The Stanislavski Century

Konstantin Stanislavski has been named alongside Freud and Einstein as one of the three greatest visionaries of the 20th Century. Stanislavski was the greatest actor of his age – founder of the celebrated Moscow Art Theater. He introduced the plays of Chekhov and Gorki to the world. He invented stage direction, laid the foundations of modern opera, and created the world’s first acting ‘System’.

This definitive film document tells Stanislavski’s story using unique personal archives never before seen outside Russia. See more

Working Forensically: Collaborative Directing in Contemporary Theatre

NEW! A discussion between Richard Murphet (Director/Writer) and Leisa Shelton  (Director/Performer) about their years of collaboration in directing,  during which they have produced 5 new theatre works. The discussion  makes a clear distinction between collaboration and group devising, and  outlines 4 modes of collaboration that the two artists have undertaken  in their working process.

The works produced over a period from the late 90s to 2008 have lent  themselves to collaboration because of the focus of their content upon  the multiple perspectives of social and personal identity. See more

Body Listening

 Developed by David Pledger, Artistic Director of Australian performance company not yet it’s difficult (NYID), the workshop video takes the viewer through exercises that form the basis of the methodology of body listening.

Joined on the floor with actors, dancers and musicians from NYID and Wuturi, the video is the first recording of a process which has been delivered around the world, including Shanghai, Seoul, Liverpool, Dublin, Melbourne, Chuncheon and Berlin. Body listening is a process which prepares the body to register and process spatial and performative awareness.
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Black Comedy alla Pulcinella by Antonio Fava

Little Opera in words, Lazzi and Music in the style of the Neapolitan Commedia dell’arte.  A real deal: an original performance with an internationally acclaimed Italian master, Antonio Fava.
Premiered in Brisbane in 2010, the performance presents  authentic Italian Comedia scenerarios, centered around the famous character, Pulcinella. Pulcinella is one of the typical characters of Commedia dell’Arte, one of the over two hundred variations of ‘zanni II’, the ‘foolish servant’. Pulcinella in this sense, is only a name just as ‘Arlecchino’, Franceschina, ‘Truffaldino’, ‘Traccagnino’, ‘Tabacchino’, Zagna, Zezza, and so on are simply other names for ‘zanni II’. See more

Director and Actor – Passions, Process and Intimacy with Dalip Sondhi

This film provides an in depth exploration of the complex and intimate relationship between Actor and Director when working on a play-text. It was shot extensively during 3 months of intensive rehearsal and performance in 2011.
The core of the process presented in the film involves working with physical and (subsequent) emotional intensity in the space, and crucially not imposing any preconceived ideas onto the work. See more

Staging the Audience: The Sydney Front

Over the course of the seven years they worked together (1986-1993), the performers of The Sydney Front transformed themselves from the extravagant display of frenzied divas in their first work, Waltz (1987), to stage managers invisibly influencing the actions of the audience as they enacted The Stations of the Cross in Passion (1993).
This DVD presents a kaleidoscope of images and archive footage from all seven of The Sydney Front’s major works, accompanied by observations from the voices of the company members still working in Sydney. See more

Jenny Kemp: Black Sequin Dress, Remember

Black Sequin Productions investigate the psyche and its ability to function creatively in the contemporary world. We inhabit the ‘everyday’ world but carry within ourselves an extensive ‘inner world’. The work is about the relationship between the inner and outer realities, about their dynamic and about the potential of their interaction.
‘haunting, witty, tightly written and distinctive theatre’ – Steven Carroll, The Age.  See more

K

Multi Media Play Inspired by contemporary events and refracted through Franz Kafka’s The Trial, not yet it’s difficult (NYID) decodes the matrix of technology and society. K fuses hard-core physical action, digital technology, sonic architectures and new texts to portray the dark, humorous and violent world of democracy in the Information Age. Part social realism, part science fiction, part fable, part documentary, K lays bare our fragile social apparatus in a hyper-real tsunami of savage absurdism. See more

Blowback

Written and directed by David Pledger, artistic director of the company “not yet it’s difficult” and made in collaboration with the company, BLOWBACK is agit-prop tele-theatre, part science fiction, part documentary and part absurdist metaphor.
Using the body and video as double agents, not yet it’s difficult investigates the dark and violent world of an Australia subject to a new imperial master. BLOWBACK tracks the story of cultural activists who hack into New Australia’s joint communications facility. Onto the facility’s operating system, they encrypt visual information from a banned Australian soap-opera which the group hopes will incite a popular uprising. See more

To Touch Paradise – with Peter Oyston

The film is an interview / documentary with Peter Oyston, best selling author of “How to teach the Stanislavski System”, “Beyond Stanislavski”  and “How to Audition”.

Peter Oyston is an internationally renowed theatre and film director, teacher and painter.  His film maker friend Laszlo Dudas made this film years before he passed away in 2011.  A close friend of Artfilms, Peter fascinated and inspired many people not only as a teacher but also with his visions to build a new theatre in Melbourne and with his painting at his hideaway studio in the bush. See more