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by Kriszta Doczy
This precious interview had been planned by Albie Thoms and Kriszta Doczy since the beginning of 2012. During that year Albie was battling with his illness and using every drop of his energy to finish his book “My Gen” about the Sixties alternative underground film makers and artists in Sydney. Finally, just three weeks before he passed away Albie sat down with Kriszta and they started the conversation they had planned for so long. The interview was cut short, the book had to be finished and sent to the printer, and Albie was hoping to attend his last party, the launch of his book. See more
Love and Work is an undisguised autobiography. The characters are sometimes played by actors, at other times they are documentary figures taken from home movies or experimental movies made by David Perry. The title came from a statement by Sigmund Freud who, when asked what were the most important things in his life replied: “love and work.” This might be a heavy burden for an Australian personal film to carry, but there it is.
David Perry can get very serious at times, the time of making Love and Work must have been one of those. See more
1. President Johnson’s Visit: A comment on U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s 1966 Australian tour, while Australian and American troops fought in Vietnam.
2. Balmain: “An enquiry, at once lyrical and tragic, into the reality of (the inner Sydney suburb of) Balmain in 1969 – an historic, beautiful and ideally located residential suburb threatened with partial extinction by lack of government planning and foresight, and by indifference to residents’ interests.” Peter King, ‘The Australian’
3. The Phallic Forest: The story is about Oliver and Julia, he in advertising, she an academic, living in a terrace house which they’re renovating, while at the same time their relationship is falling apart.
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Projected on two screens, with two separate soundtracks, the always exceptional, and occasionally brilliant, photographic images are enhanced by de Bruyn’s rigorous control over a wide variety of experimental techniques. Without overindulging in any of them, de Bruyn uses animation, optical illusions, time lapse, solarization, hand tinting, flash frames, refilming and flicker effects, accompanied by a dense atmosphere of word puns, dialogue, primal screams, music and even recycled and letraseted soundtracks. See more
An intense and sometimes disturbing series of encounters between the filmmaker and his mother as they relive the traumatic years of his childhood and adolescence. Following the migration of the family to Australia from Holland in the difficult postwar years they had to grapple with problems of housing, social injustice and adjustment made more difficult by the father’s mental illness. For the filmmaker ‘the sentiment had to be uncompromisingly true’ although he became aware that ‘all film is fiction’. See more
A road movie about Detroit and the automobile industry, a documentary about making a documentary about a city. Detroit, known as Motor City, once the fourth largest city in the United States, home of the Ford Motor Company, General Motors and other major car manufacturers, is nowadays a city in serious decline, which has lost more than half its population and much of its real estate. Until recently, residents would celebrate’Devil’s Night’ on the eve of Halloween by going out and setting fire to dilapidated buildings. Houses, factories, stores, office blocks, theatres, even the railway station, stand in ruins or have disappeared altogether, leaving vast empty lots that have returned to nature. See more
The DVD consists of the PhD thesis of Lila Moore including a link to her YouTube channel listing films and artists mentioned and discussed in the thesis. Also on the DVD: a dance on film, Gaia – Mysterious Rhythms.
Lila Moore claims the autonomy of dance on screen as a hybrid art form, a form which like other creative forms, such as painting, sculpture or even dance, has its own particular aesthetic qualities and limits. The thesis proposes that dance as a live form ceases to exist in the process of its recreation as a screen form. See more
urbunsuburban features a selection of works on video and film by David Pledger made in five instalments from 2001 to 2010: Scenes of the Beginning from the End (2001), Eavesdrop (2004), Walk-In Drive-In/Dusk Till Dawn (2006), The Meaning of Moorabbin is Open for Inspection (2008) and Hoist (2010). They were made as a part of or constitute the whole material for these projects which were variously described at the time of distribution as: live performance, interactive cinematic artwork, visual art, site-specific installation or screen and object-based public art. See more
Dances of Ecstasy is a sensory journey into the mesmerising world of trance and ecstasy that binds dancers from Manhattan to Morocco. Filmmakers Michelle Mahrer and Nicole Ma travelled to traditional and modern day rituals to discover what is the altered state experience which people seek through dance.
In these rituals, Whirling Dervishes from Turkey, Orisha priestesses from Nigeria and Brazil, and shaman healers from the Kalahari and Korea, pulse to the same beat as thousands of young people at an all night techno dance party in an Australian forest. See more
When Evil Reigns is the debut feature film for Australian brothers Luke and Alix Jackson. With a budget of only $5000, Luke and Alix fought for more than six years to develop the film from an ambitious dream into a finished product. The result is a gritty, hard-hitting homage to slasher and epidemic horror movie classics, suitable for horror fans and mainstream moviegoers alike. See more
