Film & Video
Issue 13:1 | March 1993
Special issue on film and video. Guest editor Annette Blonski. Examines independent practice in the 1990s - sexuality and ethnicity, postmodernity, indigenous work, festivals, short films, survival on a low or no budget and electronic art. Includes SCAN+ Volume 4 1993 Special Supplement edited by John Conomos on Electronic Media Arts.
In this issue
Film and Video
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....
Selected Shorts: Oppositionality, Postmodernity and the Australian Short Film
Despite my distrust of the postmodern, the possibility of disruption, the disturbance of vision that postmodernity is capable of providing within the cultural framework needs to be investigated. That such disturbances fail to deliver the most popular short films may be because they unsettle the comfortable fictions with which we seek to live....
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.
More Bangs for Bucks: Male Sexuality and Violence in Australian Film
Looks at 3 Australian films: Romper Stomper Night Out and Resonance each of which brings masculinity, sexuality and violence together.
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.
Wizards of Oz: Into the 90s - Between Documentary and Fiction
In the incredible shrinking space between 1984 and 2001 the distinction between social-issue documentary and surreal fiction is collapsing - almost as fast as Australian capitalism or Soviet communism.
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.
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.
Memory and Image: The Multiculturalism in Film Project
It is diversity, and the celebration of the marginal which makes Australian film innovative. Diversity provides the opportunity for people in Australia to enjoy and reflect on the cultural heterogeneity rather than on the alienating myth with which we are so familiar.
"I Am Like You, I Am Different" - Beyond Ethnicity, Becoming Asian-Australian
Beyond ethnicity, becoming Asian - Australian. How does one address issues of ethnicity? What is authenticity?
Who Told You We Wanted To Make Our Own TV?
The broadcasting in remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme and the failure of policy.
"I Am Not A TV Show"
"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.
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.
"Just Trust The Text, Don't Colour It"
Tracey Moffatt offers her personal insights on the making of 'Bedevil' made in 1992 with Film Finance Corporation Trust funds. Due for release in 1993.
A Tale of Reproduction and Dependency
The interface between film and video education and the Independent film and video production.
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.
The 7th International Video Festival
Blotting paper, alchemy or potent cocktail. When radical European film-makers in the 1950s with the Nagra sound recorder and noiseless, hand held camera, the Eclair, launched what they called Cinema Verite, they thought they had discovered a way to film truth on the move.
Perplexities: Experimenta 1992
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.
Museum Screen Dreams
Sydney's new Museum of Contemporary Art has actively integrated film, TV and videos into its programs since opening in 1991.
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.
Cinema or Death
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.
The Last Days of Chez Nous: Love Stories and Girls' Blouses
In his discussion of male sexuality, it was Freud who asserted that men customarily distribute their libido with expedience. What psychical energies a man 'employs for cultural aims he to a great extent withdraws from women and sexual life'. But not so in the love story, a genre which disavows this predicament.
Wild: Beyond the Deconstruction
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.
Redemptive Moments Through Utter Despair: The Films of Brian McKenzie
Expressionism and modernism. Two old fashioned words in these days of post modernism.
Brother Can You Spare a SP Betacam
Discussion with George Mannix. If there is any form of expression that eats money it is the feature length movie. Camera, lights and actors all cost big bucks and many ideas have stopped at the drawing board simply because there wasn't enough money. Independent Producer George Mannix had other ideas.
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.
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....
Delayed Voyage: George Popperwell
Exhibition review George Popperwell: Recent Works
Contemporary Art Centre, Adelaide, South Australia
September 25 - October 8 1992
The Pure and The Impure: Shaun Kirby
Exhibition review Cultic Gloss: Shaun Kirby
Contemporary Art Centre
Adelaide, South Australia
October 23 - November 24 1992
Colonial Patterns Repeated: Robert Harrison
Exhibition review Architecture without Walls Robert Harrison
University of South Australia Art Museum
10 September - 3 October 1992
Pretty as a Picture: Women Artists and the Heidelberg Era
Exhibition review Completing the Picture: Women artists and the Heidelberg era
Carrick Hill, South Australia
8 November - 6 December 1992
Come Again: Aldo Lacobelli
Exhibition review Souvenirs Aldo Iacobelli
Experimental Art Foundation
South Australia
22 October - 15 November 1992
Journey by Proxy
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
A Golden Threat: Feminisms
Exhibition review Feminisms
Curated by Niki Miller
Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
Western Australia
November 1 - 28 1992
Transformation of the Real: Constantine Koukias and Ann Wulff
Review To Traverse Water
IHOS Opera Hobart, Tasmania
Constantine Koukias and Ann Wulff
Floral Tributes: The Flower
Exhibition review The Flower
Curated by Paul Zika
Plimsoll Gallery, Centre for the Arts
Hobart Tasmania
Against 'Neofuturism': Women Artists in Technological Media
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.