The End of Independence? Women's Film and Video in the 1990s
Independent cinema may have been diverse in form, but its practitioners had in common a position of difference and marginality, working outside the mainstream and in opposition to it.
More from this Issue
TV Eye: Cinema in the Age of Video
In 1993 in Australia less than 2 per cent of the population attends the cinema yet over 90 percent of households own a VCR....
Aleksi Vellis
Aleksi Vellis announced his arrival in the turmoil of early 90s Australian cinema with his debut feature 'Nirvana Street Murder' a restlessly energetic film with cavalier camera moves that are almost as swish as the director himself.
Museum Screen Dreams
Sydney's new Museum of Contemporary Art has actively integrated film, TV and videos into its programs since opening in 1991.
Domestic Noir Night Out
Surely one of the powers of cinema is the aesthetic redemption of everyday reality, a poetics in motion that can distill and energise mundane objects, be they tiles on a kitchen wall, the fluorescent facade of an airport terminal, a luminously white T-shirt being twisted and tugged or the compact shapeliness of Y-fronts on a young body emerging from bed.
Lesbian Independent Cinema and Queer Theory
Lesbians do not exist in mainstream Australian cinema. Apart from a brief sequence representing youthful lesbian desire in 'The Getting of Wisdom (1977)' and the undercurrent of adolescent homoeroticism in 'Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)' Australian cinema has remained mute - perhaps dumbstruck might be a more appropriate term - in relation to the issue of desire between women.
A Golden Threat: Feminisms
Exhibition review Feminisms
Curated by Niki Miller
Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
Western Australia
November 1 - 28 1992
One Way Street
John Hughes independent documentary film on Walter Benjamin One Way Street was screened on ABC television in December 1992, the centenary year of Benjamin's birth. The film has been released to festival audiences in the US and Europe and will theatrical release in Sydney and Melbourne in 1993. Here John Hughe slips into pause and explores an opening on certain scenes.
Monica Pellizari's Short Black Look at the Italian-Australian Experience
The title of Monical Pellizari's recently completed short film has a characteristically wry double edge. 'Just Desserts (1993)' tempers an unfortunates Australian maxim with distinctive humour. This film is a delight, a consolidation of the stylistic and thematic concerns of her previous 3 films in 13 witty and evocative minutes.
Digital Art
The Third International symposium on Electronic Art (TISEA) which took place in 16 venues in Sydney from 9 -13 November 1992 converted the whole city into a massive hologram event.
Independent Distribution and Exhibition
In the decades prior to the expansion of art-house cinemas and television programming, 'independent distribution and exhibition' denoted a more specific activity than it does in the 1990s.
The Pure and The Impure: Shaun Kirby
Exhibition review Cultic Gloss: Shaun Kirby
Contemporary Art Centre
Adelaide, South Australia
October 23 - November 24 1992
Transformation of the Real: Constantine Koukias and Ann Wulff
Review To Traverse Water
IHOS Opera Hobart, Tasmania
Constantine Koukias and Ann Wulff