The emphasis in this collection has been on the films and videos themselves rather than the structures which support their production and circulation but they have not been overlooked....
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.
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.
Over 12 days in November 1992, the Melbourne based Modern Image Makers Association (MIMA) held the third Experimenta presenting nearly 200 works of film, video, installation and performance. It included work from Germany, Japan, England and the USA, thus providing an opportunity to assess the current state of 'avant garde' practice and discourse.
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.
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.
"I am not a TV show, this is not a TV show." These are the oft-spoken words of Tony Tjamu, Chairperson of the Mutitjulu Community at Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the Pitjantjatjara Lands of Central Australia. Their repetition reveals something of the exasperation born of the visibility of being Aboriginal in a predominantly white Australia.
Exhibition review Crossings Mary Knott: Drawings and Sculptures 1988 - 1992
Curated by Tony Geddes
The Art Gallery of Western Australia
October 3 - December 13 1992
Geraldton Regional Gallery
December 18 -January 21 1993
Bunbury Art Galleries
January 30 - March 7 1993