Foster Phillip Murphy Clapper loader 2nd camera op.

Danny Ruhlmann Brett McDowell Key grip Asst, grip John Tate Peter O ’Brien Gaffer

TELEVISION

Production company Exec, producer Producer Director Scriptwriter Based on the play by Prod, designer Prod, supervisor Prod, coordinator Prod, manager 1st asst director Continuity Script assistant

AUSTRALIA’S MOST WANTED

Prod, company Producer Directors

KATIE'S RAINBOW

PRE-PRODUCTION

Rachel Dixon Exec, producer Bridget Goodwin Scriptwriter 2 0 -2 5 minutes Length 16 m m / 1" video Gauge Synopsis: T o raise the awareness o f Victorians to the uses o f our rivers and the benefits obtained from them. Also showing what action can be taken to halt degradation o f our rivers.

TELEVISION PRODUCTION

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Casting Researchers

Research assistant Music editor Gaffers Director’s assistant Art directors Asst art director Art dept coord.

Make-up

Hairdressers

Grundy Television Margaret Slarke Andrew Friedman David Morgan Erik Steen Igor Auzins Malcolm Tennent Peter Bernardos Julie Money Russell Webb Ginny Lowndes John Coulter John Hugginson Philip East Peter Pinne Stephen Jones Barbara Ring Lisa Harrison Vicki Popplewell Rob Short Sean Clayton Tony Forsyth Scott Hibbert Laura Hayes Adrian Pickersgill Peter Conroy Peter Fitzgerald Stewart Wright Adam Spence Kay Hennessy Linda Ray Shirley Ballard Sian Fatouras Sue Manger Ben Cheshire Allen Matheson Karen Jarrett Kay Bendle Alexandra Keller Gary Hardman Graham Mulder John Engler Kristin Voumard Tony Rayes Vivian Wilson Brian W. Alexander Lee John Bulgin Viv Mepham Belinda Burke Rochelle Ford Heather McLaren Victoria Thompson

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Gail Mayes Julie Barton Phillipa Hain Wardrobe asst Kate Boalch Props buyer John Carroll Standby props Johanna Bianco Steve Haig Cast: Bryan Marshall (Host) Synopsis: Program seeking public help to assist the police in solving current crimes.

Wardrobe

BEYOND TOMORROW

Prod. co.

Beyond Productions Pty Ltd Dist company Beyond International Group Inc. Producer Ian Cross Director Geoff Tanner Exec, producer Peter Abbott Assoc, producers Shayne Collier Peta Newbold Eileen Tuohy G eoff Fitzpatrick Brigitte Zinsinger Tim Warner Ian Bremner Correspondents Gary Cubberley Jean Hill Susan Hunt Randy Meier Richard Wiese Prod, manager Livia Hanich Prod, coordinator Vicki Agg Prod, secretary Clementine Griffin Prod, accountant Barbara Brown Post-prod, coord.

Amanda Hickey Post-prod, assistant Martin Williams Research coordinator Ruth Parnell Researchers Anna Cater Victor Marsh Frances Thompson Marsha Bennett Studio producer Chris Hawkshaw Studio floor manager Ian White Composer Twilight Productions Murray Burns Colin Bayley Computer graphicsMatthew Urmenyhazi Lighting camera Hans Heidrich Michael Oates Michael Ewers David Collins Barry West Mixers Mark Tanner Julian Ellingworth Offline editors Ray Neale Nick Glover Andrew Barnes Peter Brichta Calli Cerami Music performed by Twilight Prod’ns Murray Burns Colin Bayley Kevin Bayley Sound editor Cate Cahill Sound recordists Rowland McManis Bira Castro Graham Wyse Martin Harrington Robert Harle CMX editor Bruce Hancock Studio lighting director Richard Curtis Madonna Melrose Studio make-up Publicity Cheryl Conway Scott Penza Studio Pro-image Post-prod, video Videolab Standards conversion V T C Los Angeles Length 22x1 hour Gauge 1" Dolby A video Synopsis: Five American reporters travel the world to monitor the latest develop­ ments in science and technology.

BEYOND 2000

Prod. co.

Beyond Productions Pty Ltd Dist. co.

Beyond International Group Tim Clucas Producer Director Judith’ John-Story various Photography various Sound recordists

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Editors

Harley Oliver Robert Davidson Mark Verkerk Composer Twilight Productions Exec, producer Peter Abbott Prod, secretary Therese Hagerty Prod, accountant Ara Sahargian Camera operator various Boom operator various Make-up various Hairdresser Warren Hanrahan Props David King Props buyer David King Special effects Custom Video Set designer Freddie Lawrence Set construction Up-Set Pty Ltd Musical directors Murray Burns Colin Bayley Music performed by Twilight Productions Sound editor Julian Ellin gworth Mixer Julian Ellingworth Still photography various Tech adviser Charlie Busby Publicity Michael Shephard Georgina Harrop Studios ATN 7 Mixed at Beyond Facilities Length 1 hour Gauge 1 " video Cast: Ian Finlay, JeffW atson, Chris ArdillGuinness, Simon Nasht, Amanda Keller, Simon Reeve, Maxine Grey, Bryan Smith (presenters) Synopsis: Beyond2 0 0 0 is a one-hour weekly television program, exploring the progress o f science and technology. It features the latest scientific breakthroughs and ingen­ ious technical innovations which are shaping the world and preparing us for life beyond the year 2 0 00.

THE BIG GIG

Prod. co.

Producer Director Script Writers

ABC T V Entertainment Ted Robinson Ted Robinson Patrick Cook Wendy Harmer Matthew Quartermaine Matthew Parkinson Jean Kittson Glynn Nicholas Doug Anthony Allstars Prod, designer Des White Technical producer Rick Hunter Lighting director Peter Simondson Graphic designer Pam Abbey Asst, designer Nick Hilligoss Adjutant Patrick Cook Exec, producer Frank Ward Assoc, producer Neil Wilson Prod, manager Helen Wilhams Prod, secretary Frances Fitzgerald Producer’s assts Rosalind Doheny Danni Stout 1st asst director Mark Gibson 2nd asst directors Don Ryan Hugh Johnson Music producer Ian Battersby Studio cameras Roger McAlpine Soner Tuncay Greg Wilden Darrell Martin Andrew Schmidt Karen Johnson Ian Margocsy Simon Evans Camera assistants Chris Nund Joshua Franks Monica Kapeen Grant Austin John Bowstead Frank Petrowitz Chris Loveday Crane crew Nelson Heywood Lana Kearney Videotape Denny Potter Lighting console John Smith Andrew Topp Vision control Nick Gregoric Vision Mixers Joe Murray Goran Nilsson

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Gary Schultz Peter Bradley Ernie Everitt Neville Kelly Staging Gordon Dunn Andrew Mitchell Make-up Thelma Henson Wardrobe Concetta Raffa Joyce Imlach Set dresser Mark Reynolds Props Alf Camilleri Special effects Rod Clack Publicity Marion Page Music associate Gordon Gribbin “Big Gig” Theme Swinging Sidewalks Set construction ABC Workshop Highett Length One Hour Cast: Wendy Harmer (Co-host), Glynn Nicholas (Co-host), Jean Kittson, Doug Anthony Allstars, Empty Pockets (M at­ thew Parkinson, Matthew Quartermaine) Synopsis: As the tide suggests, it is one hour o f live entertainment, a mixture o f stand-up comedy, sketch comedy and music, with a special guest and a different band each week. A showcase for up and coming young comics who have experienced very limited television exposure.

CASSIDY

Prod. co.

Archive Films Pty Ltd/ABC Producer Bob Weis Line producer Tony Winley Director Carl Schultz Scriptwriter Joanna Murray-Smith Line director Tony Winley Based on the novel by Morris West Photography Ellery Ryan Sound recordist Nick Wood Editors Tony Kavanagh Lyn Solly Prod, designer Murray Picknett Composer Paul Grabowsky Exec, producer Sandra Levy Assoc, producer Wayne Barry Prod, manager Carol Chirlian Prod, co-ordinator Shuna Burdett Unit manager John Downie Location manager Maude Heath Prod, secretary Kerrie Mainwaring 1st asst director Scott Hartford-Davies 2nd asst director Tony Tilse 3rd asst director Russell Burton Continuity Rhonda McAvoy Producer’s asst.

Anne-Marie Gaskin Casting Liz Mullinar Extras casting Sue Walsh Casting consultant Liz Mullinar Camera operator Paul Costello Focus puller Andrew McClymont Clapper loader Greg Heap Key grip John Huntingford Asst grip Gary Burdett 2nd unit photog.

Geoff Mannis Gaffer Tim Jones Electrician Ken Pettigrew Boom operator Chris Nilsen Art director Graham Johnson Costume designer Jolanta Nejman Make-up Suzie Clemo Joan Petch Wardrobe coord.

Colleen Woulfe Wardrobe assts Phillipa Wootten Lorraine Verhayen Props Peter Fitzgerald Benn Hyde Anton Cannon Props buyers Paddy McDonald Susan Glavich Special effects Peter Leggett Set dressers Robert Hutchinson Tim Tulk Scenic artist Paul Brockebank Standby carpenter Ian Rhodes Set construction Laurie Dorn Neg matching Pamela Toose Standby set finisher Bill Kennedy Sound editor Lionel Bush Editing assistants Nicole La Macchia Fabian Snjuro Mixer Mark Walker

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Ian Neilson Asst mixer Chris Anderson Stunts coordinator Virginia Speers Still photography G eoff McDonell Amenities Warren Parsonson Runner Virginia Sargent Publicity Di White Unit publicist A & B Catering Catering ABC Frenchs Forest Studios A BC Gore Hill Mixed at Atlab Laboratory 4 x 5 0 mins Length 16mm Gauge Cast: Caroline Goodall, Bill Hunter, Philip Quast, Martin Shaw, Pauline Chan, Peter Carroll, Tracy Mann, Pat Bishop, Stephen Payne.

Synopsis: Cassidy is the Premier o f New South Wales who, on his deathbed, nomi­ nates his estranged daughter as executor o f his estate. A story o f corruption, murder and political intrigue against a background o f Sydney, Hong Kong and London.

COME IN SPINNER

Prod. co. Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Dist. co. Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Producer Jan Chapman Director Robert Marchand Scriptwriters Nick Enright Lissa Benyon Prod, designer Janet Patterson Exec, producer Sandra Levy Prod, consultant Steve Knapman Prod, coordinator Roberta O ’Leary Prod, manager John Winter Unit manager John Downie Location manager Paul Viney Location finder Peter Lawless Prod, secretary Lisa Hawkes Prod, accountant Wayne Henry 1st asst director Russell Whiteoak 2nd asst director Clint White 2nd unit asst dir.

Steven Stannard Continuity Suzanne Brown Extras casting Irene Gaskell Casting consultants Liz Mullinar Casting Consultants Pty Ltd Camera operator Paul Costello Focus puller Andrew McClymont Clapper/loader Matthew Temple Key grip Gary Burdett Asst grip Ben Hyde 2nd unit photog.

Paul Pandoulis Gaffer Tim Jones Electricians Pierre Drion Tim Harris Boom operator Dave Pearson Designer Catherine Silm Asst designers Karen Land Helen Baumann Designers asst Charlotte Watts Costume designer Jim Murray Make-up & Hair Christine Ehlert Christine Belfour David Jennings Wardrobe coord.

Miranda Brock Michelle Letter Wardrobe assts Lorraine Verheyen Nina Parsons Props Chris Ryman Anton Cannon Steve Pembroke Props buyers Cohn Bailey Ian Andrewartha Standby props Chris Ryman Anton Cannon Steve Pembroke Special effects John Neal Set decorator Sandra Carrington Kim Oswin Robert J. Simon Jason Holman Scenic artist Paul Brocklebank Neg matching Pam Toose Musical director Martin Armiger Sound editors Philippa Byers Lionel Bush Fabian Sanjuro Editing assistants Martin Connor John Champ Stunts coordinator Guy Norris

Still photography Martin Webby Runner Melissa Woodhams Catering Studio and location caterers Laboratory Atlab Lab. liaison Ian Russell Length 4 X 50 minutes Gauge 16mm Shooting stock Kodak Cast: Lisa Harrow (Claire Jeffries), Kerry Armstrong (D eb Forest), Rebecca Gibney (Guinea M alone), Gary Sweet (Jack For­ est), Gary Day (Nigel Carstairs), Rhys M cConnochie (Angus M cFarlane), Jay Hackett (Kim Scott).

Synopsis: Sydney 1 9 44: a garrison town in flux tested by the social upheavals o f war and the convergence o f American forces. In this world o f chance three remarkable women, Claire, Deb and Guinea are plying for the highest stakes: survival, security and love.

A COUNTRY PRACTICE

Prod, company Dist. company Producers

JN P Films Pty. Ltd. ATN 7 Denny Lawrence Bill Searle Directors Robert Meillon Leigh Spence Peter Maxwell Chris Martin-Jones Scriptwriters David Boutland Judith Colquhoun Steve Spears Based on idea by James Davern Photography Steve Brack Audio directors Howard Flicker Russel Thompson Editor Graeme Andrews Prod, designer Steve Muir Composer Mike Perjanik Exec, producer James Davern Prod, supervisor David Watts Prod, coordinator.

Barbara Lucas Prod, manager David Watts Unit manager Margi Cremin Location manager Peter Warman Prod, secretary Toni Higginbotham Prod, accountant.

Lucy Vorst 1st asst directors Ian Simmons Richard McGrath Mark Moroney Andrew Turner 2nd asst directors Peter Dudkin Karen Willing Directors’ assts Stephanie Richards Karen Mansfield Script assistant Charlotte Alexander Justine Slater Production assts Pip Nackard Shauna Crowley Casting Glen Steer Camera operators Andrew Short Studio assistants Peter Westley John de Ruvo David Masala Boom operators Mark Mitchell Murray Hogan Steve Muir Art director Rachael Dal Santo Make-up Kit M oore Joanne Stevens Veyatie Hirst Therese Rendle Wardrobe Allan Burns Wardrobe assts Amanda Bloomfield Meg Hunt Props buyer John Paul (Lon) Lucini Dirk Van den Driesen Standby props Jane Parker Malcolm Gregory Julia Wyszkowski Publicity Margie Cremin U nit publicist Taste Buddies Catering Studios ATN Seven Studio “B ” 1 " video Shooting stock 2 x 1 hour Length Cast: Lorrae Desmond, Brian Wenzel, Joan Sydney, Shane Porteous, Joyce Jacobs, Syd Heylen, Gordon Piper, Kate Raison, Michael Muntz, Geòrgie Parker, M att Day, Geòrgie Fisher.

Synopsis: Set in the small rural community o f “Wandin Valley” , the series deals with medical and social issues, through the major characters and the local Bush Nursing Hospital. It also dramatizes the lives o f the local vet and Park Ranger.

Paul Moloney Arch Nicholson Scriptwriters Luis Bayonas Peter Kinloch Jan'Sardi Terry Stapleton Peter Allen Photography Ron Hagen “Butch” Sanko Philippe Decrausaz Sound recordists John McKerrow Editors Bill Murphy Scott McLennan Dee Liebenberg Director o f production Vince Smits Prod, control Je ff Shenker Exec, producer Ian Bradley Assoc, producer Ray Hennessy Post-prod, supervisor Sue Washington Prod, co-ordinator Gina Black Unit managers Fran Lugt John Greene Location manager Greg Ellis Prod, secretary Wendy Walker Prod, accountant Kevin Plummer 1st asst directors Chris Page Kath Hayden Rob Kewley 2nd asst directors.

Arnie Custo Christian Robinson Continuity Carmel Torcasio Anne Went Story editor Andrew Kennedy Script editors Peter Hepworth Matthew Lovering Casting Jan Pontifex Casting assistants Louise Mitchell Focus pullers Craig Barden Gary Bottomley Clapper/loaders Ian Phillips Brett Matthews Key grips Craig Dusting John Cummings Asst grips Colin McLean Wayne Mitchell Gaffers Bill Jones Gary Plunkett Boom operators Craig Walmsley Craig Beggs Andrew Reese Art director Asst art director Leigh Eichler Costume designer Clare Griffin Make-up Brad Smith Fiona Rees-Jones Hairdressers Lisa Jones Christine Miller Wardrobe supervisor Keely Ellis Wardrobe standby Sue Miles Denise Braddon Props buyer Keely Ellis Asst props buyer Fiona Owen Standby props Paul Kiely Richard Williamson Special effects Visual Effects Set dressers Brad King Souli Livaditis Scott Adcock Simon Price-McCutcheon Richie Dehne Set construction Gordon White Asst editor Anne Garter Music editor John Clifford-White Sound editors Colin Swan Michael Garden Editing assistants George Parton Justin Hughes Mixers David Harrison Andrew Jobson Stunts coordinator Chris Anderson Stunts New Generation Stunts Drivers Paul Rogan Llewelyn Higgins Best boy Jim Perkins Battista Remati Runner Travis Walker U nit publicist Susan Elizabeth Wood Catering Location One Catering Studios Crawford Productions/GTV 9 Mixed at Crawford Productions Laboratory Cinevex Length 2 6 x 4 7 mins Gauge 16mm

E STREET

Prod. co.

Dist. co.

Producer Directors

Westside Television Prodns Westside Television Prodns Denis Phelan Julian Pringle Peter Andrikides Graham Rouse Viktors Ritelis John Bannas Scriptwriters David Phillips Graeme Koetsveld Sally Webb Tom Hegarty Carol Williams David Allen Mary Dagmar Davies Nicholas Langton John Upton Linden Wilkinson Senior script editor Tim Pye Script editors Caroline Stanton Hugh Stuckey Louise Crane Researcher Carol Long Researcher’s asst Val Graham Based on idea by Forrest Redlich Audio directors Graem Hicks Dominic Brine Editor Michael Hagan Prod, designer Martin McAdoo Composer Ashley Irwin Exec, producer Forrest Redlich Assoc, producer Brendan Mooney Prod, manager Dale Archer Prod, coordinator Rachel Quirk Prod, secretary Debbie Johnson Prod, accountant Bjorn Magus Prod, assistant Vikki Knott 1st ass floor mgrs Andrew Merrifield Stephen Henley Dorian Newstead 2nd ass floor mgrs Mike Ferguson Aldo King 3rd directors assts Tracey Jones Lynn Danzey Gillian Styne Producer’s asst Gretchen Cook Casting Audine Leith Lighting directors Tom Carey Bob Miller Camera operator Barry Armstrong Camera assistant Rob Kerr Art dept co-ord.

Elle Peterson Costume designers Jane Johnston Wardrobe consultant Miv Brewer Make-up/hair Liz Harper Standby wardrobe Annie Peaccok Lizzie Gardiner Mark Riordan Lyn London Wardrobe buyer Wardrobe Michele Leonard Set dressers Phillip Miller Rob Holland Lisa Atkinson Props Bliss Swift Steve Moran (O B ) Standby props Marcus Erasmus Paul Jones Musical director Ashley Irwin Deri Hadler Sound editor Runner Alison Pickup Art dept runner Andrew Playford Length 52x1 hour Cast: Penny Cook, Brooke Andersen, Cecily Poison, Les Dayman, Katrina Sedgwick, Vic Rooney, Tony Martin, Warren Jones, Paul Kelman, Alussa-Jane Cook.

Synopsis: A drama focusing on an inner city suburb and its residents .

THE FLYING DOCTORS - SERIES V Prod. co. Crawford Productions Pty. Ltd. Producer Stanley Walsh Directors Colin Budds, Gary Conway

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Kodak 7 2 9 1 , 7 2 9 2 Shooting stock Cast: Andrew McFarlane (Dr. Tom Cal­ laghan), Robert Grubb (Dr. G eoff Standish), Liz Burch (Dr. Chris Randall), Lenore Smith (Sister Kate Wellings), Peter O ’Brien (Sam Patterson), Rebecca Gibney (Emma Patterson), Brett Climo (Dr. David Ratcliffe), Alex Papps (Nick Cardali), Maurie Fields (Vic Buckley), Val Jellay (Nancy Buckley), George Kapiniaris (D .J . ).

Synopsis: A Royal Flying D octor Service is located in the outback town o f Coopers Crossing. The four doctors, Geoff Standish, Chris Randall, David Ratcliffe and Tom Callaghan contend not only with medical challenges but also with the harsh physical environment.

G.P.

Prod. comp.

Roadshow Coote & Carroll/ABC Matt Carroll Exec, producers Sandra Levy Supervising producer Sue Masters Directors Various Various Scriptwriters Story editor Greg Millin Kris Wyld Script co-ordinator Script editor Tim Pye Story department Matt Ford Kristen Dunphy Dr Stephen Faux Medical consultants Dr David Whitten Snr prod, designer Marcus North Leigh Tierney Designers Colin Rudder Freya Hadley Kim Vecera Assoc, producers Judy Murphy Costume designer Michelle Milgate Composer Simon Walker Asst prod, mgr Françoise Fombertaux Location manager Kate Ingham Prod, manager Annette Gover Prod, secretary Susan Mansfield 1st asst directors Gary Stephens David Young Alan Parsons Mark Stanforth Script assistant Michael Miller Casting consultants Maura Fay & Associates Extras casting Irene Gaskell Casting coordinator Hatice Kanli Props buyers Rory Cronin Ian Andrewartha Unit publicist Virginia Sargent Studios ABC Mixed at ABC Length 1 hr weekly Gauge 1" video Cast: Michael Craig (William), John McTernan (R obert), Sarah Chadwick (Cathy), Michael O ’Neill (Steve), Denise Roberts (Julie), Brian Rooney (Michael).

Synopsis: Drama series detailing the cornings and goings o f an inner city medical practice.

HAYDAZE

Prod, company Dist. company Producers Directors Scriptwriters

Based on idea Photography Sound recordist Editors Prod, coordinator Prod, manager Unit manager Location manager Prod, secretary Prod, accountant Prod, assistant

BF Productions Ltd Barron Films Ltd Paul D. Barron Roz Berrystone David Rapsey Paul Moloney David Rapsey John Rapsey Glenda Hambly

by David Rapsey John Rapsey Ian Pugsley David Glasser G eoff Hall Tan Thien Thai Ros Scotts Deb Copland Simon Hawkins Liz Kirkham Sharryn Scott Ann McFarlane Lyn Robertson

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1st asst directors

Graham Murray Colin South Producer’s asst.

Jane Elizabeth Ogden Australian characters. The stories are culled Gillian Harris John Tatoulis Casting Liz Mullinar Director from the best that Australian production 2nd asst director Michael Mercurio Deborah Parsons Art director Steve Muir Scriptwriter teams have been able to capture.

Continuity Chris O ’Connell-Bryant John Wilkinson Sound recordist Make-up Veyatie Hurst Michael Collins Jan Piantoni Editor Wardrobe Helen Lloyd NEIGHBOURS Casting John Rapsey Tassos Ioannides Wardrobe assistant Michelle Jaulin Composer Prod, company Grundy Television Camera operator IanPugsley Tassos Ioannides Assoc, producer Props Gordon Brown Producer MarkCallan Focus puller Marc Edgcombe Yvonne Collins Standby props David King Prod, manager Directors Various Clapper loader Steve Scott Tania Peternostro Unit manager Length 22x 30 minutes Scriptwriters Various Key grip John Goldney Gauge 1" video Based on idea by Reg Watson Prod, secretary Frances Shepherdson Asst grip MichaelVivian Cast: Robert Hughes (Martin Kelly), Julie Prod, assistant Georgia Hewson Sound recordists Peter Say Gaffer Phil Golombick McGregor (Betty Wilson), Simon Bucha­ 1st asst director Sonya Pemberton Grant Vogler Boom operator Jenny Sutcliffe nan (Debbie Kelly), Sarah Monahan (Jenny Bruce Findlay Camera operator Harry Panagiotis Art director SueVivian Kelly), Christopher Truswell (Nudge), Freddo Dirk Prod, designer SteveKellerKey grip Art department asst AliciaWalshChristopher Mayer (Simon Kelly).

Composer (theme) Tony Hatch Boom operator Greg Nelson Costume designer NoelHowell Synopsis: Situation comedy about a wid­ Exec, producer Don Battye Art director Phil Chambers Make-up Karen Sims owed father trying to raise his children with Exec in charge o f prod.

Peter Pinne Wardrobe Lilly Chorny Marilyn Smits the help o f the family’s crazy cousin.

Prod, co-ordinator Reita Wilson Still photography Billy Chapman Wardrobe standby Delia Spicer Prod, manager StewartWright Publicity Paul Sime Props buyer Lawrence Wardman HOME AND AWAY Location manager Bob Villinger Tutor Judy Malmgren Standby props PeterMoyes Prod, company ATN Channel 7 Asst directors Howard Neil Length 6 x 30 minutes Set decorator KimSexton Dist. company ATN Channel 7 Don Linke Gauge SP Betacam Carpenter Tony von Druska Producer Andrew Howie Mark Farr Cast: Rebekah Elmaloglou (Tik), Zenton Set construction Peter Carman/Dakota Directors various Chorny (Zeonton), Amelia Frid (Moly), Casting Jan Russ Asst editors Julie GrantScriptwriters various Garry Perazzo (Spike), George Lekkas Michelle Luvisetto Cindy Clarkson Based on idea by AlanBateman Camera operators Joe Battaglia (Johnny), Richard Aspel (Johnny), Tassos Neg. matching Warwick Driscoll Editor Terry Combs Ioannides (Philippas).

Je ff Biggs Sound editor GlennMartin Andrew Currie Prod, designer John Carroll Synopsis: A dventures on Kythera IH s a sixEditing assistant Cindy Clarkson Composer MikePerjanik Andrew Berry part series which follows the antics and Mixer Dave Upson Exec, producer Des Monaghan Paul Barnett adventures o f five children who, through Stunts coordinator Rob Greenough Prod, co-ordinator LyndaBurke Mark Collins unusual circumstances, meet up again on Still photography SkipWatkins Prod, manager PeterCorny Mark Allen the Greek island o f Kythera. They embark Dialogue coach Annie Murtagh-Monks Prod, secretary EdwinaSearle Peter Hind on a variety o f escapades that bring them Wrangler Rob Greenough Prod, accountant Therese Tran Script supervisor Ray Kolle into contact with new friends, unusual John McGuckin Prod, assistant Tony Broderick Story editor WayneDoylecustoms and exciting places.

Best boys David Cross 1st asst directors Shane Gow Script editor LoisBooton Joseph Mercurio Grant Brown Storyliners Cheredith Mok THE DRUM MACHINE Phil Mulligan Cathie Roden Jason Daniel Prod, company Independent Image Runner Stuart Polkinghorne 2nd asst directors Peter Pearce Directors’ assts LindaWalker Productions/SBS T V Runner (art dept) Helen Finch Alex Tinley Jane Daniels Producer Juan Jarami Catering Big Belly Bus Continuity FrancesSwan Christine Lipari Director Juan Jarami Studios Soundstage Australia Marcus Georgiades Floor managers RayLindsay Scriptwriters Juan Jarami Mixed at Tracks Liz Perry Mark Hancock Michael Rayan Laboratory Movielab Casting coordinator Inese Vogler Alan Williamson Photography Rey Carlson Lab. liaison Kelvin Crumplin Casting consultants Maura Fay Tech, directors Howard Simmons Sound recordist KevinKearne Tutor/chaperone Dimity Malloch and Assoc.

Peter Marino Editor MarkWynya Budget S2.3 million Costume designer LucindaWhite Barry Shaw Prod, designer Rebecca Cohen Gauge 16mm Make-up Mary Georgiou Peter Coe Composers Saoco Shooting stock Kodak Eastmancolor David Jennings Lighting supers Stuart de Young Exec, producer BarbaraMariot 7 2 9 1 ,7 2 9 1 Hairdressers GeorginaBush Rod Harbour Prod, manager John Pachito Length 12 x 30 mins Paul Williams Make-up William Mcllvaney Continuity Louise Willis Cast: Daren Kelly (Mark Carmichael), Wardrobe Lindy Wylie Dallas Stephens Key grip PeterLedgw Denise Vose (Rebecca Simmons), Brayden Wardrobe assts Rita Crouch Hairdressers Michael Longhitano 2nd unit camera MarkPidcoc West (Sean Carmichael), Shannon Arm­ Francesca Bath Paul Pattison Gaffer Graham Dickso strong (Linda Carmichael), Bartholomew Props runners Jim FayleWardrobe MandySedewie Boom operator Andrew Dal Bosco John (John Carmichael), Annie MurtaghBen Heaps Julianne Jonas Make-up Caroline Zoe Viesnik Monks (Annie Carmichael), Robert van Props buyers.

Philip Cumming Gursel Ali Neg matching Marylin Dealne Mackelenberg (Pern' Simmons), Vivienne Kate Saunders Props buyer Mark Grivas (Negative Cutting Service) Garrett (Jill Simmons), Bob Faggetter (Blair Set decorator Glenn Turner Standby props Sue Birjak Music performed by Saoco Sweeney), Owen Shekels (Kevin Bickle).

Set construction GregMurphy Rob Tresize Still photography Patricia Jaramillo Synopsis: The Carmichaels, an old West­ Cast: Roger Oakley (Tom ), Vanessa Music editor WarrenPearson Catering Graciela Dousdebes ern Australian family proud o f their pio­ Downing (Pippa), Sharyn Hodgson (Carly), Offline editing The Editing Machine Mixed at SBS T V neering forebears, clash with the ‘back to Adam Willits (Steven), Kate Ritchie (Sally), Vision switching Jenny Williams Laboratory The Video Film basics’ city-bred (and international back­ Nicolle Dickson (Bobby), Fiona Spence Post-production ATV 10 Melbourne Company ground) family who buy the neighbouring (Celia), Norman Coburn (Fisher), Craig Runner Tim Disney Lab. liaison Mark Farrar farm. The results are both funny and dra­ Thomson (Martin), Judy Nunn (Ailsa), Tutor Sandra Burritt Budget $ 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 matic as the various personalities sort out Ray Meagher (Alf), Peter Vroom (Lance).

Catering.

Helen Louwers Length 58 minute their priorities, relationships and respective Synopsis: A warm and amusing family Post-production A TV -10 Melbourne Gauge Super 16 interests. A humorous, contemporary drama set in the fictional seaside town o f Cast: Anne Charleston (Madge Bishop), Shooting stock Fuji 8521 Summer Bay. ‘kidadult’ adventure series.

Alan Dale (Jim Robinson), Shauna O ’Grady Cast: Doug Scroope (advertising execu­ (Beverly Robinson), Anne Haddy (Helen tive), Gustavo Cereijo (himself), Julio HEY DAD ...!

JACK THOMPSON’S AUSTRALIA Daniels), Stefan Dennis (Paul Robinson), Cereijo (himself), Leo Velasquez (him­ Prod. co.

Gan,' Reilly Productions Prod, company Great Southland Fiona Corke (Gail Robinson), Des Clarke self), Sergio Mulet (himself), Nestor RoDiost. company ATN Productions (Paul Keane), Guy Pearce (Mark Young), sano (himself), Luciano Gaitan (himself), Producer Gary Reilly Dist. company Beyond International Annie Jones (Jane Harris), Ian Smith Mike Ryan (himself), Peter Guarino (him­ Director Sally Brady Group (Harold Smith), Kristian Schmid (Todd self), John Fielding (himself).

Scriptwriters GaryReillyProducers Matthew Flanagan Landers), Sally Jensen (Katie Landers).

Synopsis: A salsa band faces the dilemma John Flanagan John Luscombe Synopsis: Love ‘em or hate ‘em, but every­ o f compromising their music for the sake o f Kym Goldsworthy Director Matthew Flanagan one’s got ‘em: neighbours. Ramsay fame.

Ian Rochford Scriptwriters Julie Miller Street...the stage for an exciting drama Ken Matthews Bill Edmonds serial...drawing back the curtain to reveal FLAIR Neil Stewart Ray Sinclair the intrigue and passions o f Australian Prod, company Flair Television Joan Flanagan Narrator Jack Thompson families...and their neighbours.

Production Pty Ltd From the idea by Gary'ReillyLength 26 x 1 hour Producer Paul Davies John Flanagan Gauge 16mm Director Henri Safran Sound recordist Jim Astley Synopsis: Ja c k Thompson Down Under is POST PRODUCTION Scriptwriter Alan Hopgood Editors GarryBurnsabout the Australia and Australians Jack Based on idea by Paul Davies Anne Flett loves best: those who challenge the coun­ ADVENTURES ON KYTHERA II Gaye Hopgood Prod, designer Ken Goodman try, who dare to achieve, who seek adven­ Prod, company Media World Pty Ltd Photography Nino G. Martinetti ture. Jack Thompson hosts and narrates Composer Mike Perjanik Dist. conpany Richard Price Sound recordist John Wilkinson Exec, producer Gary'Reillythis 26-part series which covers every in­ Television Associates Editor Richard Hindley conceivable environment and a host o f Floor manager Jamie Stevens Producers John Tatoulis Prod, designer David Copping

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Composer Frank Strangio Assoc, producer Lynne Davies Prod, coordinator Christine Hart Prod, manager Basil Appleby Unit manager Michael Batchelor Unit manager asst.

Steve Brett Location manager Paul Healey Prod, secretary Marina Mansfield Prod, accountant Jim Hajicosta Accounts assistant Mary Makris 1st asst director David Clarke 2nd asst director Trish Carney 3rd asst director Caroline Grose Continuity Joanne McLennan Casting director Lee Lamer Camera operator Nino G. Martinetti 2nd unit camera Brendan Lavelle 2nd unit focus puller David Lindsey 3rd electrics Guy Hancock Safety supervisor Archie Roberts Construction mgr John Parker Asst construction mgr Ian Doig Construction assts Will Davidson Steven Mamo Action vehicle coord Rob M cLeod Armourer Michael Warwick Focus puller Warwick Field Clapper loader Kathy Chambers Key grip Ken Connor Asst grip Alistair Reilly Gaffer Michael Mato Boom operator Greg Nelson Art director Carole Harvey Costume designer Anna Senior Make-up super. Vivienne McGillicuddy Make-up assistant Fiona Graham Hairdresser Stephen Mahoney Wardrobe buyer/ supervisor FrankieHogen Wardrobe assts ChristineDaives Anna Wade Standby wardrobe PaulaEkerick Props buyer DarylMills Standby props ChrisJames Set dresser Trisha Keating Special effects BrianPearce Set decorator Trisha Keating Carpenters AndrewCharker Jim Gannon Stunts coordinator Glen Ruehland Still photography David B. Simmonds Wrangler WallyDalton Best boy NickPayne Runner MarcusHunt Unit publicist Tony Johnston Catering David & Cassie Vaile Cast: Heather Thomas, Andrew Clarke, James Healey, Rowena Wallace, Imogen Annesley, Charles Tingwell, David Reyne.

Synopsis: The return o f beautiful fashion designer Tessa Clarke to her native Austra­ lia is the catalyst for a cocktail o f love, jealousy and deceit. A tragic fire, a self­ destructive younger sister and two lovers one a powerful yet mysterious tycoon, the other a handsome but flawed go-getter cause a cauldron o f emotions to erupt into murder.

WISHES

TO

AUSTRALIAN

THANK

FILM

THE

COMMISSION

AND FILM FOR

VICTORIA

THEIR AND

CONTINUING SUPPORT

KABOODLE 2

Prod. co.

ACTF Productions Ltd. Exec, producer Patricia Edgar Supervising producer Ewan Burnett Series producer Susie Campbell Animators: Peter Viska Paul Williams Maggie Geddes Neil Robinson Richard Chataway Michael Cusack Budget $ 6 5 8 ,0 0 0 Length 6 x 2 4 minutes Gauge 1 inch video Synopsis: Six more half-hours o f television drama for the under-ten age group, this time all animated and regular characters.

FOR INCLUSION IN THE PRODUCTION SURVEY CONTACT CINEMA PAPERS ON

(03) 429 5511

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U IP, 0(sexual allusions) O peration P ink Squad I I : Hoi Wong, Hong Kong, 91 mins, Yu Enterprises, V(fm-g) 0(h o rro r, sexual allusions) Paris By N ight: P. Cassavetti, UK, 101 mins, CEL, L(i-m -j) S(i-m -j) P et Sematary: R. Rubinstein, USA, 102 mins, U IP, V(i-m -g) O(horror) R ainbow , The: K. Russell, UK, 110 mins, Vestron Australia, S(i-m -j) V(i-m -j) Say Anything...: P. Platt, USA, 100 mins, Fox Columbia-Tri Star, L(i-m -g) 0(ad ult concepts) Scandal: S. Woolley, UK, 114 mins, CEL, S(i-m -j) 0 (d ru g use) T a ll Guy, T he: P. Webster, UK, 92 mins, Newvision, S(i-m-g) L(i-m-g) W h o’s H arry Crum b?: A. Milchan, USA/ Canada, 89 mins, Fox Columbia-Tri Star, L(i-m -g) 0(sexual allusions)

1989

P G (P A R E N T A L G U ID A N C E ) B achelor’s Swan Song, T h e (main tide not shown in English): Bo Ho Films/ Mobile Film Productions, Hong Kong, 95 mins, Chinatown Cinema, 0(ad ult con­ cepts) Brenda Starr: M. Hyman, USA, 93 mins, Village Roadshow, L (i-l-j) V (i-l-j) Earth G irls are Easy: T. Garnett, USA, 100 mins, Hoyts, L (i-l-g ) 0(sexual allu­ sions) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: R. Watts, USA, 125 mins, U IP, V (f-l-j) LaC asad eB em ard aA lba: Paraiso/Tvesa, Spain, 100 mins, Hoyts, 0(ad u lt concepts) Lawrence o f Arabia: S. Spiegel, UK, 215 min, Fox Columbia-Tri Star,V (i-l-j) M innam urra (aka O utback): J. Sexton, Australia, 92 mins, John Sexton Produc­ tions, V (i-l-j) She’s O u t o f C ontrol: S. Deutsch, USA, 95 mins, Hoyts, OJsexual allusions, adult concepts) Sum m er Vacation -1 9 9 9 : Yutaka Okada/ Eiji Kishi, Japan, 88 mins, Ronin, OJadolescent concepts) Y oung Toscanini: F. Lucisana/T. Ammar, Italy/France, 106 mins, Filmpac, 0(ad ult concepts)

R (R E S T R IC T E D E X H IB IT IO N ) Cyborg: M. Golan/Y. Globus, USA, 85 mins, Hoyts, V(f-m-g) D om ino: G. Di Clemente, Italy, 100 mins, Village Roadshow, S(i-m-g) Gunm en: Isui Hark, Hong Kong, 87 mins, Chinatown Cinema, V(f-m -g) In the Line o f D uty I I I : S. Shin, Hong Kong, 83 mins, Chinatown Cinema, V(fm-g) S(i-l-g) M anifesto: M. Golan/Y. Globus, USA/ Yugoslavia, 97 mins, Hoyts, S(i-l-g) V(i-mg) 0(ad ult concepts)

M (M A T U R E A U D IE N C E S ) 8 4 C M opic: M. Nolin, USA, 95 mins.

Palace, L(f-m -j) V(i-m -j) Blind Fury: D. Grodnick/T. Matheson, USA, 89 mins, Fox Columbia-Tri Star, L(im-g) V(f-m-g) Faces: M. McEndree, USA, 126 mins, AFI (Sydney), 0(ad ult concepts) Gleam ing the Cube: L. Turman/D. Fos­ ter, USA, 104 mins, Filmpac, V(i-m -j) L(im-g) OJimitable stunts) Hanussen (edited version): A. Brauner, Austria/Hungary, 113 mins. Fox Colum­ bia-Tri Star, V(i-m -j) 0(ad ult concepts) King o f Stanley M arket (main title not shown in English): J. Sham, Hong Kong, 96 mins, Chinatown Cinema, V(i-m-g) L(i-m-g) Leviathan: L. De Laurendis/A. De Laurentiis, USA, 95 mins, Fox Columbia-Tri Star, O(horror) L(i-m -g) V(i-m-g) Lover Boy: D. Scharf, Australia, 58 mins, AFI (Melbourne), L(i-m -j) S(i-m -j) V(im -j) 0(ad u lt concepts) M ilw r Bychan (B oy Soldier): K. Francis/ H. Pierce, UK, 99 mins, National Library o f Australia, V(i-m -j) L(i-m -j) M y New Car: R. Lawrence, USA, 78 mins,

F IL M S R E F U S E D R E G IS T R A T IO N Christy Canyon Starring in a G ourm et Quickie: Gourmet Video Collection, USA, 29 mins, G.R. Hill, S(f-h-g) S P E C IA L C O N D IT IO N S • not to be exhibited in any State in contra­ vention o f that State’s law relating to the exhibition o f films • exhibited only at the following venues between 9 May 1989 and 18 May 1989 (both dates inclusive) and not otherwise: -M edia Department, I^aTrobe University, Melbourne -Visual Arts Department, Monash Univer­ sity, Melbourne - Media Department, Victoria College, Rusden Campus, Melbourne - Media Department, Flinders University', Adelaide • exported within the six-week period commencing on 18 Mav 1989.

Nachsatz: B. BustorfF, West Germany, 55 mins, Goethe-Institut Love Stinks: Birgit/W. Hein, West Ger­ many, 82 mins, Goethe-Institut Norm alsatz: H. Emigholz, West Germany', 105 mins, Goethe-Institut Ulisses: W. Nekes,West Germany, 94 mins, Goethe-Institut

JUNE

1989

G (G E N E R A L E X H IB IT IO N ) Green T ea and Cherry Ripe: K. Foley, S. Hoaas, Australia, 55 mins, Ronin P G (P A R E N T A L G U ID A N C E ) Against the Innocent: R. Jones, Australia, 77 mins, AFI (Melbourne), OJadult con­ cepts) Batm an: J. Peters/P. Guber, USA/UK, 125 mins, Village Roadshow, V(f-l-j) Beloved Son o f G od , T h e (main tide not shown in English): Movie Impact, Hong Kong, 92 mins, Chinatown Cinema, V(im -j) 0(ad ult concepts) Cannonball Fever: M. Shostak, USA, 94 mins, Village Roadshow, OJanti-social behaviour, sexual allusions) Coverup Behind the Iran C on tra Affair: B. Trent/G. Mayer/D. Kasper, USA, 74 mins, Ronin, V(i-m -j) Dead Poets Society: S. Haft/P. W itt/T. Thomas, USA, 128 mins, Village Road­ show, V(i-m -j) 0(adolescent concepts) G olden Eighties: M. Marignac, France, 96 mins, Urban Eye Releasing, L(i-m-g) 0(sexual allusions) Skyggen o f Em m a (Em m a’s Shadow): T. Magnusson, Denmark, 95 mins, Filmpac, 0(ad ult concepts) Star T rek V T h e Final Frontier: H. Bennett, USA, 106 mins, U IP, V (i-l-j) OJadult concepts) T roop Beverly H ills: A. Fries, USA, 102 mins, Hoyts, L(i-l-g) 0(ad ult concepts) M (M A T U R E A U D IE N C E S ) Beethoven’s Nephew': M. Coustet, West Germany'/France, 103 mins, Village Road­ show', S(i-m -g)V(i-m -g) 0 ( adult concepts) Blonde Fury, T h e (main tide not shown in English): Bo H o Films, Hong Kong, 85 mins, Chinatow n Cinema, V(f-m -g) Closer and Closer Apart: R. Colosimo, Australia, 86 mins, Rosa Colosimo, 0(adult concepts) S(i-m-j) Com m union: W. Strieber/P. Mora/D. Allingham, USA, 108 mins, Vestron, L(im-g)

E x it Sunset Boulevard: B. Cleve, West Germany, 94 mins, Goethe-Institut Hysteri-AJlergie und Fieber m it einem

Films examined in terms o f the Customs (Cinematograph Films) Regulations as States’ film censorship legislation are listed below.

An explanatory key to reasons for classifying n on -”G " films appears hereunder: Frequency

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Infrequent

Frequent

Low

Medium

High

Jusdfied

Gratuitous

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C I N E M A P A P E R S #7 6 ON S A L E 1 NI 0 V E M B E R %

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7 5

D isorganized Crim e: L. Bigelow, USA, 101 mins, Village Roadshow, L(i-m -g) OJadult concepts) D ry W hite Season, A: P. Weinstein, USA, 106 mins, U IP, V (f-m -j) L(i-m -j) Faithfully Yours (main tide not shown in English): Hong Kong, 91 mins, China­ town Cinema, OJadult concepts) F irst T im e is the L ast T im e, T h e (main title not shown in English): Seven M M Film Production, Hong Kong, 90 mins, Yu Enterprises, V(f-m -g) G ettin g I t R igh t: J. Krane/R. Kleiser, U K, 101 mins, Village Roadshow, L(i-m -j) OJadult concepts) G irlfriend From H ell: A. Lensi/D. Peter­ son, USA, 92 mins, Village Roadshow, V (f-m -g) L(i-m -g) OJadult concepts hor­ ror) H igh H opes: V. Glynn/S. ChanningWilliams, UK, 112 mins, Newvision, L(im -j) OJdrug use) H o ld M y H and, I ’m Dying: M. Cassidy, UK, 109 mins, Filmpac, L(i-m -g) V(i-m -j) S(i-m-g) Jigsaw: R. Colosimo, Australia, 86 mins, Rosa Colosimo, V (i-m -j) L(i-m -g) K -9: L. Gordon/C. Gordon, USA, 101 mins, U IP , V(i-m -g) 0(ad u lt concepts) K itchen T o to , The: A. Skinner, U K , 92 mins, Hoy'ts, V (i-m -j) S(i-m -j) La Lectrice: M. Deville/R. Deville, France, 98 mins, Newvision, S(i-m -j) L(i-m -j) Licence to Kill: A. Broccoli/M. Wilson, UK, 132 mins, U IP , V(f-m -g) M ajor League: C. Chesser/I. Smith, USA, 106 mins, Fox Columbia-Tri Star, L(f-m g) M iracle M ile: J. Daly'/D. Gibson, USA, 87 mins, Hoy'ts, V(i-m -g) L(f-m -g) Pathfinder: J. Jacobsen, Norway, 86 mins, Fox Columbia-Tri Star, V(i-m -j) R om antic G h ost Story: Hong Kong Man Wah Films Company, Hong Kong, 88 mins, Yu Enterprises, O(horror) S(i-m-g) R om ero: E . Kieser, U SA / M exico, 102 mins, Filmpac, V(i-m -j) See N o Evil, H ear N o Evil: M. Worth, USA, 101 mins, Fox Columbia-Tri Star, L(f-m -g) V(i-m -g) Siege o f Firebase G loria,The: H. Grigsby/ R. Confesor, USA/Australia, 100 mins, Hoyts, V (f-m -j) L(f-m -g) Stin g In th e T ale, A: R. Colosimo/R. M cLean, Australia, 9 3 mins, Rosa Colosimo, S(i-m -j) R (R E S T R IC T E D E X H IB IT IO N ) Bu rn ing A m bition: Yu Su/F. Chan, hong Kong, 9 7 mins,Yu Enterprises, V (f-m -g) D o T h e R ig h t T hin g: S. Lee, USA, 119 mins, U IP, L(f-m -g) D r Jekyll 8c M r Hyde: E. Simons/H. Towers, UK/Hungary, 8 7 mins, Village Roadshow', S(i-m -g) V(i-m -g) K ick Boxer: M. Di Salle, USA, 102 mins, Palace, V(f-m -g) Roadhouse: J. Silver, USA, 113 mins, U IP, V(f-m -g) Roadhouse (Edited Version): J. Silver, USA, 112 mins, U IP, V(f-m -g) W ired: E. Feldman/C. Meeker, USA, 109 mins, Village Roadshow, 0 (d ru g abuse)

F IL M S R E F U S E D R E G IS T R A T IO N Devil In M iss Jon es 3 - A N ew Beginning, T he: G. Dark, USA, 7 6 mins, A. Newman, S(f-h-g)

W ell done!

To The Editing Machine and Crawford Australia for another fine Australian production

ALL THE RIVERS RUN II Computer Neg matching and prints by

Colorfilm

Colorfilm Pty. Ltd. 35 Missenden Rd, CA M PERD O W N Ph: (02) 516 1066 Fax: (02) 5 5 0 1530 Telex: A A 2 4 5 4 5 . 14 Whiting St Artarm on 20 64 Sydney, Australia. Ph: (02) 43 9 4122 Fax: (02) 4 3 7 4717Telex: A A 7 3 0 3 5

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