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.
To begin this discussion of Ross Gibson's new film 'Wild' it may be useful to trace its origins to his 1984 film 'Camera Natura'. The earlier film employed an essay mode to deconstruct the discourses around non-Aboriginal imaging of the landscape.
What is the effect on film when the maker's background is utterly different from the culture in which he now works. Anna Epstein talked to a film-maker who brings fresh vision to the Australian film industry.
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
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.
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.
In matters of technology, as in matters of sex, it is easy to assume one's own preferences are universal and normal, and to regard other's tastes as somehow debased or improper.
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.