Unknown Pleasures: Australian independent cinema A series of regular screenings curated and presented by Chris Luscri & Bill Mousoulis, featuring the best of Australian independent cinema, both classic and contemporary, with discussions with the filmmakers. read more |
INFO FOR SCREENINGS: Our main venue is the Thornbury Picture House, |
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Tuesday, Sep 13, 8:15 pm Q&A with Ivan Gaal and others.
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Stay tuned for details of further screenings in 2022
The following screening (originally scheduled for 2020 and then 2021)
will happen at some point in 2022, along with others:
Two of the
quintessential, widely acclaimed Australian films of the '70s and' 80s, John
Ruane's superb diptych Queensland and Feathers builds upon the structures and
possibilities of the miniature to ultimately craft something more mysterious
and radically open-ended. Linked across the span of almost a decade by the
presence of legendary actor, broadcaster and critic John Flaus, essaying the
same role across both films (a lead in one and a cameo in the next), Ruane
adeptly uncovers the peculiar sense of everyday drudgery and quiet desperation
that characterise the lives of many working men and women. Tonally precise yet
seemingly affectless, the films indelibly capture through recurrent, attenuated
detail what the director has called a ‘vanishing breed of Australians', a world
more rigid, less bound to happenstance and chance than they are to the vagaries
of the almost invisibly oppressive Australian cultural logic. From fractured
affective relations to the lure of the big, coastal city – with its promise of endless
sunshine and a laidback lifestyle – the struggles of Ruane's characters are
eminently relatable. To seek an 'elsewhere' – however tenuously – is ultimately
an heroic-pathetic goal. Theirs are as much acts of hope and defiance as they
are silent, desperate screams against the unyielding, punishingly cyclical
train of life. It is no coincidence that Feathers is based on a 'minor' Raymond
Carver short story – Ruane seems to have learnt that the smaller the scope, the
more pronounced the sense of existential anomie. – Chris Luscri
On Queensland --
"Ruane's characters are familiar
Australians on the screen, acted upon rather than acting, waiting for something
to happen: Doug and Aub, sad workmates dreaming of making the break from the
Melbourne grind to Queensland sun. It is the romantic lure of escape that
occupies so many '60s and '70s "road" films... Ruane's wistful theme is
the fragility of relationships, goals and dreams. With the help of some
excellent playing by John Flaus, Bob Karl, Alison Bird and others, he touches
his people with a quality almost Chekhovian – at the no-hopers' end of the
social scale. We are actually made to care." – Colin Bennett, The Age,
26th July 1976
"A great example of down-beat everyday
realism, of struggling ordinary people. Made by the then student John Ruane
(who went on to make Death in Brunswick and other films), this also set the
template for the "hour-long" indie films that existed in Australian
cinema for the next 20 years or so. The actor John Flaus
Queensland's profile on OzMovies
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On Feathers --
"The latter [FEATHERS] achieved mini-cult
status after the AFI Award screenings in July and is already sharply dividing
audience opinion. The former is a Film and Television School graduation film.
While from very different sources, the two films have a number of common
threads — a concentration on the most ordinary and seemingly insignificant
moments of life, an exploration of the possibilities of love and of the
thousand small accommodations that love demands, and unexpectedly similar
versions of a form of masculinity that is locked partly into eternal
boyhood." - Liz Jacka, Filmnews, December 1987.
"The invisible structures of society lurk
in the sub-text of Raymond Carver's American short story, now a short (48
minutes) Australian movie. Writer-director John Ruane preserves the insights,
cultural relevance and sardonic tone of the original in his translation to
another country and another medium, with fine performances from his
principals." - John Flaus & Paul Harris, The Age, 5th February 1988.
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Tuesday, July 26, 8:30 pm Q&A with Mischa Baka & Siobhan Jackson, moderated by |
The low budget feature You Can Say Vagina stood out in 2018, with its understated quirky humour and atmosphere of awkwardness and innocence. Eventually, it revealed itself as a work of alchemy, between two highly individual filmmakers in their own right, Siobhan Jackson and Mischa Baka. This program presents a selection of their own (short) films, at film school (they were both VCA students) and as independent artists. And they are quite different filmmakers, making You Can Say Vagina a genuine mixture of different impulses.
Siobhan Jackson's work is firstly predicated on the bypassing of words. The narrative films like 1, 2, 3 or Donkey in a Lion's Cage are completely without dialgoue. Like all her work, they have a layered soundtrack of music and sometimes other sounds, establishing a disquieting mood throughout. We are presented with what seems like alternative realities – worlds of fragmented characters and oblique stories, and landscapes that are rich but mysterious. The films are hard to grasp, but they seep into the subconscious. There are transfigured faces (masks, bandages), surreal objects, unusual actions, and always an abundance of dread. Jackson is clearly an experimentalist, including the use of different visual textures for different films.
Mischa Baka's work is quite distinct from Jackson's. He loves music and dance, seen in such "music clip" type films like Walking Shadows and Always, so suddenly, all the time. The editing in these films is always surprising and innovative, and miraculously in step with the choreography of the actors and their dancing (when it shouldn't be, being jarring). Baka loves the human body, and he also elicits great natural but physical performances from his actors (à la Cassavetes). Most of Baka's films are pop and colourful, but Last Beautiful Friend shows his adeptness also in the longer narrative form. More conventional than Jackson's narrative work, Last Beautiful Friend is a penetrating study of several characters, again using unexpected editing. And dare I say that Baka is also a very daring filmmaker, with his explorations of intimacy and sexuality? – Bill Mousoulis
Siobhan Jackson: Profile / Website
Baka & Jackson radio interview by Peter Krausz, Movie Metropolis, July 16, 2022.
Bill Mousoulis radio interview by Eloise Ross, Primal Screen, July 25, 2022.
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Part 1: Siobhan Jackson |
Siobhan Jackson: Burn / 1, 2, 3 / Donkey in a Lion's Cage |
Part 2: Mischa Baka |
Mischa Baka: Clothes Dance / Always, so suddenly, all the time. / Last Beautiful Friend |
Tuesday, April 12, 8:10 pm Q&A with Maria Mercedes (lead actress) and Aanya Whitehead (producer), moderated by Simon Wilmot (Deakin Uni). |
Anna Kannava was (and continues to be) an inspiration to many in the Melbourne film scene and also many in the broader community. Born in Cyprus in 1959, she migrated to Australia in 1974, and found her niche at Deakin University (then Rusden College) studying film, acting, fine art. She settled on directing films, and made a number of short and medium-length works in the '80s and '90s, quirky shorts but also personal and inventive documentaries. Two features followed in the '00s, Dreams for Life in 2004 and Kissing Paris in 2008, but her life was tragically cut short at the age of 51 in 2011. She battled with a health condition (scleroderma) for the last 20 years of her life, and when she developed cancer in 2010, it was too much for her body. But what will be remembered forever, by those who knew her, was her passion, determination and her penetrating but generous personality. And she made exquisitely beautiful films, brimming with life (both joy and pain). Her debut feature Dreams for Life was a surprising work when it came along in 2004, shifting away from the personal and quirky nature of her previous films, and delving into a more controlled art cinema terrain. In a native and intuitive way, she came up with a quintessential "women's film", like the Sydney films featuring voice-over narration (such as Gillian Leahy's My Life Without Steve [1986] or Susan Dermody's Breathing Under Water [1993]}. But her concerns were never feminist or post-feminist. She was an explorer of humanist and existential states, her cinema one of pain and longing, and the joy that can be found in love and adventure. We here at Unknown Pleasures have celebrated her before (we screened Kissing Paris in 2019) and we will continue to celebrate her. – Bill Mousoulis. “What lifts Kannava's work beyond a kind of suburban neo-realism is a strongly lyrical aura, and an investment in the realm of transfiguring desire. Her films are built on dream-sequences, paintings, music, dance, and a whole, sensual experience of fabrics and textures – a special and intimate 'female aesthetic' proudly claimed .... Kannava is concerned with the small tremors in Ellen's life, the barely noticeable but internally powerful transformations of the spirit. Her solitary gestures of swimming or walking are just as significant as the decisions she must make about relationships. And the film, in its quiet but confident style, embodies this character's 'visionary' experience. Dreams for Life richly extends and fulfils the promise of Kannava's previous work. Cheekily taking its title from a self-help book, Dreams for Life is not afraid to confront the ersatz wisdom of the New Age movement in order to dig deep into the emotional truth of slogans about loving yourself, or coming to the peace with the past. ” – Adrian Martin, Dreams for Life review, Film Critic, June 2004. Bill Mousoulis interviewed about Dreams for Life, by Peter Krausz, Movie Metropolis radio show, April 2022. Anna Kannava interviewed about Dreams for Life, by Simon Sandall, Reader's Voice, September 9, 2005. Dreams for Life info page, Melbourne Independent Filmmakers, 2005. |