Cinema Paper No.111 August 1996

contents Focus CHINA WATCHING Uncovering the Gems of Chinatown

By Barrie Pattison F o r m any, the real gem s o f Chinese cinem a appear not in W estern arthouse cinem as, but downtown, in Chinatow n. A dedicated fan fo r decades, Barrie Pattison reveals the history o f the com m ercial Chinese cinem a.

14 HON G KONG HYBRID AUSTRALIA Tim e to Jum p Ship?

By M ichael Kitson Just when H ong K ong cinem a is at last receiving W estern recognition, the H ong K ong film industry is jum ping ship. Local film m akers are m oving offshore and into the global m arket. Will som e (including Jackie Chan) settle Down Under?

20 BOX-OFFICE REVOLUTION Do the Chinese Care About Indigenous Cinema?

By C hris B erry ¡gK^yoC^2¡mz, Chris Berry deciphers

X raZ f^^^^^M ^eá^M nese.Film e ev o ^h? f the % ‘takeover3o f H ong Kong.* Industryontm Wem

Transending

26

Director Scott Hicks has been duly rewarded for the ten difficult years spent realizing Shine, a film inspired by the life of pianist David Helfgott. Hicks and writer Jan Sardi talk to Paul Kalina ,

page

6

CHRISTOPHER DOYLE It's All About Trust

By T ony Rayns Australian Christopher D oyle is one o f the stars o f Chinese cinem a, his cinem atography w inning raves around the w orld and countless offers from Hollyw ood, Europe and Australasia. But has D oyle found his true hom e with the likes o f C hen Kaige, W ong Kar-Wai and Edw ard Yangf

28

Insights

LOVE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES Snowballing Screwball

Inbits

2

Shorts

54

Festivals

36

Legal Ease

58

Documentaries

40

Technicalities

64

New Media

42

Inproduction

75

Inreview

47 ! I Tenebrious Ten

By F incina H ópgood Love and Other Catastrophes was m ade fo r h a lf a m illion, and in secret, by a collective team headed

by Em m a-Kate Croghan and Stavros Efthym iou.

It’s a fast-paced look at the lives, loves and lessons o f university students.

34

80

Martha Ansara is a filmmaker and film historian; Chris Berry teaches in the Department of Cinema Studies at LaTrobe University;

Italian cinema; Tony Rayns is one of the world's leading authorities on, and supporters of,

Dominic Case is a motion-picture technical consultant; Mary Colbert is a Sydney writer on film; John Conomos teaches at the

Chinese cinema; Claire Roth is a pyschology student; Richard Siverton is a principal in the

College of Fine Arts, Sydney; Jan Epstein is the film reviewer for The Melbourniarr, Fincina Hopgood is an Arts-Law student at

law firm of Hart & Spira; Nina Stevenson is a solicitor at Hart & Spira; Ian Stocks is a

Melbourne University; Michael Kitson is a freelance writer on film; Marg O'Shea is a Sydney writer on film; Barrie Pattison is a

documentary filmmaker; Archie Weller is a novelist whose Day of the Dog was made into

film director and writer on film; Noel Purdon teaches Screen Studies at Flinders University, and is the author of several studies on

Blackfellas:, Raymond Younis is a lecturer at the University of Sydney.

NEWS,

VIEWS,

AND

AME PROJECT INVESTMENTS

T

he Australian Multimedia Enter­ prise has approved funding of:

• $50,000 for Mainstream Marketing of Melbourne to complete a double CD-ROM music instruction course costing $420,000: • $190,000 to Micro Forte of Canberra to complete an interactive CD-ROM strategy game costing $600,000; • $600,000 to Pacific Sales and Marketing of Sydney to develop a series of CD-ROMs on manage­ ment training for small business; • $57,000 for David Lourie and Asso­ ciates to develop the concept for a CD-ROM edutainment title based on the theme of enlightenment; and • $45,000 for Libby Hathorn to develop a children's CD-ROM fantasy title.

A $16 million, three-year agreement between the AME and the Victoria 21 Multimedia Fund to finance concept development by Victorian multimedia practitioners has also been formal­ ized. The scholarship programme w ill support travel by nine talented Australians to major symposia, such as Siggraph, each year.

MORE

NEWS,

ETC.

FESTIVALS he Melbourne and Brisbane Inter­ national Film Festivals w ill take place from 25 July-11 August and 1-11 August, respectively.

This year sees the Melbourne Festival moving both its dates (it was usually held in early-to-mid June, overlapping with the Sydney Film Festival) and principal venue, from St Kilda's Astor Theatre to the city cen­ tre. This year's Festival w ill also be the last under Festival Director Tait Brady who, after nine years at the helm, moves on to the position of General Manager, Palace Entertain­ ment. The Festival director's position has been advertised.

The Brisbane Festival's opening night premiere will be Nadia Tass' M r Reliable (formerly M y Entire Life). The world cinema section will include Looking For Richard (Al Pacino), The White Balloon (Jafar Panahi), Small Faces (Gillies MacKinnon) and Stage Door(Hu-Du-Men, Shu Kei), which w ill close the Festival.

Brisbane w ill this year stage a retrospective of the early films of Stanley Kubrick, featuring new prints of several key films and a presenta­ tion by author John Baxter, whose biography of Kubrick is due for publication in 1997.

T

CINEMAS he operators of Melbourne's Valhalla Cinema drew the curtain for the last time during June, when their nine-year lease on the popular Northcote venue expired. The build­ ing's owner is currently operating the cinema.

The Valhalla, which opened in Richmond in 1976, served as one of the city's few alternative and inde­ pendent venues, with seasons of retrospectives, science-fiction, anima­ tion, special premieres, and regular screenings of The Blues Brothers.

Its closure coincided with its 20th anniversary as well as a record-break­

T

cover:

Nina Liu (see p. 4).

Cover produced by Alissa Tanskaya.

Photographer: Alan Morgans.

Stylist: Helen Jenkins.

Chinese caligraphy: Chris Berry (also on pp. 14, 2 0 , 21 and 29).

The cover reads: “Chinese Cinema”.

2

ing season of Wallace and Gromit animations, Aardman Collection II. Melbourne's Capitol Cinema, one of the few remaining art deco cine­ mas famed for its Walter Burley Griffin designed ceiling, has been given a new lease of life as a reper­ tory and first-release venue. Until February 1996, the Capitol specialized

in Chinese films; it is now under the management of Paul Coulter (who also operates the Lumière Cinema).

Still in Melbourne, the George Cinema launched its Celluloid Bites Back programme. The programme is dedicated to screening Australian documentaries and short films, and included The Good Looker (Claire Jager), The Needy and the Greedy (Liz Burke), Miss Taurus(Graham Wood) and The Search for the Shell Encrusted Toilet Seat(Leonie Dickinson).

SVHS or SP Betacam. The aim is to produce an original dance party video clip with optional sound track. The ideal visual speed of the clip should be between 100 bpm and 140 bpm.

Entry forms can be obtained: in Sydney, from Waterfront Records, Red Eye Records, Sandys Music, Krass Records, Metro TV; in Mel­ bourne, from RMIT Union, Au Go Go Records, Gaslight Records; Redback Music in Wollongong; Hummbug Records in Newcastle; Sunflower Records at Gold Coast; Skinny's and Rockinghorse Records in Brisbane.

AFI EXHIBITION SEASONS uring August and September, the Australian Film Institute will tour "Northern Lights", a programme of contemporary Canadian cinema, and "Travel In Mind", a collection of high­ lights of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival.

The Oberhausen Collection-screens as part of the Brisbane International Film Festival between 2-6 August; at Sydney's Chauvel Cinemas on 8 and 11 August; as part of the Jumpcut Festival in Perth between 12-17 August; at the Melbourne Cinemath­ eque on 2 and 9 September, and at Hobart's State Cinema on 7 and 8 September.

D

ANIMATORS AND VIDEO ARTISTS SOUGHT he Australian Children's Televi­ sion Foundation is offering more than 30 traineeships in Australia's rapidly-growing technology-based animation industry.

They will work for 12 months on the 26-part animation series LiT Elvis Jones and the Truckstoppers. The series, a joint production of the Foun­ dation and Mickey Duck Animation Studio, will be in production this year and throughout 1997.

Trainees with proven drawing ability will learn the basic skills of animation. Others w ill be taught computer digital painting.

Applicants for traineeships should make an appointment to show their folios to Vicki Joyce at LiT Elvis Ani­ mation Studio, 141-150 Beaconsfield Parade, Albert Park 3206. Telephone (03) 9682 8277; fax (03) 9682 1110.

T

Next year's Big Day Out event w ill include for the first time a competi­ tion for amateur video artists, whose work will be screened at the national concert tour. Prizes w ill be awarded the top entries.

Artists can submit one entry of between four and six minutes in length. The format can be VHS,

cinema august 1996 num ber 111

116 A rgyll S ir l e i , F itz r o y , V ic t o r ia \ i m l \ l i \ H )6 y .

Postal address : PO B o x 2221, F itzr o y M D C , V ic t o r ia 1065 T e l : (O .) 4416 2 h 44 E m a il : cp(c p irk lim is t. lo h i au F a x : (OQ 4416 40SN Editor S c o n M uiJ<\y Assistant Editor Pa u l Technical Editor D u v in k C \*»l

IF YOU WERE WONDERING ... here is no episode of Chris Long's "Australian Cinema 1894-1904" in this issue due to Long's film commitments. The concluding Part 20 will be published in the next issue.

Then, hopefully. Long will continue his research with a new series of articles.

Advertising T erry 11m me h Subscriptions & Office Assistance'M ina C al h mu i

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n the previous issue of Cinema Papers, a mistake in the "Insurance" column drastically altered the mean­ ing of a key paragraph ("minimum" wrongly replacing "maximum"). The para should read: (B) All Risks Negative/Videotape excluding Faulty Camera, Stock and Processing provides cover for physical loss or damage to the negative/videotape and here again a First Loss limit is not ade­ quate as the value at risk grows as each day's takes are processed and stored in the vaults at the laboratory with a maximum value at risk being reached immediately prior to the making of a colour reversal internegative. This section of the policy basically covers storage and transit risks and a major catastrophe at the laboratory could lead to a substantial or total loss. A full value policy is essential.

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In the credits listing for Love and Other Catastrophes on p. 24, the Christian name of associate producer Fred Bergman was misspelt. Bergman fears that he will always be known as "Freg".

In several issues of "Inproduction", Helen Watts has been credited as co-producer of Dead Heart, with Bryan Brown as producer. Cinema Papers has now been informed that Watts and Brown are, in fact, joint producers.

In the "Eidetic Eight", p. 80, Adrian Martin's correct mark for Indian in the Cupboard was 2, not 9.

And, to avoid, any misunderstand­ ings: Brian de Palma's Mission Impossible, unlike the television show, does not have a colon!

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C I N E M A P A P E R S • A UGU S T 1996

?JvV'

At Frame, Set & Match, our new digital edit suite is up and running. The Edit Box is the very latest on-line from Quantel, the makers of Henry, Harry, Hal and the original Paintbox.

Along with the Edit Box, we've installed the Collage Titling System. So now you can bring your graphics in on disk and store them, or load any Postscript or True Type font.

With these latest additions, Frame, Set & Match is now a fully digital post production facility.

In combination with our Ursa Gold Telecine, it's a very impressive and practical set of machinery.

Now you can do a digital transfer on the Ursa Gold, then a digital finish on the Edit Box. For enquiries and bookings call: (02) 9954 0904, fax: (02) 9954 9017, email: fsm@mpx.com.au

2 Ridge Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060.

N IN A LIU

L ooking for Perfection What benefit does rehearsal gives you?

A

ctor Nina Liu tells Scott Murray how she got started in film: Liu: I've always loved the perform­ ing arts, especially ballet. So, when a casting agent came around to our school to find a young girl for a half-hour film, The Long Ride, I went to the casting call.

It was something I thought I could do for the experience, but what I really wanted was to dance. By the end of it, though, I was totally hooked [laughs].

On Naked, it was to get familiar with the character, and with Ben and Richard.

There was one point where I just felt like it came to a dead-end.

I couldn't do anything that they asked for. I thought, "This is it.

I don't want to act", but Andrea just kept at it. I ended up in tears, absolutely unable to stop. I was so frustrated, but my frustration

then did the shoot. It was a really different way of working to Naked.

Half of the crew didn't speak Eng­ lish, and I felt a bit separated. The communication was more difficult.

Do you speak Chinese?

No. I had to leam it for the role, along with how to speak English with a Canadian accent.

And then came Heartbreak High?

Yes. I have a most fantastic part, a girl called May, who is totally dif­

able with her beliefs than they are; they haven't even formed their ideas yet. She wants them to rise to the occasion and to really challenge them. All the friendships she makes are because she wants to help them grow. But they reject her, say­ ing, "No, we just want to be kids and have fun."

Is May an ethnic character?

She is Asian, but they haven't made

Faster shooting [laughs].

No. When we are not shooting, we are rehearsing. I've worked more on my character than ever before. You have to, with different directors and writers coming in all the time. You really need to be sure about who your character is.

No. Ballet is very poised, which actually made it hard for me to move and be really natural. Every­ thing was a little more exaggerated because of my stage view. I found it really difficult to bring it all down.

Has your knowledge of the charac­ ter ever set you at odds with the directors and writers? You presum­ ably know your character better than anybody else.

How was working with Richard Lowenstein on Naked: Stories of Men?

Well, yeah, you'd hope so. [Laughs] People will always have different ideas about what a character might do or say, and, if you can justify why you think a character would not do that, they always say, "Okay, we understand that." I don't want May to be suddenly very opinion­ ated over animal rights and then turn around and eat meat [laughs].

Fantastic; absolutely the most unreal experience I've ever had, I think.

I came to the set quite worried about the whole thing. It was a very big role, very demanding and quite emotional, but Richard and the crew made me feel really comfort­ able. I don't think I could have done it without their support.

Do they use multi-camera set-ups?

What specifically worried you?

We have two cameras sometimes, which I'm not used to, but it means you can shoot faster and catch two performances at once. That is good, because sometimes you are so tired after doing someone else's shot that yours becomes pushed and a little bit fake.

I have very high standards that I set for myself. 1hate to be not perfect.

Having not had much theatre expe­ rience, I just wanted it to be good.

Are you one of those actors who, when the director says "Fantastic", replies, "No, it wasn't good enough.

I want to do it again"?

What are your dreams and plans?

[Laughs] No! I don't think I am, though I might silently say that [laughs].

Did you have rehearsals on both films?

helped find the emotion that I was trying to bring out for the scene.

Like, I shocked myself. I didn't real­ ize that I could bring it forward.

What has happened since Naked!

I did Floating Life. The day after my HSC finished, I flew to Hong Kong, had a couple of hours rehearsal and

4

How has television been different to film?

And less rehearsal?

Was having done ballet on stage a help?

Only brief rehearsal for The Long Ride, but for Naked we had a week, with Andrea Moore. That was fantastic, and she helped Ben [Chow] and I a lot. Ben was fantastic; so mature for 15.

strictly because she is Chinese, but because she has ideas about people being treated fairly, and she doesn't like prejudices and things like that.

ferent from all the other characters.

She is really opinionated and politi­ cally-minded, and acts upon that.

She doesn't sit there and say, "I have a problem with this and this", she actually goes out and does things. She also wears really wayout clothes. I love that.

All the other kids think she is really weird. She is more comfort­

a big deal of that. The fact that she is Asian isn't the only thing that is different about her. It is her actual personality and her beliefs that really make the difference.

May has dealt with racism, not

To become a famous actor, in any sense at all. I'd really like to stay within the industry, or at least in performing arts. I still really love dancing. I don't think I'd so much like to direct, but choreography I really enjoy, along with sound edit­ ing, and editing in general. There is something about it which has to be very precise. A certain degree of perfection is required, and I really like things to be perfect. ®

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Extensive experience in the film and television production industry is essential. The applicant should have proven experience in location and/or production management, and be a self starter.

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C IN E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

7

erseverance, integrity and steadfast faith in the direc­ tor’s vision are keywords to the collaboration between producer Jane Scott, writer Jan Sardi and director Scott H icks, who has spent the past 10 years realizing this film inspired by the life of David Helfgott.

In the late 1950s, David Helfgott was a brilliant child prodigy whose virtuosity at the piano won him local and international fame. David’s father, Peter, was a Polish refugee, who came to Australia in 1934 and married Rachel in 1943. Both had lost their fam­ ilies in the Holocaust. Peter ruled the family with an iron will, driving David’s music education far beyond the emotional and psychological levels a child of his age could withstand.

After David won a scholarship to the Royal Col­ lege of Music in London, Peter disowned his son for abandoning his family. David suffered a nervous breakdown, languishing in complete anonymity in psychiatric institutions for years. His identity was eventually uncovered, and David began his recovery, marrying his wife, G illian*, and re-establishing his career at the piano.

Shine, which took this year’s Sundance Film Fes­ tival by storm, eschews the traditions of the biopic and the constraints that beset many productions of this scale. Hicks, Sardi and Scott, together with an impressive array of local and international actors, have proficiently realized a searingly emotional bio­ graphical story about life at the end of the tunnel.

Scott Hicks, whose previous theatrical features are Freed o m (1 9 8 2 ) and Sebastian and the Sparrow (1989)1, and Jan Sardi talk about the making of Shine.

The interviews were conducted separately and then intercut.

Can you recall your first encounter with David Helfgott?

HICKS: I first saw David playing here in Adelaide ten years ago. David came into the concert hall and looked a little lost, a little out of place. He headed towards the piano, his hands out and searching. But as soon as he started to play, he was totally in com­ mand. His performance reached out and touched people. It wasn’t a dry and clinical experience to watch him perform.

Immediately after the performance, I went to talk to him and his wife, Gillian. It took me about a year to engender a relationship of trust with them and their friends to enable me to pursue the research. I spent much of that year going back and forwards to Perth2, sourcing information, talking to members of the family. It was the start of what I hadn’t real­ ized was going to be such an extraordinarily long process.

I wrote the first draft of the screenplay, which was then called “Flight o f the Bumble B ee”3. In the meantime, I was busy directing other projects, and it was a process of trying to keep this project alive.

In 1 9 9 0 ,1 decided that I wanted to bring another w riter in to get a fresh take on the m aterial. I was very, very embedded in the biographical details of David’s life and I wanted to lift the film out of being sim ply a b io p ic, and m ake it som ething w h ich I hoped w ould tran scen d th a t. I asked Jan Sardi to join me on the project as the screen­ w riter, w hich he did from 1 9 9 0 through to the film’s completion.

There was a very, very long period of development * Declaration: Gillian Helfgott is the mother o f the Editor o f Cinema Papers, and David his step-father.

8

to arrive at the next draft, which was honed out of a vast mass of biographical material. Jan ’s enor­ mous co n trib u tio n was to lift the story into a wonderful plane o f storytelling which was very direct and very emotive. The screenplay became the calling-card both for cast, and ultimately for money.

Why does the film follow a non-linear structure?

HICKS: I had always wanted to start the story with the adult David at his lowest ebb, before returning the audience to his childhood. W e had to get the audience into a position where they realize they are going to be confronted with this extraordinary char­ acter whom they know they are going to see again later, because that’s the grammar of film.

SARDI: The challenge to work out a way to tell the story in 100 minutes was threefold: first, there was the time span, 3 0 years or so, with lots of charac­ ters, lots of incidents and the usual sort of problems of dealing with biographical stories; second was the incredible emotional depth of the story; and third, the psychological aspects of David’s character and his father, and that relationship.

The key to making it work was finding the emo­ tional line of the story. A good strong emotional

line will drive a film , so that people don’t think about time, about whether it’s ten years before, or ten years after.

I just love the way in which you can set certain things up at the beginning of a story, which even­ tually find a context as the story progresses and the background is revealed. You create a mystery about a character and, eventually, the threads of the mys­ tery start to come together. In Shine, round about the end o f the second act, the story, in a sense, catches up with itself. I think there is a great sense of anticipation as you start building towards that moment, which is what we intended.

How would you describe your collaboration on the screenplay?

HICKS: Jan wrote the screenplay; that is the fact of the matter. That said, he was very aware of my vision for this film and, consequently, we would meet and discuss detail and work over dialogue together. Jan would then go away and write, as a writer does and must. I had a very strong sense of what I wanted to come out of the collaboration, and, at the same time, I wanted Jan to bring to it everything that he could as a writer, which of course he did.

C I N E M A P A P E R S • A UGUST 1996

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What in the story interested you and led you to believe it was ripe for cinematic storytelling?

HICKS: From day one, I saw it as a story about light at the end of the tunnel. It was to me a marvellous thing to contemplate that someone could journey through such a difficult and fragmented life and emerge the other side, eccentric, with some damage to his personality, but alive, in love, playing music, and reaching an audience and accep tin g who he is.

When I first spoke to Geoffrey Rush about doing the film, I said it is about redemption. That sparked something for Geoffrey, I think. He felt that there was a bigger story that was being told through this amazing life. The film attempts to find an emotional truth rather than getting completely bogged down in day-to-day biographical detail.

What are the challenges of making a biographical film?

It was always central to our agreement that Gillian and David be consulted, but that, finally, the choice and decisions were mine.

The rest of the family were somewhat more sensi­ tive. David’s siblings were not keen on the idea of the film being made. For my part, I was at pains to point out that sooner or later somebody was going to make a film about D avid’s life, and maybe it was better that it was done with consultation, care and sensitivity to the situation rather than with some­ body making it from a series of newspaper clippings.

It was tricky. You are dealing with deep-seated sen­ sitivities in people’s lives. You have to tell the story, you can’t bowdlerize it, truncate it. Yet David has travelled into some very dark corners in his life, and you have to show that, otherwise what is the point of the journey.

H IC K S :

SARDI: The first responsibility is that they are still

Scott put a lot of time and effort into build­ ing up his vision of the story he wanted to tell. He gave me tapes of his interviews and notes, and an idea of what he wanted. I then spent about a week with David and Scott and David’s wife, Gillian. They were the only characters directly related to the movie that I met.

A story like this has to move quite rapidly. The greatest asset in moving the story forward is what the audience brings to it, because people tend to fill in things from their own experiences. The thing has to be underwritten, in terms of dialogue, and you have to move the story forward between the cuts, so to speak; that way, you let the audience ‘into’ the story, and participate in it by filling it in for them­ selves.

I think the best films are the ones where audiences are invited to work in that way, to fill in what has happened. This walks a really fine line: you are never quite sure whether you are doing too much or not enough. The process keeps on being refined over numerous drafts, and then in the editing.

The demands of production also make you refine the way o f telling the story. But I actually like that, because it really does force you to get rid of all SA R D I:

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

the fat, so to speak. For instance, when someone says, “We can’t do this scene like this”, for one rea­ son or another, you have to ask yourself, “W hat is important about the scene? Is it important at all?”

If it is, you come down to that crystal point of what the scene is saying, and find the simplest way of telling it.

Shine is very much a film for the cinema, whereas at face value a lot of the material would suggest a tele-feature. Were you under pressure to make a tele-feature rather than a cinema feature?

H IC K S : The project had the nine lives of the cat. It went in and out of numerous hands. Yes, there was at one stage an attempt to make it a glorified tele­ m ovie, and an other to m ake it a television mini-series. But I believed that it was inherently cin­ ematic, that there was potential for the whole film to hinge on a monumental central performance that, if executed properly, would simply light up the big screen. It always felt too big for me as a television story, though pragmatism and the climate of the late ’80s would have made it a great deal easier and sim­ pler to have made it as a telemovie. O f course, I’m

extremely glad I didn’t.

alive and you can’t just cut to a car chase to make their lives interesting or do something for dramatic convenience. You have to try to be absolutely true to the essence of their life experience, and some­ times you have to find dramatic short-cuts to get them to a point at which they arrived in their life.

The creative side comes in taking real-life touch­ stones and coming up with creative interpretations of scenes which may have happened. You have to work back from an experience, an attitude, or some weird saying of David, and ask yourself, “Why on earth does he keep coming back to this?”

You have to find emblems, like the scene in the bath, that psychological assault on him, when he dirtied in the bath. It was the whole thing of some­ one’s system, their internal being, their psyche, breaking down. That scene becomes emblematic of David’s breakdown, based on things David had said to us.

Did you find, nonetheless, that there were elements of the story you had to change in the interests of dramatic and thematic coherence?

If anything, we have simplified the story. For example, David stumbled into more than one restau­ rant on m ore than one rainy night to play and astonish people. So, I chose to combine those events, take elements from each and put them together as an emblematic dramatic rendering of that experi­ ence, rather than opting for the repetitive notion.

That said, every incident depicted has its touchstone in reality, and much of David’s dialogue and behav­ iour has been crystallized from real life.

In chronological terms, Peter was long dead when David got his job at the wine bar. But I felt it was vital there be a final attempt by Peter to reconcile; a swansong, if you like. Interestingly enough, in a very first draft of the treatm ent which I worked H IC K S:

9

How did you recreate David's piano playing, which is obviously an essential aspect of his personality?

David's father, Peter (Armin Mueller-Stahl), and the child David (Alex Rafalowiez). Shine.

on with writer Jo h n M acG regor, Jo hn invented Peter’s ghost to appear at the end of the film. Much of David’s babbling dialogue was conducted with this unseen figure. What you see in that scene, when the old Peter comes to see David before his death, is in a sense the residue of Peter’s ghost.

Apparently David's father, Peter, was far more authoritarian than what is shown in the film. Yet, the film might have been dramatically inert if you had portrayed him to be a total monster.

SARDI: It is only in bad films that characters are either really good or really bad. There is that won­ derful bit of grey that happens in the middle, where some oscillate towards the good and some oscillate towards the bad. One of the things that we tried to show was that his father loved him. His father wasn’t there doing these things deliberately; it was out of a misguided sense of love. Once you get the audience to understand that, he becomes sympa­ thetic, which doesn’t stop you getting frustrated by what he’s doing, because the truth is, he can’t help himself. That’s what makes him such a tragic figure.

Peter gave David an incredible love of music. He said to him that music will be your only friend. As extreme and as insidious as some of those things were, it is a really important point about his char­ acterization.

It is David’s story, but, if you look at it as Peter’s story, it is about life’s potential; it is the tragedy of a man who realizes too late in life that you only get one shot at it. He tries to control and determine everything that is going to happen in his life, and in the end it is tragic.

HICKS: One of things which I was very, very clear in delineating to Jan was Peter Helfgott must not be sim­ ply a monster, because that to me cheapened and lessened the impact of the whole story. It makes less of David, if you like, and it was vital that we feel for Peter, even though he did harsh and brutal things. It was still important that we feel for his dilemma. Peter is a victim, too, possessed by his own demons and a past he cannot escape. His crime is to love David too much, and be unable to let him go.

Jan created a wonderful picture of Peter, I think, but people would read the script and say, “He is so black, so dark, so tyrannical.” Even Armin [Mueller-Stahl], when we first met, said, “He is a dreadful character.”

In dealing with the migrant experience, many films try to deny its full effects by insisting that the next generation, usually through their rebellion against their parents, are free of it. Shine makes it clear that David is his father's son and David cannot escape

10

that very shocking past his parents have undergone.

HICKS: I was absolutely fascinated by that part and, I have to say, somewhat trepidant about tackling it, because the film’s experience is so remote from my own: the story of a Polish Jew who comes to Aus­ tralia to avoid the worst excesses of the Nazi régime, loses much of his and his w ife’s family, and yet has this abiding love of Stalin and those ideals.

It seemed to me that Peter — the character, not the real person — had lost one family and, by hell, was not going to lose another. His whole outlook is predicated on a desire to keep his family together at all costs. Ironically, in doing that, he creates the very environment that he fought to escape.

SARDI: Everything that happened to David has some aspect of the past in it, and some aspect of the future as well.

In the scene where Peter goes back to David after so many years of estrangem ent, all he can do is tell the story about something horrible his father did to him when he was a kid. It’s an attempt to turn back the clock, in a sense, but it is too late. He is a victim, and we see in that not only his father but the whole tragedy of the Holocaust in Europe.

If there is a message, if there is an objective at the end, it is saying, “No we can’t change the past.

We can’t live lives or change lives that have been lived. What we can do is live our own life and get on with it.” That is where the release comes at the end of the film.

HICKS: My intention was to show piano playing like I felt it had never been seen before: not as a dainty, elegant pastime in a salon drawing room, but as a dangerous, psychologically-edgy experience.

The Third Rachmaninov Piano Concerto became a central emblem of this. It was the grail for the char­ acter of David, the quest, to play like there was no tomorrow, and to make Peter very proud, even in his absence. Peter said to him as a little boy, “One day you will play it. You will make me very proud of you.” Indeed he does, but by that stage they are so separated that it is tragic.

The technical elements of the piano playing and the realization were extremely difficult. Geoffrey performed all his own stunts at the piano; Noah [Taylor] to a lesser extent, but Noah has that mon­ umental scene to enact. It was a daunting prospect to figure out how to make this look like climbing a mountain, while holding fast to the audience’s belief that the actor is actually playing.

The obvious ending for the film would have been the playing of the Rachmaninov Concerto.

SARDI: It is the most obvious ending, but it wouldn’t have been as good a film had we had done that. The conclusion to the story is not about triumph in the sense of performance: it is a triumph in terms of a much bigger journey, which is his life. It is a life story, so that is where you look for your climax, that is where you get your satisfaction at the end. It is not because someone holds up the premiership cup, in football terms ...

Hollywood is renowned for films which are pretty empty and then, in the last 20 minutes, it is all music and fireworks and telling the audience this is where you should be feeling. One of the good things about Shine is just how restrained it is and the way in which Scott handled what could have been overly senti­ mental or emotional in the wrong hands.

At what stage did Geoffrey Rush become involved in the film?

HICKS: In 1992, Liz Mullinar suggested I meet Geof­ frey, whom she considered the actor best suited for this extraordinarily-demanding rôle.

Ultimately, Geoffrey was the only person that I ever considered for the adult David, and the audi­ tion took the form of a meeting; his body of work was his audition.

Once I decided Geoffrey was it, I was presented with a new technical problem. The screenplay was structured so that there would only be two Davids: the child, and the adolescent P®®

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Chinas

The

Chinese filmmakers, too, are making a home here, such

This special Cinema Papers supplement examines the cinemas of the three Chinas: Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland. They are among the most vibrant in the world,

as Clara Law, whose Floating Life will soon go into release.2 Other directors and stars, such as Jackie Chan, are

and their films are finding increasing audiences and appre­

shooting films here, leading to much speculation about more

ciation in the West (even if faced with problems at home).

Chinese filmmakers setting up location bases in Australia.

The 1997 reunification of Hong Kong with China will

Chinese cinema, in all its myriad forms, is not only

have a dramatic effect on the Chinese industry —and other

exciting for what it is, and from where it has come,

industries around the world, including Australia s. Already

but for a future which may have a

Australia is handling post-production on major Chmese-

major impact on Australia’s

language films.1

film culture.

See Dominic Case, "Technicalities", Cinema Paper*», N o. 110, Ju n e 1996.

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

2 See Chris B eriy, "Floating Life , op. cit.

13

WATCH ING Barrie Paftison goes searching for the best in mainstream Chinese cinema - not on the arthouse circuit, but down in Chinatown.

R e c e n t l y i n t h e U.S., for four weeks out of six, the biggest-grossing films were made by H ong Kong directors: Jo h n W oo {Broken Arrow) and Stanley Tong (Rumble in the Bronx), with Taiwanese Ang Lee not far behind with Sense and Sensibility. Time mag­ azine had a Gong Li cover story on film from the three Chinas, following one in New Yorker. Hong Kong has just passed India as the w orld’s second largest exporter of movies, and the most ambitious film cu rrently being shot in A ustralia is Sammo Hung’s Jackie Chan actioner, A Nice Guy.

sophisticated and Europeanized centre in China.

Though our knowledge is still patchy and dependent on fragments filtering out from mainland archives under recent liberalizations, Shanghai appears to have been the Chinese movie capital. A pattern can be detected in their best films.

Shot silent, like much of the Asian and Soviet pro­ duction m the 1930s, W u Yonggan’s The Goddess (1934), with the dignified Ruan Lingyu, mixes G erf man stre et film s w ith M adam X w eepies. Yuan Muhzi’s Street Angel (1937) re-works the same-named

the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square. Lib­ eralization like the “Hundred flowers” period of the 7 1950s or the restoration after a near-complete shut- | down in the ’70s show stirrings rapidly suppressed.

Ideologue critics surface to champion then-current / work like The White-haired Girl, The East is Red or Tunnel Warfare, but reputations fail to survive the J brief shelf life of their message content. During this period, the mainland fails to generate a filmmaker of ; world standard, though m a s w Q E S ^ ^ X i^ Jin is occasionally touted on the strength of simple-minded morale boosters like Basketball Girl N um ber Five% (1 9 6 4 ) or Garlands at the F oot o f the Mountain\\ (1985). The Cultural Revolution ban on his feeble; V\ Two Stage Sisters (1964) fuelled its reputation to the/# 1\ point where it became the best-known mainland filmC|; of this period.

M any of the old Shanghai filmmakers had fled:- fm to H ong Kong, taking their stars, equipm ent and /

Burning Paradise.

If all this sounds like a sudden burst of activity, the impression is misleading. For a quarter of a century, Hong Kong has been the number three movie pro­ ducer on the planet, an extraordinary situation for a population of that size. Some 1.3 billion people see a Jackie Chan movie, dwarfing audiences for a Hol­ lywood success. As in most major cities, Chinatown cinemas have made it easier to see these films in Aus­ tralian capitals than to see films from Europe, the UK ^ / ^ A i^ r q lia .

J^,The>reason this has happened, and the lack of recognition it has received, tell us a lot about the way taste and opinion are formed in societies like our own.

T o understand the story, it is necessary to go back, at least to the 1930s and Shanghai, then the most

Roy Chiaq and Bruce Lee, reconstituted in Ng See Yuan's Game o f Death II. Frank Borzage film (1928), from his Murnau period.

Crossroads (She! Z ’ling, 1937) re-makes the German Ich Bei Tag und Du Bei Nacht (Ludwig Berger, 1932), which in turn ripped off the Hollywood classic, Lone­ some (Paul Fejos, 1 9 28). All had this mix of Berlin and L.A. Ruan Lingyu and Zhao Dan, from the later two films, were the last high-profile Chinese main­ land movie stars until Gong Li surfaced.1 From this point, the Chinese film industry becomes a spent force, broken by the propaganda needs of suc­ ceeding authorities over a 60-year period: by the Japanese invasion, World W ar II, Mao’s domination,

Jackie Chan scores in Dragon Lord( 1981). sometimes their negatives, as shown in Stanley Kwan’s draggy C en tre Stage {aka A ctress, 1 9 9 1 ). In the comparative stability, they continued making cheap black-and-white small-screen weepies, comedy and opera movies, supported by an overseas Chinese audi­ ence which the mainland product did not attract.

Even on their own turf, the tract films appear to have 7 been out-drawn by the occasional H ong Kong hit which slipped across the border. ^ -----^ A quite extraordinary succession/of events would buffet the Hong Kong films into the position of wbtld*v leader, independent of the festival and filnE-journal- ism network which we associate with recognition of

non-English-speaking art cinema.

Post-W orld W ar II, the Shaw brothers were at work in Singapore with the oldest, an artistic pro­ ducer, in charge. Though the costume adventure films were not common among their product, they had one of their greatest successes with a pre-war version of the much re-made 1920s “Burning of the Red Lotus Tem ple” story. Sixth brother Run Run Shaw, then working on documentaries, took a copy of the film around open-air village screenings, running up a bankroll that the company turned into a hundred movie-house circuit, along with amusement parks, in Malaysia, Borneo and Singapore.

Setting up their base in Hong Kong, they built a Clearwater Bay studio, training school and dormi­ tory-barracks for their talent, creating a film factory which rapidly obliterated the local filmmaking, whose

itself, talented individuals appeared to take advan­ tage. Li Han’hsiang was a Chinese culture specialist; and journalist. Characters in his films might spend a reel arguing about semantics, driving the sub-titler to desperation. His interests were expressed in opera films like the Love Etem (1963), a subject also filmed as the mainland’s first colour film, Butterfly Lovers, and more recently as Tsui Hark’s The Lovers. Li made the remarkable Emperor Chien Lung series and a suc­ cession of films about the Empress Dowager and Last Emperor, Pu Yi. After a spell as an independent, he returned to Shaw Brothers to find himself doing kung fu and skin flicks. Still active, he recently filmed The Lover’s Lover (1993) in California, with Eat Drink Man 'Woman’s Sihung Lung playing Charlie Chan’s grandson! (Hong Kong crews frequently shoot over­ seas w ith T h ailan d and the U.S. favoured as

Hong Kong Communist producers had launched a series of wu zia pian (swashbucklers) to replace them.

It was from them that the style with which Shaws will forever be associated came, but it was in the hands of King Hu that it found full expression, first in Come Drink With Me (1966), where those pillars of the wu zia pian, the drunken swordsman and the heroine in boy clothes, arc played by the chameleon Yue Hwa and soon-to-be-queen-of-the-swashbucklers Cheng Pei’pei.

Come Drink with Me mixes the elegance o f the opera film with the ferocity of the Samurai movie.

The wigs and weapons are more convincing than those that had become familiar. On-screen injuries are plausible. The film broke Asian box-office records but was eclipsed by King H u ’s Dragon Gate Inn (1967), where its opera plot is brilliantly transposed

Hsu Feng and Roy Chiao Cantonese-speaking units blimped Mitchell cameras to shoot a scene wit sound and then go home because they didn’t like the weather. Shaws would field a Japanese-trained crew (the co-production on Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Princess YangKwei-fei in 1955 was a failure and one of their last appearances on the film festival circuit) working rapidly with portable Arriflexes and adding a Mandarin track later.

A 1 9 6 1 press release proudly announced five colossal E astm ancolor and Shaw scope p ro ­ ductions, an ambitious schedule. It w ould soon be thirty. Lack of competition from the m ainland and the death of the executive controlling their chief com petitor, Cathay, delivered the immense overseas Chinese mar­ ket into their hands.

As happened in Aus tralia around 1 9 7 0 , when th e op portu­ nity presented

Jackie and Sammo spot the camera: Project A (1987).

Gong Li is the tragic concubine in The Great Conqueror's Concubine. destinations.) The art direction of Li’s work is par­ ticularly notable, whether for his own productions, his 1 9 8 0 s w ork on the mainland, or in the Shaw Brothers’ house style.

Ex-assistant to Li Han’hsiang and Voice of America producer King Hu stirred controversy when he d irected and acted in the Sino-Japanese war subject, Sons o f the Good Earth, in 1 9 6 5 . T h e opera cycle was fading and, surpris­ ingly outside the Shaw B ro th ers’ am bit, the

into comedy and action spectacle, establishing the dominance of the Hong Kong studios even more firmly. With this success behind him, King Hu set up the Taiwanese production house that enabled him to use the time and resources not available in factory filming, and to make A Touch of7.cn, shown in 1971 after three years’ work. It carried o ff the Cannes Palme d’Or, which momentarily looked like flowing on to his national industry. H ow ever, legal dis­ putes, cut versions and inadequate distribution destroyed the impact o f what may be considered the great work of the cycle.

King Hu continued making superior costum e adventure films like The Fate o f Lee Kahn (1973) and The Valiant Ones (1975) before the two Korean-based productions which again allowed his perfectionist handling, Raining in the Mountain (1977) and Leg­ end o f the Mountain (1978), co-starring his regular leading lady, Hsu Feng, and Sylvia Chang as rival phantom musicians. These are two of the most beautiful films ever made. Their failure to return a sum reflecting the effort poured into them condemned King Hu to imperfect, minor but still intriguing later work, often financed by younger generation filmmakers who revered his talent.

The third architect of the Shaw Brothers’ monument was Chang Che, a young film critic launched

by Shaws, who diverted the weepyinfluenced trad itio n into more macho territory. In his Golden Swal­ low (1968), a sequel to Come Drink With M e, Cheng Pei’pei again plays the name character, but attention shifts to co-star Jimmy Wang Yu, a swimming champion who was soon to dominate the action film as star and director, until a brush with the law cut short his career. Chang Che would also create other stars: dynamic duo Ti Lung and David Chiang; all-body-actor Fu Sheng, who died James Dean-like in his twenties; Chen Kwan’tai; and

15

a squad of pretenders to their throne. Sometimes film­ ing three pictures at the same time, Che’s work is uneven, virile to the point of brutality, simple-minded and, at its best, as in T he N ew O ne-A rm ed Sw ords­ m an (1971) or the all-star Shaolin T em p le (1976), irresistibly rousing.

Despite an instantly recognizable in-house look — the studio field demarcated by artificial flowers, the red sun created by brute arc and scrim, the working mill in the stream, the board path to the white, openair stairs or the three-storey tea house/palace/temple - this was still a director’s cinema, before the rise of the producer.

Shaw B rothers would house other world-class artists. Chu Yuan created the elegant cycle derived from w riter Ku Lung, but snapped back into his Canto-comedy roots to make the record-breaking H ou se o f 72 Tenants (1972), a boarding-house com-

with a presence that still catches attention, the films mounted around him were shoddy. Circulated abroad in khaki-colour copies with dubbed English tracks and canned music, they and their imitators reached an international public that had no idea that the mas­ terpieces of King Hu and the Shaw Brothers existed, and established an expectation for simple-minded action entertainment in Chinese filmmaking which has yet to dissipate. And, at the point where the ambition of his output was about to rise, Bruce Lee died.

The combined impact of Bruce Lee’s death and the non-circulation of A Touch o f Zen wiped off the international prospects of Hong Kong cinema for twenty years.

However, at this point the story takes a path with­ out precedent. The successes of Shaw Brothers and Bruce Lee combined with the emigration caused by

nity. They would take parties into the cinemas, review the productions in their magazines and sell videos through their shops. Why they should be more enter­ prising than the movie specialists of the 1960s and ’70s is worth considering.

Video, which would decimate the Chinatown fam­ ily theatre movie-going audience, kept the kung fu titles circulating and, particularly in the U.S., a fringe public homes in on these, using fanzines like M ar­ tia l Arts M ov ies A sso cia tes — “D on ’t forget your M .A .M .A .”

When the rest of the world turned its back on the Chinese cinema, it did not wither on the vine like the Japanese. Waves of new talents and traditions were fostered by a thriving export industry sustained by the Hong Kong majors’ refusal to sell their product to television, in order to protect the thousand-seat cinemas in their home base.

V '¡A

B utterfly M urders (1979), Tsui Hark's first.

edy in the style of Crossroads. Liu Chia’liang devel­ oped the m artial arts film to its purest form , minimalizing plot and character to emphasize chivalric codes and weapons skills in a unique series H e r o e s fr o m th e E a st (1 9 7 8 ), M y Y ou n g A u n tie (1980), Legendary W eapons o f China (1982), Cat u.

Rat (1982) and The 36th C ham ber o f Shaolin (1985) - featuring his adoptive brother, the shaven-headed Liu Chia’hui. Sun Chung managed major work in the Shaws’ style, like Ju d g e m en t fo r an A ssassin with David Chiang, but showed more versatility after their decline. There are many more.

Accordingly, Shaw Brothers was big time when, in 1971, Bruce Lee, a young actor who had minor success in U.S. television, made an approach. Shaw Brothers took a dim view of his salary demand. Some say they thought he would upset its house stars who were getting considerably less.

Shaws’ aide, Raymond Chow, however, had gone down the road to start his own company, Golden Harvest, making less ambitious versions of the Chi­ nese action movie. He bought the package of star Lee and director Lo Wei. Their first venture, Fists o f Fury (1971), created a sensation in Hong Kong, in Asia and around the world, eclipsing previous successes with first-night riots, record takings and waves of imi­ tators, precipitating the kung fu boom.

The blockbuster success of Bruce Lee was a dou­ ble-edged sword. While he was a genuine mega-star

16

Poster w ith calligraphy by King Hu for his Legend o f the

Ching Yme Yau in the m uch-printed poster shot from Wong

M ountain (1978) w ith Sylvia Chang and Hsu Feng.

Jing's Naked Killer.

Asian wars created a demand for Chinese (languages) movies w hich produced the Chinatow n circuit.

This is not unfamiliar in itself. Toho had run a chain of cinemas in the U.S., and Jewish, Indian, Mexican, Italian and Greek films had had sporadic overseas showings to native speakers. H ow ever, only the Japanese films had been subtitled. Producing in the more universal, more culturally-esteem ed M an ­ darin m eant that the H ong Kong prints needed sub-titles in calligraphy for the Cantonese speakers, and it was comparatively easy to add a second set in English, making the product attractive in overseas markets. Even in their Hong Kong first runs, their films are English titled. An occasional crafty director will use this fact to provide information not accessi­ ble in the normal manner: conversation drowned in noise, misunderstood comment, etc.

Hong Kong sub-titles did take a bit of adjusting to — “hero” for “champion”, “sinus” for “synapse” and intransitive verbs used with objects, as in “I progressed the m onk” - but, while illiterate captions do still occur, the art has advanced to the point where the English titles on the two-language print of Ronny Yu’s The Bride With White H air (1993) are better than the special English-language version.

Before Bruce Lee surfaced, Golden Harvest had a long-running series of martial-arts actioners under Huang Feng, usually starring petite Angela Mao and calling for her to mix it with the film’s young fight choreographer, the chubby Sammo Hung. Their films, like H ap kid o (1972), became major successes in the Bruce Lee era and Angela figures briefly in scenes none-too-w ell integrated into E n ter th e D ragon.

H uang’s T h e S haolin P lot (1 9 7 7 ), with a rem ark­ able central performance by Chen Sing relying on a minimal make-up disguise, and with Sammo Hung as the villainous Tibetan Chief Golden Cymbals, can hold its own with the best.

Intriguingly, the martial arts films attracted the body builders in a way that previous ethnic cinema had never penetrated the English-language commu-

Directing his own The Iron F isted M on k in 1977, Sam m o H ung co -starred w ith C hen Sing and launched a character which was enormously appeal­ ing. E n ter the F at D ragon (1978) would blend into the display of his superior The Prodigal Son (1981), E ncounters o f the Spooky K ind (1980) and Mr. Vam­ pire (1 9 8 5 )v ___ Just as the comic spaghetti cowboy of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer succeeded Clint Eastwood, the kung fu comic came to dominate.

Sam m o’s fellow pupil at M aster Yu Jim Yuen’s Peking Opera Academy, young Jackie Chan, signed on with Lo Wei to mdktya series^ designed to turn him into a second Bruce Lee. Better produced - Hsu Feng co-stars in T o K ill with Intrigue (1977), Wang Yu in C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

K iller M eteorites (1976) - these films benefit from Jackie Chan’s ingenious fight choreography and were conspicuous in Chinatown showings, which made it a surprise to find that it was not until he went inde­ pendent on the cheapo S n a k e in E a g le ’s S h a d o w (1978) that Jackie Chan caught the attention of the home audience.

Parallel, there are the comedians, the Hui broth­ ers, whose Private E yes (1 976) broke comedy film records. They went on to make brilliant, original comedies and even a passable rip-off of S om e L ik e it H o t called H ap p y D ing D on g (19 8 5 ). The inge­ nious R ich ard N g, fro m the Jo h n n ie W a lk er commercial, gets to participate in the all-star vehi­ cles as well as his own, like Super F o o l (1981), and Karl M ak had a blockbuster in the A ces G o P laces series, where he co-stars with Sylvia Chang and a fugitive Hui brother.

Jackie Chan in Australia ackie Chan is the central figure of Hong Kong's extraordinary film industry. First Strike's associate producer, Jonnie Lee, pointed o u tth a tth e 1.3 b il­ lion people w ho w a tch his film s d w a rf the tu rn o u t fo r a Hollywood blockbuster, making Jackie the m ostfam ous actor in history. N ow he's s h o ttw o film s in Australia and even The Sydney M orning Herald and The Australian have picked up on him, after ignoring fo r 20 years the movies th a t filled dow ntow n cinem as in A ustralian Chinatowns, a fe w blocks from th e ir offices.

For a decade, Jackie Chan's operation has outgrow n its Hong Kong base, w here basic elements to th e ir fo r­ mula — chases through the streets and explosions — are illegal and now only figure in film s w here the law has been bent or bulged. A fte r Los Angeles, theirs is the m ost film ed city on the planet, and audiences are quick to respond to som ething unfam iliar.

The Jackie Chan crew s have set up shop in Spain, Yugoslavia, the mainland, Japan and Canada, looking fo r a s p o tto perform th e ir eye-boggling set pieces: cars careening dow nhill dem olishing a s h a n ty to w n as they go, a helicopter landing on a moving train, a battle w ith Queen Elizabeth's h overcraft charging through the mean streets of Vancouver.

Facilities are not an issue. Jackie Chan owns all the high-tech g e a rth e y use — w ith the exception of the sound recording equipment, shooting sync being a recent developm ent fo rth e m . The set w e n t quiet the firs t time the sound recordist asked Jackie to do a w ild line. I queried designer Oliver W ong w h e th e rth e y 'd use M ovie W orld w hile in Queensland and he grinned, "N o way. W e w a n t to shoot in a studio, w e stay in Hong K ong!"

The w a y it all w orks w as dem onstrated by the elaborate set piece the First Strike unit w as shooting in B risbane's Fortitude Valley Chinatown. The streets w ere filled w ith a 40-foot Chinese dragon, stilt w alkers and parasol-w aving mourners in w h ite and a black, plumed horse-draw n hearse. This struck me as an odd m ixture of im agery — not the c o lo u rsch e m e I associated w ith the funeral scenes of Chinatown movies. W rite r-d ire c to r Stanley Tong explained th a t w h a t they w e re doing had springboarded off his

J

Propagandist I f I Were fo r Real (1982): The inspector General in Mao's China.

But there's more ...

A younger generation of filmmakers, English-speak­ ing and film -sch oo l trained , were fam iliar with Hollywood and the European art film and dissatisfied with a cinema of opera, ghosts and kung fu. First out of the gate was Po Chi’leung’s Ju m pin g Ash (1976), significantly a contemporary, non-Scope production.

It was written by a Hong Kong cop named Philip Chan, who also appears along with Chen W ai’man and Chen Sing (as “the Grinning Tiger”), with a young Ronnie Yu brought in as production manager.

Conventional enough, it was followed by the films of Ann Hui (B o a t P eo p le, 1 9 82), Tsui Hark (W e’re G oing to E a t Y ou, 1980 ), Ringo Lam (the On Eire series) and finally the most cerebral of the bunch, Stanley Kwan {Rouge, 1987). The name most-closely associated with this cycle, however, is that of an actor, Chow Y un’fat, who would dom inate production for a decade, appearing in Ann Hui’s Story o f W oo Viet (1981), Ronnie Yu’s T he P ostm an Strikes B ack (1982), Ringo Lam’s W ild Search (1989) and Stanley Kwan’s L o v e Unto W astes (1 986) among some 60plus films, most jammed into a 14-year period when he seemed to have one in release every three weeks and, at one stage, went without sleep for three days to meet his commitments, ageing before our eyes.

Never taking an English name, Chow, unlike the Chinese stars before him, would appear throughout C I N E M A P A P E R S • A UGUST 1996

Above: Jackie Chan in Rumble in the Bronx (1996).

Right: Jackie (note spelling on poster) Chan in Lo W ei's Dragon Fist (1978).

observation of the m artial-arts groups of Canada, w hose styles varied from the traditional form s w ith local input. This shading, w hich m ainlanders tend to see as corruption of th e ir culture, w as the thing w hich off­ shore Chinese found intriguing — and so, w hen it w as put to me, did I. The exercise w as to show a mob funeral as the A ustralian Chinese, long-tim e residents w ould conduct it, deliberately different from their Asian counterparts.

The A ustralian c re w members, m ost of whom w ere unfam iliar w ith Jackie Chan and the Hong Kong cinema, seem to be rising to the challenge. Barry Otto w as an exception here, signing on because he w as a Jackie Chan fan. Of course, Richard Norton and the fig h t extras w e re right at home, but the Chinese executives w ho had film ed in Canada, and those of us w ho had seen the sniffy reception several overseas heavy hitters had had from A ustralian crew s, noticed how w ell the mix seemed to be w orking. One young assistant, w ho had only w orked on funded film s to date, com m ented on how her enthusiasm had been caught: "This is the firs t tim e I'm not w orking fo r the governm ent!"

There is a lot of bottom -line thinking involved: payroll tax exemptions, w ith states making com peting offers; conditions, w ith local crew s w orking six days w hile they do seven in the colony. A N ice G u fs cam eram an, Raymond Lam, found him self in sim ultaneous tra n s la ­ tion fo r his Cantonese and English-speaking crew .

He'd pondered w orking w ith all locals.

Producer Chua Lam saw a different advantage in filming in Melbourne, having just bought a nice side of lamb w hich had vanished into the kitchens of the unit's apartm ent block. D irector Sammo Hung's mother had the reputation of being the unit's best cook.

Jackie Chan's operation is fully transportable. W hat he does can be understood anyw here in the w orld and he is an immense asset to Golden Harvest, on w hose board he sits, to Hollywood, and to the mainland Chinese, w ith w hom he's had w e lco m ­ ing meetings. However, w h a t happens w ith the rest of his industry? This w ould not be the firs t tim e the Chinese film (n e ith e rth e mainland n o rT a iw a n has a meaningful grip on the Chinese­ speaking w orld market) has had to pack its bags and move on. The Shanghai exodus is still re ce n t history.

It w ould certainly be a lively develop­ m ent to find A ustralia nosing out V ancouver as a favoured destination.

17

his films where previous slackers would show up for the opening and closing, and leave the juvenile to do all the work. He only once, as a gag, appears in opera costume — the very successful comedy, T he Eighth H appiness (1988) - marking himself off from his pre­ decessors as a contemporary figure, but, despite the profusion and excellence of his output, it was not until A B etter T om orrow in 1986, produced by Tsui Hark and directed by John W oo, that he became a superstar. After the splendidly trashy G o d o f G a m ­ blers (Wong jin g , 1 9 9 0 ), where he co-starred with ch ief p retend er to his th ro n e, Andy Lau, Chow became hyper-selective about projects, some saying he is afraid to lose his extraordinary drawing power.

The new shape of the Hong Kong industry proved too much for Shaw Brothers, which switched to tele­ vision with Sir Run Run turning the key on a vault where one of the richest single collections of film in the world, mostly on unstable Eastmancolor, now resides inaccessible, in questionable storage condi­ tions, as its admirers seethe in frustration and its reputation fades.

Taiwanese producers had contributed kung fu movies and teenager romances to the mix, but grad­ ually they waned, leaving only the elfin Lin Chin’hsia, the one enduring off-shore actress to remain a star from the 1970s. Catch the intake of breath when Evil Asia’s mask slips to reveal that elegant Lin is playing the transsexu al heavy in Ching Su i’tung’s 1 9 9 3 Sw ordsm an sequel.

In place of the Taiwanese popular cinema came the intermittent production of family entertainment, often starring C hinese G h ost Story’s singing Taoist Wu M a, and the ponderous films of Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien. It is revealing that festival and art cinema screenings have made the second group more familiar to the Euro-audience than the successes of the Hong Kong industry.

W e should rem em ber that there are four, not three, movie Chinas, with the American Chinese con­ tributing the films of Peter W ang (A G rea t W a ll, 1987) and Wayne Wang, whose best work, L ife is C heap but T oilet Paper is Expensive (1984), returns to Hong Kong both physically and in spirit, and uses significant local talents, including Cora Miao [Love in a Fallen City, 1984) and Shaw Brothers heavy Lo Lieh. Ang Lee (E at Drink Man W oman) situates some­ where in this area.

The so-called Hong Kong New Wave generated a body of work more approachable to an outside audi­ ence. Chow Yun’fat had a female counterpart in the winning Maggie Cheung M an’yuk with him in Tony Au’s Paris-filmed R ose (1986), with Jackie Chan in the P olice Story series, Sammo Hung in Paper M ar­ riage (1986), Andy Lau in As T ears G o By (19 8 8 ), with Sylvia Chang in Stanley Kwan’s F u ll M oon in N ew York (1990) and star of Ann Hui’s best film, the autobiographical E x ile’s Song (1990).

Together with the works of similarly-motivated players and filmmakers, these provided a plausible, involving picture of contemporary life. The critics and festival advocates of such material barely stirred and the handful of Chinatown watchers were ambiva­ lent. This material was terrific, but it had lost the unique, unfamiliar impact of the traditional C hi­ nese film, or almost.

Ann Hui did make T h e S p o o k y B u n ch (1 9 8 0 ), about an opera company attacked by ghosts, and a new version of R om ance o f B o o k an d Sw ord (1987).

Rouge plays the 1930s of opera and brothels against a present of motorways and ghosts, launching strik­ ing-featured Anita Mui opposite the diligent pop star acto r L eslie Cheung, seen also in Je a n -Ja cq u es Annaud’s L ’A m ant (The Lover, 1992). However, the filmmaker for whom the traditional cinema had the greatest appeal was Tsui Hark. Despite the success of

18

his B e tt e r T o m o r r o w series, painstakingly rem odelling the Jean-Pierre Melville thrillers to turn Chow Y un’fat into Alain Delon (his Big H eat of 1988 with Waise Lee is even better), Hark continued making costume films, the comedy duo Shanghai Blues (1 9 8 4 ) with Sylvia Chang and Sally Y eh, and P ek in g O p era Blues with Lin Chin’hsia (1986), a collaboration with King Hu on S w o rd sm a n (1 9 9 0 ) and a re ­ make of his D rag on G a te Inn (1992), which finally got M ag­ gie into period costum e. His greatest success, however, was the mainland gymnast Jet Lee in a new W ong Fe H ong series beginning w ith O n ce U pon a T im e in C hiita (1 9 9 1 ), a peak achievement of the wu zia pian.

Why all this activity, which w ould have been instantly approachable by the wider pub­ lic, should be ignored, and the mainland’s Y ellow Earth (Zang Yimou, 1984) be a triumph, takes some explaining. This film and its “Fifth Generation” com­ patriots were that most cherished film critic fantasy: the art cinema from the socialist country. No mat­ ter that Chen Kaige’s simple statement was, like the body of his work, fiercely critical of the M aoists, som ething w hich would cause him to shelter in impenetrable allegory for much of his output. His cameraman, Zhang Yimou, starring lady friend Gong Li in a succession of erotic costume melodramas, would have an easier passage, with his message about the abuse of women in pre-revolutionary, feudal times more marketable in items like R ed Sorghum (1988) and Raise the R ed Lantern (1991). But even he had to film the anti-protest statem ent,/« D ou (19 9 3 ), to stay in business.

Their work appears to have had little impact on mainland audiences and is non-representative of the standard message-minded mainland production, though there is a string of more personal concerns in recent features like A« U nexpected Passion (1991), and an unprecedented independent sector has thrown up curiosities like M am a (1992). However, the pic­ ture of disaffected youth in Zhang Yuan’s B eijin g Bastards (1993) is no more convincing than that of the life-wasting émigré in X ie Jin ’s T he H erdsm an (1983) in the world of cinema of content.

Received wisdom is that H ong Kong produces mindless entertainment for the undemanding, while the mainland is a hotbed of serious activity. It’s a view held by the sniffy visiting mainland-Chinese delega­ tion shown Liu Chia’liang shooting a kung fu feature using trampolines and non-gymnasts, Chen Kaige dis­

missing Hong Kong as “part of the W est” or even Eight Taels o f G old ’s “W hat’s the biggest Chinatown in the world? Hong Kong.” No one appears to feel that this fusion of East and W est has produced a vigour both can admire.

In fact, the Hong Kong industry has also flirted with issues. Ann Hui’s breakthrough with B oat P eo­ ple (1982) confused Cannes audiences unable to deal with a movie in which the Vietnamese were the heav­ ies, and was banned in Taiw an fo r its m ainland connection, wiping off its profitability. It was already one of the biggest hits on the Australian Chinatown circuit. Similarly purposeful films followed: At H om e in H on g Kong (1982) had Honkers residents training to pass as boat people learning Saigon street maps, followed by Choi Kai’kwan’s gritty H ong Kong, H ong K ong (1983) and Po Chi Leung’s H on g K ong 1941 (1983), with Chow Yun’fat. A group of films criti­ cal of the mainland, reflecting Taiwanese attitudes, surfaced, of which Pai Jin ’jui’s Dr Z hivago-influenced Coldest Winter in Peking was a spectacular best, with its depiction of factionalism and Red Book-waving mobs, accompanied by Wan Chu’chin’s On the Soci­ ety F ile o f Shanghai and Wang Toon’s I f I W ere F or R eal, all 1982.

In Chen Kaige’s ferocious Farewell, My Concubine (1R93), with Gong Li and Leslie Cheung, we have the brim, pkiSible indictment of traditional entertainment with the ritual humiliation of the costumed opera trqupe by the Red Guards, recalling the fam ily’s outrageat finding Leslie applying opera make-up in Rouge, also (like Clara Law’s T em ptation o f a M onk, 1995) from the work of writer Lillian Li. The tension at the heart of these films is also basic IE s f ’ to the Western response to Chinese cinema. p61 C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

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(Gong Li). Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou

ust when Hong Kong cinema is at last receiving western recognition, the Hong Kong film industry is jumping ship. Local box-office sales have slumped and local filmmakers are moving offshore and into the global market, ahead of the Commu­ nist C hina takeover n ext year when B rita in ’s 99 -y ea r lease on the island expires.

Canada was initially the most favoured destination for this diaspora. Now it is Australia. In Melbourne, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Golden Harvest are currently shooting the location-based A N ice Guy. John W oo has just conducted a location “reeky” in Queensland for a Hollywood feature, Tears o f the Sun, while expatriate Hong Kong filmmakers like Clara Law, Eddie Fong and Ronny Yu have chosen to make Australia, rather than Canada, their second home.

On 30 June 1997, the People’s Liberation Army, representing the People’s Republic of China, will “return Hong Kong to the motherland”. In 1989, the PLA murdered pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square; in March 1996, the PLA was conducting mil­ itary and naval exercises aimed at intimidating Taiwan on the eve of its first democratic elections. It is bad publicity and Hong Kong capital has been fleeing off­ shore to investment opportunities in stable free-market economies like Australia. Along with Hong Kong’s filmmakers, its leading production house, Golden Har­ vest, is continuing to expand its offshore exhibition

and distribution deals with international companies, including Australia’s Village Roadshow.

The deal has an interesting background. In 1995, Hong Kong, with a population of roughly six million, produced more than 150 feature films. This is huge by anyone’s standards, even those of the United States, which produces around 200 films a year. The enter­ tainment in Hong Kong movies is propelled by action: violence for John Woo, martial arts for Jackie Chan and slapstick for Michael Hui.1Action is a visual enter­ tainment, avoiding lengthy dialogue and crossing barriers of language and culture. Hong Kong films have found a wide and enthusiastic audience in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South-East Asia, along with what is known as the “Chinese diaspora”, or Chinese com­ munities in overseas cities. They vary in how much they maintain their language and customs, but most centres have a cinema screening Hong Kong movies.

In 1 9 9 4 and 1 9 9 5 , three H ong Kong action movies, D runken M aster 2 (Lau Kar Yung, 1994),

H ard-boiled (John W oo, 1 9 9 2 ), and O nce Upon a Tune in China (Tsui Hark, 1991), made transitions from Chinatown cinemas onto independent and cult screens throughout the western world. Subsequently, Jackie Chan’s R u m ble in the Bronx (Stanley Tong, 1994) went American mainstream, opening on 1500 screens across the U.S. in February 1996. Rum ble in the Bronx was mixed at Soundfirm in Melbourne.

Since the end of the 1980s, there has been evermounting world interest in Hong Kong cinema, both in pop culture and politics. Politically, there has been the countdown to the end of Britain’s 99-year lease on the island of Hong Kong. Another short-fuse has been Quentin Tarantino’s rapid rise to fame, which has seen him cast as the western ambassador of Hong Kong cinema.

Aside from the sensationalized “debt” to director Ringo Lam (whose City on Fire is often cited as the storyline of Reservoir Dogs, 1993), Tarantino has been motor-mouthing his deepfelt appreciation for film­

makers like John W oo, Jackie Chan and Tsui Hark.

At Cannes in 1993, Tarantino entertained journalists with plans to write dialogue for John W oo’s Holly­ wood movies and it is certain that, as with G et Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995), he counselled Travolta to take the role in W oo’s Broken Arrow (1996).

In the West, Tarantino has effectively turned Hong Kong’s directors into share-household names. In the East, Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) is cited by Raymond Chow, the head of Golden Harvest, as hav­ ing burst the island’s insularity and ended the Hong Kong industry’s monopoly over the island’s movie­ going public.

Golden Harvest had its beginnings 25 years ago when filmmaker Raymond Chow left Shaw Broth­ ers to start his own company. Shaw Brothers made action films, but Raymond Chow knew how to make them more entertaining. Two of Golden Harvest’s earliest investments were legendary kung fu king Bruce Lee, and stunt comedian Jackie Chan, famed for hav-

them and the film industry. Early last year they were reported as saying they didn’t make political films, so the event would probably just pass them by. Perhaps they are right; however, they have also sought alter­ native citizenship and Chow Y un-Fat moved to Hollywood late last year.

John W oo cites artistic reasons for his decisive move to the U.S. Woo was responsible for a string of Hong Kong hits which include H ardboiled, A B etter T om orrow (1986), The K iller (1989), and Bullet in the H ead (1990). He moved to the U.S. to direct JeanClaude Van Damme in H ard Target (1993). That led to the US$60-m illion B roken A rrow , starring John Travolta and Christian Slater.

Even amongst the gunplay and explosions, John Woo has always produced stylistically beautiful films, but Hong Kong doesn’t reward arthouse or even grungy films. Apart from action, told either from a police or a Triad angle, low-brow comedy, sword­ play or kung fu epics, there are no other genres. (The mainland does arthouse, but, as its directors have con­ sistently found, at great personal expense. Among the “fifth generation” filmmakers, two examples are Zhang Yimou and Tian Zhuangzhuang. Zhang, direc­ tor of Ju D ou (1 9 9 0 ) and R aise th e R ed L a n tern

Unfortunately, with the massive slump at the boxoffice of Hong Kong films other than Chan’s (still the highest grossers in Hong Kong), the money available for Hong Kong features has been getting smaller, while the budgets have been getting bigger. Hence, Chan has been looking for cheaper locations, post­ production facilities and equipment hire.

British Columbia, with its well-established Chi­ nese population, good local crews, its unexploited locations and low fees, plus shooting incentives, is a popular location. Rumble in the Bronx was set in New York but shot entirely in Vancouver. Ronny Yu’s The Bride luith W hite H air, a sword-play piece, was also shot very cheaply in studios in British Columbia.

The other pressure on Hong Kong filmmakers is the changing tastes of the Hong Kong audience. In the past, natives of Hong Kong watched only home­ grown product. Whereas Hong Kong film directors, being massive consumers of American, European, Japanese and even Australian product, were as cineliterate as any film geek, their audience was not. The controversy over Tarantino’s “plagiarism” offers itself as an interesting tool for examining an aspect of Hong Kong film m aking which is known am ongst film theorists as “hybridity”. The theories of hybridity deal in the post-colonial arena of cross-culture, plagiarism , homage and intertextuality.

Hybridizing has long been Hong Kong’s role, acting both as a buffer to China, bearing the brunt of Western fads and sensations, and, as the gateway to China, transform ing or Easternizing what is potentially threatening or Western into something with Chinese aspects, and therefore halfway palatable for tradi­ tionalist or mainland China.

It is all ebb and flow. Hong Kong’s directors have always remade the year’s Hollywood hits. With more than 150 films produced in Hong Kong every year, writers and directors have few pauses for reflection.

As an example, James Cameron’s Term inator (1984) exists in myriad reworkings as well as short referen­ tial sketches in Hong Kong comedies. The famous baby carriage on the stairs scene that began life in Sergei Eisenstein’s B attleship Potem kin (1925), and which was re-invigorated in The U ntouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987), is now considered public domain. As a gangster classic, The Untouchables was seen and cham­ pioned by all the Hong Kong directors. The baby carriage rolling down the stairs saw countless varia-

by Michael Kitson ing broken almost every bone in his body, some twice.

Now aged 42, the stuntwork he still performs is push­ ing the edge. Chan is coy when asked what he will do after the movies. Justifiably so, since Jackie Chan is rumoured to be the heir apparent to Golden Harvest.

Jackie Chan is also an Australian citizen (though his visa was revoked last year pending a six-month stay), his family have lived here since the early 1960s.

Like Chan, other Hong Kong actors and directors are joining the “H ong Kong diaspora” . Increasingly forced to choose an alternative country of citizenship, they are dispersed around the world, their energies spread between Hong Kong and their second home.

Hong Kong directors Eddie Fong, Clara Law and Ronny Yu have all chosen to settle in Australia. Clara Law’s just-completed Floating L ife examines this sub­ ject and is wholly Australian-produced.

In Hong Kong, actors like Chow Yun-Fat and young directors like Ringo Lam and Wong Kar-Wai have all been fairly blasé about what 1997 means to

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

(1 9 9 1 ), was for a time not allowed to travel with his films, and Tian was barred from making a film in 1995, after The Blue Kite was considered seditious by the authorities.)

Hong Kong’s ad infinitum rehashing of these lim­ iting genres has largely been blam ed on the involvement in the film industry of the Triads, the Chinese equivalent of the Mafia, an involvement not without its benefits. The Triads are often more will­ ing to assist the filmmakers than the Hong Kong government. In a recent interview, Ringo Lam says that every Hong Kong filmmaker has had to make a film for the Triads. After overcoming the initial fear of going over budget, Lam says he relaxed and found the collaboration to be a good one.

For some Hong Kong filmmakers, the exchange in 1997 might seem to herald a new era of expansion in cinema. Recent widescreen kung fu epics like Once Upon a T im e in C hina suggest that some filmmak­ ers have their eyes upon China’s unlimited resources.

21

tions in Hong Kong gangster films (e.g., A B etter T om orrow ), even to the point of having a gangster in the baby carriage with an automatic pistol. The onlypeople really aware of these borrowings or homage seem to have been the directors, since the Hong Kong audience only consumed home-grown product.

How ever, even the insularity of Hong Kong is changing. According to Tim e magazine, 1995 has seen a massive growth of Western cinema in Hong Kong.

Rather than let this ruin Golden Harvest, Raymond Chow has integrated with distributor United Inter­ national Pictures and exhibitor Village Roadshow.

United International Pictures recently bought ten percent of Golden Harvest and formed Golden Inter­ national. United International Pictures was able to get such American product as True Lies (James Cameron, 1994) screened in China through its joint venture with Golden Harvest. Andrew Cripps, UIP’s Execu­ tive Vice-President, pointed to heavy Chinese taxes (30 to 50 percent) and marginal returns, but nonethe­ less his tone is quietly confident. (It is not all good news for UIP, A p ollo 13 (Ron Howard, 1995) and G oldeneye (Martin Campbell, 1995) were recently refused entry by the Chinese censorship board.)

A u stralia’s V illage Roadshow spent some S150 million on its push into South-East Asia in 1995, con­ structing and outfitting a number of m u ltip lexes in T h aila n d , Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, including a $27 million virtual-reality gaming facility in Taiwan.

Village Roadshow and Golden Harvest formed the joint company Golden Village in 1992. In February 1996, Golden Village announced it had bought 9.99 percent (at $ 27.5 million) of Golden Harvest and that Jo h n Kirby, chairm an of V illage Roadshow, had accepted an invita­ tio n to jo in the G olden H arvest Board of Directors.

Golden International and Golden Village are hoping to ride Golden Harvest, Trojanhorse style, into the People’s Republic of China. In the past, the mainland restricted the number of for­ eign im p o rts.2 Com e 1 9 9 7 and the exchange of sovereignty, Golden Harvest will be a Chinese busi­ ness situated in PRC. The Chinese government also appears to be aware of this. Representatives of Chi­ na’s state film body have been travelling in South-East Asia looking at Golden V illage’s multiplexes and Golden International’s distribution outlets. For these two partially-western investors, the potential returns are huge.

Golden Harvest Limited is also protecting itself.

China is proving very difficult to do business with.

Golden Harvest can use its foreign integration and its recent diversification to lift the majority of its oper­ ations out of Hong Kong if things get too hairy.

Many believe Raymond Chow will shortly relin­ quish the reins of Golden Harvest’s production arm to Jackie Chan. Chow could continue to oversee his investments in the twin spheres of exhibition and dis­ tribu tion. Australia and Canada stand to benefit overwhelmingly as locations and post-production facilities. If China continues to be impossible to do business with, it is possible that Golden Harvest could set up on Australian, rather than British Columbian, soil. As the U.S. independents flee the expense of filmmaking in their own country, their invasion of Canada is raising location fees and freelance rates, and Aus­ tralia is looking better and better. Indeed, Golden Harvest’s production arm, Golden Harvest Private G roup, has already been seeking new locations,

22

cheaper equipment hire and post-production facili­ ties here. Jackie Chan announced at a M arch press conference that there were already plans for another Melbourne-based feature beyond A N ice Guy. Melbourne and Sydney are increasingly supplying post-production facilities for Hong Kong product.

Soundfirm in Melbourne mixed Clara Law’s Kuro­ sawa homage, T em ptation o f a M on k, Eddie Fong’s Private E ye Blues, David H o’s G o o d by e H on g Kong, as well as Chan’s Rum ble in the Bronx and First Strike (formerly T he Story o f CIA, Stanley Tong, 1 9 9 6 ).

Soundfirm has been and continues to be a world leader in digital stereo. Soundfirm head Roger Sav­ age believes it was T em p ta tio n o f a M on k (1 9 9 4 ) which drew the initial Hong Kong and now mainland Chinese interest to Australia. Soundfirm has recently finished mixing three mainland features, F oreign M o o n , Sun V alley and T h e E m p e r o r ’s Song, des­ tined for the world’s arthouse circuits. Soundfirm has also seen an increase of work from Korea and T ai­ wan. Sun Valley had its negative flown to Cinevex, so that total lab and sound-post was completed in

M elbourne, while M ovie Lab in Sydney is supply­ ing itself as the film p ro cessor to three K orean features.3 The construction of Rupert M urdoch’s Fox stu­ dios at the Sydney Showground site will also see interest from Golden Harvest Productions. Intended as a prime producer of programmes for M urdoch’s Foxtel, the Showground com plex will also supply itself as studios to both local industry and to low-bud­ get international industry. Initially, this was expected to be mainly American but there has been increas­ ing in terest from Asian cinem a produ cers. In February, M u rd och ’s News Corporation bought exclusive rights to Golden Harvest’s “back catalogue” for screening on its pay-movie channel.

Queensland’s Pacific Film and Television Com­ mission (PFTC) had been wooing Golden Harvest to Australia for six years. First Strike was shot in tropi­ cal Q ueensland , on V ic to ria ’s snow field s, in Melbourne (where the “Paris end” of Collins Street with a little additional signage doubled as Paris), and featured a 50-car pileup in Brisbane’s Chinatown.

(M elbourne’s Chinatown was dropped when the PFTC offered heftier shooting incentives.)

PFTC , like the state film bodies in Victoria and N .S.W ., is set up to liaise with international film ­ makers. Robin James, the executive officer at PFTC, pointed out how the state film offices have changed since the 1970s, when their role was to entice inter­ national funding for Australian co-productions. In the 1990s, the film offices offer themselves as gobetweens and ambassadors for their local industries.

They keep detailed location folders, can commission footage for overseas production companies, and pro­ mote local crews.

First Strike, according to Robin James, had a very successful shoot, coming in under-time and under­ budget. Stanley Tong, the stunt-director of First Strike, told David Pratt of the Melbourne Film Office that the Australian crews had been the best he had worked with in the world. Jackie Chan was so impressed he and his director Sammo Hung exchanged the setting of their next collaboration, A N ice Guy, from New York City to M elbourne’s Chinatown.

In 1995, Quentin Tarantino, a longtime champion of Hong Kong cinema, turned distributor under the guiding influence of M iram ax D istributors. Until recen tly a small ind epend en t com pany w hose uncanny ability to pick-up the independent winners, including Pulp Fiction and The Piano (Jane Campion, 19 9 3 ), has made it the giant amongst the indepen­ dent d istributors, M iram ax is now aligned with Disney (Buena Vista). Quentin Tarantino is distrib­ uting W ong Kar-W ai’s Chungking E xpress, a Hong Kong police-gangster/romance. The subtitled Chinese version was seen at M elb o u rn e’s Lum ière cinem a during Christmas 1995, but Taran­ tin o ’s dubbed version currently does not have an Australian dis­ tributor.

Perhaps it will be picked up by Village Roadshow for screening in its 15-screen multiplex cinema in Melbourne’s soon-to-be-completed Crow n C asino, expected to run twenty-four hours a day, with sev­ eral screens expected to be devoted to H ong K ong a ctio n m ovies.

Chungking Express, W oo’s B roken Arrow, Tong’s First Strike or a sim­ ilar com bination may well be the note on which to open the Casino multiplex. As the Casino clientele are said to be pred om inantly Chinese or South-East Asian, this makes sense, although, according to M r Maiochino of Village Roadshow, it is still “just a rumour”.

The growth in megaplexes could increase demand from mainstream or gw eilo (“white devil”) cinemas for Hong Kong product. U.S. exhibitor Reading Cor­ poration recently announced plans to capture 10 to 15 percent of the Australian m arket, building six “m egaplexes”, each holding betw een 3 0 and 4 0 screens. This is coincidentally timed for m id-1997.

Reading is looking at New Zealand and intends to use Australia as its launching pad into Asia. In Sep­ tember 1995, Village Roadshow announced that, as the Australian cinema market seemed to be at satu­ ration point, it would not be building any m ore multiplexes. In February, Village Roadshow changed its tune to announce plans to meet Reading’s chal­ lenge with $350 million multiplex developments.

Hong Kong action films are making other inroads into Australian cinema. In the low-budget and no-bud­ get Australian scene, there has been Matthew George’s Ironfist (formerly Under the Gun)4; from the V.C.A. film school, Brent Houghton’s short film, The H unts­ man (1994), an admirable action film paying homage to John Woo; and, in 1995, Deep Shit (Morgan Evans), a comic Jackie Chan-homage set at the Victoria M ar­ kets. (Among others, at Melbourne University, Kirsten Bowers is writing her Masters on hybridity and gen­ der roles in Hong Kong action movies, while Seekam Tan and Audrey Yue are doing PhDs at Melbourne and LaTrobe Universities respectively.)

Some critics complain that Hong Kong hybrids mis­ represent Australian cultural identity, presenting Falls C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

R

PETER SHEEHAN

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Creek as the Ukraine, Collins Street as the Left Bank, Brisbane’s Chinatown as Hong Kong. To those crit­ ics I say: D on ’t be so precious. Surely this sort of exchange can only enrich our cultural identity. In eco­ nomic terms as well as in terms of clout, it adds greater buoyancy to the Australian film industry. For those young filmmakers like Brent Houghton, it offers them the magical experience and training on the real thing, a Jackie Chan feature in their own hometown. @ S o u rces: Beth Accomando, “Interview with John W oo”, H ong Kong Film M agazine, Issue #3 .

Lisa Allen, “$300m Plans for Global Village”, The W eekend Australian, 23-4 September 1995.

Nigel Andrews, “Hong Kong Cinema Faces the Dragon”, The W eekend Australian, 24-5 February 1996.

Lynden Barber, “Foxtel Chases Local Talent on the Tail of

The Man from Hong Kong BRIAN TRENGHARD SMITH [No opening production credit.] THE MAN FROM HONG KONG. [© not given; atb 1974.] A Golden Harvest & The Movie Company co-production. Made with the financial assistance of Australian Film Development Corporation. Locations: Sydney; Hong Kong.

Australian distributor: Greater Union. P/deo: Roadshow. Rating: R. 35mm. Panavision. 101 mins.

Producers: Raymond Chow, John Fraser. Executive producers: David Hannay, André Morgan. Assistant producer: Michael Fallon.

Scriptwriter: Brian Trenchard Smith. Director of photography: Russell Boyd. Camera operator: David Gribble. Production designers: David Copping, Chien Shum. Wardrobe supervisee: Bruce Finlayson, Chu Shing-Hey. Editor: Ron Williams. Composer: Noel Quinlan.

Sound recordists: Cliff Curl, Tim Lloyd, Sherman Chow. Sound editors: Lindsay Frazer, Tomash Pokorny, Chou Shao-Lung.

Mixers: Peter Fenton, Julian Ellingworth, Chou Shao-Lung.

Cast: Jimmy Wang Yu (Fang), George Lazenby (Wilton), Hugh Keays-Byrne' (Morrie Grosse), Roger Ward (Bob Taylor), Frank Thring (Willard), Ros Spiers (Caroline Thorne), Rebecca Gilling (Angelina), Grant Page (Assassin), Deryck Barnes (Veterinary Doctor)12; Hung Kam Po (Win Chan), Bill Hunter (Peterson), Ian Jamieson (Drug Courier), Elaine Wong (Chinese Girl), John Orschik3 (Charles), Geoff Brown (Martial Arts [sic]); Kevin Broadribb, Brian Trenchard Smith (Heavies); Peter Armstrong, Rangi Nicholls, Bob Hicks, Max Aspin (Wilton's Bodyguards).

Priscilla”, The W eekend Australian, 22-3 July 1995.

Rolanda Chu, Ringo Lam special, Hong Kong Film Magazine, Issue *4.

Richard Corliss, “Chinese Movie Magic”, Tim e Australia, 29 January 1996.

Clyde Gentry III, “‘Chow’ Hong Kong, Hello Hollywood!”, H ong Kong Film Connection, Vol. Ill, Issue III. Don Groves, “A pollo, G oldeneye Get Red Light in China”, Variety, 19-25 February 1996.

Andrew Higgins, “China Calls with Chants to Kill”, The G uardian W eekly, Vol 154, # 5 , week ending 4 Febru­ ary 1996.

Sam Ho, “Wong Kar W ai”, H ong Kong Film C onnection, Vol III, Issue IV. Owen Hughes, “Asian Integration” and “Western Stars Eclipse Locals in Hong Kong”, Screen International, Fri­ day, 19 January 1996.

Megan Jo n es, “Village to go Big with New Cinem as”, Business Age, 29 February 1996.

Richard McGregor, “The Last Days of Hong Kong”, The Australian Magazine, 24-5 February 1996.

Joey O’Bryan, “John W oo”, H ong Kong Film Connection, Vol III, Issue IV. Richard Owen, “Village projects $350m Doubling”, Busi­ ness Australian, 29 February 1996.

Barrie Pattison, “Bang Bang to White Hair: The Work of Hong Kong Film Director Ronny Yu”, Fatal Visions, #19.

Barrie Pattison, “Ronny Yu: Swing of the Pendulum”, Hong Kong Film Connection, Vol. Ill, Issue IV. Tony Rayns, “The Narrow Path: Chen Kaige”, Projections 3.

Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, “History, Melodrama & Ideology in Chinese Cinema”, Film Quarterly, Vol. 49, Fall 1995.

Jaim e W olf, “The Occidental Tou rist”, P rem iere (U.S.), March 1996.

1 Chan has ventured into splastick, as well. There is Drunken M aster 2 and R um ble in the Bronx, where Chan makes direct references to Buster Keaton and S team boat Bill.

Chan has admitted to his admiration for people like Keaton and the United Artist stalwarts, specifically for their independence, their interest in and talent with stunt work, and for combining the skills of writing and direction.

2 Chris Berry adds: The screening of True Lies in the main­ land is in part to do with the decision of the Chinese government to allow China Film Corporation, the gov­ ernment distribution/exhibition company which still retains a monopoly on all imports of foreign films, to distribute up to 10 films a year on a split-of-the-box-office revenue basis, rather than just buying the rights, as they do for all the other foreign films they buy. Once this was agreed to, China Film wanted (and wants) the biggest box-office hits it can get on this basis. China Film no longer has a monop­ oly on distributing Chinese films within China. Therefore, its interests are, ironically, now with getting as many for­ eign films into the Chinese market on the best terms possible, and that is where its remaining monopoly lies.

3 For futher discussion, see “Technicalities” in the previous issue of Cinem a Papers.

4 See Michael Helms, “Under the G un”, C inem a Papers,

I

n 1974, Jimmy Wang Yu and George Lazenby co-starred in the Australian-Hong Kong co­ production, The Man from Hong Kong. Following closely on the foot­ steps of Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973), The Man from Hong Kong is a video­ store cult classic.4 (Watch for the fam iliarfaces amongst the stunt teams.) The film includes some nifty plot tricks with hang gliders, an endearing performance from Jimmy Wang Yu, and one ofthose cinematic, smash-up derby car chases that Australia is so good at.

The association which led to The Man from Hong Kong began at Channel 9 in the early 1970s. David Hannay was working as a producer on a tele-series, Godfathers, and Brian Trenchard Smith was cutting its trailer. During his time at Greater Union, Trenchard Smith found himself cutting more and more kung fu from Hong Kong. The international trend was obvious to him and he set to scripting The Man from Hong Kong.

To prove his directorial skills, Trenchard Smith pro­ duced two documentaries, The W orld o f Kung Fu (on Bruce Lee) and Kung Fu Killers. These tw o films ingratiated him with Raymond Chow, the head of Golden Harvest. A deal was struck between Golden Harvest, Greater Union (Golden Harvest's distributors in Australia) and the Aus­ tralian Film Development Commission, a forerunner of the Australian Film Commission.

Executive producer David Hannay dealt mainly with André Morgan, Golden Harvest's head of International pro­ duction. Aged 24 at the time and a gweilo, Morgan was something of a boy wonder. An executive of an expanding Hong Kong film company, in a culture that values maturity over youth, was partially due to his affinity for language. His fluency in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, among other regional dialects, made the deal for The Man from Hong Kong a very smooth one.

At the time, The Man from Hong Kong had the biggest budget of any Australian-produced feature. Expense was largely related to the need fo rtw o main units (one for each country), as well as second units. Its shooting schedule took in five weeks in Sydney, a week around Uluru (Ayers Rock) and six weeks in Hong Kong.

The Man from Hong Kongwas both very successful and very profitable. Trenchard Smith w ent on to make Deathcheaters[W Q ), with John Hargreaves, another Aus­ tralian martial-arts film. Unfortunately, though, The Man from Hong Kong resonated in the international market as only Enter the Dragon had before it: it didn't lead to further co-productions with Golden Harvest.

The film is steeped in the conventions of the Hong Kong kung fu genre. Though the direction is competent, it is

sometimes unsure of whether to play for laughs or dramatic tension. For example, the arrest of a Hong Kong drug courier (Sammo Hung5) on Ayers Rock (Uluru) is followed, after a short drive, by a cuppa atthe Sydney Opera House.

Australian audiences would appreciate the humour here.

The principal players are Jimmy Wang Yu, George Lazenby, RogerW ard and Frank Thring, with Rebecca Gilling and Hugh Keays-Byrne fresh from Sandy Harbutt's Stone (1974), also produced by David Hannay. W orthy of merit are the performances of Ros Spiers (as Caroline Thorne), and Keays-Byrne (Morrie Grosse). Caroline, an early sex-interest for Fang (Yu), develops into a forthright, no-nonsense, matron figure, while Keays-Byrne turns in a comic and often extemporized performance as a thoroughly-suspect nar­ cotics agent.

The Man from Hong Kong has flaws, time hasn't been kind to its editing-style and the narrative isn't always tight, but, like Enter the Dragon, it is spectacular chop-socky entertainment.

Thanks: David Hannay for his input in compiling this brief.

1 'Keays-Byrne' is hyphenated on the end credits but not on the opening.

2 The first nine credits are in the order of the opening credits; the restare per the end credits.

3 Usually spelt "Orcsik".

4 Editor: The unsuspecting should be warned. The commercially-available video is not letter-boxed and is an appalling mish-mash of cropped images, choppy pan-and-scan and ugly, disorientating compression. Given that a "20th Anniver­ sary edition" was released in 1994, it is a pity Roadshow did not opt for a new letter-boxed telecine, especially since Roadshow has done much elsewhere to promote letter-box videos (e.g., Tombstone).

5 Although he is not credited as such. Butthe keen-eyeed swear it is Sammy.

No. 106, October 1995, pp. 22, 23, 57.

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

25

D

N 1995, a mew player with Hong Kong origins caused a sensation in.the Chinese film industry. Ocean Films (Dayang) ^ » i s t d a movie called Blush (H ongfen, |Li Shaohong), about the fate o f former prostitutes in 1 9 4 9 Communist takeover of the mainland. Although the theme was certainly inter­ esting, it was n o t j^ ^ a u s ^ ^ l ^ T ^ u s s ^ a t h e r O ^ was the way it was distributed and marketed. Ocean ^£u^wj nndertook an extensive pre-publicity campaign, something rarely if ever attempted before in China.

It also negotiated a split of box-office revenue, rather tharf simply selling the r ig h ts t^ o m ib it^ ^ n ^ e a W ing the rest up to them. As a result, Ocean Films made twenty times more on the film than had been offered foBthe rights alone (and double what Ocean Films paid for it). Later the same year, it had a sim ilar sufjess with Zhou Xiaowen’s E rm o, which has been reEased this year in Australia.

■ h i s is just the latest episode in the ongoing trans­ fo rm ation o f the C hinese ¿film industry and the grow ing role o f H ong Kong in it. T w e n ty y e lrs ago, China’s film industry was entirely staif^owned

rain of Deng’s China to become an integrated p artof the mainland industry?

Ocean*rnrns is the same company that has also '.w X m moved from distribution and exhibition into pro­ duction with The E m p ero r’s Shadow (Q insong), also by Zhou Xiaowen. As reported in the June issue of Cinema Papers, the film’s US$2 million budget was one o f the largest ever in China, and Ocean Films brought it to Australia for post-production.

In 1980, new regulations altered this as a part of According to Wang Dawei, Vice-Gen|gfManager a nationwide effort to stimulate production in all o f Ocean Films in Beijing, Ocean Filins was estab­ fields. Censorship was loosened, devolving responsi^ lished as a branch com pany o f a lH o n g Kong bility for approval of scripts to the studios, although conglomerate with interests in fieldsianging from the finished product still has to be approved by the property tdfbigh-technology, and w iic h began to Film Bureau. More crucially, the flat fee was changed explore involvement in the mainlamrfilm'sceh^'in- ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ p e^ n n ^ O T a^ m aK T n g tnenraustry respon­ is '^ ^ ^ s u c h , it is a relatively recent arrival. sive to the box-office as well as to the demands of the Wang tells the story of his company’s recent break­ state’s cultural apparatchiks. throughs in distribution and exhibition with all the As the reforms of the 1980s rolled on, ever more oratorical skills befitting someone who started out as responsibility for profits and losses waapevolved on an actor. For him, the struggle to persuade one local to the studios, and they were given m ire power to branch company of the massive state distribution and make their own decisions about hovwto use thejljj exhibition monopoly after another to go down this resources. The same principles were being applied to new road is a David and G oliath story he clearly other state-owned enterprises across the country. This relishes. iJfhow the so-called Fifth Generation of filmmakers I told them that the Chinese film market is not bad, like% hang Yimou and Chen Kaige got their first but we haven’t been doing our work properly, we b rea k s^

M

i

Hong K ong and closed to foreign pafficipation. W hen Deng Xiaoping came to power in 11979, he laid down two broad policy direcjkfjns which have been followed ever since. Qua! was the gradual ro llb ack o f the state-owned command economy and the develop­ m ent o f the m arket econom y. T h e second was opening up to foreign investment. In fact, any foreigncom panies could have taken advantage o f these opportunities, but it is Hong Kong that has movid fastest, and taken the biggest stake.

Partly, no doubt, they v^ere helped by cultural links. But they were also mote motivated than most.

In 1984, following negotialims between the UK and China, in which they had no say, the people of Hong Kong discovered that they wpuld be “returning to the motherland” in 1997. The Hong Kong film industry responded in two ways. O pe, widely known and reported in the West, is increased international dis­ persal, using locations sucl^ts Melbourne for Jackie Chan movies and seeing talent such as Jo hn Wjoo move to Hollywood and Clara Law move to AiH§H tralia. Also widely-known but less well-understood is the decision to get into the mainland before it was forced to. The Chinese-^government did not just throw the doors wide open,; so how exactly has the Hong Kong film industry negotiated the changing ter-

haven’t changed our ideas. Whoever changes their ideas first will get a handle on the market.

However, there was a downside. The Chiagse gov­ ernm ent m aintained C h in ^ p ilm C o rm jra tio n ’s Certainly, there is no doubt that the foresight of Wang monopoly on distribution and ^ h i b i t ji n , on the and his colleagues has enabled them to do well. But grounds that the “spiritual” (meaning ideological) importance of cinema made it inappropriate to let go to understand the full situation one needs to know the terrain in which they are operating. TMs back- fcof central control. As a result, the studios could not story to Ocean Films’ recent success consists of the ■play o ff distribution and exhibition chains to gefg “reform” igaige) process without which it would not ■ fie best deal possiblelfor their product, and soon ran1 have been able to operate in China at all. This story anto economic troubll. Renting out their equipment, begins in the production sector. fa c ilitie s and personnel to Hong Kong com panies; Prior to Deng Xiaoping’s elevation to power in looking to use C h in jiis an exotic location became 1979, Chinese film studios, which are all state-owned one way to increase revenue in the late 1980s. to this day, completed films according to an annual After the Tiananmen events o f 1 9 8 9 , increase^ plan designed by the Film Bureau. All scripts had to political censorship added extra pressure. Further-, be approved by censors prior to production. For each more, increased availability o f other recreational film completed, the studios received R M B 7 0 0 ,0 0 0 options, especially television, was killing the mass film; (approximately $ 1 1 5 ,0 0 0 at today’s exchange rates) audience. This had particularly worse effects on thej from the state-ow ned distribution and exhibition I ■studios than on Chiaa Film Corporation. Between monopoly company, China Film Corporation. This ■1979 and 1991, admissions fell by fifty percent, radflat fee applied regardless of how much they had spent ||cally reducing the number o f prints o f each film making the film, and regardless o f whether or not Rieeded and, therefor® also reducing income returned anyone went to see the film. to the studios underlthe regulations introduced in 1 9 8 0 . During the same tim e, however, box-dffice income doubled, mote than cushioning the state dis­ tribution and exhibition monopoly.

Less and less able to generate the budgets for new} productions by themselves, the studios turned more and more to privat Jin v estm en t. T h at in v e s tm e iii included Hong Kong and other foreign investment, f l o w , China’s studios function largely as facilities,

C I N E M A P A P E R S I AUGUST 1996

assssBB

H

ever more rarely the nM otors of new pro­ ductions. H o t t e r , Chinese governm^gt regulations still maintainprat only films with studio mlolvement can be sentwp for the censorship and classHcation required prior to release m China itself. Neithei mamland C h iA se private producers nor H o n a Kong producers can^perate without a studio. As Jr æ u ît] Ithough We know that Hong Kong producers have jecome ever more dggply involved in C h * s e Filmmaking, it has also btBuru harder an dfiu rd lr to gdetermine which films carlktsaid to ba H onaKong films and which are mainland fjkns. ¿§§ Take, for example, The Em peror’s Shadou/xThe film is a co-production between Ocean Film«and X i’an Film Studio in north-w est China. The direc­ t o r , Zhou Xiaowen, and most of the crew ar^ k om X i’an, but all the money comes from Ocean Films. ^ K n w f i i g Dawei started out as an actor at X i’an, W d then n M m e Zhou Xiaowen’s assistant director I movingmler to Ocean Films. From this exam­ ple of the relatio n s^ ? between Ocean Films and an Film Studio, it camb$iseen that undirthe mask of co-production the privatmsector is gradually “eat­ ing up” the public sector, as the Chinese put it.

However, throughout this period ofjincreasing Hong Kong involvement in produition, distribution Land exhibition remained under stale control. The fall

again, and 1 9 9 6 ’$ box-office figures cannot compare with 1995’s. Thisjin turn is affecting production, with few investors willing to get into the businl||||yith the prospect o f the resulting product being banned.

Second, although China Film CorporatgSn has lost Film Corporation and allowed them to deal with whomever they liked. As all the local-level distribu­ its domestic monopoly, it remains the sojfe importer o f foreign films. With greatly-reduced abilly to profit tion and exhibition corporations under the leadership from domestic production, it has turnedço imports of China Film Corporation are autonomous entities, this opened up the opportunities for new initiatives to recover its income. In the past, although China such as those undertaken by Ocean Films with Blush F ilm Corporation has always brought in considerable and later Ertno. Furthermore, it is also possible for numbers of foreign films every year, it has always done so on the b a s i^ ^ u y in ^ r ic h t s a ^ n o t enter­ Chinese private investors to set up rival distribution and exhibition companiés o f their ovw to challenge ing into box-offi(flsplits with foreign producers. This the existingB>cal-level corporations, although con­ has effectively e jjlu d e d the top product, w hich it tinued c o n ç o is about who controls what the Chfflese could not afford the rights on.

However, in 1995, for the first time China Film see mean thatlforeigners are still excluded from S re c t Corporation wa^ allowed to bring in ten films on a participatioBn this sector. box-office split arrangement. These included Forwti T he massive increases in returns to producers Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994), Rumble in the Brénx promised by the example of Blush and Ermo indicate (Stanley Tong, 1995) and various others. Together, that a rapid increase in Chinese film budgets is likely, and indeed many major productions mounted since they cleaned up at the Chinese box-office. If this prac­ late 1995 are budgeted far higher than the old norm. ; tice is widened, it may constitute a new th reat to domestic production.

Furthermore, it should also mean that more modestly

«4ÉÎ

he Transformation of the Chinese Film Industry in revenue actually returned to producers w ithin China, despite the growth in box-office incorfe, inhib­ ited the level of investMe^^Hnovie prediction, be it from Chinese or FB ng KongftMfrcelr In 1 993, following extensive lobbying by produc­ ers, that too began jtp change. First, the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television which houses the Film Bureau recognized that the primary p u r p le of film production was ®d longer educational. Fh^Bynoved the major ju stiB ation for continued s t a jj conftol o f distribution arM exhibition.

In A u g u s td 94, this was consolidated with a new regulation w in ch removed the obligation of pro­ ducers w f f in C hina to sell their film s to China

ht f

1

PerhaBFreflecting the improved Chinese box office, ZhiM m m o u's latest film is his frst entirely mainland ^ H is e -fu n d e d effort since before the Tiananmen M i a re events of 1989. Under the ivorking title of Breaking W p i s Hard to Do ( You Hua Hao Hao Shuo), it commenced ^phooting in Beijing in June. Themlm, Zhang Yimou's first B■ com edy, is being made undeathe auspices of Guangxi I Rim Syudio, which also made the first Fith Generation film, Yellow Earth, in 1985. ® e* plot concerns a bookstall I owner, played by Jiang W p j (the lead in Red Sorghum), B a n d his inability to give Wjlformer girlfriend (played by ^ M t e p m e r and former nlodel Qu Ying) to a rich man, playedj|yLi Baotian (tf^godfatherfrom Shanghai Triad).

I

budgeted niche-market films can return a profit within China. The market forces that drove filmmakers like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige to dependence on for­ eign producers and foreign box-office are now things of the past. However, various factors continue to cast some doubts over whether or not a new Golden Age o f Chinese cinema is upon us. M Firgw he major joker in the pack is continued governnfcnt [censorship. All of China's reforms have been introduced on the “two steps forward, one step back” m o d e l i he Transformation o f the distribution and exhibition sector in 1995 was at least four steps for­ ward. S<£. perhaps we should not be surprised that 1996 has seen the advent of a particularly vicious new period or cultural restriction. This may be the result of jockeying fbr power in the polkicalxuccession. struggle [that is currently intensifying in Beijing as Deng Xiioping’s health continup to decline. The old head of the Film Bureau, Tian CMigming, has stepped down, and the fihn industry finds itself under more or less direct control from Din^Guan’gen, Head of the Cejiral Propaganda Ministry, unsmprlsmglyf six* films fl||n Beijing Film Studio alone have yet to make it through censorship this year, an unprecedented number lince the reforms began in 1979.

Thes^rpblptns have in turn produced a chilling effect in the film industry as a whole. With only the most anody|tf local product approved for release, the public is staying away from Chinese films in droves

Finally, for H ong Kong film producers, there is the question of their status. T o date, they have bei||| -.classed as “foreign” and had to operate under the same constraints as other foreign companies. Just as Ocean Films must cotoroduce films with a mainlandi partner, so it must d|jti|bute them with a mainiagfd partner, too.

W hat will happenin 1997|gl recently asked Dou Shoufang, Vice-Head of the FilnfeBureau? “The pol­ icy is very clear,? he assured me. “As ¿^ou know, we say ‘One Nation, Tw S Systems’ about Hong Kong.”

“So, they will be Chinese films and Chinese film­ makers?” I asked. b H | B ‘Y e s.”

“What about the two systems?”

“W e’re not sure y j f.”

Clearly, everyoneunvolved in the inainland film industry is aware of the potentially enormous effect of cashed-up Hong Kong players having unfette®j|access to participation thrlrughout the industry after 1997.

But, equally clearly, nobody is quite sure whether that wiunappen. Watch this space, as they saya

Budgeted dtiJS$1.5 miflion so far, and with privatelyraised in v e s tm te ^ M lS , the shoot is due to finish in Tate July. Post-production should be completed by the end of the year.

C I N E M A P APERS • AUGUST 1996

27

C I N E M A P A P E R S â&#x20AC;¢ AUGUST 1996

ORN IN TH E POST-WAR MUNDANTTY OF SYDNEY,

Christopher Doyle has spent much of his life at large. He has been a sailor with the Nor­ wegian Merchant Marine at the age of 18, a Thai-based Chinese quack-medicine ‘doctor’, a ‘cowboy-nic’ on an Israeli kibbutz, even a well-digger in the Indian d esert... and almost everything in between.

Doyle was ‘reincarnated’ in the late 1970s by his poet/language teacher at the University of Hong Kong, who gave him the evocative name JH (Du Kefeng).

He has never been the same.

Since 1978, Doyle has been a founding member of Lanling Theatre Workshop (Taiwan’s first profes­ sional m odern theatre group), he has shot still photographs, film and video for such modern dance groups as Cloud Gate Dance Ensem ble and Zuni Icoshedron, and he created Taiwan TV’s ground-break­ ing non-fiction series, Travelling Images.

Since Edward Yang (Yang Te-ch’ang) invited him to shoot his first feature, That Day, On the B each 1, in 1981, Doyle has devoted most of his time and energy to photographing Chinese films. His work as director of photography includes W ong Kar-W ai’s D ays o f Being Wild and Chungking Express, Stan Lai’s P ea ch B lo ss o m L a n d and Chen K aige’s Temptress M oon, seen at Cannes this year.

Doyle has also made music videos for such artists as Air Supply, Leslie Cheung, Leon Lai, Cui Jian and Tony Leung. He first exhibited his photo-collages in Taipei in 1993, and has since had several more exhi­ bitions of his collages and photographs in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tokyo and Rotterdam.

Two Chinese-language books and one Japan­ ese edition of his photos and te x t have appeared to date; an English edition is antic­ ipated for December 1996.

yet I’d never even noticed the saturation and varia­ tions of green in which the film registered the sub-tropical countryside!

I was sucked in. I bought equipment. I read incom­ prehensible Chinese translations of incomprehensible technical books. We formed other ‘experimental’ the­ atres, which were based basically on sexual interests at the time. I explored the film medium as hesitantly and as excitedly as a child explores its sex.

Taiwan was very much in its pre-Live Dragons period. It was very much a backwater of Asia, but it was emerging socially. People started to regard me as part of what was happening, and offered me things like TV. I started doing ‘documentary’ programmes, which were totally intuitive because I had no knowl­ edge whatsoever of what a documentary should be like.

I was fortunate that the other members of the team were highly-regarded still photographers, like Zhang Zhaotang. He and Ruan Yichong are regarded as the fathers of post-war documentary social-realist pho­ tography, which paralleled what was happening to the changes in Taiwanese society at that time. We

As I’d spent six years with these Taiwan people, and with their concerns, I did feel part of an evolv­ ing social and cultural history. So, I said, “Luck it.

Why should I spend 20 years just proving to Claude Lelouch that I can make a remake of an American film on the beach of Le Toquet?” Besides, the Lrench don’t work with the same intimacy and familiarity that we do. They tend to regard film as conflict rather than as the intimate undertaking with a group of peo­ ple with the same common end.

N o n e th e le s s , y o u d id s h o o t o n e F ren ch film ?

Yes, and it was a total catastrophe. It was called N oir et Blanc. “Energetic” is the word for Claire Devers, the director. She speaks about 75 times faster than I do.2 And, as I didn’t understand French, it was a bit difficult to communicate [laughs].

I also hadn’t shot anything in black and white before, and I didn’t know shit about the techniques or technical aspects of cinematography. That was one of the reasons I was there, but I wasn’t ready for it.

S o , y o u c a m e b a c k to th is p a rt o f th e w o r ld , to H o n g K ong?

Shu Kei got me back to do his second feature, Soul. He always com plains, when I receive an award and don’t men­ tion his name, “You know it is my fault you are here, don’t forget” [laughs]. And it is true; he invited me back.

On the basis of his friendship, and his interest in what was happening in Taiwan, there was an incredible inter­ action, a sense of mutual aspiration between the younger Hong Kong film­ makers and the Taiwanese filmmakers of the same generation.

Soul is o b v io u s ly a v e ry g o o d e x a m p le

H o w d id y o u b e c o m e in v o lv e d in

o f th a t b e c a u s e H ou H s ia o -H s ie n an d

c in e m a to g ra p h y ?

Ke Y iz h e n g , le a d in g T a iw a n d ire c to rs , a p p e a r in it as ac to rs. It w a s s e t up as a

By mistake obviously, and everyone has lived to regret it. [Laughs.]

I was studying Chinese at the University

of Hong Kong, but it became too expensive. As I was with someone who wanted to go to Taiwan to study martial arts, I went with her.

In the coffee shops of Taipei, I ran into the decadent likes of Stan Lai [Lai Shengchuan], who was just fin­ ishing university. He was playing jazz piano at the Idea Coffee House, which he co-owned with other afflu­ ent members of the future cultural élite of Taiwan.

In another coffee shop called Mingxing, which is famous for its White Russian cuisine, I meet Hou Hsiao-Hsien [Hou Xiaoxian], for Li Hsing [Li Xing] at that pie later like Lin Huaiming, Dance Ensemble, the m Basically, I started in a cultural capacities and they [Laughs.] My Chinese got everything was happenin I was then asked to ta the only one who had one to do an ethnomusicological dcgimentary anout my friend’s work. I had no conception about the corre­ spondence between sound and image, so the sync sound was fucked. I also had no idea of the differ­ ence between what the eye perceives and what a 64 ASA Kodachrome 8 mm film can record. We came back with something totally useless, which opened my eyes to the differences between the way the human eye and the camera perceive colour, bright­ ness, tonal range, etc. All my ‘atmospheric’ interiors were ‘black holes’ on such an insensitive stock, and

C I N E M A PAPERS • AUGUST 1996

riff on J o h n C a s s a v e te s ' Gloria (1 9 8 0 ), b u t also has N e w W a v e e le m e n ts in it.

were making stuff based on that, based on the peo­ ple. It was very affirmative of the importance of the little man in the cultural and social fabric of T ai­ wanese society.

Another programme was called Travelling Images, which was extremely well received. I would sit on the top of a moving car all the time. It was a precursor of what I’m doing now in Temptress M oon, or in the films of Wong Kar-Wai. Because we had no time to stop, and we wanted to get as much on film as pos­ sible, we moved in any way possible. Tkat became a very audio­ visual history of Taiwan.

Edward Ya le who watched the show. H " " ’id, “w: do my first feach was n the Beach. ture film?”, entral Motion There was at const; ere 23 camera-j Picture Corp tfonjDe ing people an men on salary, let alone all the li ||ther directors. They were fmious, out the idea th ing like this, a#d w o upstarts should be doinga went on strike. But Edward prevailed for me, with a great deal of compromise. There was a so-called super­ vising photographer on the set, but after five days he realized there wasn’t much to do and stopped coming.

Later, I was rather shocked by the positive response.

I quickly became afraid that I would become a big fish in a small pond. I’d been out of contact with the rest of the world and it all seemed too easy.

So, I went to France. But I soon found the French pond was just as ridiculously constrained as ours was.

W h ile n o t to ta lly s a tis fa c to ry , it is an in te re s tin g m e ltin g p o t.

I agree, and I don’t think Shu Kei would disagree. He obviously tried to go in too many directions at the same time. But that was exciting for me because I got to try different things.

We worked very hard on trying to co-ordinate it all. For whatever reason, I prefer to integrate every­ thing well. My interest in literature, and perhaps my experiences in theatre, have led me to consider coherle and things like that to be fsometimes I now think, “Hell, |k out of it.” That is why I’d like with Stanley Kwan with a diffilm’s 33 episodes. I’d like a change, because sometimes jillenge your instincts and inch­ ed and/or applicable they ^ut of them, but you should tn a’Bmaf you should. Style should a choice, not a With Sotd, some people paid attention to the cin­ ematography and it put me on the map here. I have no idea why. W hen I look at it now, I don’t see why people regard the cinematography as unusual or interesting. But I’m too much inside it.

W h ile o n e p r im a r ily th in k s o f y o u as a c in e m a to g ­ ra p h e r, y o u also m a k e p h o to -c o lla g e s a n d ta k e p h o to g ra p h s . D o th e y c o m p le m e n t o r in te rs e c t w it h y o u r c in e m a to g ra p h y ?

It is the same as the dancing and the women: they are

29

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lirirk Uk€ htr duAnyhiny kvttl trwVK wv all a part. I have this energy which I basically don’t know what to do with. Either I fuck my brains out or I make another collage. That’s it.

I made my first film when I was in my thirties.

Is it because I was a late starter that I feel a need to make up time, or have I always had that energy? I don’t know where it comes from, although I sus­ pect it comes from dissatisfaction with the suburban Australian environment, from having dreams of moving beyond the restrictions and the seeming mundanity of that space and time. I think most Aus­ tralians feel that, which is why Australian films have such imagination.

Wirn^ K-eir-wsibS

And why you meet Australians all over the world.

Yes. I see it all as part of some energy within me that happened to find an ideal form in cinematography.

I get to think on my feet, which I do better than in front of a computer or in a debate. I can create reactively; I can interpret things at that moment. I’m very intuitive.

I also get to sweat a bit, and that releases the energy. So, it is the perfect medium for me.

Of course, after 24 hours straight shooting, I go home and realize, “Shit, I haven’t done anything for myself today”, and a collage starts to happen, or I go dancing and make rom antic gestures towards young women, which they usually have the good sense to reject. So I say, “Shit, I haven’t done anything for myself today”, and go home to make more collages!

Basically, it’s my western background compared to this Chinese thing where people spend all day together in an extremely social environment. They will sit in an office all day just to feel part of what is happening. I can’t do that. No matter how inte­ grated I am into this culture, or how much part of the filmmaking process I am, I still need a little bit of space and time to myself. That is why danc­ ing or the collages are extremely important to me.

You are now associated with a number of particu­ lar directors, most of whom you have worked with more than once.

I’m the only person who has worked with Patrick Tam more than once! [Laughs.]

These directors are all based in the Far East.

What kind of experiences, feelings or instincts

Of course, after 24 hours straight shooting, I go Hdrhei and raalize|"Shit, I haven't done any! gestures towards young women, which they usually have the good sense to reiect So I say,' led you towards those particular directors and the sustained collaborations over a number of films?

Friendship. No question.

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We started Days o f Being Wild with a portion of the script. From there, we moved into less and less knowledge of what the hell we were doing [laughs].

Wong Kar-Wai gave me 30 pages of the script of Days o f Being Wild. On Ashes o f Time, I saw some hand-written scenes occasionally, when the big actors or the big guns came to town. Then Wong Kar-Wai got progressively more abstract and on Chungking Express he said, “Well, you know it is probably about this.” On his latest film, Fallen Angels, he said, “I don’t even want to tell you what it is about.” On the next film, he says he won’t even tell me when, what or even where we are going to shoot it [laughs].

So, it is very much based on trust. I don’t know where an intimacy comes from, though in Wong KarW ai’s case it comes from our mutual interests in literature, particularly Latin American, and in popu­ lar or alternative music.

30

We never say, “Have you seen such and such?” And, when we do talk about a film we are doing, it is in quasi-technical terms. “I want to have white light” is the way he described the colour scheme and the visual point of departure of Days o f Being Wild.

We also discussed how we were going to approach the sense of its happening in the ’60s, as seen look­ ing back from the ’90s. We discussed things like, “Let’s stay away from things like sepia tones. But how do we express nostalgia? How do we express a sense of nostalgia in terms of colours and ambience?”

One thing I have learnt from Wong Kar-Wai is how important a sense of space is. I totally relate to that because of my interest in and knowledge of theatre: that classic coherence of space and time. The location scout is now one of the most dynamic and most important parts of the whole ‘creative-’ process. It basi­ cally determines what the film is going to be.

Days o f Being Wild was a pivotal film for me, a real break-through.

Given Wong Kar-Wai's ever-diminishing scripts, how can you meaningfully collaborate? Is it all done on set?

It is totally process, which may begin at different stages. For example, now that we have collaborated at length and with much more intimacy and trust, it begins the moment I ask, “So, where will we set this?”

Wong Kar-Wai communicates in different ways and on different levels with different participants: with the actors, or with [production designer] William Chang or with myself. He has realized that the less I know, the better I am [laughs]. The more intu­ itive, the more on-the-spot I am, the better I work. If I make a collage and then rethink it, I usually fuck it up. It is inevitable. I am the Harvey Keitel of cine­ matography [laughs], I wish!

Given the Hong Kong film industry has a roster of major stars, you must find yourself working with the same people on different projects. Is there ever a rapport w ith an actor that cuts across your rap­ port with the director?

It is all about process. We start something and we take it somewhere. The first day is the first day of the rest of your life, as they said in the ’60s.

When we did Fallen Angels, I started with a 9.8mm lens. I thought that was rather distorted but Wong

C I N E M A PAPERS • AUGUST 1996

The cast an,d art w s tea ca-jys, A Tea Lady" vcca.j>ies herself with heeflny them- fa.ll <rf fo-sa-ally very m ed iterei tea. she a 1st f>erpares h tt tr arid ttwels (Uhe y ta. y e t <rn, Asian, airlines and, in, Chinese resto-arants) tir r e f r e s h y to. du-riny the shttt- There’s nar refreshm ent waytn,, th tiy h ; Kar-W ai said, “L et’s go further.” So, we went to 6.5mm. [Actor] Michelle Reis turned her head and her nose became like Pinocchio; it just extended through the whole frame [laughs]. I said, “What are we going to do?” and Wong Kar-Wai said, “We don’t show her the rushes, do we?” Once we were com­ mitted to that approach, we couldn’t go back. We stayed true to the visual style.

We could have said, “This is how we are going to work because the sets are so small.” Or we could have intellectualized it and said, “W e want to get closer and closer to the people. We want to force an inti­ macy on them. W e want to force a confrontation between the camera and the characters. We want to create a new way, or a different way, or a slightly unusual way, of interacting between the camera and the person perceived on the screen.”

Once you go into that, all hell breaks loose. Given the trust we create between ourselves, we can throw away half the shoot - we usually do - to get there. I don’t give a shit.

A lot of actors were hesitant with that process. They were not used to working this way. They were only used to giving a certain amount of energy and time to a given project, because they were doing five at the same time.

When we did Days o f Being Wild, [actor] Maggie Cheung hated my guts. She wasn’t used to it. She wasn’t sure what was coming out of it, and why there were technical problems. I was working on very open apertures and there were a lot of problems, but I stuck with the style I had chosen and we pushed it through.

I had the support of the director, because he knew that what we were getting visually was exciting enough to warrant what we were doing. But Maggie, who was in that transitional period of becoming a real actress, instead of just being an ex-Miss Hong Kong, was aghast. She thought this is really wasting her time and energy. Now she doesn’t see it that way.

There is no question that it is all about the rap­ port you set up between people, no matter who they are: the night porter/non-actor who plays Takeshi’s father so wonderfully in Fallen Angels or the biggest superstar in the local industry. You work on creating that trust. Because of the films I have done in the past five or six years, I have slowly realized it is not about technique, it is about communication; it is about cre­ ating that ambience.

That is what happened with Temptress Moon. I had

shit from anyone else. Nobody tells you “Don’t touch my cable or I’ll sue you”, which is a great thing.

Nobody insists that I stand behind the [video-screen] monitor. If I stand behind the monitor, and I’m not holding the camera, I go crazy. There is none of this kind of restrictions.

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The directors with whom I feel the greatest intimacy and complicity are Stanley Kwan, Chen Kaige and, as if it wasn’t obvious, Wong Kar-Wai. I have worked with W ong Kar-W ai on more films than anyone except William Chang.

Stanley has this incredibly beautiful sensitivity, which I’d love to have as totally as he does. I’m not as tuned into the feminine aspect of my personality as Stanley is.

Chen Kaige, on the other hand, has this incredible discipline and perception of where he wants to take things, which I have in part, but not as totally as he does [laughs]. And I’m not as removed from things as Wong Kar-Wai is.

I regard all the people I work with, especially the directors and William, as different aspects of my per­ sonality. I’m so schizophrenic [laughs], I may as well explain the different aspects of Christo­ pher Doyle, better known as “Du Kefeng”. That has always been important, in that I have a little bit of dis­ tance from this other person who is called Du Kefeng in Chinese, who you know is definitely not Christo­ pher Doyle. He is much more interesting in many cases, although he is as full of shit as Christopher Doyle is. I can regard him with a little bit of disdain, a little bit of distance. I can push him on a bit, and then go home and disregard everything he has done.

It is good to be a bit schizophrenic in that way.

I’m the best whore in town. I want to make people happy, to give them what they paid and ask for, to give them the best they’ve ever had, no strings attached. It is this need for reassertion, it is this need for love, it is this need for people to say, “Yes, you are taking us there. You are doing it.” I need to give and be encouraged to give good (cinematic) head!

I don’t have any great aspiration to be a writer-direc­ tor, because I know what I’m doing now is probably the best I’ll ever do. The only thing that could hap­ pen is that it gets better, because I have these people who are making demands on me to be better. I’m very happy.

cS,

1986 N oiret Blanc (Claire D e v e rs )-D o y le w a s co-DOP w ith Daniel D esbois

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1987 Soul (Lao Niang Gou Sac, Shu Kei) — B est C inem atography, 1987 Hong Kong Film A w a rd s 1987 Burning Snow(Xue Zai Shaor, P atrick Tam) 1990 Days o f Being Wild (A-Fei Zhengchuarr,\Nong K ar-W ai) - B est C inem atography, 1991 A s ia -P a c ific Film Festival; B est C inem atography, 1991 Hong Kong Film A w a rd s 1992 Peach Blossom Land (Anlian Taohuayuan, Stan L a i) -S ilv e r S akura, 1992Tokyo Film Festival; Caligari Prize, 1993 B erlin Film Festival

The Bed Lotus Society (Feixia A-Dam , Stan Lai)

1993

1994 Ashes of Time (Dong Xie Xi Dw, W ong K ar-W ai) - S pecial J u ry A w a rd , 1994 V enice Film Festival; B est C inem atography, Golden Horse A w a rd s (Taiw an); B est C inem atography, 1995 Hong Kong Film A w a rd s 1994

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Chungking Express (Ghongqing Senlirr, W o n g K ar-W ai)

1994 Bed Bose, White Bose (Hong Meigui, Bai Meigur, S tanley K wan)

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Fallen Angels(Duoluo Tianshr, W o n g K ar-W ai)

1995

1995 Out of the Blue (Tiankong Xiaoshucr, Jan Lamb) 1996

Temptress Moon (Fengyuer, Chen Kaige)

1996 Four Faces of Eve (Sze Mian Xia Wa\ Kam K w okleung, Jan Lamb, Eric Kot)

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lything for myself today", and a collate starts to happen,orlgo dancin and make romai ore collages' a terrible experience with Gong Li on one of her worst films, Mary from Beijing. There were all sort of reasons for that, but I felt partly responsible because I didn’t make her look good on screen. So, when it came to Temptress Moon, I felt I had a sin­ cere obligation to make up for what happened last time. She sensed that, too. Of course, we had a much better vehicle, we had much more interesting con­ ditions. She had a much more interesting role and a director of a slightly different taste.

The wonderful thing that most people remark about on our films is that, even though these actors are superstars, there is none of this trailer bullshit, none of this “Give me Peter O ’T oo le’s trailer now that he is out of town”, as a certain Chinese-American actor is reported to have demanded on a certain Italian-Chinese super-production in Beijing a certain time back. Rather, it is about all of us sitting together on a sidewalk, eating from our lunch boxes.

Except in your case?

Yes, I drink from my lunch box [laughs].

There is an intim acy that I love here. W e have enough big brother behind us that we don’t take that

C I N E M A P APERS • AUGUST 1996

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S ta n le y K w a n 's Red Rose, White Rose, w h ic h you sh o t in S h a n g h a i, w a s y o u r firs t s tu d io film , o th e r th a n Peach Blossom Land, w h ic h is th e a tre . To w o rk in to ta lly -c o n tro lle d co n d itio n s m u s t be s o m e w h a t d iffe re n t fro m s h o o tin g on lo c atio n , as W o n g K ar-W ai does all th e tim e ?

Yes [laughs]. Next question [laughs].

I have done lighting for theatre. Although I wasn’t very good at the time, I did have a perception of things. Hopefully, you expect different things of your­ self each time out, although I don’t think you should expect that each film is different. As they say, every­ one only has one story within themself, only different ways of telling it. I think it is the same for a cine­ matographer; it is variations on your potential.

I am extremely interested in the dynamics of space.

Don’t talk to me about content. Of course I can understand the structure of a story, but I am much more interested in atmos­ phere and dynamics. That is why I should never direct. I should leave that to people who want to tell a story logically. I’m not very logical.

I was shooting Red Rose, W hite Rose in China and word got around: “What is this mad man doing in our part of the world?”

Hsu Feng and Sunday Sun, producer and executive producer of Temptress M oon, came on to the set to check me out. They said to me, “You are so totally off-the-wall and Chen Kaige is usually a bit more reserved. What would happen if we put the two of you together?” It was a kind of Yin-and-Yang concept.

Chen Kaige had certain working procedures, which were difficult at the beginning for me to adjust to.

It is a much more structured working environment than we have in Hong Kong, or ever existed in Tai­ wan. He is much more meticulous. The time used to pursue an idea, and the energies devoted to it, are quite different, as is the way the hierarchy is struc-

B ecause yo u m o v e th e c a m e ra a lo t, an d yo u are close to th e ch a ra c te rs , C h en K aig e said he co u ld te ll w h e n w a tc h in g th e rush es th a t th e c a m e ra lo v ed th e ch arac ters. T h a t in tu rn m a k e s it easy fo r h im an d fo r th e au d ie n c e to lo v e th e c h arac ters. M a y b e w h a t is m issin g fro m m o s t o f th e e a rlie r C hen K aig e film s is th a t in tim a c y w ith th e ch a ra c te rs , a real e n g a g e m e n t a t a w a r m level. O b v io u s ly , he m a d e m a s te rfu l film s b e fo re , p a rtic u la rly King of the Children, b u t yo u c o u ld n 't say yo u fe e l e m o tio n a lly close to th e ch arac ters. T h e film s re ta in a sense of an in te lle c tu a l s tru c tu re , an a rg u m e n t, a g ran d m e ta p h o r, b u t th e y a re n 't m u c h to do w ith th e d a y -to -d a y m in u tiae o f h u m a n fe e lin g s , w h e re a s Temptress Moon a p p e a rs to be. It is odd th a t it s h o u ld c o m e to h im so la te in life.

H a v e y o u e v e r h a d a n y c o m p la in ts fro m e d ito rs w h o fo u n d y o u r m a te ria l d iffic u lt to cut?

Patrick Tam, when he cut Ashes o f Time, said, “How come you are moving all the time?” I said, “There was several hundred thousand feet to look through. Maybe you just didn’t look closely enough.” [Laughs.]

The dynamics of editing have changed so much in the past few films. I stay away from it, of course, like most cameramen.

It is rather traumatic for some people to see the best shots thrown on the floor. But the best shots are still there, in a sense. If I perceive, or agree to, an image at a partic­ ular tim e, then it is part of my visual experience. So, I don’t worry if it happens

"I want to be part of all this. I have a real intimacy with this region, with these people. [...] I'm going to stick with the sticky rice!" to hit the editing-room floor. If you made it once, next time you can make it even better. It won’t be the same image, of course; it will be an evolution of that image.

It is all just an accumulation of experience to me.

So, I don’t worry any more, especially since Wong Kar-Wai uses only a very small percentage of what we shoot. To worry about that would be ridiculous.

During a recent seminar on my work with Wong Kar-Wai, the HKSC suggested drafting me a contract to oblige Wong to use a specific percentage of what I shot in the release prints of our films! I felt very sad­ dened and alone to realize how very differently we regarded a cinematographer’s input, collaboration and even the creative process itself.

O n/ C f F n/ K~/v /c EH o w d id y o u b e c o m e in v o lv e d w ith C h en K aig e, y o u r firs t m a in la n d C h in e s e d ire c to r?

tured. Fortunately, we broke that down through the period of shooting the film, and I was very happy with that.

Like Days o f Being Wild, I knew this was going to make or break me. If I could make it through, then I was on to another period of my personal filmmaking history, and hopefully so was Chen Kaige.

I think we have succeeded in what we tried to do, which was to move beyond the fifth generation, beyond the conventions. We used to make a joke: “We have skipped a few generations. The 6th gen­ eration is too rebellious, the 7th too young, so let’s call ourselves the 8th and see where we can take our­ selves from there.” We wanted to rejuvenate ourselves, to sortie into an area of more developed filmmaking, filmmaking which more directly expresses our per­ sonalities than had been possible before.

C h en K aig e's p re v io u s film s w e r e all s h o t by Z h a n g Y im o u o r G u C h a n g w e i, w h o a re in m a n y w a y s s im ila r c in e m a to g ra p h e rs w ith s im ila r p e rs o n a litie s .

O b v io u s ly , y o u re p re s e n t a h u g e d iffe re n c e fo r C hen K aig e. F ro m ta lk in g to K aig e, I h a v e a sen se th a t Temptress Moon is a b re a k th ro u g h fo r h im . O n e o f th e rea so n s is th e c o lla b o ra tio n w ith y o u , w h ic h b ro u g h t s o m e th in g th a t w a s p e rh a p s m issin g fro m his e a rly film s .

I brought a bottle of whisky every day, you know [laughs].

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c a n tera shut w ith m e

th is sa le h e a d t <r tve in, p la s t ic j a r f a y e bays tv

He is the same age as I am. We are both children of the ’60s.

H e w a s a ch ild o f th e '6 0s in C h in a , w h ic h is ra th e r d iffe re n t fro m y o u r '6 0s an d m y '60s.

How come the results are so similar, then?

C hen K aig e said th a t he had fo r th e firs t tim e b e g u n to u n d e rs ta n d h o w m u c h yo u can u n d e rs ta n d a b o u t p e o p le b y lo o k in g a t th e ir s e x u a lity .

[Laughs.]

W h ic h is s o m e th in g th a t had b e e n s in g u la rly m issin g fro m his e a rlie r w o r k , ev en in c lu d in g Farewell, M y Concubine, w h ic h is o s te n s ib ly a b o u t th e s e x u a lity o f th e c e n tra l ch a ra c te rs .

H e said th a t a fte r w o rk in g on Temptress Moon he fe lt he h a d b e c o m e m o re b ro a d -m in d e d .

T hat’s good. That’s why he told me he loved me the other day [laughs].

W h ile yo u w o rk e d on Temptress Moon, w e re yo u conscious o f C hen K aig e changing?

They told me that if I didn’t stop bringing whisky to the set, his father was going to come down and beat me up. [Laughs.] But that never happened. Chen’s father died half-way through the shoot. [Doesn’t laugh.]

To answer your question, yes, I think Kaige changed a lot. A real love developed between us. It is a cliché, but making a film is being part of a family. You get to know people more intimately than their own families do. And since this film took six or seven months to shoot, you either got to p 62

p r o t e c t m e f r v m th e f a h e blvvd. t i h j d i d th e m a r t i a l a r ts d i r e c t o r ( w i t h th e c a m e r a in, th e p h v fv ) vn,ly n e e d a tvw eL

33

is an exercise m fast-paced, low-budget, collective filmmaking: fast-paced because it was shot over 17 days following preproduction of only six weeks; low-budget ($545,000 *) in tbat the film only got shot due to the generosity and enthusiasm of all who read the script; and collective m the sense that Emma-Kate Croghan wrote the script with Yael Bergman, based on a story from Stavros Efthymiou, with additional scenes and script editing by Helen Bandis. Efthymiou also acted as producer, while Justin Brickie was director of photography.

Love and O ther Catav trap her

h e f i l m , w h i c h C r o g h a n d e s c r i b e s as “romantic comedy; a day in the life of five uni students”, is influ­ enced by a passion for screwball comedy of the 1930s and ’40s. Consequently, the film is dialogue-based, quite a change from Croghan’s short films, Desire and Sexy Girls, Sexy Appliances, which feature no dia­ logue and a strong emphasis on art direction. Her most recent short, Come as You Are (co-directed with Brad M cCann), is a quasi-documentary about three people’s alter-egos — a drag queen, a sexual deviant and a gay cowboy —- which was highly commended in the Australian Short Film Competition at this year’s Melbourne Queer Film and Video Festival.

T

34

The five students in Love and Other Catastrophes are played by Frances O ’Connor, Matthew Dyktynski, Matt Day, Radha Mitchell and Alice Garner. Kim Gyngell and Suzanne Dowling make cameo appear­ ances as lecturers, “both having been very encouraging from the beginning”, according to Croghan. Encour­ agement and support also came from “Film Buffs’” Paul Harris, The Age film reviewer Adrian M artin, casting agent Greg Apps and editor Ken Sallows. “We were very, very lucky to get Ken because, with his experience, when we didn’t have a lot of coverage, he was able to get everything he possibly could out of the rushes”, Croghan says.

Interviewing Croghan was also a collective enter­ prise, with Helen Bandis and Yael Bergman frequently in terjectin g and adding com m ents to C rogh an ’s thoughts. It wasn’t hard to picture the frenzied pace and excitement of their creative process: CROGHAN:

We were writing very fast.

Things would be faxed to and fro. We didn’t even have time for meetings.

B A N D IS :

: W e wrote it in two weeks, although, of course, we were changing stuff all the time. That process continued right into shooting, where we would constantly change things on set. c ro g h a n

Was it a deliberate change on your part to go from "silent" shorts to a dialogue-based film? Did you feel the need to do something different?

C R O G H A N : I d o n ’t k n o w t h a t i t w a s t h a t c a l c u l a t e d .

I s u p p o s e , in a w a y ... m a y b e s u b c o n s c io u s ly .

I think also the fact that it was set in a uni­ versity. It’s som ething everyone involved in the project has been through and connects with the experience.

B A N D IS:

Universities really are about dialogue.

The film’s not so much about university as about life ... and the energy that comes out of the CROGHAN:

C I N E M A P AP E RS • A UGUST 1996

university experience. You go to this place to learn, but really it’s about get­ ting the social thing happening, finding your place in the world.

University’s a much m ore serious place now, but I know a lot of people’s experience was that it was a time to have parties.

BANDIS : You work things out, take

direction. T hat’s where the comedy comes in. There are people with time to be con cern ed about love and romance and stuff like that.

So the production was fast-paced?

CROGHAN: W e shot in 17 days. As the

film is close to 8 0 minutes, we were doing approximately eight minutes of screen time a day. Pre-production was also really short. From Stavros coming to us with the story to shooting was six weeks. Stavros is currently starting on another feature as director [True Love and Chaos2], so this was in the period when he was waiting for funding. He wanted to do something fast and he had this idea. He felt it was a “young” story.

How did you get it all together when you had no funding?

CROGHAN: It just happened. If you want something,

it will happen. That’s the thing about a film like this: it had an energy, the script had an energy and it just snowballed from there. People were generally so supportive. It amazes me. It was a deliberate choice to go this kind of low-budget route, but the story demanded that anyway. If we’d gone another route, and got funding and done all that, it would have been a different film — it might be a better film, it might be a worse film — but it would be different and definitely that’s come all the way through.

BANDIS: We may have had budgetary restraints, but

on the other hand it allowed us a degree of freedom.

It sounds like the product's really sold itself, in terms of getting people to contribute and help out.

CROGHAN: Everyone’s been incredibly generous.

When we finally had a rough-cut of the film, we approached the AFC saying, “Ah, look, we’ve made this film and we don’t have any money to finish it.”

had. an energy and i t j u s t snowballed from t h e r e . P e o p l e were g e n e r a l l y so s u p ­ p o ryyt i v e . I t a mazes me .

One of the things which I thought might be diffi­ cult for me is I’m such a production design fascist, as you might have seen from my other films. I thought, “Oh my god, I’m going to have no control over anything.” W e didn’t have a designated designer, although Helen was getting props together and we had a girl working on costumes — Lisa Collins, whom I’d worked with at the VCA — so what we said was we’ll have no bright colours, we’ll just go for earth tones. Amazingly enough, it’s devel­ oped into a look of its own.

BANDIS: It has a definite palette.

are.

How would you describe the look of the film?

CROGHAN: The film was shot on super 16. Every time I see it, I cannot believe how good it looks.

Justin had times when he had only an hour or even

half an hour to light.

Justin and I talked a lot beforehand about the fact that on set I’d have to spend most of my time with the actors, because we were working so fast, and we’d have to do things like change scenes and impro them. It’s a simple style, but it has a lot more of a style than I thought it would. I thought it would be a lot rougher than it is. Again, it’s still simple. There are no crane shots. It’s all shot on sticks, but it’s amazing how well it’s come together, especially with such a small crew: basically Justin and a camera assistant and a clapper loader, who helped with lights and stuff.

C I N E M A P A P E RS • AUGUST 1996

on Love and Other Catastrophes.

CROGHAN: I like the work of Leo McCarey in The Awful Truth, which is a story of re-marriage, and th ere’s an aspect of that in this film. T h ere’s a couple who love each other but can’t get it together; they break up and then try to get back together but spend half the time miscommunicating.

Basically, Love and Other Catastrophes draws upon the Hollywood tradition of that factory thing, where things had to happen really fast and turn over. You got the script, you got the cast, the crew went out and shot it and you cut it. A lot of screw­ ball comedies came out of that environment. The films I watched a few times in the process of film­ ing, and I kept coming back to, were Holiday, The Awful Truth and Shop Around The Comer. There are little homages to those throughout, some quite obvious, actually. b a n d is :

And some things happened by accident.

How did you find the transition from directing short

CROGHAN: Yeah, it was pointed out to me the other

films to making a feature?

day that in Holiday the party moves upstairs and our party moves upstairs, too. But that was com­ pletely by accident, osmosis, or whatever!

CROGHAN: Because this was a small group of peo­

They just said, ‘Yes, here’s the money”! So here we

Can you explain the influence of screwball comedy

ple, it wasn’t such a big thing. The pressure was there a little bit, but it wasn’t like we had produc­ ers com ing out to the set every day. I was in a position where I could have a really good dialogue with the producer. It wasn’t like you had, you know, money people coming and fretting at your dailies.

And because we shot over 17 days, it just felt like an extended short ’till we got into editing. That’s when it changed.

Artistically, how did you find the difference between a short and a long film?

CROGHAN: Artistically the difference? Um, you gotta sustain yourself a bit longer. One is just one form at. It’s like asking a w riter the difference between a short story and a long story. It’s like, “W ell, I had to sit in the ch air for an e x tra m onth.” ... Do you know what I mean? Because there wasn’t that pressure of “This is the feature”, we were able to be fairly free and just do it. I’m sure we made mistakes, but we got a lot of stuff

done as well.

At the close of the interview, Croghan rushed off to meet with the film’s composer (Oleh Winter), a mem­ ber of Big Pig and composer for the ABC’s Attitude series. The rough-cut of Love and Other Catastrophes so impressed the people at Polygram that they helped with source music for the soundtrack.

The film was finished by the end of April. Though bypassed by the Carmes Film Festival, the film was bought beforehand for some overseas territories by Fox Searchlight (the company which had success with the ‘no-budget’ U.S. feature, The Brothers McMullen).

Distribution in Australia is through NewVision.

“From little things, big things grow”, and this homage to screwball has become a snowball. © 1 The filmmakers had raised the $ 4 5 ,0 0 0 to get the film to double-head. On viewing that cut, the Australian Film Commisison then put in $ 5 0 0 ,0 0 0 to finish the film on 35m m and pay out the many deferrals.

2 N ow in post-production.

35

Festival International iCannes 1996 Mary Colbert reports on the world's premier festival

I

he job of director of one of the grand-slam film festi­ vals requires a juggling act of artistic, commercial and nationalistic pressures; or, as one journalist at Cannes this year described it: “It’s like inviting 20,000 guests to dinner and trying to please everyone.” Recon­ ciling the varied interests is always an enormous challenge for Gilles Jacob, the host of cinema’s biggest banquet, though this year he prepared a feast for the megastar-starved worthy of a Grand Bouffe as Cannes re-positioned itself as the champion of auteurs and quality arthouse (much of it independent) film.

The main jury, headed by Francis Ford Coppola and including actors Greta Scacchi and Nathalie Baye, cinematog­ rapher Michael Ballhaus and Canadian director Atom Egoyan, set the tone at the opening press conference with Coppo­ la’s attack on big Hollywood studios which mass-produce films in assembly lines, like Big Macs or cars, failing to challenge audience tastes or - these days - even to satisfy for the most part their financial backers. And, of course, they have no idea of what ‘artistic’ means.

Dustin Hoffman, on a whirlwind visit to announce his creative partnership with Village Roadshow , continued in the same vein, expressing his enthusiasm for the current buoyancy of the indepen­ dent, non-mainstream studio sector.

T h e awards at the 4.9th Festival reflected a 1990s humanism and a swing towards personal, intimate filmmaking on a smaller canvas, a move away from glossy period dramas, epics and Hollywood studio fare which epitomized last year’s Compéti­ tion line-up. The Palme d’O r winner, Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies, is a poignant and wry insight into dysfunctional family rela­ tions triggered by a professional, young, black woman’s search for her natural parents. Developed organically in the usual Leigh manner with actors, and allowed to ‘marinate’ during the shoot, it’s a beautifully- and tru thfu llychoreographed human drama spiced with characteristic Leigh wry humour.

Secrets and Lies was one of

36

several films about the search for iden­ tity and natural parentage in selection this year (American independent David O. Russell’s Flirting with Disaster was another, while Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty also contains strong ele­ ments). Leigh’s continuing investigation of life juxtaposes dark and light aspects, tonally poised mid-way between his last Croisette outing, the pessimistic Naked (1993), for which he won Best Director, yet lacking the optimistic vigour of Life is Sweet (1991). “It’s pleasing to see this

the viewer. Von Trier, like Leigh a non­ believer in pre-conceptions, also evolves his projects organically with strong con­ tributions from actors. Delighted with the outcome of his five-year mission, Von Trier (absent due to severe travel phobia) challenged that getting anything but the Palme d’Or would be a shock, his disappointment alleviated only by respect for Coppola’s judgement.

The Coen brothers failed to repeat their Barton Fink (Joel Coen, 1991) trifecta (which actually led to a changing

M ik e Leigh's Secrets and Lies is poignant and w ry insight into dysfunctional fa m ily relations [.. festival supports films about emotions, passions and things that matter”, said à beaming Leigh, who also, in a rare dou­ ble-head er, scooped the F IP R E SC I international critics prize. Lead Brenda Blethyn added her Best Female Performance to Secrets and Lies’ accolades.

N eck-to-neck press favourite was Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, a spiritual and em otional m elodram a about a naïve young w om an’s love affaire and marriage to a more worldly oil rig worker who, incapacitated by an accident, encourages her to take on a lover and to graphically recount her sex life to him. The potent combination of sex and religion, a lyrically-powerful script, adroit directorial management of tempo and an ensemble cast, Emily Wat­ son’s outstanding performance and DOP Robby Miiller’s hand-held camera com­ bine to create an inspiring journey for

Deborah Unger, it is a sickly-seductive and sensually-disturbing film.

U n C ertain R egard One of the delights of this section is the stylistic (as well as thematic) diversity of d istinctive original voices (thus the name), ranging from ground-breaking efforts of first-time filmmakers to the avant garde experimentation of estab­ lished talents, like Peter Greenaway. This year they were joined by actors A1 Pacino (Looking for Richard) and Anjelica Hus­ ton (Bastard Out o f Carolina) 3 making their directorial feature débuts, j Kicking o ff the selection,| mJ Mary Harron’s bold first fea-1 ture, I Shot A ndy WarholM 1 immediately set the ‘alternative’ inde­ pendent audacious tone.

T h e; multi-awarded documentary-maker orig­ inally intended to tackle the portrait of < Valerie Solanas, the radical feminist who? claim ed her 15 m inutes o f fame (to , which Warhol felt we were all entitledjj by wounding the icon in 1968. The diLI ficulty of obtaining original material allowed producers Tom Kalin and the BBC’s Alan Wall to persuade her to opt

of the rules, lim iting the num ber of categories for which the winning film can be eligible), taking out Best Director (Joel Coen) and rave reviews for - espe­ cially ¡1 Frances McDormand’s pregnant sheriff in the offbeat kidnap thriller, Fargo.

A precedent was set this year for an audacity award for the film that most galvanized audiences: David Cronen­ berg’s daring study of technology and sexuality, Crash. It is a futuristic love story set in the present Maurice fifn o th v ^ H B I Secrets m Êm èM , about the attempts of a couple, who have found themselves very d isconnected , to recon n ect through the medium o f car crashes, and to seek out other people with similar connections.

With a hip cast including James Spader, H olly H unter, Elias Koteas, Rosanna Arquette and

C I N E M A P A P E R § i * / A U G U S r 1996

1

for a feature format. The result is a droll and riveting portrait of Solanas, a fringe figure on the W arhol scene incensed by his indifference towards her and her work — a fascinating study in fanaticism played with razor-sharp wit and out;of-control intelligence by Lili Taylor.

■Funnelled through her is an insight to the W arhol persona and cult (Harron jclaims 95 percent of the material is auto­ biographical), centred on his silver ftin-foiled studio, The Factory.

Harron and co-scriptwriter Daniel Minahan steer the potentially-alienating figure of Solanas; venting her anger and fru stration w ith male oppression through SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men, which she formed and is the sole member), and balancing an off-beat, satirical yet vividly-depicted picture of the disturbed but frequently-brilliant visionary feminist. She is a focal point to a funny and realistic paean to Warhol and his sub-culture, at times linking the magnetic king of pop with his attacker, both isolated figures.

It’s a crisp and intelligent script but what charges I Shot Andy Warhol with life are dynamic, brilliant performances from Taylor, and Jared Harris (son of R ichard ), whose body language and delivery, blond wig and dark glasses cap­ tures W arhol’s monosyllabic, deadpan voice to perfection as W arhol floats around his decadent, drug-induced world. The support cast - Stephen D o rff as Candy D arling, Reg Rogers as Paul Morrissey, Martha Plimpton as Stevie and Lothaire Bluteau as Maurice Girodias - are superb.

On the subject of cult follow­ ing, it seems that everybody is hooked on Richard III these days, especially Shakespeare’s interpre­ tation of the monarch. A1 Pacino spent two decades on Looking for Richard. British veteran thespian

Ian M cK ellen, having found him on stage, performed the rôle for three years and then refused to let it go, determined to extend the term longer by turning it into a feature film. M acbeth, Hamlet and Lear used to be the choice Shake­ speare rôles. Evidently, Richard has come into très chic vogue with the thes­ pian heavies.

Pacino arrived in town with Richard in tow and, with a dearth of Hollywood stars,«caused a frenzied stir amongst press and paparazzi, in the process eclipsing Australian Shirley Barrett’s press confer­ ence for Love Serenade. (Producer Jan Chapman and Barrett accepted their casu­ alty status with stoic good grace.) Amid the media circus, Pacino enlightened the gathered throngs about his goal in decon­ structing and demystifying the Bard’s regal villain for mass consumption.

Pacino’s inspiration for the play and character drives this docu-drama and keeps it rolling at a lively pace through interspersed re-enactments: the director is brilliant as Richard; W inona Ryder (Lady Anne), Kevin Spacey (Bucking­ ham), Aidan Quinn (Richmond) and Alec Baldwin (Clarence) lend a hand; there are visits to Stratford-on-Avon and the Globe T heatre, perform ances in New York, and interviews with experts, producers, directors, critics, academics and randomly-selected audiences.

In the vein o f Francois T ru ffau t’s La N uit Am éricaine (Day fo r N ight, 1973) and Fellini’s 8 V2 (1963), Pacino integrates the process with response and

re-enactment; practical and artistic bat­ tles are juxtaposed with performance and response, with visits to the Bard’s roots intended to illuminate stage and screen versions.

The subsequent mosaic breaks down barriers between audience and actors, with Pacino - star, producer, director in the rôle of guide the entire journey.

A njelica H uston has evi­ dently decided i t ’s tim e to follow in her father’s footsteps, with an accomplished, com ­ pelling, emotional drama set in the poor South, a tale of child abuse and rape, torn loyalties and family relations in the somnambulant 1950s in Greenville County, South Carolina.

Originally commissioned by Turner Television/Broadcasting, but later found too risqué for family entertainment, the theatrical feature (Turner may have done Huston a favour by its rejection) was adapted for screen by Anne Meredith from Dorothy Allison’s best-seller. It fea­ tures Je n n ifer Jaso n Leigh as Anney Boatright^ a mother torn between her daughter, Bone (a knockout p erfo r­ mance by young Jena Malone), who is reminiscent of Scout from Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, and her second husband, the child’s abuser.

Huston adroitly creates the ambience of the languorous south, delving beneath regional clichés to expose a com plex web of family rituals, hardship and tra­ dition in post-World War II days. She elicits compelling performances from her cast, with the possible exception of Ron Eldard as Glen, the abusive stepfather, whose rôle lacks conviction or malice.

The abuse and rape scene are handled superbly, with sensitivity and dramatic poignancy that Turner needn’t have worried about: the unexploitative real­ ism may have scored him more good ratings.

The mother-child relationship is the focus for the politically-slanted Some M other's Son, T erry G eorge’s (co ­ scripted by Jim Sheridan) companion piece to In the Name o f the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1994), dramatizing the con­ tentious issues in the Anglo-Irish conflict through a political nexus.

The film revisits the H-block hunger strike by Republican prisoners in the early 1 9 8 0 s with a widowed school teacher (Helen Mirren) politicized as her eldest son is sentenced to 12 years for his part in an ERA ambush. The human price for political conflict is conveyed in a wrenching performance by Mirren, twice winner of Best Actress honours here.

Post-teen infatuation is handled in different ways by Shirley Barrett’s Love Serenade (winner of the Caméra d’Or) and M att Reeves’ The Pallbearer, both expertly handled by their helmsmen.

37

festivals But, for this reporter, one of the most scintillating films in Un Certain Regard, the real pièce de resistance - artistically and intellectually - is Peter Greenaway’s technically-brilliant The Pillow B ook.

The art-trained director, always look­ ing for a tem plet to engage te x t and image, has chosen to pay homage to an ancient Japanese text from the 10th cen­ tury using it as the launchpad for a revenge love drama (if ever Greenaway’s work can be reduced to phrasal descrip­ tions) set in Jap an and H ong Kong between the 1980s to year 2000.

Thematically cross-pollinating hieroglyphics/calligraphy and erotica, the subject is a Japanese model played by Vivian Wu, whose fetishistic obsession with calligraphy prompts her to urge lovers to inscribe her body. This allows Greenaway full flight into technological innovation, surpassing even what he achieved in P ro sp e ro ’s B o o k s (1 9 9 1 ).

Shot on 35mm with the genius of Sacha Vierny once more behind the lens as DOP, Greenaway combines styles: blackand-white static footage at eye-level of a kneeling figure à la Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi; suppressed light, and central European cinéma vérité. As in Prosper­ o ’s B ooks, he plays with ratio and frame, fighting its tyranny and, in the process, taking visuals to new extremes.

Q u in za in e des R éalisateurs The Quinzaine, as always, presented some choice pickings with John Sayles’ L o n e S tar, M ichael W in terb o tto m ’s Thomas Hardy adaptation, ]n d e , and Sergei' Bodrov’s Prisoner o f the C au ca­ sus, awarded the FIPRESC I prize for n on -C o m p étitio n sections (“for its courage in vividly portraying the conflict in the Caucasus in a personal and evenhanded way”) the highlights.

Indie actor Steve Buscemi’s first writ­ ing-directing outing in Trees Lounge and Hattie M cD onald’s B eau tifu l Thing, a poignant gay love story set in South Lon­ don, also impressed.

Indie veteran Sayles, in his most commercially-accessible film yet, turns his focus to a particular socio-cultural land­ scape: the T e x -M e x border using a whodunit murder mystery as a narrative locomotive. The device enables him to open a Pandora’s box of characters from surrounding cultural groups - Mexicans, Anglo and Afro-Americans resi­ dent in this area of the Rio Grande - and to exp lore the metaphor of borders (inspired by the Yugoslavian conflict) and the burden of history.

Essentially, the story fram e­ work is W ho Shot the Sheriff? as the lawman tries to unravel the mystery of a murder committed 37 years ago for which his father was a prime suspect. What he in fact unravels are political and fam­

38

ily intrigues, ambitions and passions of three generations, presented through an interweaving of present and flashback, shot superbly by New Zealander Smart Drvburgh (The Piano, Once Were W ar­ riors).

The three generations of sheriffs offer a political allegory for the various eras of U.S. politics: from the Teddy R oo­ sevelt imperialist (with the casting of country-western singer Kris Kristofferson) to the la issez fa ir e , relu ctant, guilt-ridden 1960s.

After the offbeat début of Butterfly Kiss (1995), Ju d e is a surprising follow­ up for British television wunderkind Michael Winterbottom. He transforms a favourite literary work into a M er­ chant-Ivory period piece, injecting a contemporary sensibility into the stylish portrait of a young man determined to change his destiny from stone mason to academic.

W interbottom was attracted to the story as a 15-year-old at school, letting it simmer away until the success of his first feature opened the door for him and producer Andrew Eaton to a choice of projects offered by Head of BBC Film, Mark Shivas. Winterbottom: It’s a great story, a very romantic story about someone who is able to survive the worst things that can happen and still be true to his ideals. The most impressive thing about Hardy is that he takes very ordinary people, in very ordinary circum stances, puts them through the most extraordinary expe­ riences, and transform s them into heroes and heroines.

The appeal of both central characters, Jude (Christopher Ecclestone) and the love of his life, Sue Bridehead (played brilliantly by Kate Winslet), is that they are characters ahead of their time who suffered love on an epic scale in their attempts to defy the limitations that soci­ ety tries to impose. The key to the film’s success - and here scriptwriter Hossein Amini (D ying o f the Light, Wings o f a D ove) plays a pivotal rôle with his sparse dialogue clear of anachronism s, and fresh, direct modern characters - was depicting a romanticism and idealism devoid of excessive sentimentality and lyricism.

W interbottom and team avoid the

cliched pitfalls of period dramas with a strongly-visual cinematic approach (all the more successful for literature schol­ ars: W interbottom studied at Oxford, Eaton at Cambridge). Jude’s optimism and defiance are celebrated against harsh, gritty backdrops not of Hardy’s W essex (now D orset), but a dark, gloomy, heavy atmosphere of broodywintry landscapes (virtually forbidding) of Scotland (Edinburgh), the north of England between October and Decem­ ber, and New Zealand (as a stand-in for the English summer).

Against this wide canvas - divided into separate sections as Jude moves to different towns - the central sparks are

the intense love story between Jude and his cousin Sue, a modern young woman (a teacher), complicated by their respec­ tive relationships with his first wife, farmer’s daughter Arabella (Rachel Grif­ fiths), and his role model, and later Sue’s husband, the schoolmaster Phillotson (Liam Cunningham). But just as they are liberated from these connections, it is ultimately society which dooms their prospects (a frequent Hardy theme) of happiness (together). Their passionate and tragic relationship is etched impres­ sionistically in strokes at times deliberately reminiscent of Truffaut’s Jid es et Jim (1961), with Winslet charg­ ing up the screen with her vibrant looks and intelligent charisma.

While Ecclestone and Cunning­ ham deliver compelling performances, as in Butterfly Kiss, the women steal a number of the scenes with brilliant performances, Winslet confirming she has an extraordinary career ahead of her.

Like other tragic love stories (Hardy’s speciality), the lovers are ultim ately doom ed but, in their defeat, W interbottom ’s film cele­ brates the courage and idealism of the human spirit.

After several years of doldrums from Russia and form er C .I.S . repu blics, Sergei' Bodrov’s K aukazski Plennik (Pris­ o n e r o f th e C au casu s) is a w elcom e offering from the now U.S.-based direc­ tor, breaking the dry spell of qualityfilms (Nikita M ikhalkov’s 1995 Burnt by th e Sun and a couple o f others excepted) from a once-revered industry.

The film is a tri-co lla b o ra tio n between Kazakh producer Boris Giller (American Daughter 1995, a rather oversentimentalized father-daughter buddy movie of American-Russian relations), Bodrov, who ran foul of Russian law enforcement agencies with his compas­ sionate, compelling portrait of teenage delinquency in F r e e d o m is P a ra d is e (1992), and co-scripter Arif Aliev.

Years ago, Giller was inspired by Lev Tolstoy’s classic story about a captured Russian P.O.W . who falls in love with one of the enemy’s daughters; the trio decided to update the story and make it an anti-war film. Somewhat propheti­ cally, the script was finished six months before the war in Chechneya broke out, and, though the filmmakers deliberately avoid direct references to the current conflict, the obvious simation injects the film with a poignant and obvious imme­ diacy. Bodrov insists the story could happen in any war in any territory, but the fact that the film was shot during the climax of the Chechen struggle person­ alizes the universal.

T he story revolves around two wounded Russian soldiers taken pris­ oner during the C aucasian W ar by C hechen enem ies who hope to trade/exchange them for the son of their gaoler (taken hostage by the Russians.)

If the exchange fails, the old Chechen man from the m ountain village of Abdul-M urat, where they have been im prisoned, w ill have to kill them .

W hen one of the soldiers and the old man’s son are killed in escape attempts, the validity of the negotiations has been undermined. But, in the meantime, the surviving soldier has found solace in the arms of the old C hechen’s daughter, who has fallen for him but knows that her father, egged on by the village, is planning to kill him.

The story becomes a compelling con­ flict of love and divided loyalties starkly told by a confident filmmaker, with out­ standing performances by one of Russia’s best actors, Oleg Menshikov (Burnt by the Sun), and a strong cast that includes Sergei' Bodrov Jnr as one of the soldiers.

The Semaine de la Critique (Critic’s Week) also featured some interesting films, especially — conceptually at least — T he E m pty M irror, speculating the survival of Adolf Hitler (with Joel Grey as Goebbels) by début American feature director Barry Hershey. But, as always at Cannes, the main obstacle to viewing the programme was time and choice. ©

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

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documentary

Documentary: Dead or Alive?

During the 100th year o f cinema and the second year o f the European Union, filmmaker Ian Stocks visits documentary festivals in Europe

t

he documentary film form has survived in Europe despite a catastrophic war and the ensuing division between socialist and cap­ italist blocs. Now, it must face up to the more sub­ tle threats posed by cable television and multimedia.

And, by all outward signs, it appears to be showing remarkable resilience. Documentary has not been so diverse and adventurous since before World War II, and shows itself ready to tackle a range of themes and styles. This is perhaps not so surprising. The Euro­ pean documentary tradition gave us not only Georges R ouquier’s F a rreb iq u e (1946) but also Leni Riefenstahl’s Tri­ um ph o f the Will (Triumph des W idens, 1933).

Documentary is still part of a living tradition, albeit with special links and rel­ evance to European culture. In the course of the visit, I was to see not only con­ temporary film, but some of the hidden masterpieces of the pre-World War II period. European documentary, based since its early days on notions of design aesthetics and experimentation as much as a desire for ‘realism’, appears to be continuing on its own path, undistracted by the demands of tabloid television. A growth in commitment to documentary culture has been evident over the past few years, with the inception of numerous organizations supporting or representing the documentary aesthetic: Dox in Ams­ terdam, the filmmakers’ trade union Ag D ok in Frankfurt, and the Haus der Dokumentarfilm in Stuttgart, to name a few. E.U. bodies, such as the Media Pro­ ject for the Creative Documentary based in Copenhagen, form part of a pan-Euro­ pean support mechanism for film product, and makes substantial invest­ ment in documentary projects. Although cable television and deregulation of com­ mercial broadcasting have made great inroads to the perceived authority of state-run broadcasters, there remains a substantial commitment to running doc­ umentaries in prime time on the first and second national channels in Germany, and the regional third channel.

Generally, these programming pri­ orities are reflected in other national environments, with the result that large numbers of documentary films can be seen on television year round. Dutch documentary filmmakers are particularly active, helped by the interest generated

40

by the annual Documentary Festival and market in Amsterdam. In these dissem­ inations, the “document” component is as highly valued as aesthetic form.

Films are presented, not so much for their ratings value, but because they record some event of note or present a particular point of view. The channels and the broadcasters seem to have so far resisted attempts to commercialize the form . One way of reinforcing docu­ mentary ideologies is through regional film festivals.

The 38th Leipzig Dokumentär and Animationsfilm Festival shows its social­ ist origins as a showcase for documentary, and now includes animation film. It used to be lavishly funded but now operates on probably a tenth of its previous bud­ gets. It still has the feel of a cultural bridge between East and W est, but now it attracts Russians, Romanians and Turks, who attend seeking co-production deals with the West. Leipzig is committed to simultaneous translation and full docu­ mentation, and the costs of this, while an ideological plank of the Festival, are also a financial burden. Festival director Fred Gehler, a prolific writer and director of documentaries in the Eastern German system, feels that the Festival’s role as one

must reflect its e lf and its strategy of producing pictures (i.e., consideration of the material which the author places betw een us/the audience and the world/reality), in order to be able to survive and to free itself at least occa­ sionally from the ‘Babylonian captivity’ (Alexander Kluge) of television.

The Leipzig offerings were diverse. Peter Schamoni’s endless portrait of sculptress Niki De Saint Phalle showed the heights of 1960s self-indulgence and was as rev­ erential as anything on the Sunday

programme of the ABC. It was a relief to escape to another theatre and see Boris Kustov’s The M arshal and the Red H orse, which records the efforts of the inhabitants of Ekaterinburg in the Urals to raise a statue to Marshal Zhukov, the commander who took Berlin in the final days of the G reat P atriotic W ar, but

whom Stalin saw as a threat to his own pre-eminence. BD W om en, by British director Inge Blackman, is an affection­ ate depiction of the struggle of black lesbian women to create their own social milieu, and effectively uses dramatiza­ tion and evocations of long-lost social events to create the mood of the film.

Blackm an attended the Festival and revealed that the film ’s broadcast on Channel 4 evoked complaints that pub­ lic money was being used to publicize “deviant behaviour”.

Over its six days, Leipzig proved to be tough going. Four cinemas ran doc­ umentaries and animation continuously from 11a.m. until 9 p.m., with another two cinemas running special sessions in locations out of the city centre. A range of films was showing at any one time, but the multiple venues meant that if a film was missed there was little hope of catching it again. Not only was there an enormous range of current documentary film s, but also the chance to witness some of the great “lost” films of the past, of which I had read much but never actually seen. These films were shown in a special retrospective.

These special screenings included long-neglected documentaries from the between-wars period. Germany Between Yesterday and Today (Deutschland Zwischen Gestern und Heute, Wilfried Basse, 1932-3) takes a holistic view of Germany just before the Nazis seized power, and is constructed along the lines of Vertov’s One Sixth o f the W orld (Shestaya ch ast’ mira, 1926). The warmth of its images and its plea for tolerance and harmony make it an interesting counterweight to

of the prime world documentary show­ cases must be maintained, even though financial problems threaten its future: Elementary of documentary cinema — such as credibility, authenticity, and truth crop up incessantly - despite the fact that the flood of media charms and the inflation of documentary television pictures have long since devalued and perverted it. The documentary film C I N E M A P A P E R S • A UGUST 1996

the much more famous (or notorious) Triumph o f the Will from the same era.

Willy Zielke’s dramatized documentary T he S teel B east (D as S tah ltier, 1935) about the German railway system was criticized by Dr. Goebbels for paying too much attention to the British invention of the railroad , although Z ie lk e ’s lugubrious T he Truth (D ie W ah rh eit , 1933), with unintentionally humorous, staged shots of workers marching to Soviet-style meetings, showed that the left-wing was way behind in the propa­ ganda stakes. Zielke also designed and shot the opening scenes of Lem Riefenstahl’s O ly m p ia (O ly m p isch e S p iele, 1938.) Laszlo Moholy Nagy’s cinéma vérité m asterpiece, T he G ypsy C ity {G rosstadt Zigeuner, 1932), uses for­ malized documentary observation that compares favourably with many con­ temporary films.

Another bonus was well-attended information sessions, including a series of archival interviews with key G er­ man docum entarists like Koepp and Wildenhahn, commissioned by the three German television channels, WDR, ARD and 3 Sat. My most enduring image, however, is that of American documentarist Les Blank discussing his work with a rapt audience. Blank arrived with his own store of personalized merchandiz­ ing items — posters, buttons and tee-shirts — in which he did a brisk trade after the seminar. Now there’s a documentarist!

In Europe, documentary finds much of its relevance and importance through identification with the generic forms of the short film. T h at’s the opinion of Angela Haardt, director of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival: We don’t discriminate against or for documentaries. They are part of our film screening and evaluation envi­ ronment, and they are judged on the success or otherwise of their artistic vision. So, for us, it’s not really an issue whether documentary needs special attention. We show short films, that’s all, and we are looking at innovations and development in that form.

For the last few years, Oberhausen has screened videos on an equal footing with film prints, so there is no discrimination there either. Klaus Wildenhahn, one of Germany’s forem ost documentarists, switched to Betacam some years ago and has produced three feature-length doc­ umentaries on video.

C I N E M A P APERS • AUGUST 1996

The Duisburger Filmwoche, a few kilometres from Oberhausen, operates mainly on grants from the city and main­ tains a German-language focus which helps clarify its concerns. D irector Werner Ruzicka feels that documentary is a form that invites personal commit­ ment, and that the best documentaries can be a type of artistic testam ent.

Debates about realism and manipulation by the filmmakers are subordinated to

home village, but the relentless video­ taping of nightlife in Sao Paolo (population 25 million) showed real skill. ORiginal WOlfen (Nils Bolbrinker, Kerstin Stutterberg) details the demise of the East German state-run film man­ ufacturing and processing plant, ORWO. The film in microcosm shows the immense changes occurring in the old East Germany as developers move in to snap up cheap real estate and close down unprofitable state enterprises.

The competition winner at the Duis­ burger Filmwoche was M unich Film School graduate Thomas Cuilei’s som­ bre Gratian, which showed the atavistic life of a Romanian peasant, rejected by other villagers because he was rumoured to be a werewolf. Shades o f N osferatu; some old traditions die hard.

German festival audiences accept that

documentary relates most effectively to the lives of everyday people. Documen­ tarists, like their subject matter, live and work in the everyday world.

The mood surrounding the produc­ tion of documentaries in Europe is one of cautious optimism, and the fact that so many European cities host thematic Festivals plays a large part in keeping alive diversity and enthusiasm. Many people travelled from B erlin to the Leipzig Festival, and at Duisburg there was a mix of German, Dutch and expa­ triate filmmakers working in German, which gave the Festival a broader rele­ vance. The practice of focusing the concerns of each Festival seems to advantage the documentary, which is too often lost in the generalist programming policies of Australian festivals, which inevitably foreground the feature film.

Docum entary is still part of a living trad itio n , albeit w ith special links and relevance to European culture.

In the course of the visit, I was to see not only contem porary film , but some of the hidden m aster­ pieces of the pre-W orld War II period. discussions of the success of the film­ maker’s vision. The Festival committee’s selection ranged over classic films to experiments in form and even television documentary. Duisburg does not simul­ taneously translate into other languages (as is the case in Leipzig) and it keeps to a restricted programme to allow for lengthy discussion sessions with the mak­ ers after each screening. This is of vital importance in positioning the Festival so that a serious reception and analysis of new films can occur.

Challenging for the visitor with lim­ ited German, the discussion sessions were, in the main, amicable and sup­ portive rather than confrontational. At Duisburg, only German language docu­ m entaries were shown, and the programme ranged from feature-length to television timeslot material. Klaus Wildenhahn’s Bosnian film, The Third B ridge, runs 80 minutes, and Volker Koepp’s epic, C o ld H o m ela n d (K alte H eim at), runs 157 minutes. This film is a portrait of lost German territory at Königsberg in East Prussia, superbly filmed in 35mm Eastmancolor. Slowmoving and thoughtful, the film shows an abandoned city that once housed philosopher Immanuel Kant, and has reverted to a sort of ghost town where a few ethnic Germans struggle to survive.

Ciuni Amelio Ortiz’s television-style documentary on child prostitution in Sao Paolo, Solange Can G o H om e, seemed to tie things up rather too neatly when a friendly social worker put the errant pre-teenagers on a bus back to their

many films are designed to challenge, provoke discussion of the filmmaker’s intentions and serve as a springboard for further investigation of the topic. There was little evidence of preference for the sewn-up current-affairs approach that does not allow for any ambiguities.

Sessions around the theme of cine­ m a’s first hundred years produced insights into early Lumière documen­ taries. Film m aker Fiaroun Faroucki developed his analysis of the Lumières’ La Sortie des usines (Workers Leaving the Factory, 1895) - the scene exists in three different versions - into a survey of all films showing w orkers in factories, including a scene of Marilyn M onroe working at an aircraft plant. The refer­ ence to the Lumière film, itself a seminal event in the development of film as a form of art and communication, evoked the possibility that of all film activity,

The mood surrounding documentary activity in the new Europe is positive, and, given the ease of communications and substantial local markets, the form shows strong possibilities for continuous growth and development. Financial sup­ port from the European Community will remain a necessity, but the greatest strength of European docum entary comes from its own traditions.

This visit would not have been possible without the unstinting help and advice of Prof. Ingo Petzke, filmmaker and film analyst, who arranged my accredita­ tion and accom m odation. Given adequate warning, German festival orga­ nizers are welcoming and accessible, and help from the patient staff at all these events was much appreciated. And thanks to Ilka Korgan at Ansett Interna­ tional and the Eurail pass. ©

41

new media

Less silicone rapture and more informed analysis, argues John Conomos after a tour o f recent conferences and exhibitions devoted to new media igital Æsthetics-One” and “T he Language of Interactivity” were significant co n fer­ ences held in Sydney during April. Still run­ ning at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, are “Burning the Interface”, a fairly com prehensive survey show of CDR O M art, and “P hantasm agoria”, a smaller and engaging exhibition of inter­ active art installations that are indebted to M éliès’ fantasy tradition in cinema and electronic media.

Together, these events represent a useful and vivid roadmap of the more significant concerns, directions and issues central to the ever-growing, dynamic world of electronic art.

True, it seems that everywhere we turn nowadays there is yet another reminder of the spiralling vortex of dig­ ital media, a new exhibition, a new magazine and a new television commer­ cial. It is no secret by now, as we are frequently reminded by the rapidlyincreasing number of commentators on digital/virtual culture, that the 21stcentury capitalist culture’s aspirations are heavily anchored in the “computer rev­ olution”. But what is needed now, more

42

than ever, is less silicon rapture and more informed analytical thinking that looks at cyberculture in the context of its socio­ cultural formations and histories.

Mark Dery’s scorching, sharp-eyed critique of our information age, Escape Velocity (1996), is a welcomed historical analysis, and is highly recommended.

Dery, who was one of the invited over­ seas speakers at the Digital 2Esthetics-One symposium, gave an informative, ironic, well-researched and playful reading of the graphic design philosophy of the postMcLuhanite, new technology magazine, Wired.. Dery’s book is arguably the first of its kind: an archaeology of the present moment that explores the many high-tech subcultures that constitute the more romantic and dystopian aspects of our wired era: techno-pagans, cyber-hippies, maverick technologists, and evangelistic Utopians. Dery, who looks and talks like Phil Spector on speed, digs deep into the less-known cultural and technologi­ cal subcultures of the digital epoch, and is the kind of exhilarating popular archaeologist of computer culture we need.

D ig ital /E sth etics -O n e

The first of the two conferences, Digital PEsthetics-One, organized by the inde­ fatigable W erner Hammerstingl and

Carolyn Deutscher, was a much smaller, spontaneous event compared to The Language of Interactivity. Nevertheless, it featured many d ifferent local and overseas academics, artists, curators and technologists who, in various panel and seminar contexts, spoke about a myriad of different themes, issues and artists’ works concerned with contemporary media culture.

Owing to brevity of space, I shall only refer to a number of the speakers’ presentations. Professor Nicholas Zurbrugge, the sym posium ’s keynote speaker, gave an incisive, expansive and highly-suggestive paper on how the dig­ ital technologies are inform ing representations of the body in contem­ porary art practice (Laurie Anderson, Henri Chopin, Stelarc, Nick Zedd and Peter Callas). He fittingly reminded his audience (in terms of the historical avant-garde and V irilio ’s w ork on techno-corporeal aesthetics) of the press­ ing necessity to value old and new media forms on the same plane of audiovisual creativity.

Professor Allucquere Roseanne Stone (aka Sandy Stone), who was one of the key guests of last year’s “Biennale Symposium of Ideas”, gave a highlyentertaining performance around the key notion of how today’s technology is chal­

lenging orthodox concepts of gender identity and relations. Characteristically, Stone’s performance incorporated inter­ disciplinary ideas concerning how the communications technologies are allow­ ing people to experiment with emerging alternative personas.

The inventive British interactive artist Grahan Harwood was also one of the symposium’s key invited guests. He gave a vivid account of how he becam e involved in making politically-motivated computer art in the context of British mainstream culture. He spoke in some detail concerning his recent major work (one of the C D -R O M exhibits at the symposium’s exhibition, “Rehearsal of Memory”, held at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery) which dealt with the lives of patients held at the Ashworth Maximum Security Hospital in the UK. Jane Goodall’s informative, stimu­ lating presentation focused on how techno-aesthetics should be engaged in the renegotiation of human senses other than the main ones of sight-vision and hearing-sound. Her paper was motivated by a multifaceted objective to critique electronic media’s emphasis on its main audiovisual axis in attempting to account for the possibility of a digitally-mediated synaesthesia. M cKenzie W ark gave a characteristically thoughtful, provoca­ tive presentation relating to the need to rethink the conceptual basics of the aesthetic ob ject and judgem ent. He argued for an approach that highlights the specifics of the abstract relations pro­ duced by contemporary media culture, instead of the more conventional one of seeing the aesthetic solely in terms of the formal elements of the aesthetic object.

Significant local artists like Patricia Piccinini, Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, Phil George, James Verdon and David Cubby also spoke about their work as artists working with technology and/or as art educators w orking in this rapidlyexpanding field. Internet artists/curators,

C I N E M A P APERS • A UGUST 1996

such as Graham Crawford and Shiralee Saul, also spoke about their more recent experiences in setting up Internet gal­ leries, like Crawford’s collaboration with Gavyn Lister in Urban Exile and, in the case of Saul, creating New Media N et­ work, Australia’s first major new media gallery. Digital designers, such as Peter H ennessey, C hristopher W aller and Andrew Garton, also gave presentations concerning new concepts and trends in new media design and their own desk­ top publishing and Internet work.

The French multimedia artist Orlan spoke in a phone link about her recent body art/surgical experiments which have challenged the more orthodox ideas of beauty and the prevailing concepts of Western identity. Orlan’s cyborg/plastic surgical body art is controversial because it suggests the body is becoming obsolete in the context of cyberculture.

The body-art performances of Stelarc, who was also one of the symposium’s key guests, utilize prosthetic technolo­ gies and his more recent performance on the Internet. As the British medical the­ orist Rachel Armstrong reminded us, what needs to be rem em bered with artists like Orlan and Stelarc, controversy aside, is that both artists are using digi­

C I N E M A P A P E RS • A UGUST 1996

tal technologies to create new horizons of defining the post-human in society.

All in all, Digital Æsthetics-One was an open-ended, highly-flexible and engag­ ing event that aimed to stimulate debate in the dynamic area of the new media arts — a w orthw hile objective given the hyperbole still evident in academic and popular discourses surrounding computer culture. Thankfully, the symposium was not designed to be a definitive statement of sorts: on the contrary, it offered no answers as such, but more questions lead­ ing to other questions.

T h e Lang uage of In te ra c tiv ity The Language of Interactivity (organized by the Australian Film Commission) was a much larger, more tightly-organized event. It focused on the diverse concepts, issues and techniques of storytelling and computer design central to the develop­ m ent o f in teractiv e m edia like C D -R O M s, the In tern et, hypertext, video games and interactive installations, etc. The audience attending this mam­ moth (but nevertheless stimulating and well-organized) multimedia conference was a broad one w ith (arguably) a stronger representation from the mul­ timedia industry.

The keynote speaker, G loria Dav­ enport, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s fabled Media Laboratory, spoke in entertaining and experiential terms about the central rôle of cognitive psychology in shaping the emerging digital/cultural realities, m etaphors and narrative structures in interactive media form s of storytelling like C D -R O M art. Davenport’s current “evolving” doc­ umentary concerning the life of Jerome Weiner, the scientist-educator responsi­ ble with Marvin Minsky and Nicholas N egroponte for founding the M edia Laboratory, is an experimental example of her prototypical digital storytelling ideas and forms. It is welcomed because, amongst other reasons, it (ironically) accentuates the important rôle of his­ torical thinking (critics as diverse as Jonathan Crary, Mark Dery and Andreas Huyssen stress in their writings this sig­ n ificant point) in the em erging new media arts.

Davenport’s presentation indicated the time-intensive, but necessary, explo­ ration o f new interactiv e modes of cinematic storytelling, aside from the more problem atic, com plex issues of over-emphasizing cognitive rationalism in the design and production of interac­

tive media — something that was graph­ ically underlined, later on, with the more experimentally-intuitive and candidlyhumble artists’ presentations by Derek Kreckler and Michael Buckley, whose C D -R O M , The Swear Club, is, in my op inion, one of the m ore creative instances of what is possible with CDROMs. Of the 30-odd speakers (too many to allude to in this brief overview), I men­ tion in passing a few who contributed to the many different critical perspectives of the conference. Producer Peter Harvey-W right and film m aker Kathy

43

n e w m ed ia Georges Méliès' Le Voyage dans la Lune.

Mueller spoke of their collaborative CDR O M w ork, Strange Fruit, and the complex design, interactive and writing issues it raised. B oth W rig h t and M ueller’s presentations attested to the ‘stab in the dark’ nature of interactive media creativity. The American multimedia artist-producer Hal Josephenson examined the complexities of defining the right kind of metaphor for creating mood and point of view in interactive media. Paul Brown made a comparative exam ination of how, with C D -R O M media, the emphasis is placed on guid­ ing the spectator through an unknown audiovisual landscape, in contrast to the Internet, where the spectator is encour­ aged to navigate that landscape in a flexible, undetermined manner.

One of the highlights of the con­ ference was the session devoted to the emerging collaboration between electronic artists and computer programmers. This trend will become one of the more critical aspects of elec­ tro n ic art in the years to come. Digital artists are start­ ing to critiqu e the role of software determinism in their work. Recent debates between Peter Weibel and Friedrich Kittler underline the em erging necessity (since the advent of the personal computer) for artists to go below the user-friendly graphic devices and surface of an electronic art work in order to customize the systems codes below for their own expressive purposes.

Thus, computer animator Jon M cC or­ m ack, softw are developer Colin G rim m er, digital media artist Heidi Riederer and the Dutch media artist-pro­ grammer Gideon May spoke about this important aspect of the new media arts.

New media producer Gary Warner spoke about the emerging critical design,

technique and m ethodological issues relating to museum digital and analogue audiovisual media exhibits (W arner’s recent curatorial and producing work at the Museum of Sydney is a benchmark effort in commissioning artists to create site-specific museum exhibits and instal­ lations). W arner, with curator-writer Kevin Murray and computer consultant

44

Justine Humphry, examined in a panel con text: the role of navigation in an interactive work; questions dealing with how best to assist an interactor through a w ork; and the m ore preferable creative models of interactivity for the objective of navigating through a virtual space. On the latter point, Tim Gruchy’s synsesthetic approach across the media proved to be a stimulating, informative perspective on the non-point-and-click modes of interface.

Finally, the English interactive film artist Chris Hales spoke of the aesthetic necessity to question artists’ over-reliance

in their deployment of the lastest digital gadget for their work. Hales’ stress on the importance of using the ethereal and m oody textual qualities of film in the developm ent of a new, hybrid interactive genre is an interesting coun­ terpoint to more predictable high-tech driven features of interactive media.

Relatedly, Jonathan Delacour in a lucid talk examined the creative potential of looking at modernist cinema and the Internet for designing computer game languages.

The conference’s main underlying theme of probing the intricacies of the language of interactivity was a timely one. However, speaking in a more utopian sense, the local multimedia industry needs to become more aware of the untapped creativity and knowl­ edge that can be obtained from looking at the relatively unknown narrative of electronic art (from the historical avant-garde onwards), and con ­ textualizing the new media arts (as Delacour did in his presentation) in terms of the more-established art forms.

B urning th e Interface and P h an tasm ag o ria The two shows at The Museum of Con­ temporary Art, Sydney, com plem ent

each other in many related ways.

The CD -RO M art exhibition Burning the In terfa ce, curated by Michael Leggett and Linda Michaels, itali­ cizes how artists are using the C D -R O M genre of interactive multimedia for the purpose of personal expres­ sion. As such, the various issues raised by the two conferences take an experiential form as we encou nter the exhibits of both shows. Local artists such as T roy In n o cen t, M ich ael B uckley, Linda Dement, John Collete, Brad Miller and Phil George, and Ralph Wayment con­ tributed to Burning the Interface.

Their exhibits, like the examples by such overseas artists as SASS, Luc Courchesne, Eric Lanz, Dorian Dowse, to name a few, are concerned with a wide range of individual themes: cyberfeminism, autobiography, cultural d isplacem ent, gender, language, sexuality and the body.

C ertain C D -R O M s, more than others, manifest a playful reflexivity about the prevailing limitations and techno-utopian myths of arti­ fice, control and rationality; works like Dement’s Cyberflesh Girlmonster, Buckley’s The Swear Club, and SASS’ Anti-ROM. All of the CD -RO M s, like Luc Courchesne’s reflective Portrait One, the multilayered Jean-Louis Boissier’s Petrinsularis (based on Rousseau’s Con­ fessions), or Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone’s Passagen (inspired by W al­ ter B en jam in ’s unfinished Arcades Project), in contrast to the more linear ‘down-loading’ style of commercial CDROMs, incorporate ambient open-ended links, textures and forms of digital nar­ rative interactivity.

Burning the Interface, it should be remembered, is a fairly comprehensive survey of the more creative uses of the CD -RO M medium which is (like most other forms of contemporary electronic

media) in a state of conceptual and tech­ nological transition.

Phantasm agoria, curated by Peter Callas, is an exhibition that traces the legacy of Georges Melies’ cinema of fan­ tasy in cinem a and electronic art. As such, its m odest cu rato rial o rb it — w hich could have been much larger but the budget would not permit it — conveys in a vivid, stylish and informa­ tive m anner how certain m edia and visual artists have been fascinated by Melies’ cinema. A significant feature of the exhibition were the programmes of Melies’ films (curated by Jonathan Den­ nis and Paolo Cherchi Usai) which have left their indelible mark on narrative or independent cinema as much as on com­ puter and video art.

The three installations on show are, individually, engaging w orks: Tony Oursler’s low-tech psychodramatic dis­ memberment of the human form in 5 Worlds (for Georges) (1996) is fairly rep­ resentative of the artist’s overall interests in popular culture, bizarre narratives and post-punk Expressionism. Toshio Iwai’s installations, Time Stratum 11 (1995) and Music Insects (1992-4), represent (in terms of the artist’s ceuvre) his gifted, flexible and poetic interactive interests in joining together old and new media (from the early flip-books, phenakistiscopes and other related pre-cinem a optical devices, to computer and video gam es). Agnes H egediis’ suggestive Handsight (1992), featuring a clever eye­ ball sensor interface, allows the spectator to create a 3-D computer graphic world modelled on the interior of a Hungarian ‘passion-bottle’. Hegediis’ piece operates like a metaphor for our increasing urge to create and immerse ourselves in vir­ tual worlds.

To conclude, the two conferences and the two M CA shows clearly express that with electronic art no one knows where it’s heading: we are located in a world of ¿esthetic, cultural and geopolitical turbulence where old and new media are con­ necting each other in com plex non-binary ways we have yet to under­ stand. The art comes first, our critical and theoretical explanations follow. ®

C I N E M A P AP E RS • A UGU S T 1996

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45

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GARNER MACLENNAN DESIGN

6 1- 2 - 4 3 8 - 1 0 0 2

Take Two

Not 14 Again

Richard Franklin has again turned to a play as his cinematic source.

M a r c O ’S h ea examines

C la ir e R o t h

reviews this tale o f sexual harassment and shifting truth

Très Chic

what happens when Gillian Armstrong returns to the site o f her previous three documentaries on workingclass Australian girls, now women

47

100

Stratagems

The most sought-after Shakespearean rôles appear to change with the seasons.

N o el P urdon

I

J a n E p s t e in

discovers everyone wants to be Richard

;

i I

investigates a new book on Bernardo Bertolucci, which examines a master’s rhythmic, imagist and elegiac filmic sensibility

50

52

50

LI V TYLER DA Z Z L E S • D I T C H I N G OVERALL S • F I N D I N G RI CHARD • A F O R M I D A B L E NEUROSI S

Film DAVID WILLIAMSON'S BRILLIANT LIES Director: Richard Franklin. Producers: Richard Franklin, Sue Farrelly.

Scriptwriters: Peter Fitzpatrick, Richard Franklin. Based on the play by David Williamson. Director of photography: Geoff Burton. Production designer: Tracy Watt. Costume designer: Roger Kirk. Editor: David Pulbrook. Composer: Nerida Tyson-Chew. Cast: Gia Carides

(Susy), Anthony La Paglia (Gary), Zoe Carides (Katy), Ray Barrett (Brian), Michael Veitch (Paul), Catherine Wilkin (Marion). Australian distributor: Roadshow. Australia. 1996. 35mm.

97 mins.

D

century social structures and, more

result disappointing - retaining

denies the allegations, and the two

specifically, Australian culture. It’s

many of the original play’s

fight it out bitterly in a public hear­

a seriously-intentioned film with a

weaknesses.

rich thematic framework, intriguing

Susy (Gia Carides) makes a

ing after a series of interviews and stalemate mediation sessions with a beleaguered femocrat, Marion

narrative and largely-complex char­

formal complaint against her

acters, and it proffers a welcome

employer Gary (Anthony La Paglia),

(Catherine Wilkin). Susy begs sup­

avid Williamson’s Brilliant

humanism. However, while it can’t

demanding 540,000 compensation

port and substantiation for her case

Lies strides confidently into

be accused of dogmatism, the script

for sexual harassment and unfair

from her sister, Katy (Zoe Carides),

the battleground of the gender war

is heavy-handed in other ways, the

dismissal following a particularly-

trying to pluck Katy’s lesbian-femi­

and through it into the broader

structure flawed, and the overall

ugly exchange. Gary vehemently

integrity. Using a sexual harassment

nist strings; Gary leans on boss and mate, Vince (Neil Melville). The

moral/political arena of truth and

conflict is played out against Susy’s

case as their main forum, writer-

A n A ir o f G racefu ln ess

director Richard Franklin and

S te a lin g B e a u ty is an im p o r ta n t film in a t

she and Katy work through old

co-writer Peter Fitzpatrick examine

le a s t tw o re s p e c ts . It m a rk s B e rto lu c c i's

resentments against their profligate

re tu rn to Ita ly — th a t is, to th e p la ce w h e re m a n y b e lie v e he fa s h io n e d his

irritations with their stolid, church­

notions of truth in the context of male-female relationships, late 20th-

fin e s t film s — an d it m a rk s a re tu rn to a m o re m o d e s t an d in tim a te c in e m a . p 49

long-standing family drama, in which

father, Brian (Ray Barrett), and going brother, Paul (Michael Veitch).

Neither the case nor the family disputes are cut and dried; both provide ample scope for exploration of the film’s themes and for an absorbing story. Via carefullyconstructed characters and care­ fully-manipulated exposure of information, the film posits truth as elusive and ephemeral, configured by individuals in accordance with prevailing morality but equally influenced by personality - and unable to be verified or defined. It posits morality as a similarly-shifting entity, compromised by the need to survive or to meet individual needs in family, workplace, society.

For example, Susy’s an oppor­ tunistic, ill-tempered party girl with a grudge against her father (mainly for his lost millions, although she has far more about which to be truly aggrieved) and the world in general.

She is an enthusiastic participant in the culture of complaint, whose most obvious motivation for pursu­ ing the harassment case is financial.

She’s a thoroughly-unlikeable character of whom we are highly suspicious, a far cry from the victim/prude/bitch stereotypes which too often dominate this type of story (witness David Mamet’s play, Oleana, for the more familiar

C I N E M A PAPERS • AUGUST 1996

47

^review Films

grey are competently layered and the film invites a sympathetic, humanist reading of the issues.

continued misogynist version, Disclosure1 for

Performances are also strengths, the ensemble cast delivering credible and frequently-powerful work. Gia

role-reversal), and potentially at

Carides and La Paglia spark well

least an effective catalyst for debate

and engender the more demanding

about sexual politics.

moments of their roles with palpa­

Katy, ‘despite’ her lesbian-

ble vigour; Zoe Carides, Wilkin and

feminist sensibilities, has serious

Melville are equally effective in

misgivings about corroborating

more understated approaches.

Susy’s claims, and so on. And

(Unfortunately, Veitch is wasted as

because the incident and its after-

Paul, reduced to caricature and

math are revealed in fragments,

painful comic relief, and Barrett’s

cussion about sexual politics, the

makes for something like an early

enters current political territory

from various points of view -

role is outright ham.)

script provides only outdated funda­

1980s instructional text. Most dis­

needs to keep the material contem­

mentals. Can a promiscuous woman

cussion has progressed well beyond

porary and well-informed.

Susy’s, Gary’s, Vince’s, Marion’s,

However, the level of analysis and debate is pretty simplistic and

legitimately claim to have been

this - certainly within the feminist

mode, just as we’re ready to pass

several other aspects of structure

harassed? Where does flirtation end

movement - and neither Susy’s

judgement a shift in perspective

and style defeat these strengths;

and harassment begin? How can

deeply-impassioned courtroom out­

process. Again, like the play (and

holds us back. It’s not until Susy’s

then there’s an underlying conser­

men develop social relationships in

burst nor Katy’s and Marion’s

much of Williamson’s work), the

problems begin with the writing

final testimony in court that we

vatism which undermines the film’s

the workplace without unwittingly

wisdoms can compensate for the

film appears to have begun with a

know the truth, and even then

apparent objectivity and underval­

transgressing fluctuating moral and

weakness. To be fair, Franklin has

theme around which the writers

there’s room for doubt.

ues the attempted humanism. For

political codes? The characters artic­

said that sexual politics is not his

constructed a storyline and various

example, while the characters (or at

ulate only timeworn rhetoric about

main concern; like Williamson, he is

characters, who between them

their father and brother are similarly

least the character types) and cir­

the issue, and there’s scant attention

more interested in the questions

encompass every possible angle

treated. The themes aren’t ground­

cumstances of the harassment case

to the policies and structures which

such cases raise about wider issues.-

on that theme, thus effecting a

breaking, but the story’s shades of

offer much scope for exciting dis-

deal with it, all of which ironically

Fair enough, but any writer who

manufactured objectivity. The

of Noemi; the seemingly-disinterested attitude of Diana; the explicit and erotic sexuality of Miranda; and, of course, the anxious and tentative but blooming sexuality of Lucy.

But this is not a film about sexuality alone, even though it is charged with an affirmative and vital eroticism. It raises many issues, most of them engaging and thought-provoking: the idea of Europeans and Americans who_are uprooted in a crucial sense; the idea of reconstructing the pastacross a span of some twenty or more years; sexuality and the springs of creativity and art; the changes in perception wrought by the consciousness of life's imminent end; the dynamics of group solidarity and companionship; and so on.

At the fundamental level, the film is concerned with rites of passage and varieties of awakening or growth. Lucy makes the transition from a sort of innocence to a sort of experience. Ian learns something crucial about his past at the film's end and seems to be fully empowered again as a sculptor and as a human being. Alex regains a vitality that he had lost, Diana realizes the importance of her roots and longs for the place of her origins. There are other examples. The film facilitates these transitions effectively by employing a dynamic visual style.

Crane shots and tracking shots are often employed to give the film a fluid rhythm, a sense of the loose connect­

edness of these people and the spec­ tacular Chianti landscape they inhabit.

They seem not so much aliens in this place as presences who require it, in all of its shifting tones and evocations, in all of its variety, as a source of renewal or of transformation.

Indeed, there is an air of graceful­ ness in the style which undercuts and ultimately dominates the darker ele­ ments coursing beneath the beautiful, natural and elegant surfaces. It is strik­ ing that much of the film is set in fields of green and brown under clear blue skies. The light in the film is brilliant the cinematographic palette is dominated by vivid and occasionally-heightened colours. And one of Mozart's most sublime works, the adagio of the Clarinet Concerto in A, is employed as a leitmotif at the beginning and end: this poignant and eloquent work rein­ forces the sense of something "stolen" or lost in the processes of transforma­ tion and growth which the film's rhythm otherwise evokes so insistently and, for the most part, effectively.

Bertolucci's casting deserves comment. He chose to cast two icons of the Italian and French cinema, Stefania Sandrelli and Jean Marais, in secondary roles. Initially, the viewer is shocked at the effect that the pas­ sage of the years has had on their faces. One feels especially shocked initially at seeing Marais so aged and so fragile. One cannot butthink of the

Susy and Katy’s conflicts with

Stealing Beauty Director: Bernardo Bertolucci. Producer: Jeremy Thomas. Associate producer: Chris Auty. Scriptwriter: Susan Minot. Based on astory

by Bertolucci. Director of photography: Darius Kondji. Editor: Pietro Scalia. Production designer: Gianni Silvestri. Music: Richard Hartley.

Cast Liv Tyler (Lucy Harmon), Jeremy Irons (Alex Parrish), Sinead Cusack (Diana Grayson), Carlo Cecchi (Carlo Lisca), Jean Marais (M. Guillaume), Donal McCann (Ian Grayson). Australian distributor: Fox Columbia Tristar. Italy-France.35mm. 1996.118 mins.

I

n recent times, Bernardo Bertolucci has been preoccupied with the East. In his last three films, The Last Emperor (1987), The Sheltering Sky (1989) and Little Buddha (1994), he has explored grand themes in grand, though in the latter two films some­ what variable, style. Stealing Beautyis an important film in at least two respects. It marks Bertolucci’s return to Italy |j- that is, to the place where many believe he fashioned his finest films — and it marks a return to a more modest and intimate cinema. One has­ tens to add, however, that the new film is no less effective for being mounted on a self-consciously smaller scale.

The film deals with Lucy (Liv Tyler), an American virgin, who travels to Tuscany ostensibly to have her portrait painted. But she has other goals in mind: she is curious about her moth­ er’s experiences in Tuscany, in the very same guest house, and with some of the same people, some two decades ago; and she seeks a young man who

48

Other structural and stylistic

Katy’s - in flashback and linear

once wrote love letters to her. In Italy, she encounters a motley crew of Euro­ peans: Diana (Sinead Cusack), the keeper of the house, and Ian (Donal McCann), her husband and artist; Alex (Jeremy Irons), who is terminally ill; Noemi (Stefania Sandrelli); M. Guil­ laume (Jean Marais), a somewhat disenchanted old man; and others.

Each of these characters, the viewer learns, has great problems: Diana and

and so orr; The arrival of Lucy, a vivacious and attractive young woman, stirs passions of various kinds in the house. Alex sees in her aspects of himself as an inexperienced, searching and fearful young man: Ian's frustrated sexuality and creativity are awakened; Diana sees in her an innocent who is on the verge of sexual awakening and matu­ rity; Miranda (Rachel Wersz) sees in

Indeed, there is an air of gracefulness in the style which undercuts and ultimately dominates the darker elements coursing beneath the beautiful, natural and elegant surfaces.

Ian seem to have no sexual relation­ ship; Ian has not been creative for some time; Noemi is alone and some­ what cynical about love and men; Alex waits for death; Guillaume walks in his sleep and criticizes the others openly;

her a rival for Christopher Fox's (Joseph Fiennes) affections.

Indeed, there are at least five types of sexuality in the film: the predatory drive of some of the men; the hardnosed, staunchly-unidealistic attitude

C I N E M A P A P E RS • AUGUST 1996

components merge gradually,

didn’t communicate with them.

highly-significant lines - distinct

office, Marion’s glass and metal

destroy the faith we’ve just invested

aligning ever so neatly at the end

And Marion accepts this, appar­

pronouncements - signposting plot

monolith of a building, Katy’s

in her. The ultimate point, really, is

warm and colourful flat.

and leaving us with the impression

ently, without further investigation

points and encapsulating themes, as

that we should be satisfied. But it’s

- despite the extremely-contentious

when Gary, elucidating on the title,

all too pat. Franklin and Fitzpatrick

nature of Susy’s allegations and

says, “T o survive in the ‘90s you

is that the two narratives compete

family, eh!” And the quite real

ostensibly embrace the chaos inher­

the imperative, as in all such cases,

have to be lucky, rich, or tell bril­

too strongly for the same thematic

agonies evident in this particular

ent in the elements of the story,

to glean as much information as

liant lies.” On stage, such dialogue

territory and for audience attention,

family - as in the case - are

neither ever quite establishing

suddenly brushed aside as so many

navigating energetically through

However, the biggest problem

“Well, shit happens. W e all screw up, but you can always count on

conflicts which have no clear way

primacy. Initially, the family story

petty squabbles. It’s a frustratingly

out. The authorial hands are too

is an enlightening complement to

complacent end.

obvious, however. Only elements

the harassment case, changing pace

which suit their purposes are

and scene, adding revelations and

included and, ironically, any

suspense. But, by the second half

seriously into complex issues, when

semblance of the chaos or even

of the film, it has become equally

so much Australian cinema aims to

disorder manifest in real life is

consuming.

cash in on a reputation for the

rejected. All writers consciously

Finally, the last scene betrays the

The film’s value lies in Franklin’s willingness to enter

quirky, and in the spirited and

construct narratives to suit their

film’s surprising and disappointing

assured work of the cast. It’s a pity

intentions, and manufactured

conservatism, implying, whatever

these attributes are somewhat

objectivity is fine, but here the

your trauma, “Give it a rest. Be an

overwhelmed by flaws which could

process is something like colour-

Aussie. Have a drink.” Much as the

have been addressed at development

by-numbers as opposed to a

dénouement might have been

stage.

detailed freehand drawing.

intended to emphasize the film’s

By way of illustration, the

themes and to convey ironies about

harassment case conveniently arises

the lackadaisical tendencies within

in a small business in which there

Australian culture, in the context of

are no subsidiary characters who

the high drama preceding it, it

can comment on it. W hen Marion

possible from every possible witness.

questions Susy about other possible

Dialogue is another problem.

© Claire R oth

1 Disclosure (Barry Levinson, 1995).

2 “'David Williamson’s Brilliant

Lies”, Richard Franklin inter­

can be affecting and even momen­

comes across as a disturbing nega­

viewed by Scott Murray, Cinema

tous3; on screen, it’s clumsy and

tion of Susy’s trauma and everything

Papers, No. 110, June 1996, pp.

witnesses, the other women in the

Like most stage-to-screen adapta­

superfluous. The performances go

the film has taken seriously until

office (of whom we’re barely

tions, the film’s wordier than

some way towards countering the

then. The final question mark over

3 The quoted line is not actually

aware), Susy says they didn’t like

average, but this is not as deleterious

effect but can’t fully override it. Art

her integrity serves not so much to

from the play (rather, from a

her, were probably jealous of her

as the nature of the script. The dia­

direction, likewise, is laboriously

underline points about the

poster advertising the play), but

tertiary qualifications, and she

logue is relentlessly purposeful, with

symbolic: Gary’s dark and messy

ephemeral nature of truth as to

the point remains.

great years of Cocteau and Marais in films such as La Belle etla Bete (1946) and Orphee(1950)-film s which, one ought to remember, were written with Marais in mind. The fact that Marais, so often the dashing young hero in those films, should now be the disen­ chanted and somewhat cantankerous old man lends extra resonance and pathos to Bertolucci's film. Stefania

bandrelli is perhaps most often associated with two of Bertolucci's most prized films, II conformists (TheConformist, 1970) and Novocento ( 1900,1976). In both, Bertolucci celebrated her youthful beauty, her revolutionary sentiments and her vitality. To see her playing a rather disillusioned woman adds much resonance to the film.

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

It should be said that the cast is almost uniformly excellent, a crucial aspect since this is essentially a cham­ ber piece in pastoral mode for some eight or nine key characters. The rela­ tionship that develops between Alex, expertly and subtly played by Irons, and Lucy forms the emotional core of the film and is often poignant There are some flaws and it is

interesting to note that they are often associated with films of this kind: a number of the secondary charcters are really not developed enough (including Marais' rôle, which really should have been a much more inter­ esting and incisive one; instead, he j wanders from scene to scene very much as a cipher on numerous occa­ sions). Certain scenes, though not

18-20, 60.

many, are drawn out too long and the optimism of the ending will strike some viewers as rather contrived.

But Bertolucci's intention is clearly to fashion a summery film without ignoring darker currents, somewhat in the manner of Malle's and Rivette's recent variations on the theme of pas­ toral satire or comedy. In this context, Stealing Beauty is a significant exten­ sion of Bertolucci's œuvre. Many of his earlier European films explored char­ acters whose lives are uprooted, compromised (for example, by their complicity with fascism), orfragmented in a style that is loosely woven, allusive and almost baroque - some might say overwrought - and with Borgesian labyrinths orGodardian montage in mind.

Certainly, his earlier explorations of nascent sexuality in films like Prima della Revoluzione [Before the Revolu­ tion, 1964) and The Conformistwere inseparable from an interest in bourgeois forms of constraint or in revolutionary expressions of vitality and energy. Now, the intricate camera movements remain, but the baroque mise en scène and thé, attimes, stri­ dent revolutionary agenda have given way to something milder, more per­ sonal and charged with not a few psychological insights about creativity, the persistence of the past, and cycli­ cal patterns of change, time, maturity and death. © Raymond Y ounis

49

reflexively. She develops from

re\ Films

=

continued NOT 14 AGAIN

------------ --------------------------

being imaged as an overalls-wearing filmmaker to an eminent woman who knocks on doors to stage our introduction to the women and

i

their teenage daughters.

I I

about Armstrong or her motives

There is nothing disingenuous

\

here. She started off being shy about

i i

her role in making a documentary

j

about women’s lives, about her comparative privilege, about

i

Director: Gillian Armstrong. Producers: j Jenny Day, Gillian Armstrong.

She moves us along either in this Scriptwriter: Gillian Armstrong. Director rhythm, back for forward momen­ of photography: Steve Arnold. Sound recordist: Toivo Lember. Editor: Suresh | tum, or with drive-bys of suburban streets where most of us used to Ayyar. Cast: Josie, Kerry, Diana, Amy, Wendy, Rebecca. Australian distributor: j live. This drive-by link sees houses Roadshow. Australia. 1996.35mm. from inside of the car. It’s a per­ 109 mins. sonal, backseat kind of history that

T

confirming commonality between unemployed, for most of the time.

Perhaps that’s because Diana col­

characteristic focus, Armstrong has

lected his paypacket when he did

taken stock of her cinematic attitude

work. No sentimental heroes here.

over the years. This croupier’s style

Diana disagrees and surprises by

of raking old footage to the present

turn. Like all of us, she needs Josie.

in this film engenders a closure

Josie mothered herself as a girl,

his is the fourth film in director

i recalls these streets, these rows of

cooked tea for her dad, and had a

Gillian Armstrong’s documen-

1 houses. It might be Josie’s, or

tary series spanning 20 years in

herself and the women. With

about this film, about Armstrong’s appearance in the documentary as a

baby, a flat and a pension by 15.

dinner guest, on par with her talent.

Diana’s, or Kerry’s. Big picture

The whole town knew Josie but she

Will she be up to speed? Is it the last

political history gave us the houses

had to send herself the only flowers

film in the series? Who are we, now

footage and feelings from the series’

i in which we lived, though we sweat,

she’d receive on the birth of her

we’ve watched Josie, Kerry and

earlier films.1 Cut fresh, these crisp

1 save and swear we’ve chosen well.

three women’s lives. It rescues

baby girl. This pragmatic angel leads

Diana grow over twenty years?

ingredients for historical Aussie

And it might have an American feel,

the trio of women, in present time.

This latter question is a source of

stock enhance the flavour of this

this cruising, this Sunday afternoon

She’s already back studying. Diana

profound and complex impact, a

needs Josie to encourage her to do

tribute to Armstrong’s skill and

importance of American cinema to

the same. But Kerry’s quick to agree

intelligence. It feels like the spark

two decades on from our first

us is legend. These common experi­

that schooling is what they need

that ignited the project twenty years

acquaintance when they were

ences unify us nationally through

now. They all let it go way too

ago. The “take no prisoners” atti­

early.

tude of director and talent alike is

fourth film right until its end. We meet Diana, Josie and Kerry again,

fourteen or fifteen.

It’s a bold invigoration, in expert hands, of the present life.

i drive - as indeed it should. The

I

i what feels like a very subversive

i

social history.

Diana, the teenage firestarter,

A voracious four-year-old and baby girl in arms, Kerry says she got what she wanted: one of each, a

clear-sighted, muscular and, no doubt, hard won.

© MARG O'SHEA

With each of these women, we dip

admits that she’s bored with her

back to the women they were, but

i present life. She’d like to go back

suburban house, and a stable mar­

Good, 18's Better (1981), Bingo

Armstrong teases tension from our

i to work, having stopped work at a

riage. Her self-employed husband

Bridesmaids & Braces (1988).

interest in who they are now. At

café four years ago to give birth to

has done his back in. Business is in

There is also a shorter version of

various times, Armstrong’s muses

wildboy Beau. She’s still married to

decline.

14’s Good, 18’s Better known as

are momentarily named by their

i the same guy she married all those

natures, but she doesn’t dwell on it.

i years ago, and he’s been home,

Armstrong treats herself as

action. This stripping the drama to

1 Smokes and Lollies (1976), 14’s

the bare bones to expose motive and personality can produce riveting drama, but it can also distort meaning, as it does in O thello, by simply making the Moor jealous

More Smokes, More Lollies.

and vengeful.

talent, too, panelled into the film

There have been other memo­

RICHARD III

rable attempts to film Shakespeare,

Director: Richard Loncraine. Producers: Stephen Bayly, Lisa Katselas Paré.

Executive producers: Ellen Dinerman Little, Ian McKellen, Joe Simon, Richard Eyre. Scriptwriters: Ian McKellen, Richard Loncraine. Based on a stage adaptation by Richard Eyre. Director of photography: Peter Biziou. Production designer: Tony Burrough. Costume designer: Shuna Harwood. Editor: Paul Green. Cast: Ian McKellen (Richard III), Annette Bening (Queen Elizabeth), Kristin Scott-Thomas (Lady Anne), Jim Broadbent (Buckingham), Robert Downey Jr. (Earl Rivers), Maggie Smith (Duchess of York), Nigel Hawthorne (Clarence). Australian distributor: NewVision. 35mm. U.K. 1996.104 mins.

including Joseph Mankiewicz’s

Julius Caesar (1953), and Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968).

Orson Welles’ O thello (1951) and

Chimes at M idn igh t (aka Falstaff, 1966) are both masterpieces in their way, as is Roman Polanski’s

Macbeth (1971), and Grigori Kozintsev’s H am let (1964) and King Lear ( 1970).

Laurence Olivier’s classic quartet of Shakespeare films, Henry

V (1945), H am let (1948), Richard I I I (1955) and O thello (1965), have dominated the screen for decades.

His stylized H enry V is as innovative today as it ever was, and his com­

he problem with filming

plex H am let is still unrivalled. His

Shakespeare and making him

50

accessible to global audiences has

j hamminess has been forgiven for the

always been what to do with the

I brilliance of his charismatic perfor-,

dense, poetic language and the

| mances. But now Kenneth Branagh,

i

inherent staginess and theatricality

j with H enry V (1989) and M uch Ado

of the plays. A common approach,

\ A bout N oth in g (1993), has chal-

which worked well for Mel Gib­

i lenged Olivier’s hegemony by taking

son’s H am let (Franco Zeffirelli,

j his own intelligent productions out-

1989) and Oliver Parker’s recent

j doors, and giving them a robust,

O thello, is to cut the play heavily

| swashbuckling style and pace. And

and link the main speeches with

I he further energized M uch Ado

C I N E M A P A P E R S • A UGUST 1996

her husband and father, and is then

energy of a blockbuster, and, in

corrupted and seduced by him, is

eight minutes of tour de force

one of the film’s great psychological

filmmaking, Loncraine, whose pre­

moments.

vious credits include the wayward

It makes great sense in this

backgrounded the Civil War, with

Queen and her brother Americans.

the assassination of the king and its

Much of the film’s plausibility

aftermath, and laid the scene for all

derives from our historical aware­

the action that is to come, all with

ness of Nazi sympathizers on both

dazzling audacity and virtually no

sides of the Atlantic: chiefly, the

dialogue.

Duke of Windsor and his American

His introduction to the main

wife Mrs Simpson; JFK ’s father,

characters at a ball to celebrate

Joseph P. Kennedy, who was U.S.

Edward IV’s coronation is breath­

Ambassador to England in the early

lessly assured. The camera, with an

’40s; and Sir Oswald Mosely and his

eye for telling detail, follows the

supporters, many of whom were

flurry of preparations as the Royal

members of the British Union of

Family and friends prepare to cele­

Fascists.

brate the triumph of the House of

To equate Richard with Hitler

York over the House of Lancaster.

is original and accurate. No play­

While the little princes dance with

wright before or since Shakespeare

their mother and Clarence is inter­

has written with such understanding

rupted from taking snapshots of the

about the psychopathology of

family to be escorted to the Tower,

tyrants, and the fear and danger

Richard circles the ballroom before

they represent. Well before Freud,

taking to the floor and almost

Dr Johnson observed that, in the

crooning into the microphone,

case of Richard III, his urge to

“Now is the winter of our

destroy stemmed from an envy

discontent...”

nourished by his own deformity.

McKellen plays Richard with a

Brimstone and Treacle (1982), has

England of the 1930s to make the

While the setting of the action in

The contemporary parallels seem

the 1930s is novel and startling, the

obvious: Goebbels’ clubfoot, and

form of the drama adopted by Lon­

Hitler’s rage that he was not born

craine and McKellen is traditional

tall and blond. And it could well be

and orthodox. The classic form of

Stalin’s face we see reflected in the

movement from order to chaos and

About Nothing (and virtually

an inspired Annette Bening as

guaranteed the film’s international

Queen Elizabeth; Robert Downey

manic glee. He may be the devil

lavatory mirror, when Richard

back to order again is reproduced to

success) by his surprise casting,

Jnr, equally good as her brother,

incarnate, but he is human, too.

confesses to himself and to us,

grand effect, enabling the power of

along with his customary ensemble,

Earl Rivers; Nigel Hawthorne, who

“I can smile, and murder when I

Shakespeare’s language - comple­

of American stars Denzil Washing­

plays Clarence as touchingly fussy

dence with a smirk, or jerks his head

smile.” What is most exhilarating

mented perfectly by Peter Biziou’s

ton, Keanu Reeves and Robert Sean

and affectionate; Maggie Smith as

for us to follow him as he careers

about the film, however, is not just

brooding film noir cinematography

Leonard.

Richard’s coldly-rejecting mother,

i madly down a hospital corridor, we

the cleverness of the idea, but its

and Tony Burrough’s opulent sets -

the Duchess of York; Adrian Dun-

j are as seduced by his deadly charm,

masterly execution.

to impact as naturally on our 20th-

on Shakespeare, whose themes are

bar as Richard’s evil hitman, James

as is Lady Anne. The scene in the

universal. Yet the language he

Tyrell; and Kristin Scott-Thomas as

mortuary where Anne spits in

cinema. Richard III bursts upon the

speaks is specific. The English know

the fire-and-water Lady Anne.

Richard’s face for having murdered

screen with all the power and

The English have no monopoly

1 When he takes us into his confi­

Loncraine’s direction is pure

century ears as it must have done in Elizabethan England.

© J an Epstein

it best because they are schooled in Shakespeare, and have developed traditions and institutions devoted almost solely to the performance of his plays. Olivier and Branagh came out of this tradition and so does Ian McKellen, who is the executive producer, co-writer and star of Richard Loncraine’s Richard III, one of the most enthralling Shakespeare films ever made.

Based on the Royal National Theatre production of Richard III directed by Richard Eyre, Loncraine and McKellen have probably changed the way we think about Richard forever. Their solution to making the play widely accessible is to locate it in England in the 1930s and liken Richard’s rise to power with that of Hitler. This works brilliantly.

Loncraine has assembled a magnificent cast which includes: McKellen as Richard III; the everreliable John Wood as Edward IV;

C I N E M A P AP E RS • AUGUST 1996

51

Anna (Dotiiinique Bernardo Bertolucci's II Conformista.

in Paris scandalized everyone,

review Bookc

Kael who hailed it as a liberating portrait of its era there were dozens who saw it as the solidi­

men and women, East and West,

fying of a brilliant career into

he made each of his films a kind of

style without substance. Even

exorcism of the one before. This

Tonetti is cautious despite her

devoted son of a poet killed off

celebration of N ovocento (1900)

fathers with a vengeance in La

and defence of the concentration

Strategia del Ragno (The Spider’s

on surface and lack of depth in

Stratagem, 1970), and explored

La Luna (1979). With La

incest with mothers and aunts in

Tragedia di un Como Ridicolo

Prima della Revoluzione (Before the

(Tragedy o f a Ridiculous Man,

Revolution, 1964). The fastidious

1981), the cold star had reached

lover of elegant women gained inter­

the remoteness of a black hole,

national notoriety for his imaginative

what the director himself called

use of butter in L ’Ultimo Tango a

“full emptiness”.

Parigi (Last Tango, 1973). The critic

Is this the point at which

of America-the-imperialist-pig loved

Bertolucci lost it for those of his

to act out John Wayne’s swagger,

spectators who were captivated

and was obsessed, like Huston, with

by virtuosity precisely because it

lost money.

was driven by intelligence and

In retrospect, it seems miraculous that he was able to hold it together

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI

and for every critic like Pauline

revolt, his hero, Giacobbe, played by

and De Chirico, set them to power­

not commercial sensation? The

French cult-actor Pierre Clementi,

ful operatic scores by Verdi, and

turning-point remains a problem.

at all. The secret was his open-

literally lives a surreal double-life

mindedness, his trust that his own

with his opposite self in Partner. Just

unconscious would mesh with the

as he used literary sources for his

spectator’s desire.

other films of this period (Stendhal,

After working with him on

created a style which mirrored his

i

Certainly, the nine Oscars awarded his next spectacle, The Last Emperor,

i own poems. Tonetti translates: One hundred stratagems

reflected a general delight in its

blooming in the shadow of a wall

sumptuous splendour and exotic

one hundred trains never

locations. His new producer, Jeremy

stopping at Marinetti,

Thomas, was the genius at the door

Accatone (1961) and La Commare

Borges, Moravia), Bertolucci adapted 1 this one from Dostoevsky. Already |

Secca (The Grim Reaper, 1962;

his visual style was transforming

script: Pasolini, director: Bertolucci),

them into the work of a distinctive

! ately recognize the filmic sensibility:

opened Morocco and Niger for

he Twayne series has already

the older artist quickly recognized

auteur, a mannerist who, like the

! rhythmic, imagist, elegiac, dissolving

The Sheltering Sky, and the royal

established itself as a neat,

that his apprentice shared a neurosis

Parmigianino of his native city, dis­

I with metaphor. By this stage, he had

inexpensive menu of auteurs, genres

as formidable as his own, and wrote

torted, elongated, gestured, froze.

made it world famous. With its

Little Buddha. But is there any heart

and national cinemas, with no spe­

one of the earliest and most percep­

In II Conformista (The Conformist,

establishment, he was also moving

at the centre of these extravagances?

cific ideological axe to grind, and a

tive critiques of his style, contrasting

1970), he played with fascist space

from his Marxist base and experienc­

Is there a brain? I must admit to

compact blend of fact and interpre­

its painterly immobility with the

and dislocated time to the point

ing the results, contradictory as

finding Siddhartha in Seattle not

tation. Claretta Tonetti brings to its

formal experiments of Godard and

where he was able to substitute an

always. Producers courted him,

latest release on Bertolucci the same

Antonioni. Bertolucci was to reward

overpowering cinematic subjectivity

concise skill which characterized her

him later with a split and a hostile

for one based on words and

earlier study of Luchino Visconti.

silence that lasted years.

conventional narrative.

THE C IN EM A OF A M B IG U ITY Claretta Micheletti Tonetti, Twayne Publishers, 1995, 281 pp, S26.95

T

Being Italian and educated in

The split in his own work

Aided by his impeccable taste

i Admirers of Bertolucci will immedi-

of the Forbidden City, just as he

palaces of Bhutan and Nepal for

only embarrassing but laughable.

One critic dubbed it “Get ready for

i while leftist friends attacked him

another gorgeous room.”

not simply for his double themes ; but for downright duplicity.

Tonetti is more charitable,

Typically, Bertolucci pushed

seeing in psychoanalysis the thread

the classic traditions of her subject,

came to a head in 1968. As Europe

in painting and music, he picked

his provocations even further. The

which has guided Bertolucci’s

she is at home with the cultural

exploded into ultra-leftist student

exactly the right tones from Ligabue

pathological vulgarity of Last Tango

exploration of the unconscious

material that shaped him, from the

through many states, religions and

alta borghesia of his birthplace in

realms, bringing Pu Yi, Marcello and

Parma to the peasant communism

the earlier heroes from atrocious

celebrated by his mentor, Pier Paolo

conflict to serenity. She draws on a

Pasolini.

wide range of reference from

Currently teaching film at

Metzian theory to location details.

Boston, Tonetti is also able to

The quality of the stills is what you

follow the transition to post-1987

would expect from a low-priced

productions (The Last Emperor,

print. 1900 is the worst hit, with

1987; The Sheltering Sky, 1990;

Vittorio Storraro’s palette.reduced

and Little Buddha, 1993) with

to a diagram.

cosmopolitan ease.

Most filmmakers of any

Otherwise, the book serves its subject with unpretentious erudition.

complexity could be characterized

Acute pointers to other key contexts,

as “ambiguous”; but the title fits

and boxed-in plots and critical

Bertolucci like a mask of Janus.

summaries frame each chapter.

His films express such savage

Several times in her career, Tonetti

contradictions that their structure

has feared the Italian artists’ curse,

comes to depend on them. Tonetti

“Traduttore, Traditore” (“Transla­

uses this basic opposition to trace

tor, Traitor”). Unlike Bertolucci’s

a map of his career which makes

ambiguous figures, she has nothing

sense of his crashes as well as his

to worry about.

® N 0 E L PURDON

triumphant flights. Torn between

52

socialism and decadence, intellect

N ote: B ooks R eceived

and animal instinct, the lures of

next

held over to

ISSUE.

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

Y O U N G F I L M M A K E R S F UND The State Government has established a fund for the encouragement of young filmmakers.

The Fund will be administered by the New South Wales Film & Television Office.

Eligible projects will be mainly short fiction films, documentaries or experimental films.

• The Fund will be open to individuals or teams of individuals between the ages of 18 and 35 years who are NSW residents.

• The Fund will make direct grants towards production and post production costs only.

• Projects must demonstrate cultural and economic benefit to NSW and be entirely produced in NSW using NSW-based service providers.

I Each project’s principal photography must begin within six months of approval and the project must be completed within twelve months of approval.

• There will be no restriction on the format (film or tape), subject matter or type of film.

• The maximum grant will be in the range of $20,000 to $25,000, but the assessment committee may recommend a larger grant for a proposal of exceptional merit.

• There will be three funding rounds in a full year closing on: 9 August, 8 November and 28 March.

Guidelines and applications for the Young Filmmakers Fund must be used and are now available from: Level 6 ,1 Francis Street, East Sydney NSW 2010 Tel: (02) 9380 5599, Fax: (02) 93601095. i

___

NSW FILM O

A K| n T V

I OFFICE

PALACE films present

griffiths mi leads to

madness

Australian film by John

From the creator of Cinema Paradiso In the golden age of cinema, everyone dreams of b One man promises to make all thier dreams come I

From the Director of Cyrano de Bergerac c j wonderfully romantic tale starring Juliette Bj

» R E m M W fjf m

i :

H A

contact Antonio Zeccola • Sam Di Pietro • Tait Brady - Palace booth, Brisbane Movie Convention Palace Head Office: 233 Whitehorse Road Balwyn Victoria 3103 Australia • Telephone (613) 9817 6421 Facsimile (613) 9817 4921

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

53

shorts

Living in a Storm Archie Weller examines the recent programme o f short films

by Aboriginal filmmakers, From Sand to Celluloid n this, the one-hundredth year of Australian Cinema, I think it most appropriate that we have this series of short films by or about Indigenous Australians.

The film history of Aborigines portrayed on screen is not the best, especially in the early years. Even in the 1970s, when Australian film really began to take off, it was always white people directing and producing, and thus it was a white perspective. Film, as I have said elsew here, is the W h item an ’s Dreaming. N ot only in front of the screen, but behind the scenes as well, there were very few Aboriginal sound people, camera people, producers or directors. In that respect, we are on a parallel with the Native Americans and both our histories have been white­ washed by our usurpers.

So, it is with great pride I sat down to review the following films, and it was not only because I was meeting a lot of old friends. Being able to watch a film more than once, of course, gives an advantage of being able to see things that the ordinary viewer would perhaps miss. But that is one of the hallmarks of a good film: to find a new slant or angle every time you watch it. Espe­ cially this is so in the short-film genre.

But the first impressions of these films left me with a curious feeling of both pain and elation. Why? Because they are all moving, skilfully-orchestrated pieces of work and yet, in all of them, the message is sad.

I

All are w orth seeing, but three I thought were quite powerful in their story and filming techniques. These w ere: Fly P eew ee, F ly !, Two Bob M erm aid and N o Way To Forget.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get hold of a copy of Round Up [see breakout].

I would like to say at the outset that I hate putting stars or numbers to a film. Each individual has his or her own

deep and resonating voice has a haunt­ ing quality that is true to the heart.

As this film is based heavily on fact, it is interesting to note that the central character - and, hence, the audience is only an observer of the atrocities wit­ nessed. There is nothing much Shane Francis (David Ngoombujarra) can do, although he tries so hard, and this is the crux of the problem.

I th a n k all involved in Fro m S and To C e llu lo id fo r allow ing Australians of every culture to share some o f our diverse experiences m ost successfully. opinion as to why they like or dislike a film, and every one of these films I thought was excellent in its own way.

Because of the shortness of the films, a few loose areas showed up, but, as men­ tioned before, I was proud to watch them . I am sure that any audience would learn from these stories and, even though some of them are har­ rowing, they are not violent and so are accessible to the wider public. After all, that is another reason for films - to teach us about each other - and all these films do just that.

No Way To Forget (Richard Frankland) is possibly the most professional of the films. It is a sombre and disturb­ ing film about a complicated subject: black deaths and assaults in custody. It is a no-holds-barred film with poignant imagery. Actor David Ngoombujarra’s

This is a film that relies on voice and thoughts, not so much actions. It is also a very subtle film. All the films are sub­ tle in various ways, an im portant component in the short film; what is understated is often the most powerful rather than the obvious. But this film employs this skill more than the other four. Shane’s failure to tie the knot on the towel rail could be a subtle hint that the youth in the photo (Caine Muir) did not commit suicide, as is the taut little scene involving the cutlery knife and the disturbed girl (Rachelle Burke) who has already attempted suicide by slashing herself. It is stated - and yet not stated - that the Prison W arder (John Bishop) wants her dead. There is the hint that the girl who was raped by the police (Kylie Belling) is found dead (murdered by them ?) This is a con ­ fronting film and not one that will settle easily on one’s conscience.

gÀtìlACK RY'ICK THORNTON. 1996 »Jo opening production c re d itjp M B fflK ,© 1996 Warwick Thornton. Produced Blackfella Films. Made in asso^K onl Independ ent for "C r eative Nation]! P r a itl1 association with the Australian Film Ccr and N fe ^ p u th W a je ftln i& T e lé K iM 16mm. l0 mins. Producer: Pentv/ McDonald. producer. Rachel Perkins. SBS execiÀ vé prancdMfc|ièr|. S upervising producer: Gn Isaac, Indigenous Bran H 3 $ te tra ÌH M |fl sion; SàRiRTWRiTÈR:Wa rwflk Thornton. photograph rW a rwifk Thornton: rGmR: Daran F uj|anpPsjh^sjK ^le McLean Anne Pratten. Sound designer: A ndrai S ound RÊCjôRbisTÎ Aridfevy B m ttiW H w t V acclfe® |yr; fce’prge DjilayngajPaddy), “ || , peter Datjing (Abcrigina' '

54

The editing in this film is what makes it so special in my opinion.

The cuts with the closed eye, the hand reaching out to the nephew (Geoff Tye), and his mouthing “No m oney” keep the story rolling and make Shane become a part of his victim’s story - as he states so beautifully later on in the film. He is touched by death.

The editing is the best of all the films. The music also is good as is the format: a drive in one night from Swan Hill to M el­ bourne. N ice and tight and succinct.

Payback (Warwick Thornton) is filmed in black and w hite, ironic since it deals with the issues of black and white atti­ tudes towards law. It is also the only film that uses traditional lan­ guage extensively and traditional values. Incidentally, all the actors (G eorge Djilaynga, Charlie Matjiwi, Peter Datjing and Larry Yapuma) are related and are from Elcho Island; this is a nice touch given the nature of the film.

Although not a professional actor, Djilaynga is the lead singer of Warumpi Band, so has expe­ rience of performing before big crowds. The acting is not expert, but it is not really a film that needs much acting, since it is a film about val­ ues.

The cameras that photograph Paddy (George Djilaynga) after he is released from prison represent media, or Euro­ pean, values as opposed to Aboriginal law. But, as there was no reason given for the media to be there, although a 26-year sentence would have been for a horrendous crime, I found this con­ cept confusing and hard to grasp. It was no surprise to learn the writer-directorDOP W arw ick T h orn ton is an experienced cameraman. But, in this scene, I found that too much was hap­ pening at once, and I lost the character of Paddy, who is the main thread of the story.

It was well done that, even though Paddy is free at last of the prison (whose scenes are excellently shot to show darkness and confinement), he is not free from the m edia. The little scene when he signs his release is almost unobserved it happens so fast, and yet it says so much. He has done 2 6 years’ gaol for a crim e he would C I N E M A P A P E R S • A UGUST 1996

m only have been speared in the leg for.

Also, he couldn’t write when he went in and now he can, which to my mind represents so-called progress. Yet, he remained stagnant for all that time.

Nothing changes in his people’s way of looking at things, which is the oldest way. The prison is shown as a dark and cramped place governed by foreigners who, although kind, are still in charge of Aborigines’ destiny.

The punishm ent or payback, although thought to be cruel, is seen to be the kinder of the two laws and the punishers are actually very gentle. It is the old man who goes in the ambulance and none of the media, who are only greedy for a story. And the message given by his speaker is the same as the judge would probably have given, “Don’t do it again!”, with the addition of “You are free now”; that, of course, the judge could not say.

Two Bob Mermaid (Darlene Jo h n ­ son) is an interesting story on a subject that is close to my heart: fair-skinned Aborigines and the question of Aboriginality. It is set in 1 9 5 7 when these

C I N E M A PAPERS • AUGUST 1996

issues were even more pressing than today, although no less im portant.

Being a fair-skinned Aborigine myself, I found this story very sad, yet beauti­ fully filmed and told. Darlene Johnson is to be congratulated on her sensitive portrayal of a difficult subject.

There are some graceful underwater shots. Also, the contrast between the fun in the river and the synchronized, almost regimented, swimming in the town’s aquatic centre is well filmed. As this is a story about colour, I loved the touches like the chlorinated blue water (washing all our sins away?) that turns every one the same blue colour, and the sheets on the line that make m other (Tessa Leahy) and daughter Koorine (Carrie Prosser) the same until they come out from behind the billow­ ing whiteness. Shadows against the tent are, after all, only shadows.

But there are a few discrepancies that worry the mind, only because it is such an engrossing story. Has the white father (Gary Sweet) left the mother or did he die in the war? The mother is a church-going woman and she was mar-

W.Iofiè; Original f réductions pr||e|;td RouniUp. @ s pèS Core Original Productions P|/yLtd. Made jjh ; , issociation with SBS Independent for "Creative ' iation” [and] AFC IndigenousIBranch. 16m§. l€jl | I■f c m in s. FProduce ^ f e L P*:aPauline u l i n e Ciaaue&SBS x e c u t iv e p r o Ì mins.

Clague. SBS eexecu H ducer: Franco &\ Chma/SuPERVlCiivG proou^ .111

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WhmmmmL

fii§ift

m

11*

Graenjpsii$ . S criptwriter: B\m a Farnoti. DmECTORVPmctyGmm K'pBatterham/PpoDUCTiONDEsiGim: Kylie McLean. Editor: John Scffc Composer: David Idge. S q u iv ^c o ^ T :A n d re w Belletty. Sfiujik mroR: Martin Osmond [sic; Oswin] CAsr.Ben Oxenbould (Hugo Htrfjon), G a ry lo o ^ r (Desi lifoiM Jacqueline Barkm|b!(Wavirig Busines|WJnian)l|rS tuaft Barlow (Stockman ;1), Jacob.Cqjsidy

(StockrpaJk H 9 I ^ H k $|

9

ft B e fo rd w i annual round-up., tw o stockmari, f ugo H |itto n H B ^ 0 x e n fo u la T a ^ 8 !fs i|

(Gary C to j|e r),'a re m v o h id 'p R .s u ch P P !^Y ic ia ^D i;a w i tW tifhey age sent to 3 p ty jp | tal. W itip day to sfiafe before re tu i|iin f tq ? |a p ;a n ^ ^ k !,s ta d o ^ th e | wander t m m w h e re 'tr^ ^ B K b a c k jh |tu r*P o ^ rc in e a s tl^ w fth c|ymor'esLHugo odesn't know howto order p c o ffe e % 9 p e il9 * & e sogar psjpnTOr; tn | Mtorffllnal Desi frightens <W :e pies by^&kipgiqfipJfgnt; both help anfiuoriginal b a g H d yl|illia n Crombie) w a rd o ff a threatm nw ^trhe't^ang. Through it alfttHugo and Desi travel toward a sense of reconcilia­ tion, if osWouchingly reinforced by Hugo's final meeting with Ester (Ella-Mei Wong). S.M.

g|É||

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G.Jpen Seahorse Production presents No Ij y j ÿ e Forget © 1996 Golden S jk lw s e Productions [and] Australian Film Commission.

Produced with the a ssig n e e of Independent Filmmakers' Fund of Filni Victoria, Made in. association with SBS Independent for "Creative Nation". Produced in association with Australian m Film Corm|j|ston. 16mm. 11 mins. P roducer: John Foss.- SBS executive pacoucffl:FrancoSii SuPERViS'mpRODUCER: Graeme Isaac, indigenous Branch, Austrtilianfiim Commission. SmPTfâlJËrnimÈmjm Richard F t ^ ^ n d . D irector of photography: Peter Zakharov. Editor : Michael Collins.'Soû/yo fifeonÉM l Mark T&©e|, M ixer : Neil McGratitgCdsf;David Ngoombujarra (Shane Francis), GeoffTye^agrtg Boy), T] Christina'Sfgnders [Woman in Kitchen), Amy Saunders (Yipfig Woman), John Bishop (Prison Warder).

Vf SO FORGET FRANKLA9Ü, 1996

[No opening production credit] BLACK MAN DOWN. © 1996 Sam Watson. Made in asso­ ciation with SBS Independent for “ Creative Nation". Produced in association with Film Queensland and Australian Film Commission.

16mm. 11 mins. P roducer: Bruce Redman. Co- producer: Sam Watson. SBS executive producer: Franco di Chiera. S upervising producer: Graeme Isaac. S criptwriter: Sam Watson. D irector of photography: Les Parrott. Production designer: Shane Rushbrook. W ardrobe: Susan McKinnon. Editor: Bill McCrow. Composers: John Vallins, David Hudson. S ound recordist: Paul Jones. M ixer: Peter Ferrier.

Cast : David Hudson (Waxy], Linda Johnson (Mulweena), Jarred Wall (Young Waxy), Rcslyn TrillotWatson (Mother), Ted Hopkins (Father).

BLACK MAN D0V.'«

BILLHcCRDt. 1996

ried legally with a bridal dress and, pre­ sumably, all the trimmings. Given the age of the girl, this marriage would have been just before or during the war.

In an ethereal scene, we are shown this was a time when everything was fine w ith the m other. Perhaps she, too, left her family and friends to try and live a white life. It would have been good to see more of this facet explored.

And the town child ren, having all grown up together, would surely know she had an Aboriginal heritage, and this

makes some of the scenes, although strong, not quite believable.

For all that, the acting from, once again, a cast of mostly unknowns is excellent, and the scene in town, when Koorine forsakes her Koori mates to go swimming with the white kids gathered outside the milk-bar, is especially mov­ ing. In retrospect, this is a film about assimilation, but I believe it could have been just that bit stronger. The end of

the film leaves one wondering if her family accepts Koorine and if she accepts her family. It is only because this is such a good film that these small irregulari­ ties jar on the mind.

B la c k M an D ow n (Bill M cC row ) is w ritten by Sam Watson. It also deals with assim­ ilation and alienation in a big city. It is the only film [with R ou n d Up] to use images of a capital city. It is the most ‘arty’ of all the films that use images to prod the psyche. The image of police and priest, harsh and hum anitarian ... but do they really understand the Aboriginal m entality? The image of the earth beneath the concrete of the city is a strong one, as are all the spirits of W axy’s (David Hud­ son) past. Indeed, this film is similar to N o Way To Forget in that it is a very spiritual film. But the spirits here are visible and take human form, whereas in the other it is all images of wind, moon, thoughts and other unseen things. This film also touches on the issue of black deaths and the reasons behind them. But in B lack Man Down he survives.

Again, this is a subtle film. W axy wears no A boriginal clothing or colours, as if he is ashamed of being Aboriginal. Waxy is only at the protest

meeting to look for a fight. Before the fight, he seems disillusioned - as he expresses in gaol. Yet, when he awak­ ens from his dream, he is lying on an Aboriginal flag. His people are there for him as are the spirits of his Dreaming and his family - proud to be Aboriginal again. Alcohol is shown to destroy fam­ ily and culture, but in an unusual and moving way, not in the stereotype way so many European directors and writ­ ers portray Aborigines. This is a theme that moves throughout all these films and is important to realize. Issues are explained in an Aboriginal way, often understated, but always there and extremely powerful.

The last film I watched was Fly Peewee, Fly! which is the gentlest film of all seen, about a family sorting out their identity and lives. It is about loneliness and survival. Once again, the effects of alcohol is quietly explored (as it is on similar lines in Two Bob Mermaid). Was it because of drink that the mother left Billy (Stan Dryden)?

This film is also rich in images. The bird making a nest, whose death brings all the family together, is, of course, the most graphic one. But there is the song that both father and son sing about rejection and racism. Both grandma M ay (Faye M ontgom ery) and Billy say the same thing, “Good spot for a nest”, and the cryptic “Shame the seats are so hard” is a statement from May

I¥ 0 B O B MERMAID DARLENE JÜRNSQN. 1996 [No opening production credit.] two bob Mermaid © 1996 Australian Film Commission, New Soutf Wales Film & Television Office [and] Darlene John­ son. Produced in association with the Australiar Film Commission and New South Wales Film 8, Television Office. Made in association with SBS Independent for "Creative Nation". 16mm. 15 mins Producer: Antonia Barnard. SBS executive producer Franco di Chiera. S upervising producer: Graeme Isaac, Indigenous Branch, Australian Film Commis­ sion. Scmvw?/7B?; Darlene Johnson. D irector oi photography: Kim Batterham. Production designer Laurie Faen. Costume designer: Anni Browning, Editor: Liz Goldfinch. Compose/?:The Tiddas. S ounl recordist: Andrew Belletty. S ound editors: Mark Ward, Linda Murdoch. M ixer: Martin Oswin, Cast : Carrie Prosser (Koorine), Tessa Leahy (Mum), Jie Pittman (Koori Boyfriend), Stephen Blair (Koorine’s Brother), Megan Drury (Koorine's Girlfriend).

56

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

FLY PEEVEE. FLY!

SALLY RiLEY, 1995

Film Australia presents FLY PEEWEE, FLY! © 1995 Film Australia. Made in association with SBS Inde­ pendent for "Creative Nation". A National Interest Program Production. 16mm. 10 mins. P roducer: Adri­ enne Parr. Executive producer: Sharon Connolly.

S criptwriter: Sally Riley. D irector of photography: Kathryn Milliss. Production designer: Gavin Barbey.

W ardrobe: Ruth Bracegirdle. Editor: Wayne Le Clos.

Composers: Jim Conway, Lerdy Cummins, Jan Pre­ ston. S ound recordist: Chris Bollard. M ixer: Martin Oswin. Cast : Duane Johnston (Robbie), Stan Dryden (Billy), Faye Montgomery (May), Peewee (Peewee), Puss (Thomas).

re fle c tin g on the fa ct th a t R ob bie (Duane Johnson) has a hard, truthful view of life.

And so it is with these short films.

They give a straight view of aspects of Aboriginal Australia and, although they were made in all parts of the country, it is interesting to note similarities in each film. There are birds involved in most of them. As well as the obvious imagery in Fly Peew ee, Fly! (the bird by the way is black and white), there is the call of a mopoke to bring Billy back on the path o f his loving son. T h ere is the frightening death bird call in B lack

M an D ow n . In T w o B o b M erm a id , as well as the image of kids flying through the air like birds, there is the k o o k ­ aburras on the newsreel, which brings the two girls closer together as they share the humour and yet alienates the A b orig inal b oy frien d . All the film s except P a y b a ck use photos (another type of still film) to describe part of the story. Fam ily is im p o rta n t in all of them. Given the way Aboriginal fami­ lies have been trea ted in the past half-century, with children being taken away and the core of family life disin­ tegrating, this is not surprising. The

family, therefore, is described here in an Aboriginal way.

P eople callin g out from behind closed barriers, and yet no one taking any notice, plays a part as well. There is the nephew behind bars in P ay back and the kids in T w o B o b M e r m a id behind the fence around the aquatic centre. People are calling out in No Way To Forget but no one listens. And, in all the films, spirits and spirituality is important. It is, indeed, the very cen­ tre o f A boriginal psyche and is well portrayed in these short works.

The skill of making a short film is a highly-honed art as you only have a

short time to say all you want and show what you want seen. Scenes tend to be shorter and sharper and tell a lot in quick, even sparse, imagery. But there is no less w ork fo r the cam era and writer, sound, director and, especially, the editor. Perhaps there is more than in a longer film. In all these works, this is shown as a huge success, and it is g reat to read throu gh the p u blicity notes and see how many Aborigines are w orking in and around the cinem a now.

Because ten minutes is time enough to take in the whole story and digest it while fresh in our mind, the story must be taut and, above all, gripping and even unusual in its outline. There is no time for the audience to ponder until after the film as everything is rac­ ing along. It is a brave m edium for anyone to get into.

So, for this I thank all involved in F rom Sand T o C ellu lo id for allowing Australians of every culture to share some of our diverse experiences most successfully. I hope we see a lot more of their work. ©

N o t e : All the above films are avail­ able on VHS fo r purchase from the Australian Film Institute.

Number 1 (January 1974) David Williamson. Ray Harryhausen, Peter Weir, Antony Ginnane, Gillian] Number 2 (April 1974) Censorship, Frank Moorhouse, Nicolas Roeg, Sandy Harbutt, Him under Allende, Between the Wars, Alvin Purple Number 3 (July 1974) Richard Brennan, John Papadopolous, Willis O'Brien, William Friedkin, The tru e Story of Eskimo Net Number 4 (December 1974) Bill Shepherd, Cliff Green, W em er Herzog, Between Wars, Petersen, A Salute to the Great MacArthy Number 5 (March-April 1975) Albie Thoms on surf movies, Charles Chauvel filmography, Ross Wood, Byron Haskin, Brian Probyn, Inn o f the Damned Number 6 (JulyAugust 1975) Steve Spielberg, Glenda Jackson, Susan Sontag, Jack Thompson, Bruce Smeaton, The Removalist, Sunday Too Far Aw ay Number 7 (Nov-Dec 1975) Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Winkler, Dusan Makavejev, Caddie. Picnic a t Hanging Rock Number 8 (March-April 1976) Pat Lovell, Richard Zariiick, Sydney Pollack, Pier Paolo Pasolipi, Phillip Adams, Don McAlpmepJons Party Number 9 (JlllietJuly 1976) Milos Forman, Max Lemon, Miklos Jancso, Luchino Visconti, Caddie, The Devil's Playground Number 10 (Sept-Oct 1976) Nagisa Oshima, Philippe Mora, Krzysztof Zanussi, Marco Ferreri, M arco Bellocchio, gay cinema Number 11 (January 1977) Emile'MY&itonio, Jill Robb, SamuelZiArkoff, Roman Polanski, Saul Bass, The Picture Show M an Number 12 (April 1977) Ken Loach, Tom Haydon, Donald Sutherland, Bert Deling, Piero Tosi, John Dankworth, John Scot, Days o f Hope. The o f Wisdom Number 13 (July 1977) Louis Malle, Paul Cox, S H fiM v e r , Jeanine Seawell, Peter Sykes, Bernardo Bertolucci, In Search o f Anna Number 14 (October 1977) Phil Noyce, M att Carroll, Eric Rohmer, Terry Jackman, John Huston, Luke's Kingdom, The LastWave, Blue Fire la d y Numbei 9 5 (January 1978) I om Cowan. Truffaut John Faulkner, Stephen Wallace, theTaviaiiflbrothers, Sn Lankan fdm. The Chant ot Jimmie Blacksmith Number 16 (April-June 1978) Gunnel LmdblonCJohnDutgan, Steven Spielberg, Tom Jeffrey. The Africa Project Swedish cinema. Dawn!, Patrick Nlimbei 1 7 (Aug Sept 1978) BiH Bam I a b ille li I pert Bn r May Pali hcinema Nowsfronr, The Night the Procter Number 18 (Oct-Nov 1978) John Lamond Soma Borg Alain Tanner Indian cinema. Dimbndla, dathy's Child Number 19 (Jan-Feb 1979) Antony Ginnane, Stanley Hawes, Jeremy Thomas, Andrew Sarris.spdn: ored doeumentanes B lje Fin Number 20(Maicb-April 1979) Ken C a m e r i ^ ^ M d e ^ ^ ^ & li m Shannon, French film. M y Bnlhant C truer Number 21 (May June 1979) Vietnam o i Rim, the Cantrills, French cinema. M a d Max, Snapshot th e Odd Angry Shot Franklin on Hitchcock] Number 22 (July Aug 1979) Bruce Petty Luciani Arrighi, Albie Thoms, Stax, Alison's Birthday p a t t e r 23 (Set-Oct 1979) TinrYlifstall, Austialian S e e n filmmakers. Japanese cinema Li iwfonfs, M y B n lln n t Career. The Plumber Number 24 (Dec-Jan 1980) Brian Trenchard-Smitfi, Ian Holmes, Arthur Hiller/JerzyToeplitz, Brazilian cinema Hartequ n Number 25 (Feb-Maich 1980) David Punriam. Janet Strickland, Everett de Roche, Petei Faunan Cham Reaction, Shr Number 26 (April-M ay 1980) Charles H. Joffe, Jerome Heilman, Maicolm Smith, Australian nationalism, Japanese cinema, Peter Weir* Wafer; Underthe Bridge Number 2 7 (June-July 1980) Randal Kleiser, Peter Teldham, Donald Richie, obituary of Hitchcock, NZ film industry, GrendelGrendet Grendet Number 28 (Aug-Sept I960) Bob Godfrey, Diane Kurys, Tim Bums, John O'Shea, Bruce Beresford, Bad Timing, Roadgamed Number29(0ct-Nov1980)BobEtliS;Uri Wiridt,Edward Woodward; Lino Brncka Stephen W allace Philippine cinema Cruising The Last Outlaw Number 30 (Dec 1980-Jail 1981) S-fm Fuller, 'BreakafLMorant rethought Richard Lester, Canada supplement The Chain Reaction, Blood Money Numbei] Alternative Numbei 31 (March-April 1981) Bryan Brown, looking in on Dressed to Kill, The Last Outlaw, Fatty Finn, Wmdows lesbian as villain, tha ne w qenerahon Number 32 (May-June 1901) Judy Oav d David Williamson. Richard Rush Swinburne, Culnn cinema, Pul 33 (June-July 1976) John Duigan, the new tax concessions, Robert Altman, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Edward Fax Gallipoli Roidgames Numbers 34 and 35 SOLD OUT Number 36 (February 1982) Kevin D o b s o n .B n a n 'K ea rn ejM ® H < | | j | j i, Micl M orant BodyHeat, East Number 39 The M an from Snowy River Number 37 (April 1982) Stephen MacLean, Jacki Weaver, Carforî^aura, Peter Ust nov women tn drama Monkey Gr p Number 38 (June 1982) Geoff BurrowesYSep'rge Mïïter.Jàmes Ivory, Phil Noyce, Joan F o rp ^ p T o n y ie Return o f Captain (August 1982) Helen Morse, Richard Mason, Anja Breien, David Millilkan, Derek Granger, Norwegian cinema National Him Archive, W e j j j | | | t e v e r Never Number 40 (October 1982) Hi nn Safr m Michael Ritchie, Pauline Kael, Wendy Hugha^ Ray Bj Invincible Number 41 (December 1982) Igor Auzins, Paul SchradaMfcter Tammer, Yeartâuyjhg Darigmtusly N i p b r |||^ a r d ||j9 6 3 ) Mel Gibson^d^^TAfater^Jan Pringle,Agnesiyarda, c |]||jjp iL lari from S now y/¡m at Number 43 (MayJune 1983) Sydney Pollack, Denny Lawrence, Graeme Clifford, The ¡[MpjfiÇal, Sumner Locke Elliott's Careful He M ig h tH e a rY o u H u m b e f 44:45 (April19|4) David Stevens^^vnifoWincer, Susan Lambert apbrsonat history p fC m e m a % ^ ix , Si 461 July 1984) Paid Cox, Russen Mulcahy, 4nnsîfum ber48 (Oct-Nov 1984) Ken Alan J! Pakula. Robert DuvgltJe/ejTiy Irons, Eureka^Sjocftade, W a t $ $ t jk The B oy m jh e B à s f f ê W ^ ^ ^ u f f e r s . , ^ ^ ^ Ê r o 'Î Ï ÎÊ v b p T 0 T ^ t m ^ t i ^ H '3 M ) RrcSini L o w e n s f^ ^ y y 5 m W e n ift^ 3 S v jj^ B r^ ^ y i® |ih ia TurkfëiivœtHftfijh Hudson; Cameron, Michael Pattirison, Jan SticdCYoramGross; Bodyline, The Slim Dusty Movie Number 4 9 |Ddcembdr1Sp4) Alain Resnais, Brian McKenzie. Angela P u n | ^ ^ r e g o ^ ^ p Y N ^ ^ ^ e , Jane Campion, horror films. N ie!Lynn Number 5 0 (Feb-March 1 98 5) Stephen Wallace, Ian Pringle, Walerian Borowczyk, PeterSchreck, Bill Conti,Brian May,/Thé Last Bastion. Bliss Number 51 (May 1985)ünoBrocka/Harrisoi1Fordi Nom Hazlehurst DosanMakavejevjrfmoARuéWm ners. Morri&lyestiRheNa'kedDountry. M a d M ax Beyond Thunderdome, Robbery Under Arms Number 5 2 (July 1 98 5) John Schlesinger, Gillian ArmstrongiAlariParker, soap operas. TV news, ^ ^ » i ^ p | g . Don’t Call M e Girlie, For Love Alone Doub’i Sculls Number 5 3 (September 1965) Brian Broum, NiéofasRoëg, Vincent Ward, Hector Crawford, Emir Kusturica, NZ film and TV. Return to Eden Number 54 (November

A Guide to W hats in Stock

Armstrong, Ken G. Hall, The Cars that Ate Paris

I M S ) Graeme Ciifford,T3ob VVeis J<ritp Boorm an;M?naham Golan. rockyidbos? WW& and Burke, T 0 p jg h t Bookie Robbery. The LancasterM illerA ffa ir i1 $ ttn b e r i5 5 { J a n ià llfâ 9 lf6 ) '3 a m e ÎStewart"uebBie Bÿjne, Brian Thompson. Paul Verhoeven, Derek Meddings, tie-in marketing. The Right Hand Man,

Number 5 6 (March 19 | | | j | e d Schepisi, Dennis Q’Ruurke, Brian Trenchard-S:ii[‘ii, John Rargreaves,Dead-endDhve-în,The MoreThm gsChangé.... Kangaroo, Tracy Numbers 57 SOLD O UTHum ber 5 8 (July 1 98 6) Woody Allen, Reinhard Hauff, Orson Welles, the Cinémathèque Française.

Number 5 9 ( S e p te r a b c iN 9 8 6 ]^ ^ ^ f||tm ti|i’ Paul COX, lrno Brocka, AgnesVarda.theAFI Awards.The Movers Number 6 0 (November 1 986) Australian television. Franco Zeffirelli, Nadia Tass, Bill Bennett Dutch cinema, moites by microchip, Otello Number 61 (JanuafyY$B7) Alex Cox, Roman Polaàçfi.Thilippe M o r * iCbrlin Arminger;fijm in South Australia. D o g s m S p a c k lfo w E n g lllN u m b e rp iifl^ U C b 1987)Screenvioleqpg, David LynçttJÇary Grant ASSJIrConference. production barometer, film finance. The Storj| ^Vladimir Osherov, Brian Trenchant Smith, chartof the Kelly Gang Number 6 3 (M ay 1 987) GihmnArinWotig.Antony'Ginnane.Qiris Haywood.fim oretebnard. Troy Kennedy Martini The SacrificgrLpndslicfmCfyeWpeJsBig Adventure.

NuraberM (Jlriy1987) Jfostakpa Dennis Hoi— busters. Insatiable Number 6 5 (September4M^Angé||ff6vler, Wim Wenders, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Derek Jarman; Gerald tlc u y e r, Gustav H a M Ê L F I k ^ ^ . P o o r M à h 'è ^ l ^ ^ e Nûmber 6 6 (November 1987) | M H b n scE H m ntd lina, James Bond: part 1, James Clayden, Video, iber 68 (March 1988) Martha Ansare, Channel De Laurentiis, New World, The Navigator. W ho^ffltatG irl Number 674Juuuaiy1988) John Duigan, James B o n j g m ^ H | e Miller, Jim J a r n |ip i| Sovietcmama, women m film,70mm,fi|mmalangmGhana, Th e Y e a h M ^ V cip e E ^ ie i Gem iber 1988) Him Australia, Gillian Armstrong] 4, Soviet cinema: part 2, Jim McBride, Glamoui^BbiMs O f itifiCno1 Dead, Feathers, Ocean, O c e a m fiu m b er 6 9 (l\^ay1S88) Sek, death and fa m il|jjjp |C a n n e s w l ^ ^ H p o s e r s , D a v id P a rk e r,id p ^ a d l^ j ^ s u r e Domes N um lB S I^ ¡an sci-fi movies, 1988 mini-series, Aromarama, Fred Schepisi. W es Craven, John Waters, Al Clark. Shame screenplay p a rti Number71 (January 1989) Yahoo Serioui. David Cronenberg, 1988 in retrospect film smmd,LastTemptationofChrtst Philip Brophy Number 72.(l||ar^b1989) W K D p rrit. rema, Philippe Mora, Yuri Sokol, Twins, Ghosts _ Celia, La deice Vita, women and Westerns Number 73 (M ay 1989) Cannes ^ Dead Ca/mFrartco NeroijJa'ne Campjori, The Prisoner of S i Petersburg, Frank Pierson, Pay TV Number 7 4 (July 1989) The Dehm jjenl Australian in He I Btrdsyille

The Fringe Dwellers Great Expectations: The Untold Story.JheLast frontier

o f the CivilDead, Shame screenplay.^Number T C ^ ^ w m ^ e r 1 9^ )S a lly B o n g e rs,th e teen movie,,a m jn a te d ,.£ ^ |^ a ift Pet SematsryiMartin Scoriese and Paul Schrader, Ed Pressman N u m b e r 7 6 (N o v e m b e r 1 989) S iniontancer. QuigleyDWm Under, Kennedy Miller, Terry Hayes, Bangkok Hilton, JohivDuigan, Rifting, Romero, Dennis Hopper, Frank Howson, Ron Cobb N u m b e r T? (J a n u a ry 1 9 9 0 ) John Farrow monograph. Blood Oath,Dm>ms

BpamWilliams, Don McLennan, Breakaway, 'Crocodile‘ Dundee overseas N u m b e r 7 8 (M a r c h 1 9 9 0 ) The Crossing. Ray Argali. Return Home,

Peter Greenaway and ftiD C ùok. . Michel Cii m ^ Îa n g k d ^ m m i. Bariowpnd Chaptbers N u m b e rs 7 9 S O L D O U T N u m b e r 8 6 (A u g u s t1 9 9 0 ) Cannes repoitFred Scheprsicareec aitennew. Peler W & ffm G re e n c a rd , Pauline Chan, Gus Van Sant and Drugstore Cowboy, German stories N u m b e r 81 (D e c e m b e r 1 9 9 0 ) \anŸnnglélsabelie£berhgrdfiJane Campion,

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1991) Australia atCanrteszGillian Armstrong Thp Last Days a t Cher NoUS,TheSiien'ce of the Lambs,f m ÿ D e a d to theWorid, Anthony Hopkins; Szotswaorf J 6 u m b m 8 4 (A u g u < t1 9 9 1 ) James C a m e r o n a ^ ^ ^ ^ a to r 2 : Judgement Day, Dennis O'Rourke, Good Woman o f Bangkok, Susan Deimody. Breathing Under W ater;Cannes report, FFC N u m b e r 8 5 (N u V e m b iê r'Î9 9 1 ) Jocelyn l^ iti^ p is e . Proof,

(J a n u a ry 199 2) Romper Stomper, The Nostradamus Kid. Greenkeeping, Eghtball, Kathryn

BigelowEHDTV arid Super16 N u m b e r 8 7 (M a r c h 1 9 9 2 j Multi-cultural cinema, Steven Spielberg. tfooi:, George Negusiand The Red Unknown; Richard towensfehli S ay a

cinema N u m b e r 8 8 (M a y -J u n e 1 99 2) Strictly Ballroom, Hammers Over the Anvil, Daydream Believer, Wim{ , David Lynch, Vitali KanieVski. Giannt Amelio, Forties*, fdm-hierature connections teen movies debut Number 90(October 1992);T2rèLast Days c idley Scott 1492, Stephen ElGott Frauds, Giorgio

^Vender's Until The End o f the World, Satyajit Ray Number89 (August |992) Darn Mangiamele, Cultural Differences and Ethnicity tn Australian Cinema, Johit Frankeriheimer's V earoftlie Gun Number 91

veil •ach, Australia's first films: part 1 Number 9 2 (January 1 993) Clint Eas^lpod m tiiinforgivBtt; Rauf Ruo, G’eOraa Nhller^tXf'^oss fatt and Bedevil, Lightworks and Avid, Australia’s (April 1 99 3) Reckless Kelly, George Miller and Lorenzos B/fM egan Simpson, Alex, The Lover, women iri film and television, Australia's first films: p a p ^ u m i ^ ^ ^ | l n i q r n 9 P l @ i ^ | n < p i o n and'The Purio, 1993)1 [reams, Franklin on the science of previews. 77re first films: part 3 Number 9 4 (August 1993LGatines '94,Steve BuscemlandBeservoir Dogs/taul Cox, Michael J j a H y S f o r t t w e l L Kid. first (Oi onovan: fs, Australia's first films: part 6 Number 9 7 -8 Custodian, documentary supplement, Tom Z u b p j^ lo h n Hughes, Australia's first films: part^5 N u m b e r 9 6 ( O e c M * e r IH p J ju e e n s la n d issu|:Ye|pview ofhlm in Queensland, early Q u e m P a n r^ m ^ ia , J upplement, Geoffrey Burton, Pauline Chan and (April 1994) 20th Anniversary double issue t w i ^ p ^ ^ l ^ ^ p l ^ M ^ n M ^ P D r and LtgAmrnjkfecki Richanl'Banklinionleaving Ami rica AusUalia sfnst film s.pait7 Number 9 9 (June 19M ) l&zys. |owskfc1 Traps, Australia’s first films: Part 8 Number 100 (August 1994) Cinnes'94. NS W suppltment. BemardD Benoluccrsizttte Buddah.Jhe Sum o fU g .jS p id e riR q s e .IM ard lh digilalwoild An in h V s fiis t is I t. Queen ofthe'Desen. Victorian supplement p J J. Hogan and Muriel's Wedding. Ben Lewin and Lucky Break, Australia's first films: Part 9 Number 102 (December 1994) Once Were Warriors, films w e love. Back o f Beyond, Cecil Holmes, Lindsay Anderson, Body Meft, AFC supplement Spider & Rose, Australia's firstfilm s: F a it 10 Number 103 (March 1995) Little Women, Gillian Armstrong, Queensland supplement, Geoffrey Simpson, Heavenly Creatures, Eternity, Australia's first films: Part 11 Number 104 (June 1995) Cannes Mania, Billy's Holiday. Angel Baby. Epsilon, Vacant Possession, Richard Franklin, Australia's First films: Part 12 Number 105 (August 1995) Mark Joffe's Cosi, Jacqueline McKenzie, Slawomir Idziak, Cannes Review, Gaumont Retrospective, Marie Craven, Dad & Dave Number 106 (October 1995) Gerard Lee and John Maynard on A ll M en are bars,Sam Neill,The Small Man, Underthe Gun, AFC low budget seminar Number 107 (December 1995) George Miller and Chris Noonan talk about Babe, New trends in criticism. The rise of boutique cinema Number 108 (February1996) Conjuring John Hughes' What l Have Written, Cthulu, The^Top 100 Australian Films, Nicole Kidman inTo.Ore For Nmnbef 109 (April 1996) Rachel Griffiths runs the gamut, Toni Collette and Cosi, Sundance Film Festival, Michael Tolkin, Morals and the Mutoscope

Number 110 (June 1996) Rolf de

Heer travels to Cannes. Clara Law’s n e w home. Shirley Barrett. Richard Franklin

C I N E M A P A P E R S • A U GU S T 1996

Sfifi tear-nut SUBSCRIPTION FARM tn nrrier 57

legal ease

Financing Your Low-budget Film with Government Funds Richard Silverton and Nina Stevenson look at legal issues to do with AFC- and FFC- funded low-budget films he federal and state gov­ ernments (other than those of the Northern Territory and Tasmania) each have film agencies or bodies which are responsible for administering and allocat­ ing funds to assist in the financing of Australian films.

The sources of government funding for low-budget films are the Australian Film Commission (AFC), the Australian Film Finance Corporation (FFC) and/or the various state agencies. We will refer in this article principally to the AFC and FFC. The AFC’s limit for production investment in a film is around $1.5 million. The FFC’s Film Fund is an initiative which has fully funded three features with budgets each around $2.5 million for the past two years.

We will assume for the purpose of this article that you have a script which is capable of being made into a film on a low budget. In other words, you do not require a cast of thousands and several overseas locations to bring your script to life on the big screen.

What is a “low-budget” film? It can mean anything from “no bud­ get” to $ 2 .5 m illion. Some films start out as having no budget, but then require substantial funds in order to enable a com m ercial release to satisfy union require­ m ents, or to make technical changes to meet the requirements of festivals or distributors.

On Every night, Every night, director-producer Alkinos Tsilimidos accumulated $ 2 7 ,0 0 0 of his own m oney to fund the shoot.

He continued to work part-time throughout the filming to maintain some cashflow. At double-head stage, Film Victoria provided some post-production funds. And, following the film’s com ­ pletion, to enable the film to be released commercially, the AFC invested approx­ imately $100,000.

The AFC funds were principally to pay award rates to cast and crew who had previously agreed to work outside the Award system on deferrals and per­

58

centage points of net profits of the film.

Once a commercial release was secured, the M edia E n tertain m en t and Arts Alliance (“MEAA”) insisted that cast and crew be paid according to the Award.

The final budget of the film was $260,000.

Gregor Jordan’s short film Swinger, which was originally made for entry in last year’s Tropicana Film Festival, had an initial budget of $500. However, in order to be considered for the Cannes Film Festival, Jordan needed to redo the titles, make a Dolby sound mix and blow­ up the film to 35mm. The AFC provided enhancement funds of $15,000. As you are probably aware, Swinger was selected

Kingdom, France and the United States for $1 million, so the film is already in profit.

All the above film s would have required the filmmaker at the outset to determine which items in the standard AFC A-Z Budget could be minimized or eliminated. If you are undergoing a similar exercise, you should consider w hether you anticipate governm ent funding at some later stage, and, if so, what budget cost cutting will be accept­ able to, say, the AFC or the FFC. You should also give consideration to what distributors and film festivals will require to ensure your film is able to be pro­ moted and exhibited.

for the Compétition (Shorts) at Cannes in 1995 and went on to win the Palme d’Or. A more recent example is the feature Love and O ther Catastrophes which was shot and post-produced to rough cut with $ 4 5 ,0 0 0 of the film m akers’ own funds. The AFC then provided $ 5 0 0 ,0 0 0 post-produ ction funding.

Fox Searchlight recently acquired the distribution rights for the United

So, what budget items will you need to allow for if you are intending to apply for AFC or FFC production finance?

C ast R ights B u y-O u t Cast must be budgeted at least at the Award rates. In addition, you must bud­ get to buy out world-wide rights. This means payment of an additional 110% of the base rate. Note, you will be liable to pay a penalty of an additional 110%

if these rights are not bought up-front at the time of contracting.

C ast R ates The AFC and the FFC generally require you to budget at market rates for crew, not merely the Award rate. However, if you can show them that your crew will agree to work for less this may be acceptable.

N ote that deferrals are generally not encouraged. M oreover, a deferral system in lieu o f the Award rates of pay for cast and crew is not acceptable.

M u sic and F o o tag e C learances Again world-wide rights are required.

This can dramatically increase the bud­

geted cost of your film. If you are not obtaining finance from a government organization such as the AFC or FFC, you may only wish to clear these rights for Australia, or Australia and interna­ tional film festivals.

S h o o tin g on V id e o as O p p o sed to Film W hether this is acceptable to the AFC and FFC will depend on the nature of

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

the project and its potential market; that is, whether the film is being made for the festival market only or whether a com­ mercial release is anticipated.

Insurances All usual insurance coverage (including Workers’ Compensation, Public Liabil­ ity, FPI, N egative Film Risk, Faulty Stock, Camera and Processing, MultiRisk) is required. The most controversial insurance is Errors and Omissions (E & O) insurance which essentially covers defects in the chain of title on the script actions for defamation, defects in music clearances, etc. Ffowever, it does not cover errors in the producer’s clearance procedures! The FFC does not usually require E & O insurance on its docu­ mentaries, but it does on its feature films.

And most distributors require E & O insurance. The A FC has generally required E & O insurance; however, the E & O and FPI requirements are being reviewed for short films. For AFC films in which the budgeted cost does not exceed $500,000, E & O insurance pre­ miums are approximately $ 1 ,8 0 0 , plus the cost of a U.S. title clearance, if it is a feature. Otherwise, the E & O costs will be at standard market rates, in the vicin­ ity of $5,000.

C o m p le tio n G u a ra n te e The FFC requires all its films (including “Accord documentaries”) to be bonded.

The AFC only requires its feature films to be bonded. The premium is roughly 3% of the budgeted cost. So, on a $250,000 Accord documentary, the fee is approxi­ mately $7,500; on a $1.5 million feature film, the fee is approximately $42,000.

Legal Fees Both the AFC and FFC require the pro­ ducer’s solicitor to review and confirm (in writing) that the chain of title for the film is clear. So, at the very least, some allowance for legal fees is necessary.

A u d it All FFC films and most AFC films (for investm ents greater than $ 5 0 ,0 0 0 ) require an audit to be conducted at com­ pletion of the film.

D e liv e ry Ite m s Both the AFC and the FFC have certain delivery items and required com ple­ tion materials which will need to be included in your budget.

Aside from normal AFC production funding of shorts, documentaries and features, there have been some specific low-budget initiatives. For example, the

AFC proposes to fund five features with budgets of less than $ 9 5 0 ,0 0 0 . These films will screen on SBS, which will pro­ vide a pre-sale for each film.

For documentary-makers, the AFC has recently developed the “Gorilla Docs” for documentaries with maximum budgets of $ 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 . The AFC has so far funded two documentaries under this initiative.

As the AFC usually funds 100% of the budget, no marketplace attachment is required. However, the FFC requires m arketplace attachm ent on all p ro ­ jects. Marketplace attachment includes a television licence, a distribution guar­ antee or a pre-sale against a particular territory or territories.

N ote that the FFC also requires a minimum level of “private sector par­ ticipation”. The required level of private sector participation will vary according to the budget, the project category (e.g., television programme, documentary, fea­ ture), and marketplace attachment. The FFC will accept lower-level private-secto r participation with low -budget projects.

The FFC has Accords with both the ABC and SBS for the financing of docu­ mentaries. Under these Accords, the FFC invests funds in the film, and the broad­

caster cashflows a pre-sale, which is applied against the budgeted cost of the film, in exchange for the right to broad­ cast the film.

Under the ABC Accord, the FFC will invest in up to 2 0 one-hour documen­ taries where the budgeted cost of the film does not exceed $ 3 0 0 ,0 0 0 . The ABC pre-sale is a standard 27.5% of the total budgeted cost of the film, rising to 30% in 1996-7.

Under the SBS Accord, the budget ceiling is $250 ,0 0 0 and the SBS pre-sale is a standard 27.5% of the budget.

W hile it may be difficult and, at times, frustrating, the rewards of lowbudget filmmaking can be significant.

The success of Love and Other Cata­ strophes is an example of this - a film made for $ 5 5 0 ,0 0 0 bought for $1 mil­ lion in three major territories. The results would not have been so great if the bud­ get were $ 2 million. The breakaway success of low-budget films is no longer a rarity. Overseas low-budget movies have included successes such as Clerks and The Brothers McMullen.

Note that the AFC will shortly pub­ lish its papers from last year’s Low Budget Feature Seminar under the title Low Means Low - the Collected Papers From the Low Budget Feature Seminar. ©

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101 E T O N ROAD L I N F I E L D N S W 2 0 7 0 (02) 416 2633 FA X :

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East Sydney Productions are selling one hour screenplays from Australian and Nem Zealand writers in order to develop and pachage a six part quality drama series for Australian television.

These should be original and compelling stories with emotional depth. Strong central characters are essential and me envisage that both comedq and drama mill be represented. Our primary aim is to produce a series that captures a diversity of life in Australasia over the past fifty years.

Up to ten scripts mill be selected for further development and nem mriters are encouraged to submit.

Screenplays developed to at least first draft stage are preferable, hut treatments mill be accepted.

Submissions must be received by 23rd August 1996 and may be addressed to:

SU ITE D 172 FILM A U S T R A L IA BUILDING

TEL:

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(02) 416 2554

FILM CULTURE PROPOSALS Talent and ideas development is a cornerstone of the role of the NSW Film & TV Office.

The FT0 recognises the valuable relationship between a healthy film culture and the film and television production industry.

In September 1996 the FT0 will aflocate funds for the support of events, publications and organisations that contribute to film culture In NSW. Funds, as usual, are tight but the FT0 would welcome approaches from individuals or organisations with an initiative that might warrant support.

There is no formal application form. Proposals, which should include a budget as well as information, should reach the Director by 31 August at the latest.

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C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

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Level 6, 1 Francis Street, East Sydney NSW 2010 9360 1090

NSW FILM A N D TV OFFICE 59

Life at the End of the Tunnel who became the adult. Suddenly, here we w ere with ** G eoffrey, who was way beyond playing an adolescent, but was absolutely perfect for the adult David.

That is when the rôle became split into three: the child, the adolescent and the adult David.

W e solved one m ajor casting dilemma to give ourselves another. Liz was very perturbed over who on earth would look anything like Geoffrey Rush. I said, “Maybe it is not looks that m atter as much as m ann er.” I thought of Noah because he has such a curious charm. I felt it was just one step for him to play this rôle as a tran­ sition into David’s breakdown.

W e brought G eoffrey and N oah together. O f course, physically they are very different, but nonetheless it actually w orked to confirm in my mind that it could work if we restruc­ tured the script.

Geoffrey had a monumental task in conveying this incredibly-manic holy fool, which was a key we hit on about David. He was like the Shakespearean fool: he can say the things that others can’t say. But Noah equally had a very difficult task because he had to carry David as an early teenager, who is half Noah’s actual age. He had to chart the disintegration and I think he is superb.

I did come under considerable pres­ sure from some sources of potential financing overseas to get rid of Geoffrey from the package because nobody had heard of him, a 40-year-old actor who had never been in film! The arrogance was mind-boggling; the sort of names they wanted in the film, whom I knew, would not be capable of this rôle.

I had people here in Australia say, “Geoffrey is a brilliant theatre actor, but how will the camera read him?”

I thought this is a lack of understand­ ing of what performance is and of the power of an actor to communicate.

W hat you becom e as a d irecto r is really just the eyes and ears of the audience. You can give the actor the nuances and the feedback, you finetune and finesse. But this thing of “Will it work on film?”! As long as the director has got his head screwed on, I think it will work.

To w hat extent was David's dialogue, that wonderful, rhyming, yet lucid gibberish, scripted?

H IC K S : Every word was scripted. It is a kind of word salad that David com­ municates in all the time, a monologue of free association of words. I had to impress on the cast to forget about conventional cues. Here is a character who never stops talking. You have to

60

inject yourself into that monologue, like throwing a stick into a river, and sooner or later, generally sooner, that stick gets picked up by David and worked into his consciousness and spun out again.

How did Armin Mueller-Stahl get involved? : The role o f Peter was very difficult, initially. L.A. casting agent Sharon Howard Field came up with a list of suggestions and Armin’s name was on it. I went to L.A. and met with him. His concern was that the charac­ ter was too dark, and that is where I said to him, “But not the way you are going to read it. It is what we don’t read here that tells us about Peter’s pain.” I think he responded to that well. His eyes are so eloquent and he has this tremendous suppressed pas­ sion in him as an actor. You feel the lid rattling on the saucepan, he is a timebomb, and o f course there are those key moments in the story where he could unleash it and you tremble.

There was the scene with a scrap­ book, very simple and descriptive. In the script it is one line: Peter leafs through the scrapbook of memories of David’s career. Armin took that moment and he sucked every bit of nuance out of it that you could pos­ sibly wish for. You see him hungrily devouring the pages of this scrapbook.

Then suddenly the sun goes behind a cloud on his face as the thought catches him that he is losing his cre­ ation. He closes the book and, in a little m asterstroke, he sees the torn arm of the armchair and covers it up with the blanket to make it respectable. A gem. He created a great moment, and that’s one of the plea­ sures working with great actors.

He said to me when we met, “Promise me one thing, that you won’t say cut too soon because sometimes it doesn’t happen until after you have finished speaking.” I was very mind­ ful of that because he would suddenly, at the end of a scene, invent something else! Armin did have to be coaxed into some of the more explosive moments. I think that his Hollywood pictures have tended to suppress the darker side of his acting.

The scene where he has a tussle with David and slaps him around before David decides he’s leaving for London: it’s the most psychologically over­ powering moment in the film, I think.

When Peter says to him in a whisper, “You will be punished for the rest of your life”, it is spine-chilling for its power, and far more than if he’d thun­ dered it out, as a lesser actor might have. And then he unleashes, at the last second, “Don’t make me do it!” The choreography was fabulous. Often he h ic k s

would do it once, and I knew I was not going to get it that way again.

From w hat I have read, you were genuinely taken by surprise at the overwhelming response to the film at Sundance.

We knew that by going to Sun­ dance we were choosing to bypass Cannes. That was a nerve-racking decision: Do we jo in the queue o f a number of fine films on the slipway, or do we seize this moment and take another direction? The print that went to Sundance was straight out of the lab; it was wet!

I had this terrible nightmare a couple of nights before leaving that nobody was going to turn up, that we were going to end up screening this film in an empty theatre. But it was so far from that as to be funny, really. Once the film started to roll, you could feel the audience move into its thrall.

H IC K S:

It is quite incredible when you are involved in a situation like that.

You think that it is going to end after everyone claps for 10 minutes. But it just went on day after day after day, and it has pretty much gone on since, and we have all been inundated and subjected to Hollywood ‘heat’.

SA RD I:

From your point of view, is the adoration for Australian films in the U.S. less a pat on the back and more an opportunity for studio heads to try to turn around their often ailing fortunes?

They see the lifebuoy out there in the big ocean, and swim for it. Can you take me somewhere?

Most of these guys aren’t storytellers, most of them aren’t producers, most of them aren’t directors, and so they don’t know ... They’ve never had to work out a dramatic problem before, and it is a mystery. They want to buy whatever it is that they think you have that no one else has.

Everyone is making movies and when they stop to applaud Australian films, even the films that we are very proud of, they have these 15 seconds of fame; they have standing ovations.

But if you m ention those films to someone, vaguely they say, “I remem­ ber th a t.” Over there, we are very small fish and a long way away.

SARD I:

So it is sobering in the sense that it sharpens our own perspectives of w hat is important, rather then assuming just because somebody overseas ...

Yes, I think it is sobering in the sense that the only stories we can really tell are our own, and the ones that do make people sit up and take notice are the ones that are pretty much unique to the Australian experience.

There was a period where the FFC

wanted us to test-m arket Shine in America. I just can’t see the value pf that (eventually it was nipped in the bud because it got accepted into Sun­ dance). You’ve got to stick by the story you are trying to tell. Scott and Jane and I knew the story. Had this film been tested in America, they probably would have said something like, “Well, geez, we really don’t like the father.”

So, the report would have come back, “Don’t like the father. Cut out scenes with the father.”

I think it is a shame that the FFC looks towards this thing, at the same time acknowledging that there has to be a market out there and the movies have to sell and they are big investors, and so on. But don’t go the H olly­ wood route. Talk to Ronin and people like Andrew Pike. I mean, the script of Strictly Ballroom was knocked back by everyone. There is a way to sell movies, and to see that some element of the budget, if n ot all o f it, is recouped. Although I think they make the best movies of their type, don’t let the Americans tell us how to make Australian movies.

What went to Sundance was a grotty little VHS videotape of the workprint, which looked horrible, and had no soundtrack music. And they made up their minds to put it in the world pre­ miere section. They saw the story there. It reached out, yet there was an enormous brawl here about testing this film. What do you do?

In the wake of the Sundance screening, people would come up to me in restaurants and introduce them­ selves as head of production at a major studio. They would say, “After the film, I had to sit in my car for 20 min­ utes to compose myself before I could put the key in.”

So far, it has been an extraordinary exp erien ce to see the way it has wrought emotion on to a blokey sort of audience. It gives me a lot of hope in terms of how the film might speak to people on a broad scale.

W hat I wanted to happen with the film, and it seems to have worked, is to create a dam of emotion. There are different points at which people find a release, but it is not simply a case of turning on the magic music at the end. It builds through this incredible story, the power of the performances and the music. It somehow gets into the core of people, and that is the thrill. It seems to live with people long after the event. © H IC K S :

SARDI:

1 Scott Hicks also directed the tele-feature, C all Me Mr. Brown (1986).

2 Where David and Gillian Helfgott were then living.

3 After the piece David Helfgott regularly played in the piano bar.

C I N E M A P A P E R S • A UGUST 1996

C hina W atching ^___-

The case of Clara Law shows how the facts are re-shaped to ” meet expectations. Her first two H ong Kong films treat the mainland savagely. In R ein carn ation o f G o ld en L otu s (1989), Joey Wang runs foul of the m ainland’s four modernizations, w hile in the 1 9 9 0 F a r e w e ll C h in a bureaucrats tell Maggie Cheung she’s too beautiful to be given a visa for the U.S., where she’ll marry and abandon them, and Tony Leung follows her to an unyieldingly hostile N ew Y ork , where she has been totally corrupted.

There is certainly no lack of comment in these films, but it was not until she made the bland Autumn M oon (1992) that Law’s work was championed by the international press.

Film critics, even the ones who think they are anti-C om m u n ist, are, as a group, M arxists, campaigning against mindless entertainment. (This was one of the things that Stalin and Trotsky split over.) Body builders, whatever else they may be, are not Marxists, and had no problem with the Hong Kong film, but critics have drawn a line between the trivial off-shore product and the seri­ ous m ainland m aterial, and the festival/art screen/academic network has no room for any contradiction.

I once offered a local journal a piece suggesting that the fact superior mater­ ial had been on show in the Chinatown screenings for a quarter of a century, but got less attention than Peking potboil­ ers, indicated that the movie-assessment industry was Marxist and racist, and was told indignantly that the board rejected the notion that they were Marxist.

The notion of race is also intrigu­ ing here. Ask som eone from the Hispanic countries (the other major area that film studies has neglected) and they’ll mention people like Hugo Fregonese, Raul Ruiz or Léopold Torre Nilsson, names we know, if imperfectly.

Ask Asians and they’ll come up with unfamiliar talents like the Korean Chen Cheng’hwa or Hong Kong’s Li Chenfeng. Language can no longer stand as an excuse with a quarter of a century of sub-titled prints to draw on.

T h e H ong Kong film has had its greatest crossover successes in black communities. They were so popular in New Guinea that the government con­ sidered banning them and they do best in the black neighbourhoods of the U.S. Samuel L. Jackson had to explain Chow Y u n ’fat to D avid L etterm an (“H e ’s M ajor!”). In Farew ell C hina, the owner of the Harlem Chinese food shop tells Tony Leung, “When you get to know them, black people are better than white people.” M ix the issue of politics with th a t o f race and you start to get an explanation of why the most effective

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

industry outside Hollywood has not had the exposure of films from Cuba.

However, one filmmaker is achiev­ ing the high profile that eluded Ann Hui, Stanley Kwan and the rest, though he, like them, has drawn on the gang­ ster and martial artist cinema traditions that preceded him. W ong K ar-W ai’s début, As T ea rs G o By (1 9 8 8 ), with Andy Lau and M aggie C heung, is a nicely-observed Triad drama, but, when they surface again in his Days o f Being W ild (1 9 9 0 ), confusion sets in. It’s a relief to find his co-workers have diffi­ culty understanding these, too.

H ow ever, serious critics love them , pouring out more p rin ter’s ink than Shaw Brothers, Jack ie Chan and the New Wave ever generated. His Chungk­ ing Express (1994), with Lin Chin’hsia in a blonde wig and a striking tw opart stru ctu re, and A sh es o f T im e (1995), an all-star wu zia pian, alternates b rillia n t m aterial with footage that demands freeze frame and footnote.

W hen A B etter T o m o rr o w wound down the H ong Kong New W av e’s brief flirtation with would-be serious subject matter, Triad gangsters moved centre stage. They say that the Italians got Mafia and pasta from the Chinese, with Marco Polo, and the Clans or Tri­ ads appear so glamorous in these films because they are funded by them. Dur­ ing the 1980s, Triad involvement in film production increased with murders and intimidation, climaxed by the theft of a cam era negative on one production where co-operation had been withheld.

The 1 9 9 2 film , A ll’s W ell T h a t E nds W ell, a so-so, all-star com edy, was shown anyway. It was claimed the ban­ dits got the wrong cans, but the film industry finally drew the line in the sand and, headed by Jackie Chan, Andy Lau and b lock b u ster com edian Stephen Chiau, three hundred workers demon­ strated for action in fro n t of police headquarters.

Hong Kong filmmakers have noticed the irony of the fact that Triad produc­ ers proved rem arkably sym pathetic, providing minimal interference in con­ trast with accountant producers.

The question has become irrelevant as Triads have been among those to abandon the Hong Kong film business over the .past four years as profits evap­ orated, along with thirty percent of the audience. A number of factors have con­ tributed to this. As 1 9 9 7 approaches, producers have gone into get-rich-quick mode trying to squeeze the last dollars out of a structure that may not be there under the mainland’s Marxists. A poster with a couple of popular half-naked leads in front of an explosion is more important than content and, just at the point where the product became less marketable, there has been this surge of interest in the off-shore Chinese film.

Exactly why is a speculation. As 199 7 looms, more Hong Kong filmmakers are looking to H ollyw ood for their future, bringing the newest o f their achievements with them. Gong Li, who appears in films from all three centres, has attracted attention, but the most probable answer is the Quentin Taran­ tino factor.

Super-trendy movie guru T a ra n ­ tino is a fan of the Hong Kong action movie, m odelling his R eserv oir D ogs (1992) on Ringo Lam’s Chow Yun’fat movie, City on Fire (1987). As Sammo Hung observes philosophically, “We steal from them. They steal from us.”

Tarantino introduced John Travolta to John W oo and his support has sur­ faced as a video label which will issue Chungking Express, and his enthusiasm has sent executives and movie freaks scurrying to the shelves of Chinese video outlets where they never previously ven­ tured.

It is easy to spot T im e packing Richard Corliss off to Asia to research the movies he could have seen a bus ride away from the office during the past 20 years. Earlier material, no longer acces­ sible, d oesn’t figure in these 1 9 9 0 s studies.

The heavy hitters have taken a step back. Chow Yun’fat now films sequels and star-featuring vehicles at widelyspaced intervals, each claimed as the film to precede his retirement. He looks at H ollyw ood and has announced a movie version of The King an d I story.

John W oo, with Chow’s most con­ spicuous films, T he K iller (1 989) and H ard B o iled (1 9 9 2 ) on a resumé that already includes key film s in m ost cycles, has been the first Hong Kong director to film for Hollywood, encoun­ tering studio interference unthinkable on his hom e tu rf with H a r d T a rg et (1994), the Van Damme vehicle.

Jackie Chan had already made four so-so U.S. movies (in two of which his character is Japanese!), costing him frus­ tration and the massive effort to master English. His R u m b le in th e B ro n x (1994) is a different strategy, set in the U.S. (and filmed in V ancouver), it is made to his own requirements and has been his great success in the U.S. mar­ ket. It is claimed to be the last of his films to be shown in the world’s Chi­ natowns. T hu n derbolt (1995), his two filmed-in-Australia pieces, First Strike and A N ice G uy, directed by Sammo Hung, are slated for U.S. circuit distri­ bution, and he is getting back faxes about the quality of his English voic­ ing and the number of Asian faces in his work. There’s a $15 million offer on the table to make a studio movie, with his Chinese producers muttering that they are paying him near to that already.

Ringo Lam, Stanley Tong and most of the quality Hong Kong talent are con­

sidering offers from Hollywood that dwarf the sums they usually handle, but, along with the trade-off in authority and identity, there’s the thought that these big budgets don’t necessarily translate into greater production values, with higher salaries involved all round sopping up the difference. Tsui Hark’s wires and smoke flying scenes are as convincing and more elegant than the megabucks Superman/True Lies special effects.

On the other hand, the mainland stu­ dios, with their outmoded camera gear and bureaucrat control, are in a slump and selling o ff their quotas to Hong Kong producers. The enormous Chi­ nese mainland audience, which their own producers have failed to involve for half a century, is a glittering prize.

This leaves the Chinatown cinemas (Australia, with four screens in Sydney and three in Melbourne, has been rated as its most im portant elem ent of the international Chinatown circuit), one of the most successful movie entrep re­ neurial ventures in history, in limbo.

T h e ir great draw cards have alm ost deserted them. Their takes are down.

Venues have closed in London and San Francisco.

W e have been hearing about the need for alternative cinema for three decades. Those loudest in their demands have been among the ones to ignore its existence. Those of us who have used Chinatowns as an appeal against the sentence of conformity on our access to world cinema have as little to say in the m atter as we did when the N ational Film Theatre “disappeared” on us a cou­ ple of decades back.

How much less rewarding going to the movies would have been without Jackie Chan battling a hovercraft in the streets of fantasy New York or buffeted about in the hangar-size wind tunnel; Maggie Cheung discovering that her m ah-jon g-ad d ict mum was once a heroic figure in W orld W ar II China; Yue Hwa impaled by the detached hand o f his form er herm aph rod ite lover where the naked nuns bathe with rose petals; Chow Y u n ’fat em ptying the automatic weapons he’s hidden in the pot plants into hordes of Triad heavies; Alexander Fu Sheng coached in martial arts by the abbess who sits facing the wall of the Shaolin temple, her back to him; Michael Hui taking off his wig and being told, “Well, nobody’s perfect!”

It’s like discovering a new Howard Hawks movie every week — or, at least, a new Joel Schumacher - and it could go away, after enlivening our experience of cinema for 20 years, without a word of comment. © 1 E d ito r: Due to the lack o f press and research material in English, the Chinese titles of films and the actors’ character names are not always given.

61

It s All A bout Trust hate som eone’s guts or you __ became extremely intimate.

L' " Chen Kaige and I spent a great deal of energy in pre-production and scouting locations. We then shot for four months with one actress, but it just wasn’t working. So, we searched the known Chinese world for a sub­ stitute and found Gong Li, the most obvious choice and ultimately the only choice, for all sorts of reasons.

We were a bit scared about that. We w ere afraid th at she would bring along the Gong Li baggage. When we did the first shot of her, I was lying on the ground holding the cam era as close to the ground as possible. There was nothing special about the shot: she just walks into frame, and then out. After she did it, I looked up at Chen Kaige standing above me, he looked down at me, and we both burst into laughter. We were just so happy to realize that we had not made a mistake. This was perfect, this was the woman we were looking for. It was wonderful.

From then, it was a new process. We had made all these preparations, we had envisaged the film in a certain style, we had worked within this the­ oretical and perceptual context for so long. But then Gong Li came on and we had to work overtime every night re-discussing how we were going to shoot the thing. It became this won­ derful interaction between the camera and the actress, the actress and her text, the director and his aspirations for the actors, and his perception of the actors. It just grew. We used to say, “This team is like a wedding cake. We start at a certain level and then go, ‘Oh, we need a bit more.’ So you add a finishing touch. Then we say, ‘Oh, it is not finished at all.’” So, we kept moving up, tier by tier.

The second half of the shoot, when Gong Li was on the set, was such a joyous experience compared to the previous part, which was probably like they used to shoot before. The energy of the film definitely comes from her collaboration, her participation.

Have you used any of the material from the first part of the shoot?

Yes. In China, they count in shots, which we don’t do in Llong Kong.

They say how many shots each scene takes, or how many shots a specific character has, or how many shots the whole film has.

The first actress was only in 47 shots, so in certain situations we could cut away from what we had. However, there were certain situations where there was a cut/counter-cut, and that was a problem . You need a certain

62

amount of technical expertise to stay on top of that.

Of course, I’d have rather re-shot the whole thing, because then we would have had much more continuity, espe­ cially given we were mainly working in long tracking shots. The camera was moving all the time. It was a partici­ patory cam era, and very much a character in the film.

action. It is a subjective thing, but at times, because of the content of a shot, you would have to move from a sub­ jective back into an objective thing.

I love playing with that and we did a lot of that also in R ed R ose, W hite Rose. With that film and Peach B los­ som Land, we have developed it to a much more sophisticated level.

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As a very busy cinematographer, how do you keep abreast of new

know how to do cinematography is

developments in technology?

I don’t understand television monitors [laughs].

But on Temptress Moon, you acceded at times to a Steadicam operator.

Li Baochun is probably the greatest Steadicam operator in the world. I hope he has an agent, because he is going to be flooded with offers once T em ptress M oon is released interna­ tionally.

It was a pleasure to see this guy get­ ting into it. He had the technique down sufficiently that he could get into framing. He was good enough technically to have the freedom to start developing as a cinematographer.

It was wonderful to be part of that, to watch that.

Usually, you talk about the beginning and the end of a shot. You just hope that an operator gets something rea­ sonable in betw een. T h a t is why I prefer to operate myself. You have to have the ability to react frame by frame, otherwise it is not yours. You can’t convey this verbally, but with this guy we would talk something through, rehearse a bit and then he would go so close to how I would want to do it.

W e were playing o ff the d ifferent energies of a hand-held camera and a Steadicam camera.

It was a great learning process for us.

For example, there is a very important shot where Gong Li’s character sees that the man she is in love with, who is Chinese and a gigolo, is blackmail­ ing a woman as part of his job. She is in a house opposite the room in which he is. We tried many times to do this, and then we realized we needed the energy and the speed with which a hand-held cam era can move. The nuances you can put into a hand-held cam era are very d ifferen t to Steadicam. It was a great experience for us and we are now very clear about when to hand-hold and when to Steadicam, and the different impact of each.

We were always working with what we call objective/subjective interaction.

Sometimes the camera was informa­ tive, but basically it is part of the

part of the world?

It’s because I grew up here. I left Aus­ tralia very young. M y w andering pretty much insulated me from the practical concerns of ‘the real world’, so my ‘formative years’ came ten years too late, in my twenties, in cinema, in Taiwan.

But do you see yourself spreading your wings and moving further

You have said that the only w ay you to operate yourself.

preference as being located in this

People know I’m going to play around with things and, if they have some­ thing new, they usually try to tell me about it. But this is totally secondary to imagination.

I work primarily with three labs in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Tokyo. I see the graders and timers - who happen to be women, which is very helpful, by the way - as creative collaborators.

They are not lab technicians in my mind; they are very much part of our vision.

With Ashes o f Time, we were shoot­ ing in China. The film was going to be released just days after we finished the final day’s shoot. Obviously, the lab had a great deal of personal respon­ sibility for what was going on. I had to trust them because we could only communicate by telephone.

At the beginning, the lab used to say, “Oh no, this guy is going to ask for crazy things.” They used to hate me, but over the years, because the col­ laboration has been fruitful for both of us, it has become a lab willing to do things for the cinematographer.

Fallen Angels, for example, is one of the most satisfying visual experiences.

It is the closest to my visual perception of that particular subject at that time.

And that is totally due to this interac­ tion betw een m yself and the lab, specifically with my grader, Lu Lihwa.

Now, they suggest things. They will say, “Why d on’t we try th is?” The point of departure is not what you can do, but what you want to do. I look more at music videos and things gen­ erated on video than at other films.

You think, “If they can do that, why can’t we?”

At the moment, we are held back by the economics of Chinese filmmaking.

We still have to consider how much money we have for film stock and for processing. On American filmmaking, it is a minimal part of their budget.

You can shoot as many million feet as you want to. But we have to consider such things very carefully here.

O

n/

t h e

P

u t u l e

Despite invitations from around the

afield?

I’ve seen what the rest of the world is like, thank you very much. We are very happy with where we are and what we have. Am I going to go back to Claude Lelouch or work for Roger Corman? I don’t think so. I don’t see the point.

It is not about money. If we were into money, we would have gone into real estate long ago.

At the same time, as a semi-techni­ cian, you have to expand your horizon. That is what your last ques­ tion was about: How do you increase your technical capabilities because the industry itself is changing? Obviously, you have to try and keep abreast of certain experiences, certain working conditions and experiences which will enhance your ability to bring them back to your people, or to share them in a different way. Obviously I should.

So, there is an in terest in doing things outside o f the im m ediate sphere, of enhancing my experience and my exposure to things non-Chi­ nese.

But, at the end of the day, it comes back to people. I don’t care how good the script is if it is going to be con ­ frontational, if it is going to be about the producer standing behind my back and saying, “You’ve only got 26 shots today instead of 2 9.” If it is not imme­ diate tru st, if it is n ot im m ediate interaction, if it is not an immediate and loving experience, then I don’t give a shit. I don’t think the H olly­ wood Hills are any more interesting to me than Happy Valley or mid-lev­ els Hong Kong, all of which I am very happy with at the moment.

One of the heartening things in the past ten years has been the demysti­ fication of Chinese cinema. The rest of the world has at long last begun to understand that Chinese film is not necessarily a Zhang Yimou film about the oppressions of feudal China.

N ot everyone has. They still think S h a n g h a i T ria d is a m asterpiece [laughs].

True, but on the whole there is an increasingly widespread perception that the issues - human, sexual, political - in this part of the world

world, you essentially shoot Chinese

are fundamentally the same as those

films. Is this as much a matter of

that confront everybody else. It

C I N E M A P A P E RS • AUGUST 1996

makes absolutely no sense to

anybody else, including Zhang

exoticize Chinese cinema as some

Yimou. Maybe this is not a question

kind of alien object.

th at you care to address yourself to,

Exactly. We can’t explain Chinese to the rest o f the w orld, but you can experience people.

M o st o f the scripts I get w ant to explain. For exam ple, I received a script for a five-part mini-series which is going to explain the w hole phe­ nom ena of this w onderful, eclectic and very diverse group of people called the “A ustralian C h in ese” . I don’t see any point in explaining that.

You can’t explain it, anyway. And, the people who are trying to explain it have no knowledge whatsoever about the reality.

The only way you can enhance or enlarge or deepen your experience is by contact. That is what we are doing already. We don’t need the W est to come along and say, “Now, thank you very much, we’ll take over here and fin­ ish the job, because you people don’t really understand.” We understand people. The reason the Zhang Yimou films, and Kaige films and all the other films are receiving the attention they deserve is because they are speaking to people who will listen to them, because they are talking to people.

One of the things that people are

but how do you see the future for Chinese filmmaking? If the industries of Hong Kong, Taiwan and the main­ land, to a greater or lesser extent, collapse, just as they have in most other countries already, and all that

think it can sustain the kind of energy and rapid advances that it has made over the past ten years?

I’ve no idea about the film industry as a whole. I rarely speak to filmmakers.

I never go out with filmmakers. I don’t even talk to Wong Kar-Wai in a social context. But I believe the people with whom I’m associated, and I guess to a certain extent myself, have the energy to go on, no matter what. We will pur­ sue whatever we have been doing up to now.

If the mainstream collapses, will it make any difference to you?

It would probably increase our chances.

That may have happened in Taiwan.

Taiwan's mainstream industry totally

are terrific.

industry, in whichever sector of Chi­ nese society, is worried about the future. They all think th at the threat from Hollywood has suddenly become a much larger one and a very real one in term s of audience prefer­ ences. Nobody is quite sure w hat the future is. One arrives in Hong Kong to discover that yet another couple of filmmakers have emigrated to the States, trying to follow the John Woo trail, and that so and so is beginning to give up, and that this company has closed down, and that investment is at an all-time low. Crisis is definitely in the air. In th at context, you are per­ sonally associated w ith a few people who are probably going to survive, because they are people w ho have never been dependent on the main­ stream film industry in the first place.

There are four references to W ong Kar-Wai films in 30 minutes. It is like an Indian film w ithout the songs!

[Laughs.]

finding new people to w ork with?

Kong audience has deserted Chinese

Everybody you speak to in the film

board for you?

on a more or less large scale, and in

impending sense of crisis. The Hong

process of doing the same thing.

W hat projects are on the drawing

Is there a side of you that is inter­

collapsed last year, but a dozen films

w hile the mainland audience is in the

because one of his idols is Wong Kar-

ested in nurturing new talents,

some cases a very small scale, do you

Exactly.

As they say in Chinese, “Shenme ren, shenme zhenfu” ... “The people get the government they deserve.” It’s a “chacun sa m erde” kind of double jeopardy. The Chinese government is the way it is because the Chinese peo­ ple are the way they are. If we have fucked up the Chinese industry, it is our own fault. But I think we have the drive, the integrity, the stupidity and the stubbornness to make sure it con­ tinues.

We won’t go to Hollywood alone.

We may shoot in the West, but we will do it together. We may be thrown out of our country, we may be exiles one day, but we w ill be m aking film s together with the same impetus, and with the same interest. I think that will always be the same.

That is the difference between com­ merce and hopefully where we aspire to be one day. Whether it is art or not, I don’t know.

I ’m a good surfer. I like to surf [laughs].

Wai.

is left is a few individual film artists

were made recently and at least six

audience already did so a year ago,

There is a point of comparison,

trying to make films independently,

going to be able to relate to is the

movies in a very big w ay, the Taiwan

Yes. It was my great pleasure.

Yes. I’m still a ’60s person. I’m still ide­ alistic. I’d hate to end up being the grand old man of cinema whom every one regards with disdain.

I was extrem ely honoured to be invited by Jan and Eric [Kot] to make their film . T hey to ok me into the world of early and mid-teenage kids, which is the world of arcades and CDRom and com ics. I knew of that world, but I would never have entered it without being taken by the hand by Jan and Eric. Now I know the places, I go there regularly. I hang out in my dirty-old-man status. I pursue it at a different level. [Laughs.]

It is extremely stimulating that they weren’t afraid to work with me. They didn’t regard me as some pissy old fart who was going to impose a “Let me tell you how to do it” attitude on them.

W e’ve gone on and done another film recently. They came in with this music-video energy that allowed me to try visual styles that nobody would even consider if they weren’t from this kind of background. Because I think they trust me, and working again with William Chang, we have a collabora­ tive base that we can work from. It was a great experience, and there is no question that we will work together as much as possible.

Because the industry is in this wild free-fall, I would have expected, as in the rest of the world, that there would be a lot of people knocking on the door, trying to get in. But I don’t sense anyone there, except a few direc­ tors and writers and actors maybe. In terms of people in lighting, art direc­ tion, or camera, there is still this same group. There hasn’t been much change recently. T h a t is a little b it disap­ pointing because I think you need that energy of young, upcoming people to push you on, to say, “We can do bet­ ter than y o u .” T h a t is what is happening with the sixth generation vis a vis the fifth generation in China.

You need that stimulus. It is the only reason we are going to move on to beat the eighth generation, as in the case of Chen Kaige.

W ong K a r-W a i’s new film , Chen Kaige’s new film , W ong K ar-W ai’s other new film.

There may be a collaboration with Wayne Wang. He wants to come back and try something in Hong Kong, and he has considered me. But there may be schedule conflicts and he is a little worried that I’m going to be running around telling these American actors that they should be eating their lunch boxes like everyone else on the side­ walk [laughs].

That is one situation where I think we can actually share what we have here with the greater H ollyw ood establishment. It will be quite inter­ esting, because it is very much on our terms in that case.

Then there’s Stanley’s film, if it ever gets off. And Jan and Eric’s new film.

Somehow I think we will find a way.

We have Korean friends. We are try­ ing to re-integrate the community a bit more. W e’re talking about collabora­ tions, about crossing more borders than we have before.

For me, the big border we crossed before was the mainland Chinese bor­ der. Ail Asia is thinking that way.

Maybe that is the real answer to your Pacific Century question. For exam­ ple, I’m even doing photographs for the Japanese now. They have finally realized what Europe realized a long time ago, which is that if we are going to be contenders, as the expression goes, then obviously there has to be much more interaction between the members of the Pacific community and that means Japan, the four drag­ ons and China, obviously.

I want to be part of all this. I have a real intimacy with this region, with these people. We have been talking to this group of people, and hopefully taking them with us, hopefully participating in their social changes, in the growth and evolution of this society, which is Chi­ nese society. They helped to bring us here and we have a sense of responsi­ bility to these people. I’m going to stick with the sticky rice! ® 1 Edward Yang had previously made a tele-feature and an episode for the port­ manteau film, In Our Tim e. T hat Day, On the B each is his first full feature.

Wong Kar-Wai is his own film indus­

Most of the directors you are w ork­

try base; he did come from the film

ing w ith are pretty well-established

industry, but has long since tran­

now. Someone people may not know

scended it. You could say the same of

about is Jan Lamb [Lam Hoi-Fung],

Stanley Kwan. Chen Kaige has defi­

who is basically a DJ and who began

nitely survived the upheavals and

making films only last year. He

In all the news magazines, one reads

remarked, “I was only talking so fast to

turm oil of China's attem pt to shift

started w ith a 30-minute short film.

repeatedly that w e are about to enter

keep Tony from going back to the card

the film industry from the state sec­

O ut o f the Blue, which he asked you

the Pacific Century. How does it look

games he’d been playing all week on my

tor to the private sector, better than

to shoot.

from w here you sit?

computer.”

C I N E M A P A P E R S • AUGUST 1996

2 E ditor: And Chris Doyle is easily the fastest speaker in 24 years of C in em a Papers'. W hen D oyle read the tra n ­ script (and the preceding sentence) he

63

technicalities

Past, Present and Future Oral history, post-production crisises and archiving: Domonic Case investigates his issue of “T ech n icali­ tie s ” brings three very different overviews of the technology o f the Aus­ tralian film industry. The topics may seem a strange choice for the “Technical­ ities” column; there is little discussion of expensive boxes with buttons. But if the focus is not on the equipment, nei­ ther is it on the end product - the films them selves - but on the produ ction processes, and the people involved.

Martha Ansara is currently research­ ing a history of Australian filmmaking, from the filmmakers’ and technicians’ points of view, rather than the already well-docum ented stories of the films themselves. She speaks about oral his­ tory, and the need to preserve not only films, but also that most ephemeral of records, people’s experiences and mem­ ories. Looking forward to experiences as yet unknown, a group of researchers at the University of Technology, Sydney, is monitoring the remarkable speed of technological change in the industry, and the effects that change is likely to have on our lives and ways of working. And, finally, in a look at where we are today, there’s a report on the recent one-day conference on post-production (“Fade to Black”) organized by the Screen Edi­ tors’ Association.

T ellin g O u r O w n S to ries

The history of the Australian film indus­ try has been written several times, and yet none of the accounts so far concen­ trates on the concerns of those who made the film s. M artha A nsara’s research is not from the written sources - film reviews, parliamentary reports but from oral history - recorded inter­ views with the old film workers. She has discovered a different industry from the one peopled by the visionary directors and producers of the written histories.

In Telling Our Own Stories1, she writes: Hands-on filmmakers engage deeply with social, technological and indus­ trial realities which play a forceful role [...] in shaping the artistic and ideo­ logical co n ten t of our film s. The significance of this aspect of our indus­ try is perhaps not know n and is certainly glossed over by most film his­ torians. So near, and yet so far away, film w orkers’ life stories await dis­ covery, rich in the traditions of the industry: the mechanics of it, the lingo, the attitudes, the disciplines, the phys­ ical and tech n ical con strain ts, the

64

victories, the dangers, and the sheer petty drudgeries.

As a filmmaker I have been talking to film technicians for more than 20 years [...] Film people as a group are obsessed with their work and with each other.

Until the 1980s, it was a small industry in which the majority of people knew each other, worked long hours together, and had relatively little time or interest for other pursuits. Not onlydo we tell our own stories, we tell sto­ ries that belong to other film workers, too. A body of knowledge has been set up: a set of technical reference points, a conditioning of attitudes and behav­ iours, warnings, solutions, standards and goals. This may be changing with

The cameraman (until the fifth genera­ tion o f Ja n K enny, it was always a cameraman) is identified as central to the whole task of filmmaking:

and the inventiveness and technical ingenuity of these technicians has been a creative high point of the Australian

I’m speaking here of the sound era, although I suspect that the cult of the cameraman existed during the silent days, too. Although sound had well and truly arrived in Australia by the early 1930s, the majority of our film­ ing was done without sync sound right up into the television era. Only a small number of features were produced in the best of times, and the mainstays of the industry were voice-over docu­ mentaries, newsreels - often shot mute - and commercials. A close-knit group of cinematographers were at the core

Has this “cult of the cameraman” been responsible for the success of so many Australian DOPs internationally? How has Australia, with its tiny (by world standards) population, produced so many world-class technicians? Ansara believes that in the struggle to get a film up, to see it through, and then the often greater struggle to have it screened any­ where, many producers and directors would have spent years embroiled in one p ro ject. And then, w ith lim ited resources, production time would be very concentrated, and so technicians moved from one project to the next, developing skills, building experience at an intense rate.

T he cu lt of the cam eram an has shaped many of the continuing practices and perspectives of today’s Australian film industry, although its traditions and its influence are no longer with us as they were in the past. Young people today will never experience the rewards and humiliations of being “the boy”; and many a fledgling cinematographer now has a tertiary education. Australian soci­ ety and along with it the industry are changing rapidly and decisively in ways we rarely think about or question. Yet, as the stories of cinematographers show us, the reflections of people who look back upon their past from within the changed circumstances of the present are inevitably provocative.

Martha Ansara's research is not from the written sources - film reviews, parliamentary reports - but from oral history - recorded interviews with the old film workers. She has discovered a different industry from the one peopled by the visionary directors and producers of the written histories. the younger filmmakers - the product of film schools rather than prolonged apprenticeships [-] and with the cre­ ation of a much larger body of film workers under the freelance system.

Ansara notes that there has been a ten­ dency in the past twenty years to much larger crews. P icnic at H an gin g R ock (Peter Weir, 1975), for example, had a crew of 4 5 ; The Year o f Living Danger­ ously (Peter Weir, 1982) had 80. With this increase has come more specializa­ tion. O f course, there have been many reasons for this: reasons of budget, of expectations of standards, of the com ­ plexity of the task, and so on. It is often noted, however, that Australian crews, despite an awareness of the disciplines of the various crew roles, are still more relaxed about crossing the lines, about helping out, or making suggestions, than their overseas counterparts.

In another paper2, Ansara traces the cult of the cameraman: an unbroken “T ransm ission of the L ig h t” from generation to g eneration, from one master to the next, from Lacey Percival, who shot early silent film s, through Movietone ace Bill Trerise, on to Ross Wood, and thence to W ood’s one-time assistants, Peter James and Russell Boyd.

of their production. These cameramen, employed by a small number of pro­ duction houses, worked at their craft non-stop, and when American or Eng­ lish productions came in, a number of the cam eram en along with the gaffers w orked with the overseas experts. Thus, technical standards were maintained at a high level - and cher­ ished - despite the underdevelopment of the industry in most other respects.

[In those days] the education of a film technician did not encourage theoret­ ical speculation. You left school and entered the business in your mid-teens, starting as “the boy” in a hierarchy of seniors and juniors which emphasized practicality, discipline and respect. As the stories of cameramen reveal, you learned dedication to your work, and pride in it, technical expertise, versa­ tility, professionalism, stoicism, élitism, a group solid arity. C reativity was highly respected, but not something a man would talk about. The pub was an important meeting place. The techni­ cians’ union was formed in the pub.

And craft issues, too, were discussed there. As a consequence of Australian film’s impoverished resources, a high value was placed on problem solving:

industry.

M o v in g P ictures

Tom Fisher and Ellen Baker are mem­ bers of the School of M anagem ent at U niversity of T ech n o lo g y , Sydney; A nne-M arie Chandler is head o f the Department of Media and Text at UTS. Their joint research project is looking at ways in which new communication tech­ nologies impact on work practices in the making of feature films or tele-features in Australia. Baker notes that large cor­ porations tend to be slow to adopt and to adapt to new ways of working, sim­ ply because of th eir entrenched structures. By contrast, the film industry tends to form structures on a project-byproject basis. This makes it particularly quick to adopt changes, and other, slower industries are watching film with interest as it leads the way.

In a recent paper3 (to be published shortly in the BKSTS journal Image Tech­ nology), they consider the broad effects of computerization on film production:

C I N E M A P AP E RS • AUGUST 1996

POST PRODUCTION • DESIGN • GRAPHICS • SPECIAL EFFECTS • STUDIOS • OUTSIDE BROADCAST '

7 McCABE PLACE WILLOUGHBY NSW 2068 AUSTRALIA TEL (02) 417 5700 FAX (02) 417 5879

technicalities Three implications of [computerization] are discussed. First that there could be large shifts in the skills required, in work rôles and in the workflow of film production processes. Second, that the current domination of the film indus­ try by the U.S. could be weakened by these changes, providing more scope for non-U.S. film production and essen­ tially achieving globalization of the industry. Third, that non-U.S. film pro­ ducers could adopt certain strategies to maximize their chances of survival and further encourage globalization of the 21st-century film industry.

Basically, the entire film production process is being com puterized, so effects typical of computerization can be observed. Thus, digitizing motion video permits the material to be manip­ ulated more easily, bringing changes analogous to those seen in office and managerial tasks when spreadsheets and word processing were introduced.

Thus, some filmmaking rôles are dis­ appearing or merging with another, and some crafts are less in demand.

Producers and directors will be doing more of what had been part of a craft rôle b efo re. The increased use of com puter technologies means that employees in the industry are becom­ ing m ore skilled in com puter techniques. There will be some threat

and save time lost in travelling or ship­ ping materials. A number of computer networks exist that allow efficient trans­ fer of motion video. In London, Sohonet links The Computer Film Company, Cinesite London, the Moving Picture Company and V TR. The network can carry several D1 video streams simulta­ neously in real time: higher-resolution images are equally possible at slower rates, and test transfers of full-film resolution Cineon files have already been carried out successfully. Several compa­ nies are planning to put their sound effects or video footage libraries on line.

Similar networks are running in the U.S. Pacific Bell’s Media Park links 35 post-production houses with the major Hollywood studios, and Sprint and Sil­ icon Graphics’ Drums network linking New York with Los Angeles has been used to send rough cuts, graphics and audio mixes back and forth.

Australian connections so far have been less permanent, but none the less effective. Kennedy M iller’s innovative use of the Internet to ship effects images for Babe (C hris N oo n an , 1 9 9 5 ) between Sydney and the American dig­ ital effects com pany R ythm ’n ’Hues is now well documented. Soundfirm has used Dolbyfax to connect a com ­ poser in Los Angeles with its studio in Melbourne.

faxes are examples respectively of dif­ ferent modes.

For Australia, same-time collabora­ tion at a distance is inconvenient: when it is 9am in Sydney, it is midnight in London, 7pm in New York, and 4pm in Los Angeles. But where, for example, a videofax is sent for approval at the end of a Sydney day, a response can be made from London while the Australian crew sleeps, ready for revisions or continued work first thing the next morning. This actually makes the process faster than if the approval had to be made in Sydney.

The UTS group sees this form of col­ laboration as a distinct advantage in Australia, and a key to an ongoing Aus­ tralian production industry.

Film production has been shifting from Hollywood to low-cost producers, such as the UK and Australia. This takes advantage of skills and talent available there, but generally involves the trans­ fer of responsibility for a segment of the work, rather than integrated collabora­ tion. M ore com plete co lla b o ra tio n could come in the wake of develop­ ments such as Rupert M urdoch’s Fox Studios Australia.

So, there could be a weakening of the current U.S. domination of the industry and an increase in non-U.S. film pro­ duction. This shift to low er-cost locations involving close and highly-inte­

Film production has been shifting from Hollywood to low-cost producers, such as the UK and Australia. to jobs, and to creativity and quality [...] but creative talent, ideas and the ability to go from ideas to finished products will still be the most valued characteristics.

As computer hardware and software become cheaper, more non-computer professionals will be trying their hand at production. However, when there was a similar spread of video produc­ tion to non-professionals, it led mainly to new uses - such as corporate video, “funniest home video” shows, and spe­ cial occasion capture - rather than to amateurs making full-length video pro­ ductions.

Film production is still largely carried out as five separate and sequential stages (acquisition, pre-production, production, post-production and dis­ tribution). However, computers are making it easier to work in parallel rather than sequentially. Lots of post­ produ ction processes can be done during production. This parallel work­ ing should shorten the tim e from acquisition to distribution and this in turn should reduce costs.

The ability to digitize film images means that networking and communi­ cation technologies can improve the utilization of high technology resources

66

V id eofax is a sim pler link, using ISDN lines for video transmission. The research group made a particular study of one such application4, when Sydney production company Film Graphics pro­ duced a roller-blading sequence, part of a Halifax Building Society commer­ cial for London agency Bates Dorland.

Videofax facilities in Sydney were avail­ able through Winning Post Productions.

As with much technology, Videofax applications have extended from the original purpose, that of sending final cuts of com m ercials to FACTS for approval, to a wide range of post-pro­ duction operations. Over the course of this production, 16 separate videofaxes were sent, ranging from casting tapes and storyboard segments sent at low res­ olution to special effects segments sent at high resolution.

The UTS group notes that collabora­ tion is one of the m ost distinctive features of the film and television pro­ duction industries, and one that is receiving a lot of attention, as computer netw orks becom e part of the scene.

W orkers can collaborate in the same place or at a distance; and simultane­ ously, or at different times. Meetings, phone conversations, successive phases of work on one production, and video­

grated collaboration is exactly what has been happening in other industries (e.g., automobile design and production). If this happens, Hollywood social n et­ works would be less influential, the industry would use talent and expertise wherever it happens to be located, and global teams would w ork on a film together. This could be organized from a non-U.S. location.

W hat strategies can film producers outside of the U.S. adopt to encourage the globalization of the 21st-century film industry? We would suggest three com­ plementary strategies.

First, take maximum advantage of the advances being made in network tech­ nologies. Become early adopters of these tech n olog ies, encourage the use of expertise w herever it happens to be located, and discourage restrictive prac­ tices that bolster your local industry. In that way, non-U.S. expertise is accessi­ ble for use by U.S. producers and vice versa. Let electronic communication turn disadvantages into advantages. The goal is to make it very easy to be part of global film production teams. This will require strong interpersonal ties and social networking so that there is enough trust between team members to support the use of technologies in this manner.

Second, be very selective about pur­ chasing p rod u ction tech n ologies developed by the U.S. film industry.

Later adopters gain relatively little ben­ efit, so if prices haven’t dropped markedly, it may be better to outsource - using U.S. expertise and equipment instead of purchasing your own. Avoid copying what the U.S. is already doing.

Third, find niches, unique produc­ tion technologies or products that your local industry can develop and essentially m onopolize. O nce an innov ation is established, its uniqueness is lost, and it isn’t worthwhile for others to enter the market. It isn’t easy to find such niches, but now is the time to be looking for a niche for film industry technologies.

It’s hard to find much in common betw een these two views of the film industry in A ustralia. T ru e, M artha Ansara deals with production while the Productivity Research team is concerned with post-production; but this was a scarcely im portant distinction in the early days, and it is becom ing less so once again. If the shape of the industry up to now has been marked out on the one hand in term s of class attitudes and of nationalism , and on the other hand in terms of strangled budgets and technical innovativeness, then society now has less regard for the former issues, and the industry is less constrained by the latter. Technological determinism is not a fashionable doctrine, but there seems to be a good case for concluding that it is the technology of the digital 21st century that will shape not only the methods of production, but the very social structure of our industry. Cer­ tainly, it has never been more important to examine the implications of technical innovation. Ansara once again: If we don’t scrutinize technology, we tie ourselves in to systems and we lose our independence. Just because some­ thing is invented, it doesn’t mean we can’t scrutinize it.5 1 Martha Ansara, “Telling Our Own Sto­ ries”, published in P u b lic H i s t o r y No 3, 1996.

2 M artha Ansara, “I W ou ld n ’t Have Changed My Life For Anything - the Cult of the Cameraman”, to be published in M e d i a I n f o r m a t i o n A u s t r a l i a , A FTRS,

Sydney.

J Ellen Baker, Anne-Marie Chandler and Tom Fisher, “The Future of Film Pro­ duction: All-in-the Box and 21st Century F o x ”, U TS, 1 9 9 5 , to be published in Im a g e T e c h n o lo g y (BKSTS, London).

4 Ellen Baker, Anne-Marie Chandler, Tom Fisher, Rachel Moss, “Moving Pictures: a case study of the Videofax in Film Pro­ duction”, UTS , 1996, to be published in M e d i a I n f o r m a t i o n A u s t r a l i a (A FTRS,

Sydney).

3 Martha Ansara interviewed by the author in May 1996.

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technicalities accept that the industry would become involved in technology that didn’t give an advantage. Lightworks, he said, was originally devised by Paul Bamborough to solve some of the frustrations he had as a picture editor. But discussion moved on quickly from the old “sprocket ver­ sus digital” argument.

The pressure to complete quickly on the expensive com puter- systems is widely felt. Editor Fienry Dangar argued that editors now are putting in as many hours in a six-w eek schedule as they used to for an eight-week schedule, sim­ ply by working longer hours per day.

Session Chair Malcolm Smith spoke of the need to pace oneself: Bob Weis reck­ oned that editors have always gone home at 2 am, regardless of the tech­ nology. Dangar pointed out the subtle pressures:

Fade to Black In a landmark day for the post-produc­ tion industry, the Australian Screen Editors, Screen Directors, Screen Pro­ ducers, Screen Com posers and the Screen Sound guilds and associations came together at the Australian Film Television & Radio School on 1 June to find a solution to the crisis in post­ production. It’s clearly a hot topic: the A FTR S theatre was packed out, and monitors were set up in adjacent rooms to cope with the overflow.

This is a short, selective, and therefore personal view of the conference. There’s a transcript of what was said on the Inter­ net at http://www.aftrs.edu.au/post, if you want the detail.

Although producer Tony Buckley spoke movingly in the keynote speech

[that] the writer, the producer and the whole production office must be the­ oretically on much less time because they have more time available.

Envy of production crew conditions (e.g ., paid overtim e) was deeply acknowledged by the audience, who applauded Ju d d ’s argum ent against the “expected” free overtime worked in post-production: Unless the production people come around and work for the sound peo­ ple for free, doing their washing and shopping and other things, they don’t get time to do.

Nerida Tyson-Chew was the first of sev­ eral com posers through the day to present their perspectives, often paral­ leling other crafts’ concerns. She felt that composers should be brought on ear-

later that the composer was not a soli­ tary crew member: the one line on the budget represented a team of musicians, recording facilities, copyists and so on, all managed by the composer.

Some speakers in the first session had argued that there was no crisis. Bob Weis claimed surprise at the perceived short­ comings in application of the technology.

D irector Richard Franklin “pitied the editors - but he was having more fun making film s than ever”. This drew strong criticism from composer Martin Armiger: I want to take issue with the attitude that has come from Bob, from Frame­ works and from Richard Franklin on this crisis. What crisis? There is obvi­ ously, in a new technology, going to be huge dislocation in any industry.

The reform of the textile industry in

Sound editor Phil Judd.

about the sloppy editing and loss of cre­ ative co n tro l foisted upon recen t productions in the world of new tech­ nology, the conference went on to focus primarily on industrial rather than cre­ ative issues: longer and longer working hours; anti-social shifts; fossilized pay scales; no pay for overtime; shorter and shorter schedules; more and more to do on top of the basic task; rapidly chang­ ing (and not always well-understood or reliable) technology; no training oppor­ tunities or career path. It’s a familiar syndrome, occurring in many w ork­ places, not just film.

Som e speakers on the first panel (“Technology, time and creativity ”) started by defending non-linear editing.

Bob Weis (producer, and also the origi­ nal distributor in Australia of Lightworks systems) expressed surprise at other speakers’ reservations. He could not

68

There’s an unacknowledged cover-up.

Editors are as guilty as anybody else on this. In their desire to finish a pro­ ject, they accede to the producer’s w ishes, because budgets are often small. We are aware of that. But we are probably not expressing to pro­ ducers and p rod u ction managers exactly what has occurred to reach that screening the next day. It isn’t only ed itors; I think that facility providers are doing the same thing, labs are doing the same thing. I think we need to be a b it m ore tru thfu l about how films and television pro­ grammes are actually making it to the day.

Phil Judd argued that there was a strong belief that technology could make cre­ ativity go faster, but, If the computer really can make it so much faster, then my [point] would be

lier; they need to understand the direc­ to r’s views of the project, preferably during the shoot: As a com poser, I have to write the em otion. The moment the music is there, it puts an attitude on a perfor­ mance. It is very difficult when you do not know your director to make those ch oices, when you have not had a meeting ahead of time to connect and get a sense of the person whose vision you are trying to write the music for.

As a composer, I think it is my role to write the music the director would write if he could write it himself.

Tyson-Chew felt that digital systems and synthesizers were excellen t for pre­ viewing music to a director, but that there was an assum ption that, once the preview was heard, the jo b was done.

M artin Armiger was to point out

the 18th or 19th century resulted in huge difficulties for many people, and it took many years of econom ic and industrial action to reconcile the work­ ers and the expectation of the owners of the industries with the reality. If there is no crisis here in post-produc­ tion, what are we doing here? There are more than 300 people come to dis­ cuss this very issue.

D enise H aslem drew the argum ent straight to the point: Our top editors have been told they are taking too long: “If you can’t fin­ ish the job, we will get someone who can.” Meanwhile, directors are saying, “W e are having fun with computers and having fun playing with them .”

W e are losing many editors through w ork-related illnesses because they can ’t do these shifts. Som e o f you wonder why we think there is a crisis.

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technicalities It makes me wonder what you know about editing.

The digital revolution hit the film indus­ try in the early 1990s, at the depth of the recession. The only way it could be sold was as a budget-saving device rather than a creative tool. That view has stuck. The truth is that, while non­ linear editing as a technique may be b e tte r, it isn ’t cheaper, and it isn ’t quicker than the older systems. Sound engineer and m ixer Steve M urphy pointed out that equipment had to be paid for, and, that by contrast with the Australian situation, overseas people were pouring vast amounts of capital into new technology.

It is arguable, th en , w h ether the working conditions are indeed a result of the new technology. Steve Murphy suggested that the new systems actually

increasingly productions are swinging back to workprinting and to cutting the print from an EDL prior to the nega­ tive cut.

In the argument for better budgets, a repeated theme was the number of slices of the pie: it seemed that the pie was only so large, and that there could only be so many slices. The called-for expenditure in one area could only be at the expense o f some oth er area.

While this seems reasonable logic, the conference did not (or could not) con­ template the solution of larger pies - to satisfy everyone’s needs - but perhaps less of them. Antonia Barnard regretted that we always work backwards from the budget - features come in at one of two or three fixed prices - rather than working forwards from the script.

M att Carroll acknowledged early

Steve Jodrell, Phil Judd and composer Peter Best.

made things easier: “If schedules are going to get shorter, at least the tech­ nology is allowing us to achieve a better result in the schedules”. However, he pointed out that

in his speech that it was going to be a “get the producer” day, and philosoph­ ically accepted the role of Aunt Sally.

He described the environment in the film industry today:

‘digital’ sometimes gets confused with ‘magic’. If you have noisy dialogue, it’s not going to go away because we are digital. Often the final product is so clear that the problems are more obvious.

One of the things historically is that [we] came from a cottage industry and a lot of us embraced this early cottage industry into what is truly an interna­ tional industry and that is where the problems lie, from a producer’s point of view. It is a buck-driven, deal-dri­ ven industry and there is no getting away from it. Then you must divide the industry in two. There is a basic sector - the feature film industry where there is a greater area for cre­ ativity and a greater flexibility. But I don’t think you can step away from the rest of it [being] a deal-driven sec­ tor and the deals are getting tougher and there is less money. It is a manu-

T h ere was little other discussion of the ap p licatio n o f the tech n o lo g y , although, in a reversal from an earlier position1, Richard Franklin spoke of the w ear and tear on a negative in telecine, conceded that there was some value in a w orkp rint, and said h e ’d probably have one next time. Budget savings in non-linear editing, of course, have been largely predicated on elimi­ n atin g the w o rk p rin t, althou gh

70

facturing industry. In a way, you are creating sausages.

In this deal-driven industry, C arroll recom m ended a firm line with over­ demanding producers: “You have to learn to say ‘N o’, or, even better, ‘Fuck off, I am not going to do it.”

In the current federal government’s philosophy, it seems this “workplace bargaining” is the recommended style.

Perhaps the other most-discussed topic was the collapse of the training path, as assistant editors are relegated to the back room and the nightshift, dig­ itizing rather than learning the craft of editing. There was talk of apprentice­ ships, of a training levy on all films over a certain budget to hire an extra trainee editor, and of attachments. On-the-job training, however, the “good old way” of paying on e’s dues, is attractive to

around the world for the richness of its resources). The present government’s approach to train in g , M a tt C arroll observed, was not encouraging: with current plans for apprentices to lose pay while at college, and the starvation of academic funds, he felt there was a real problem.

Follow ing lunch was a session of light relief, when m oderator Dennis W atkins hosted a “H y p o th e tica ls” debate. Cast as key production players ori a television pilot (Road Blues, set in thfe high pressure world of NRM A road setvice), industry personalities, includ­ ing R o b ert G ibson and Bevan F ee, Negotiated a series of crises and com ­ promises brilliantly scripted by Paul Feadon. In a post-production managed on an unknown non-linear system that /crashed when it rose above six degrees f

Composer Chris Neil and editor-diredtor Robert Gibson.

some, but less so to others. Tom Jeffrey: When I was learning on the job, all my mistakes would go straight to air. I made many mistakes. It was awful.

[Training] has to have measurable out­ com es in safe environm ents where people can not only learn the craft of using the tools, but also gain knowl­ edge in applying their abilities with those crafts. Team ing on the job is probably 20 percent of the total learn­ ing experience a person needs.

N ick Beaum an to ok issue with this, arguing, “If you gave me an assistant editor, I could teach him in one year what he would learn in three years at the film school.”

The A FTRS has only had an Avid system for a few m onths. Sara B en ­ nett, head of editing at AFTRS, pointed to the limited resources of the school (although the AFTRS does attract envy

Director Catherine MillerJ

Celsius, with music scored , to m eet the budget, for flute and accordion, and a laissez-faire three-cam era style (“If Kylie and Ja so n can see each other, the cameras can see each other”), the players found no job stereotype too low to stoop to. Fast-minute CGI treatment of every NRMA sign to RACV signs for release in Victoria secured the reputa­ tions of all concerned.

In break-out sessions, each craft guild discussed its own set of resolutions, and the final, general session discussed and adopted these.

M ost of the ‘wish lists’ included a properly experienced post-production supervisor on larger-budget films. This may be the editor - kept on after picture lock-off - or a separate role - possibly part-time, but on right from the start.

They also sought full and continuous consultation, steps towards investigating

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technicalities training programmes and attachments, and more firmly protected and itemized post-production budgets, immune from raiding to pay for unplanned production expenses.

In the light of his earlier position, Matt Carroll’s report from the produc­ ers’ meeting was couched in remarkably conciliatory term s, but captured the major points of the day:

i

We are one industry and the proof of it is we are all here today. It is not an ‘us and them ’ situation, and I was provocative today to try and draw things out. It is also about a respect for each other’s crafts and skills, and the great strength of the industry here over other film industries [is that] we are very small. Certainly compared to them we are incredibly unified, and certainly I can speak for all the producers I know

K odak Backs Film In a move that seems to place bets on every form of imaging technology, the division of Kodak that serves the motion picture and television m arkets has renamed itself the “Professional Motion Imaging Unit”. But to reassure the film industry, the unit’s president, Joerg Agin, says in a recent press release: We anticipate steady breakthroughs [sic] in film technology. For the fore­ seeable future we believe film will continue to be the dominant medium for producing high quality content for cinemas, television, and the new multimedia formats such as digital video disk. Film will also withstand the chal­ lenge of the electronic cinema. The quality gap between film and electronic media is large today - and expected to

Producer Ross »mpfexecutive Bevan Lee.

in the enormous respect we have for the people who work in the industry.

We do feel we are all in one and we all have our own battles to fight and often they become compartmentalized, and I think that has happened in the case of post-production. We may very well have neglected the fact we have not been negotiating enough [in post­ production]. The crisis that has come out of it has been lack of communica­ tion, lack of going over the budgets with you, and lack of having these sort of meetings where we discuss the size of pie.

The conference ended by appointing the organizing com m ittee to the task of planning an Australian M otion Picture Academy, to continue the spirit of co­ operation engendered by the day.

“Hasn’t it been good? We must do this again sometime.”

C I N E M A P AP E RS • AUGUST 1996

get a lot larger as new hybrid tech­ nologies enhance the quality of the projected film image.

But there’s more: We are also in the very early stages of evaluating different options for becom­ ing involved in ‘content crea tio n ’.

When, or to what extent, is yet to be decided.

In a world where Sony owns the music that’s played on its Walkmans, where Sil­ icon Graphics owns the software that runs on its com puters, are we to see Kodak not only making film, but mak­ ing films? Keep watching. © 1 On H o tel Sorrento, Franklin edited on Lightworks without a workprint: “I think it’s obscene with the modern technology to waste so much money and silver on something that hardly gets looked at.”

[Cinema Papers, # 1 0 4 )

nan: Love Letters from Teralba Road (1977; only one 16mm print could be located for preservation - has anyone seen the negs?), Stir, Spotswood; Ross Matthews: Australian Dream (1986), Waiting (1990); Richard Mason: One Night Stand (1984), The Boy who had Everything (1984). And Gold Stars to Megan McMurchy for Breathing under Water (1992), Glenys Rowe for God’s Girls (1992) and to David Elphick for No Worries (1 9 9 2 ), but not for Star Struck, Love in Limbo and Undercover, which he lodged at the same time.

W ill Y o u be E xpunged Shorts, commercials and television fro m History? material are just as important!

A plea from MARTHA ANSARA ...

If the lab is no longer keeping your ow many of the films that you have film - or, even if it is, but there are no been involved in have been lodged longer prints being struck - or if you’re with the National Film & Sound Archive paying a fortune to a film vault, think (NFSA)? T h a t’s right: they’re still in about it. Talk it over with the NFSA someone’s shed or under your bed. And acquisition officers. They perform an you and your work are about to disap­ unenviable tightrope walk between film pear from Australian film history. Film history and a lack of finance, and are is fragile. Colour film is even more frag­ somewhat overworked, so, if you pos­ ile: it fades even when stored under sibly can, write out a list for them of the best conditions, which your shed is what you have, including the material not. And if you leave this film around you hold for each title, and short syn­ much longer, the renaissance of Aus­ opses. Perhaps you still have some of the tralian film - and your part in it - will publicity material. It’s best, if you can be almost as poorly known to future spend a day organizing it, to donate rel­ generations as is our early silent era, of evant d ocu m en tation, including which only ten percent remains, much properly-labelled stills, post-production of it damaged. scripts, press cuttings, etc. This provides I know, I know. You keep meaning a context for understanding the film in to get around to it, and, like all of us, the future. However, it’s better by far you’re too busy. You’ll do it next week. to hand in the actual celluloid than to Somehow next week never comes. And keep putting everything off until you’re then ... properly organized.

One director, who shall remain un­ W ith feature films and shorts, the named and unshamed, had a new sale NFSA generally takes the final cut neg for a print of a 15-year-old film. When and duplicate negatives, final mix, and she pulled the rusted tins out from prints.

With documentaries, there is also under her house and sent them off to a selective acquisition of out-takes, but the lab, the negs were - naturally - all stuck together and blocked up. Fortu­ such m aterial must have adequate descriptions (i.e., a shot list). The best nately, she rang the NFSA for help. thing is if you still have the logs. (That’s There, the trained preservationists per­ right: from now on, don’t discard your form ed their w itch-like rituals and paperwork so quickly.) You can discuss brought the neg back to life. But she was your excess documentary footage with lucky. It’s not always the case that your the acquisitions officer. You can keep film will be selected for this painstaking the copyright of the deposited material, w ork w hich costs the public purse and you still have access to it if you need heaps, a cost which could have been to make prints. avoided had the film been lodged in the Note that I haven’t mentioned video.

NFSA ten years earlier. M oreover, as Video is even more fragile than film, the so-called “efficiency cuts” of the fed­ and I can’t even begin to contemplate eral budget take their toll, the NFSA will what will happen to that. And even if have to become even more selective. So the tape lasts, there’s no guarantee of why wait?

Of course, you may be perfectly sat­ how long the format you’ve used will be around. Ask your NFSA collection isfied if film history represents the 1970s development officer about it. and ’80s as consisting of the work of

H

Bob Ellis and Martha Ansara - and not you. Or, sadly, you may feel that your work isn’t important enough. But it is!

Im portance is only relative in the NFSA’s attempt to build a representa­ tive collection. Exam ple of the films which have been lodged recently with the Archive include: Kim Batterham: Pins and Needles (1980); Richard Bren­

In Sydney, get in touch with Jane Adam, NFSA, 84 Alexander St, Crows Nest.

Tel: (02) 438 1477; fax: (02) 436 4178.

In Melbourne, Helen Tully, NFSA, 223 Park St, South M elbourne. T el: (03) 9690 1400; fax: (03) 9699 4874.

In Canberra, Elizabeth Jamieson, NFSA PO Box 2 0 0 2 , GPO Canberra 2 6 0 1 .

Tel: (06) 209 3038; fax: (06) 209 3165.

73

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Tim Webber Director of Special Effects, FrameStore, London

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F C C Funding Decisions Features Paws Diana & Me The Big Red Black Rock

75 75 75 76

Docum entaries The Human Race Final Insult f Suburban Strippers C’arn the Dogs Nicki Colour Bars

75 75 75 75 75 75

A Dying Shame Peace So Simple, So Hard Was That Really Me? Buffalo Legends Stowaways

76 76 76 76 76 76

Television The Wayne Manifesto

XX

Dead Letter Office Diana Si Me K. C. Oscar and Lucinda Siam Sunset Sound of One Hand Clapping Features in Production A Nice Guy Angkor Paradise Road Thank God He Met Lizzie

Production Survey Features in Pre-production The Big Red 76

sks

Featured

London and comes close to shaking hands with the princess... but misses her chance at the last minute. She is elbowed out of the way by a pushy paparazzi photographer who spends his time chasing the Princess for a scandalous shot that will bag him a fortune. Determined to meet her idol, she teams up with the photographer in search of the princess and strange things begin to happen.

PAWS (95 mins)

THE BIG RED (105 mins)

Latent I mage P roductions D: Ka r l Zwicky P: A ndrena Finlay, V icki W atson EP: Rebel Penfold Russell W: Harry Cripps Dist: Polygram Film I nternational Developed with the assistance of: NSWFTO C, a computer literate dog, flees to the arms of Zac, a lonely 13-year-old boy, after witnessing his master's murder. The two set about unravelling the mystery of his death and finding treasure that has been hidden. An adventure comedy about friendship and trust and how these things can overcome any obstacle in life - even the ultimate challenge of defeating PC's evil nemesis.

P

DIANA & ME (100

mins)

M att Carroll Films D: David Parker P: M att Carroll W: M att Ford Dist: V illage Roadshow romantic comedy about a young Australian woman who happens to share the same name and birthday as the Princess of Wales. Obsessed with her royal namesake, she wins a trip to

O pen Channel P roductions & W ith D irection D: Ivan Hexter P: J ohn M oore W: Ivan Hexter Pre- sale: ABC TV Developed with the assistance of: Film V ictoria inal Insult will follow a group of six people suffering from mysterious illnesses who are isolated for four weeks in an environmental control unit They have come to the unit to find out if food or chemicals in their environment are triggering their condition and what, if anything, they can do about it

F

Ds: Peter du Cane, Damon Smith, Ulrich Kratzig

his documentary will expore the lives of the male and female suburban strippers whose stages are the lounges, garages and backyards of Australian suburban homes.

i i

follow the Footscray Football Club through the football season, from the board room to the change room.

P Producer

NICKI (52 mins) Far S ighted Films

AS Associate Producer

D: Ruu Ramrakha P: Naomi M itchell, Riju Ramrakha W: Riju Ramrakha Co-w: Romaine Youdale Pre- sale: SBS

D Director SW Scriptwriter C Cast PC Principal Cast S E Story Editor W D Writer-director D IS T Distributor NOTE: Production Surveyforma now adhere to a revivedform at.

Cinema Papers regret) it cannot accept information received in a differentform at.

Cinema Papers doev not accept revponvibilityfor the accuracy o f any information ¿applied by product 'wn companiev. Thiv iv particularly the cave when information changea but the production company makev no attem pt to correct what hav already been vupplied.

icki, 33, a successful make-up artist, has lived her life underthe spectre of damaged heart and lungs due to the effects of Thalidomide. Nicki grew up expecting to die young. She has fought to try to lead the life she wants. In 1984, the first heart lung transplant was performed in Australia.

Suddenly, there was new hope. Nicki has recently been told that her time has come. She must have a heart lung transplant or die. She must decide.

Nicki wonders whether it will all be worth i t Perhaps this is her natural time to die.

N

COLOUR BARS (55 mins) Frontyard Films D: M ahmoud Yekta P: Fabio Cavadini, M anoy King W: M ahmoud Yekta Pre- sale: SBS

C'ARN THE DOGS (55 mins) B ondi P ictures C ompany D: M ichael Cordell P: M ichael Cordell AP: Chris Hilton W: M ichael Cordell Pre- sale: ABC TV

(55 mins) P iper Films

T

78 78 78

Co-P Co-Producer LP Line Producer

SUBURBAN STRIPPERS

D: M ike Piper P: M ike Piper EP: Dasha Ross W: Sheryn Dee Pre- sale: ABC TV

e y

78 78 78 78

E P Executive Producer

FINAL INSULT (55 mins)

Documentaried

Electric P ictures

77 77 77 78 78

against each other in a test of endurance, survival skills and tenacity as they walk 600 kilometres from the edge of the sun-scorched desert to the coastline. The film will show just how far civilized man has travelled from his roots.

D: Stephen Elliott P: Finola Dwyer, A ntonia Barnard EP: Steve W oolley, N ik Powell W: M ichael T homas Dist: Samuel Goldwyn Company

THE HUMAN RACE (55 mins)

Shorts Devils Gorilla Girls (aka Lady Gorillas) Left Luggage Otherzone Tales From Afar

n adventure documentary set in A the Kimberleys in North Western Australia, where three men are set

Developed with the assistance of AFC

A

77

Developed with the assistance of: Screen W est

U nthank Films & S eala P roductions

eddy, a 'streetwise hawker"from New York, owes a lot of money to a couple of heavies. He flees from his life in New York and jumps on a plane to freedom. He ends up in the hot dry centre of Australia and unexpectedly comes across Angie, a beautiful blonde sex kitten. Teddy can't believe his luck as they set off together into the outback. Then Angie asks the fatal question, "Are you married?" Wham!

Teddy wakes up whacked on the head, shot full of dope, tossed in a chicken stack and married.

Documentary Changing Heart

K

Television Production 3-4 Ever Adrenalin Junkies Good Guys, Bad Guys Simone de Beauvoir’s Babies Spellfinder II: The Land of The Dragon Lord The Territorians Whipping Boy

77 77 77 77 77 77

Idiot Box The Inner Sanctuary Red Herring River Street Road to Nhill True Love and Chaos

P: A ndrew Ogilvie EP: A ndrew Ogilvie W: A ndrew B urke Pre- sale: ABC-TV, ZDF, National Geographic Dist: Beyond Distribution

O fficial A ustralian -UK Co- production

T

76 76 76 76

Features in Post-production ! Dust Off the Wings 76 I Hotel de Love 77

FFC Funding Decisions Following a Board meeting ; o%,3 M ay, the F F C has I entered into contract negotiations with the , producers of the following ects • & & _ssV'"*j‘pfoi / SSMn

76 76 76 76 76 76

he 1996 football season is about to begin. The people of Footscray are battlers and so is their football team.

The mighty Bulldogs haven't won a premiership since 1954. The hopes and aspirations of a whole tribe are resting on the broad shoulders of the "Doggies". This documentary will

T

he film w ill follow five youths of non-English speaking background showing the 'reality' of being born into families with cultures different to that of the mainstream. Although different in many aspects, they share a strong sense of not belonging to any culture: their parents' culture or the mainstream Anglo-Saxon culture. They long for acceptance from the mainstream culture while feeling an obligation to respect their parents' culture. The film w ill explore the sharing of their idenrties.

T

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32 Punch Street Artarmon NSW 2064 Australia Phone (+61 2) 9901 4455 email asc@audiosound.com.au 75

production FFC Funding Decisions

BUFFALO LEGENDS (55 m in s )

continued

D: Desmond Kootji Raymond P: Paul Roberts EP: Robert T urnbull Ws: Paul Roberts, D esmond Kootji Raymond Pre- sale: SBS-TV

Pre- sale: SBS, NDR D ist: B eyond D istribution P/L

Television THE WAYNE MANIFESTO

(26 x 26 m in s ) A rtist S ervices Ds: S ophia T urkiewiez, Ian W atson , Steve M ann David Cameron , Paul M aloney P: A lan Hardy EPs: Ewan B urnett, Steve V izard, A ndrew Knight W : David M cRobbie Pre- sale : ABC-TV, S outhern Star Sales D eveloped with the assistance of: Film Queensland, Film V ictoria

comedy series based on the characters and situations from the popular Wayne series of children's books. Wayne Wilson is a juvenile who tends to stumble into funny and embarrassing situations, then singiehandedly he makes them much worse.

A

Following a Board meeting on 12 Ju n e, the F F C has entered into contract negotiations with the producers of the following projects:

Features BLACK ROCK (90

hrough the personal stories of families and individuals within the Aboriginal community - urban, rural and remote - the human tragedy behind the statistics of aboriginal health unravels. A Dying Shame focuses on the failure of the Australian health system to service the lives and well-being of the Aboriginal community.

T

PEACE (52 m in s )

m in s )

D: Steven V idler P: David Elfick W : N ick Enright D ist : B eyond Films , PolyGram Developed with the assistance NSWFTO

of:

ared is 17 and lives with his mother in Blackrock, a suburb in a large industrial city on the coast of NSW. Finishing strongly in his second last year at school, he is starting to gat a handle on life. Then Ricko, the young local hero and Jared's idol, returns.

Jared throws a welcome home for him, at the local surf club. Everyone is there.

A 15-year-old girl is found dead on the beach. Jared is torn between loyalty and truth.

J

Documentaried A DYING SHAME (52 m in s ) I guana Films P/L

B

uffalo Legends is a fast-moving montage of stories and images concerning the struggle of Darwin Aborigines for social, and economic justice. The Buffaloes Football Club, the first sporting club with a non-racial membership policy, became the most popular and successful team in the Northern Territory in the 1930s, and a vehicle for changing the racist culture of Darwin.

SOS P ictures D: Rebecca M cLean P: Elisa A rgenzio W : Rebecca M cLean

he gaoling of the 'Fairlea Five' was the first many Australians had heard of the Save Our Sons movement - a group of women formed in the 1960s to protest against the Vietnam War. Peace is an attempt to understand the SOS movement in the light of current theoretical debates and politics.

T

SO SIMPLE, SO HARD (52 m in s ) Stella M otion P ictures D: Phillipe Charluet P: Phillipe Charluet W : Phillipe Charluet, J ane S earle Pre- sale : SBS-TV

S

Palm B each P ictures

D: Paul Roy P: Paul Roy AP: J enny A inge W : Paul Roy

Film and T elevision I nstitute (Excalibur N ominees P/L)

o Simple, So Hard follows the adventures of four single women as they tread through the labyrinth of introduction agencies and single services in their search for an elusive partner to share their lives with.

Through documenting their experiences, we discover the common problems and social expectations that contribute to loneliness in our contemporary society.

WAS THAT REALLY ME?

(55 m in s ) T riptych Films D: Edwin Hill P: Debra A nnear Ws: Edwin H ill, T racey Callander Pre- sale : SBS

\ A f as That Really Me? is the story If If of Tracey and Simon's encounter with Post Natal Depression.

After the birth of their son, Tracey has her expectations of being a "good mum" shattered when PND's symptoms take over their lives. The film explores how often the most caring, loving people will often deny or minimize the experience of a mother with PND, and how the notion that a mother not coping is taboo in our society.

A t a special telephone link up on Thursday 16 M ay 1996 the F F C Board approved funding for the docum entary Stowaways.

STOWAWAYS (55 m in s ) M usic A rts D ance Films D: K evin Lucas P: A anya W hitehead EP: Paul Humfress, Kevin Lucas W : Kevin Lucas Pre- sale : SBS, NPS D ist: M elsa Films D istribution

documentary about the work of puppeteer Phillippe Genty in Australia. Structured around the countdown to curtain call at the world premiere of G ent/s Stowaways in Adelaide, the work is interspersed with workshop and rehearsal footage, and Genty himself discussing his work, his dreams, his childhood and his practice of self-analysis.

A

Production Survey Information is supplied as and adjudged as of 15 April 1996

DIANA & ME Production: September-N ovember 1996 [S ee FFC Funding Decisions for credits]

K. C. Executive producer: Rick Kabriel Co-producer: T ony Estephan Production: J une-A ugust 1996 Budget: S20 MILLION Director: Danny de M oreta Scriptwriter Danny DE MORETA machine that can cure AIDS and cancer can also be used destructively.

A

OSCAR AND LUCINDA Production company: MERIDIAN FILMS Distribution company: Fox Searchlight Production: SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 1996 Budget: $16 MILLION Producers: T im W hite, Robin Dalton Director: Gillian A rmstrong Scriptwriter: Laura J ones Government Agency investment: FFC ased on the novel by Peter Carey, a B story about fate, love, gambling and faith.

SIAM SUNSET Production company: A rtist Services Production: 11/11-13/12/96 Scriptwriters: M ax Dann , A ndrew Knight

SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING Production company: A rtist S ervices Production: 7/10-22/11/96 Producer: Rolf de Heer Writer: Richard Flanagan Script editor: D eborah Cox Cast: K erry Fox

THE BIG RED Production: A ugust 1996...

[S ee FFC Funding Decisions for credits]

DEAD LETTER OFFICE Production company: ARTIST SERVICES Production: 20/1 -7/3/97 Scriptwriter: DEBORAH Cox

et in World W ar 2 Sumatra, European women imprisoned by the Japanese seek solace from the horror of their imprisonment by forming a vocal orchestra.

S

THANK GOD HE MET LIZZIE Distribution company: REP Production: J uly-S eptember 1996 Principal Credits Director: Cherie N owlan Producer: JONATHAN SHTEINMAN Scriptwriter: ALEXANDRA LONG Director of photography: Kathryn M iluss Government A gency I nvestment Production: AFC, NSWFTO Cast Cate Blanchett, Richard Roxburgh, Frances O'Connor

Featured in podt-production ACRI [S ee previous issue for details]

DUST OFF THE WINGS

Featured in production A NICE GUY Production company: Golden Harvest (HK) Ltd Production office: MELBOURNE Principal Credits Director: HungKam Po Sammo Co-producer: Tso Kin Nam Executive producer: CHUA Lam Scriptwiter: Tang King Sang Edward Directors of photography: Lam Fai Tai Raymond, Chan J ose Editor: CHEUNG YlU CHUNG M arketing Distributor: Golden Harvest Unit publicity: Fiona Searson, DDA Cast J ackie Chan

ANGKOR Production: 1/7-9/8/96

Featured in Pre-production

Scriptwriter: BRUCE BERESFORD Director of photography: PETER JAMES Editor T im W ellburn Production designerHERBERT PlNTER Costume designer: T erry Ryan Production Crew Unit production manager A nne Bruning On -S et Crew 1st assistant director: Colin Fletcher Make-up supervisor: NiKKl Gooley M arketing Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Unit publicity: Fiona Searson, DDA Cast Glenn Close

[S ee previous issue for details]

PARADISE ROAD Production Company: V illage Roadshow Pictures Production Office: SYDNEY Pre-production: 29/4/96-29/7/96 Locations: Penang, Port Douglas Principal Credits Director: BRUCE BERESFORD Producers: Greg Coote, Sue M illiken Executive producers: Graham Burke, A ndrew Yap

Production company: Bombshell Films, Cranbrook Films Distribution company: As ABOVE Production: 13/4-29/4/96 Principal Credits Director: Lee ROGERS Producers: Lee Rogers, W ard Stevens Line producer: Emma Brunton Associate producer: Ian FOWLER Scriptwriters: Lee Rogers, W ard Stevens Director of photography: J eff M alouf Sound recordist: Eric Putre Editor: Peter W hitmore (W inning Post) Production designer: Sam Cook Wardrobe: JACQUIE SASSON Composer: Phil Ceberano Planning and Development Casting consultants: Greg A pps (Prototype Casting) Production Crew Production managers: Cathy Chapple, Emma B runton Production assistants: Sarah Bandler, Fleur Goldrick, Lisa W ard, Ellis Lodge Camera Crew Focus pullers: N ick WATT, Kei YOKOKAWA, T oby Britton, B ryan Horne, Lara Connor, Pete Holland Clapper-loader: Stuart Frevan 2nd unit D.O.P.s: N oel M cDonald, Peter Coleman On- set Crew 1st assistant director: A dam Spencer Key grip: A dam Good Gaffer: Flowers Best boy: Simon Hammond Technical adviser: A shley Rowan

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76

32 Punch Street Artarmon NSW 2064 Australia Phone (+61 2) 9901 4455 email asc@audiosound.com.au C I N E M A P A P E RS â&#x20AC;˘ AUGUST 1996

Still photography: M arco PENESI Make-up: ANGELA MORK Hair: A ngela M ork Unit publicist: M aria Farmer Catering: P a m B racher

A rt D epartment Art director: S a m C ook

W ardrobe Wardrobe supervisor: JACQUIE S asson

P ost- production Assistant editor: J ody Gallacher

M arketing Publicity: M aria Farmer

Cast K ate C eberano (J e nn a ), K ate Fischer (R o xan ne ), L ee R ogers (L ee), W ard S tevens (W ard ), P hil C eberano (P h il ), Roch (R och ), S imone M ackinno n (M el), L eigh R ussell (L uke ), S im on Lyndon (G a z z a ), Felix W illiam so n (A lex )

very unromantic comedy as a young surferfaces his impending marriage. A daunting task when you've grown up in the pit of Australian hedonism, Bondi Beach.

A

W ardrobe Wardrobe supervisor: K atie G raham Wardrobe assistant: Fiona H erman

Cast B rett Climo (A ndrew G ordon ), K ym W ilson (F io n a ), G erard K ennedy (F ather J im K elly), L isa M c Cune (F elicity ), D eidre Rubenstein (P eggy), S am uel J ohnson (C ar l ), J on Finlayson (A rchbishop Clarke ), P eter S tratford (M onsignor Rya n ), A drian Raw lins (O w e n ).

ith his professional career at the crossroads, the last thing on Andrew Gordon's mind is helping the city's homeless. But when he's dropped into the chaos of St. Cuthbert's Church and Mission, Andrew enters the grey area between legally right and morally justified.

W

S ee previous issues for details on the following :

RED HERRING RIVER STREET

IDIOT BOX THE INNER SANCTUARY

ROAD TONHILL TRUE LOVE AND CHAOS Production company: WESTSIDE FILMS Distribution company: N ew V ision FILMS Budget: $2.4 MILLION Production: 15/4/96-15/5/96

Production company: I ntensity Films P/L

P rincipal Credits

Principal Credits

Director: S tavros Efthymiou Producer: A nn Darouzet Scriptwriter: S tavros Efthymiou Script editors: A nnette B lonski, S tephen S ewell Director of photography: LASZLO BARANYAI Production designer: S tephen J ones -E vans Editor: K en SALLOWS

Director: CHRIS CLARKE Producers: CHRIS CLARKE, MURRAY SESTAK Executive producer: W arw ick M owbray Scriptwriters: C hris C larke , B oyd H icklin Director of photography: B arry M alseed Sound recordist: J ohn P hillips Editor: B rett S outhwick Production designer: B oyd H icklin Costume designer: K atie G raham

P lanning

and

Government A gency I nvestment Production: AFC, FFC, Film V ictoria

D evelopment

Script editor: B arbara GuDDON Casting: M ichelle Q uinn Shooting schedule by: MURRAY S estak Budgeted by: M urray S estak

P roduction Crew Production supervisor: C hris C larke Production manager: M urray S estak Production co-ordinator: Sarah H arold Producer's assistant: S arah H arold Location manager: M artine B roderick Production assistant: Fiona H erman Assembly editor: B rett S outhwick Financial controller: Kathy Ojala

Camera Crew Focus puller: A ngelo S atore Clapper-loader: J em Rayner Key grip: R ichard ALLARDICE Assistant grips/ 2nd Grip: David V aughan Gaffer: J im m y H unt Best boy: R obby H echenberger

Cast H ugo W eaving , N aveen A ndrews , N oah T aylor

M

A rt Department Set decorator: B ernie W ynack Standby props: B rian La n e (JAGGER)

D oau nentaiy CHANGING HEART Production company: D igital A rts Film & T elevision Pre-production: J anuary -F ebruary 1996 Production: M arch -A ugust 1996 Post-production: S eptember -D ecember 1996

P rincipal Credits Director: M ike Carroll Producer: SEAN CADDY Executive producer: K en H aw kins Director of photography: H elen Carter Editor: S imon W hitington Technical supervisor: G erald T hompson and

D evelopment

Casting: V ast - P eter Yates

Production Crew Production manager: JACQUI HARRISON Production assistant: M ia Hargrave Financial controller: P eter W hite Insurer: ClNESURE Legal services: H art and S pira Travel Co-ordinator: S how T ravel

Camera Crew Camera assistant: D arryl W ood Camera type: M itchell M K II, A rri III Key grip & Motion Control: Charlie K iroff Motion Control Electronics: Patrick W alsh

On - set Crew

DATING THE ENEMY FIRST STRIKE (FORMERLY the STORY OF C.I.A.)

FLOATING LIFE LOVE SERENADE LUST AND REVENGE THE PHANTOM MR RELIABLE (FORMERLY MY ENTIRE LIFE)

THE QUIET ROOM TO HAVE AND TO HOLD (FORMERLY THE SMALL MAN)

A rt D epartment Art director: M atthew P utland Assistant art director: Rachel M c L aren Standby props: J anin e N utley

P ost- production Film gauge: 16 m m Shooting stock: K odak 7293

hen hell freezes over! A puppet look at life in hell.

W

GORILLA GIRLS (AKA LADY GORILLAS) Production company: F-REEL P/L Budget: $190,000 Pre-production: A pril 1996 Production: 29/4-9/5/96 Post-production: 15/5/96 ...

Production company: Ego T ripp P roductions Pre-production: N ovember 1995-J une 1996 Production: J uly 1996 Post-production: A ugust -S eptember 1996

Principal Credits Director: J ames C owen Producer: RACHEL M c L aren Executive producers: JAMES COWEN, M atthew P utland Scriptwriter: JAMES COWEN Director of photography: T im M cGahan Sound recordist: M ark PlDCOCK Editor: J ames Cowen Production designer: M atthew P utland Costume designer: HEATHER PUTLAND

P rincipal Credits Director: Stephen THOMAS Producer: Kathryn SYMMONS Scriptwriter: S tephen T homas Director of photography: Ellery Ryan Sound recordist: GEORGE GOERSS Editor: JANE USHER Production Designer: CORAL TuLLOCH Composers: J en A nderson , M ichael T homas

P lanning

and

D evelopment

Casting: Faith M artin & A ssociates Storyboard artist: CORAL TULLOCH Shooting schedule by: CAMERON M ellor, K athryn S ymmons Budgeted by: Kathryn S ym m ons

Production Crew Production manager: JASON BYRNE Director's assistant: G uy T aylor Producer's assistant: C hris T russelot Production secretary: Caroline H ealey Production assistant: Richard O 'N eil, C hris B artlett Insurer: W illis Corroon R ichard O liver P/L Legal services: PiGGOT WOOD & B aker Travel co-ordinator: S how T ravel

P roduction Crew

DEVILS

LEFT LUGGAGE Production company: Roar Film Budget: $145,000 Production: 11/5-18/5/96 Post-production: 22/5-30/7/96

Principal Credits

Production managers: Charlotte SEYMOUR, Leverne M c D onnell Unit manager: ARPAD MlHALY Insurer: HGA Legal services: Roth W arren

3D Animation & Digital Compositing: A n im a l L ogic Laboratory: MOVIE Lab Film gauge: 35 m m B low UP TO 70 m m ( large S creen Form at ) Screen ratio: 1:2.34 Shooting stock: K odak 5245, 5298 Video transfers by: D igital P ictures Off-line facilities: NETWORK 8 & D igital A rts

town of Goondi, and are scheduled to play a lean, mean team at the top of the ladder. The Lady Gorillas' coach Graham has no reason to think that once, just for once, the Lady Gorillas might win.

Director Fiona Cochrane Producers: FIONA COCHRANE, Louise H ubbard Scriptwriter: D ianne D empsey Director of photography: M artin M cG rath Sound recordist: CHRIS IZZARD Editor: D enise Haratzis Production designer: M argaret Eastgate Composer: ZYDECO JUMP

P ost- production

Shorts CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

1st assistant director: VERONIQUE GOLLEGE Continuity: T eena Economidis Special fx make-up: S teven B oyle Special fx: M ichael & P eter S pierig Still photography: A aron HARWOOD

Helicopter Pilot: T erry Lee

A w aiting Release S ee previous issues for details on the following :

Camera Crew Camera operator: T ony O'L aughlan Camera assistant: S hane Fletcher Camera type: A rriflex SR 11

On - set Crew

imi and Hanif begin a road trip from Melbourne to Perth, Mimi he Changing Heart is a largeheading home to make peace with her T format film to be serened at the mother, Hanif running from the new Desert Life Park & Botanic consequences of his involvement in a Gardens near Alice Springs. The film drug theft masterminded by his friend, follows the evolution of Central Dean.

Australia from the beginnings of time until recent history.

On - set Crew 1st assistant director: M urray S estak 2nd assistant director: M artine B roderick Continuity: CARMEL TORCASIO Playback operator: J essie D oring Boom operator: S tephen V aughan Make-up: C heryl P ennefather Hairdresser: C heryl P ennefather Special fx supervisor: P eter S tubbs Safety officer: PETER Culpan Still photography: J ohn W ebb Catering: "R eel to Reel" J enny Stockley Runners: Eddy Raym o n d , M arcus D wyer

ZONE 39

Planning

S ee previous issues for details ON THE FOLLOWING:

HOTEL DE LOVE

UNDER THE LIGHTHOUSE DANCING

Camera Crew Focus puller: PETER STOTT 2nd unit Cam op: Kathy Chambers Camera type: A aton 16 m m L emac Key grip: B rett M c D owell Gaffers: David Parkinso n , G reg Rawson

On - set Crew 1st assistant director: Louise H ubbard Continuity: JULIE FEDDERSEN Boom operator: Rodney B euthin Make-up: S andra Royce Choreographer: BASKETBALL M atthew N icholson Safety officer: P eter Culpan Still photography: JACQUELINE MlTELMAN Catering: H elen Clarke Runner: NICOLAS Lee

A rt D epartment Art director: L ouise M c Carthy Standby props: J odie M c M ahon

W ardrobe Standby wardrobe: J odie M c M ahon

P ost- production Sound transfers by: EUGENE WILSON Mixer: David HARRISON Laboratory: ClNEVEX

Government A gency I nvestment Production: Film V ictoria (IFF)

Camera Crew Camera assistant: Laurie B almer Key grip: B arry Hansen Assistant grip: P hil S parks Gaffer: T ed NORDSVAN Best boy: A dam WILLIAMS Electrician: G raham B rown

On - set Crew 1st assistant director: Cameron M ellor Continuity: AUDREY HUTCHINSON Boom operator: GEORGE GOERSS Make-up: VANDA LEIGH Still photography: JOHN DE LA ROCHE, Kathryn S ym m ons Catering: Two Can D o

A rt D epartment Art director: C oral TuLLOCH Pros: M arie Fitzgibbon

W ardrobe Wardrobe: M arie Fitzgibbon

A nimals Animal handler: Luke H ura , Luke ' s Canine & A n im a l A ctors P/L

Construction D epartment Construction: J ohn DE LA ROCHE, J ack T ulloch

P ost- production Sound editor: N eil M c G rath Laboratory: A tlab SYDNEY Laboratory liaison: A nthos S imon Film gauge: 16 m m Transfers: COMPLETE POST Editing facilities: T he FACILITY

Cast

Government A gency I nvestment Production: A ustralian Film Com m issio n Marketing: A ustralian Film C om m ission

P roduction Crew

Leverne M c D onnell (J udy ), M erridy Eastm an (M argaret ), S hanti G udgeon (B rook ), D ia n a T aupeta (H ester ), S hari Gates (L ucy), D enis M oore (G r ah a m ), M ike B ishop (R eg), H elen M utkins (S o n ia ), P enny H anby (K ylie ), Ha nn ah B arry (T a n ia ).

Production manager: T a m a r a G erlic Unit manager: B en STEENDYK

Lady Gorillas is a down-and-out T hebasketball team from the country

Cast Kane M c D onald (B illy ), H elen J ones (B elle), J illian M urray (B illy ' s M u m ), B arry Kay (B illy ' s D a d ), J ohn Flaus (P u blica n ), J eff B lake (W aiter ), Craig C larke (B oy 1), G raham W ordsworth (B oy 2).

AUDIO SOUND CENTRE CALL NOW FOR YOUR COPY OF OUR AUGUST RENTAL EQUIPMENT CATALOGUE a u d io s o u n d centre C I N E M A P A P E RS â&#x20AC;¢ AUGUST 1996

32 Punch Street Artarmon NSW 2064 Australia Phone (+61 2) 9901 4455 email asc@audiosound.com.au 77

production Production Survey continued illy leaves his home in remote Western Tasmania and comes to the city. Belle is an alcoholic country singer on a downhill spiral. Although they never actually meet, their paths cross many times in a single day.

OTHERZONE Production company: S erpentine Films Budget: $205,000 Post-production: 13/3/96-31/1/97

Principal Credits Director: D avid C ox Producer: SARAH Z adeh Scriptwriter: D avid Cox Director of photography: Paul R. Cox Sound recordist: L eonie D ickenson Production designer: G eorgina Campbell Costume designer: L innet G ood Composer: Ollie O lsen

Planning

and

Development

Script editor: A drian M artin Casting: PROTOTYPE CASTING Storyboard artist: D avid C ox , J ohn P ower Budgeted by: S arah Z adeh

Production Crew Production manager: L ibby P orter Production co-ordinator: L isetta M oscardo Assistant unit manager: BARBARA A gar Production accountant: A lan D redge AND Co - G ia n n a R osica Insurer: H. W. W ood Legal services: S hana Levine Roth W arren

Karen H adfield (N atalie ), J acqueline M itelman (K areen ).

Ngyen, researcher, has Kareen developed the Ameth scarf, a

device which enables human souls to be down-loaded and stored. Her murder by Nam Meloque, head of the global telecommunications monopoly, Machines All Nations, propels Kareen's daughter, Zheng, on a chase to avenge her death, and join a rebel group on their moon base.

TALES FROM AFAR Production company: T he A ustralian Cin e m a Ensemble Pre-production: 4/12-12/12/95 Production: 13/12-16/12/95 Post-production: 17/12-31/12/95

Principal Credits Director: A ngelo S a lam an c a Producer: T he S alvation A rmy Executive producer: A ngelo S alam an ca Director of photography: BRYSON SHERWOOD Sound recordist: B ryson S herwood Editor: N ad ia Cossictt Production designer: A ngelo S a lam an ca

P lanning

and

D evelopment

Researcher: ANGELO SALAMANCA

Camera Crew Camera operator: B ryson S herwood Camera assistants: M ajor J oe W ilcox , J ohn G riffin

Camera Crew

A rt Department Art director: ANGELO SALAMANCA

Post- production

Art director: G eorgina Cam pbell Assistant art director: Paul M acak Armourer: JOHN Fox

W ardrobe Wardrobe supervisor: LINNET GOOD

P ost- production Edge numberer: Oliver S treeton Sound transfers by: Eugene WILSON Sound design: P hilip B rophy Animation: D avid Cox Laboratory: ClNEVEX Film gauge: 35 m m

Government A gency I nvestment Development: A ustralian Film Co m m issio n Production: Film V ictoria

Cast M arie H oy (Z heng ), Stelarc (N am M eloque ), M ax Fairchild (C utts ), B ruce N aylor (C hicken sticks ),

and

D evelopment

P roduction Crew Production manager: SCOTT M cD onald Production co-ordinator: HEATHER MuiRHEAD Location manager: NADINE SCH0EN 1st assistant director: DAVID W olfe -B arry Continuity: JULIE FEDDERSEN Make-up: B everly Freeman

W ardrobe Wardrobe supervisor: Ruth MUNRO

P ost- production Post-production supervisor: E dward M cQueen - M ason Sound editor: P eter D. S mith Mixer: P eter D. S mith Mixed at: S.A. FILM CORPORATION

Government A gency I nvestment Development: S.A. FILM CORPORATION

he orphaned Danny, Paulie and Tcommon Frances find they have a lot in and through Frances' psychic powers and shared adventures, In an often cruel and Intolerant world, an unbreakable bond is produced - a pact to be 3-4 Ever.

(t e l e - f e a t u r e )

Cast

Principal Credits

T racey M ahood

T

Television Production [D etails of television series in production have been held over

UNTIL THE NEXT ISSUE DUE TO SPACE RESTRICTIONS]

3-4 EVER ( m i n i - s e r ie s ) Production company: V ertigo P roductions /F andango SRL Distribution company: SBS (A ust) RAI U no (I taly ) Budget: S3.2 million Pre-production: 3/6/96 ...

Production: 30/7/96 ...

Post-production: 23/9/96 ...

Principal Credits Director: Franco D i C hiera

P u n n in g

and

Development

Script editors: J utta GOETZE, P eter H epworth Casting: K elly O 'S hea Casting consultants: Liz M ullinar Casting C onsultants Budgeted by: Ros T atarka

Production Crew Production manager: S ue EDWARDS Production accountant: MARGOT BROCK Insurer: Rollins H udig H all Completion guarantor: Film Finances I nc

P ost- production

Director: GEOFF BENNETT Producers: MICHAEL CAULFIELD, S imone N orth Executive producer: MlKAEL BORGLUND Scriptwriter: TONY CAVANAGH Script editor: LOUISE HOME Director of photography: Ian T hornburn Production designer: P eta Lawson Composer: R oger M ason

Government A gency I nvestment C ommercial T elevision P roduction Fund

taff in the emergency department S of a large hospital have become addicted to the adrenalin rush they experience while dealing with life-anddeath emergencies.

GOOD GUYS, BAD GUYS (t e l e - f e a t u r e ) P roduction company : B eyond/S impson le M esurier P/L Distribution company: B eyond D istribution Pre-production: 27/5-19/7/96 Production: 22/7/-16/8/96 Post-production: 19/8-1/11/96

hildren's fantasy adventure

C series.

THE TERRITO RIAL (tele - fea tu re ) Production company: Robert B runing P roductions Network presale: SEVEN Production: 9/4/96-14/5/96

Principal Credits Director: MICHAEL OFFER Producer: Robert B runing Scriptwriter: T ed R oberts

Government A gency I nvestment Commercial Television Production Fund

story of a young Aboriginal Thepoliceman and the city detective he is forced to work with while investigating a series of murders in the outback.

Laboratory: ClNEVEX

Government A gency I nvestment Production: A ustralian Film COMMISSION - Commercial T elevision P roduction Fund

M arketing International distributor: B eyond D istribution Pre-sale: N ine N etwork A ustralia

Cast M arcus G raham (E lvis M a g in n is )

lvis Maginnis comes from a dubious E family background and the fact he's a former cop only makes matters worse. It's hard to tell the Good Guys from the Bad Guys anymore. But then again, perhaps it always was.... Good Guys, Bad Guys. Nothing is what it seems.

WHIPPING BOY (tele - fea tu re ) Production company: J N P FILM S Network: T en Production: 15/4/96-11/5/96

P rincipal Credits Director: Di D rew Producer: Ray A lchin Executive producer: J ames D avern Scriptwriter: P eter Y eldham

Government A gency I nvestment Commercial Television Production Fund

Cast R ebecca G ibney

love story between four people and Atwo countries S ee previous issues for details on :

G.P. [S ee previous issue for details ]

Production company: L iberty/ B eyond Distribution company: BEYOND Production: 14/6-12/11/96

racey Mahood's account of her life on a cattle station as a jillaroo, and later as a journalist in El Salvador, has passion without prejudice, conviction without bias. Gripping story-telling.

Cast H eather M itchell

ADRENALIN JUNKIES

Video gauge: Hi8 Screen ratio: 1.1.35 Off-line facilities: T he S alvation A rmy V ideo C lub

On - set Crew

A rt Department

P lanning

Script editors: ROB GEORGE, DAVID FARRELL Casting: A udine Leith Shooting schedule by: D avid LlGHTFOOT Budgeted by: David LlGHTFOOT

On - set Crew

Focus puller: KlERAN DOOLAN Clapper-loader: NlCOLE SWANN Camera type:ARRi "E xquisite " 35 Key grip: Freddo D irk Assistant grip: RUSSELL CROWE Gaffer: J im H unt , A ndy M oore 1st assistant director: Karen M ahood Continuity: T ara Ferrier Make-up: Lloyd JAMES Safety officer: P eter Culpan Still photography: R0CC0 FASANO Catering: Eat Y our H eart O ut

Producer: D avid L ightfoot Co-producer: J ane B allantyne Executive producers: R olf D e H eer, D omenico P rocacci Scriptwriters: JlM CARRINGTON, M aura N uccatelli Sound recordist: D es KENEALY Editor: Edward M cQ ueen M ason Production designer: IAN JOBSON Composer: G raham T ardif

P rincipal Credits Director: STEVE JODRELL Producers: R oger S im pso n , R oger L e M esurier , Ros T atarka Executive producers: MlKAEL BORGLUND, K ris N oble Associate producer: A ndrew W alker Scriptwriter: ROGER SlMPSON Director of photography: CRAIG B arden Editor: PETER CARRODUS Production designer: T el STOLFO Costume designer: SANDI ClCHELLO

ACADEMY BEAST

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR'S BABIES ( m i n i - s e r ie s ;

4x60 m i n s )

Production company: ARTIST SERVICES N etwork pre- sale : ABC Producer: DENISE PATIENCE Director: Kate W oods Scriptwriter: D eborah Cox Script editor: JUTTA GOETZE

of women in their thirties A group make a pact to have children.

SPELLBINDER II: THE LAND OF THE DRAGON LORD ( se rie s ) Production company: Film A ustralia Network presale: N ine Production: 5/96-3/97

BLINKY BILL'S EXTRAORDINARY EXCURSION HALIFAX F.P, HOUSE GANG KLINE'S BOTTLE NEIGHBOURS PACIFIC DRIVE PLACE OF THE DEAD PLASMO POLICE RESCUE

P rincipal Credits Director: N oel P rice Producer: NOEL PRICE Executive producer: Ron SAUNDERS Associate producer: ZOE W ang Scriptwriters: MARK SHIRREFS, J ohn T homson Director of photography: D anny B atterham Production designer: NICHOLAS M c Callum Costume designer: J ulie MIDDLETON Editor: P ippa ANDERSON

Government A gency I nvestment Production: FFC, Film V ictoria

BEVERLEY HILLS FAMILY ROBINSON

THE SILVER BRUMBY SWEAT TABALUGA: THE LITTLE GREEN DRAGON US AND THEM WATER RATS WHITE LIES

AUDIO SOUND CENTRE CALL NOW FOR YOUR COPY OF OUR AU6UST RENTAL EQUIPMENT CATALOGUE a u d io s o u n d centre

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* About critic's family.

A panel o f ten film reviewers boo rated a selection o f the latest releases on a scale o f 0 to 10, the latter being the optimum rating (a dash means not seen).

The critics are: B ill C ollins (F a x tel); B a rb a ra C reed (T he A g e); S a n d ra H a ll (T he B ulletin); P a u l H a rris (JR R R ; “The Green Guide”, The A g e); S ta n Ja m e s (T he Adelaide Advertiser); A d ria n M a rtin (T he A ge; “The Week in F ilm ”, Radio N ational); S cott M u rra y ; Toni R y a n (T he Sunday A g e); D avid S tra tto n (V ariety; S B S ); and E v a n W illiam s (T he A ustralian).

C I N E M A P A P E RS • AUGUST 1996

Halifax FP

Batman Forever

Law of the Land

Braveheart MARK

UNMARK 1

Waterworld

Singapore Sling

Pulp Fiction

Frontline Liftoff II

Speed Mrs Doubtfire

Home & Away

Broken Arrow

Colombo Spellbinder

Little Women Mission Impossible

Matlock

Rob Roy

Cracker Conspiracy

Lucky Break

Beaurepairs TVCs

Angel Baby

Hotel Sorrento Cosi Shine Brilliant Lies Pelican Brief Conga

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