Cinema Papers September 1985

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September 1985

Issue 53

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NEWS PLUS . . . The wait-and-see budget, the ABC’s crisis continues, a tribute to Miranda Downes, Crawford’s $ 16-million deal, a film delegation visits from the People's Republic of China, satellite links to Tokyo and some Bicentennial film incentives; Festival reports from Annecy, Melbourne, Munich, Sydney, Taormina and Tokyo. Plus two new sections: an international industry round-up featuring news from the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and New Zealand; and two pages of short profiles — in this issue featuring Cannes Golden Palm winner Emir Kusturica, very independent filmmaker Playdn Keenan and Melbourne producer Rosa Colosimo .................................................................... 2

BEACH BOY

One of the country’s most durable exports, actor and now producer Bryan Brown talks to Dorre Koeser about Australian identity, film acting and The Empty Beach ............................................................. 16

ISSUES: STAR WARS The first in a series of articles in which Cinema Papers asks prominent members of the film and television industry to speak out. Television pioneer Elector Crawford kicks off the series with some comments on the place of imported actors in the Australian in d u stry........................................................... 20 NEIGHBOURS In a special series of articles, we look at film and television in New Zealand. Tony Mitchell talks to Vincent Ward, director of Vigil, the first Kiwi film in competition at Cannes; Nick Roddick provides an overview of the film industry, from its early offerings to the seventies boom and the current aftermath of the end of tax concessions; and Warren Mayne looks back on a quarter of a century of state-run New Zealand television ........................................................................... 24 roeg ;s g a ller y In Cannes to nurse his latest film, Insignificance, through the rigours of competition,

Nicolas Roeg talked to Nick Roddick about big actors, the small release of Eureka, and other tragedies and farces .................................................................................41

FACTS AND FIGURES

Fred Elarden talks to cinematographer Dean Semler about his work before and beyond Thunderdom e; plus a round-up of the current production scene, with a special report on the return of Return to Eden, and a brief look at how Australia’s obsessions have been paling at the box office .......................................................................... 46

Fifties America: above, Michael Emil as The Professor and Theresa Russell as The Actress in Nicolas Roeg’s Insignificance.

Below, turn-of-the-century New Zealand: the Grevillton set in the mini-series Heart o f the High Country.

INEMA No 53 Editor: Nick Roddick. Assistant editor: Debi Enker Office and advertising manager: Patricia Amad. Art director: Ernie Althoff. Secre­ tary: Linda Malcolm. Proof-reading: Arthur Salton.

Typesetting by B-P Typesetting Pty. Ltd. Nega­ tives by ABB-Typesetting Pty. Ltd. Colour separa­ tions by Colourscan Pte Ltd. Printed by York Press Ltd. Distribution by Network Distribution Company, 54 Park Street. Sydney 2000 (Australia) and T.B. Clarke Overseas Pty. Ltd. Founding Murray.

publishers:

Editorial consultants: McFarlane, Tom Ryan.

Peter Fred

Beilby,

Scott

Harden,

Brian

ISSN 0311-3639

FILM REVIEWS

Full-length reviews of Broken Mirrors, D on’t Call Me Girlie, Full Moon in Paris, An Indecent Obsession, Insignificance, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdom e, Morris W e s t’s The Naked Country and A Nightm are on Elm Street. Plus shorter reviews of all the recent releases ................................... 61

Cinema Papers is produced with financial assist­ ance from the Australian Film Commission and Film Victoria. Articles represent the views of their authors and not necessarily those of the editor.

While every care is taken with manuscripts and materials supplied to the magazine, neither the editor nor the publishers can accept liability for any loss or damage which may arise. This maga­ zine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission of the copyright owner. Cinema Papers is published every two months by MTV Publishing Limited, 644 Victoria Street, North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 3051.

Telephone: (03) 329 5983. Telex: AA 30625 Reference ME 230.

BOOK REVIEWS

© Copyright MTV Publishing Limited, No. 53, September 1985.

RKO — The Biggest Little Major of Them All by Betty Lasky; A Night at the Pictures: Ten Decades of British Film by Gilbert Adair and Nick Roddick: Learning to Dream: The New British Cinema

by James Park; and British Cinema Now edited by Martyn Auty and Nick R o d d ick.......................................73

’ Recommended price only.

Front cover: Bryan Brown in The Empty Beach. Inset, Bruno Lawrence in The Quiet Earth.

CINEMA PAPERS September — 1

Coopers & Lybrand W.D. Scott. Not only is that figure considerably inflated, argues the report, but the eco no m ic benefits emanating from the film industry outweigh to a considerable degree any such cost to revenue.

This document, which has been received with considerable interest in Canberra and is likely to become a major talking-point in future discussions, stems in part from dis­ budget briefing, at which a concerted satisfaction with the AFC’s role in represent­ approach to Treasury will hopefully be ing the interests of the film industry to worked out, will take place on 27 August.

Treasury. Indeed the report, some feel, When it happens, that meeting will be the should have been put together by the AFC climax in a period of intense industry itself, rather than by a private firm. activity in the aftermath of the June White Industry dissatisfaction reached a peak at Paper. And, as with all such activity in the a meeting of the Film Industry Standing film world, where public restraint has not Committee on 25 July, when a number of always been a major feature, the meeting is speakers angrily attacked the AFC. One of unlikely to be entirely smooth, since there is the more vociferous of the AFC’s critics, far from unanimous agreement about what John Dingwall, went into print in The Age (5 any concerted approach should contain.

August) with an article that declared, in There is, however, fairly general accept­ anticipation of the axing of 10BA: “ I have ance that September will see the end of the already cast the villain of the piece — present tax concessions, which have been Keating's own regulatory body, the Austra­ in operation since June 1981. They origin­ lian Film Commission.” ally entailed a 150% tax deduction on Accusing the AFC of being inefficient and of giving preference on its board to the service industries rather than the film­ makers themselves, Dingwall summed up his main objections as being two-fold: "It [the AFC] kow-tows to the money merchants who bleed the system. And it continues to give financial backing to proven failed producers.”

The AFC’s Kim Williams totally rejects the notion that the AFC is “ Keating’s regulatory body” . “ We are not the government,” he f says, “ even if the majority of the criticisms would seem to imply that our critics wish we were.” But he points out that he is bound to confidentiality on certain aspects of the AFC’s discussions with Treasury: details simply cannot be passed on to the industry, as the FISC meeting called upon him to do. “ We don’t have that flexibility,” he says.

The AFC Policy Unit’s ‘Discussion Paper on Tax Reform and its Implications for the Film Industry’, issued in August, does however, give some idea of the lie of the land.

In it, five options are listed and discussed: • the White Paper option of a return to the 1978 situation of a two-year write-off; • direct outlays of government funding, either through an increased appropriation to the AFC, or by the establishment of a film bounty or fund; • a prescribed government investment system, under which a film would have to have a set proportion of AFC or state film corporation investment in it before it would qualify for tax concessions; capital invested in film production, and a • a licensing system, modelled on the 50% tax exemption for net income. This was modified, in August 1983, to 133% 1984 Management and Investment Com­ pany Act, which would restrict tax con­ and 33% respectively. But, despite promises that the concessions would cessions to films for which funds had been raised by an approved licensee; remain in place for the life of the present parliament, the White Paper, which esti­ • and ‘claw back’ options, possibly in­ mated the cost to revenue at $95 million, cluding a limit on eligible investments, a makes this extremely unlikely. reduction of tax concessions, or budgetary limits for each category of eligible film.

Despite the fact that 10BA has given a Implicit in all the options, and expressly considerable boost to Australian film pro­ duction — from 1970-1979, there was an stated in the document’s parameters, is the need for some kind of ceiling or ‘lid’ to be average of 13.5 features and mini-series a year; from 1980 onwards, that figure rose to built into the scheme. Indeed, from the document, it is possible to read a clear 27.8 — the loss of tax revenue was felt to be indication that the government will insist on too high. an upper limit being set on its concessions This figure of $95 million is, however, energetically disputed in a lengthy con­ to the film industry, as against the openendedness of the present system. fidential report commissioned by the Screen Production Association of Australia All those approached by Cinema Papers from accountants and tax consultants seemed reluctant to express a preference

Angry exchanges over future film policy

Wait-and-see budget leaves the industry hanging on September As was widely anticipated, budget night (20 August) had little of direct importance to say to the Australian film and television industry.

Reliable sources in Canberra have been saying for the past couple of weeks that any decision about the future of the 10BA tax breaks — whose demise was proposed in the Draft White Paper which preceded the ill-fated July tax summit — would be delayed until September, when the details of the governm ent’s revamped tax package was likely to be announced. To many, the future of the Australian film industry hangs on what is contained in that package.

One bright note on budget night, how­ ever: the Australian Film Commission did fairly well out of 20 August, with a 6.8°/o in­ crease in its appropriation. And, according

to AFC Chief Executive Kim Williams, the Commission was pleased that the Special Production Fund had been given a reprieve, albeit with a reduced level of fund­ ing (down 20% to $4 million). The Fund, Williams points out, was originally set up for two years only, and that time limit had expired with the present financial year.

Meanwhile, the consultations called for in the Draft White Paper have been continuing between the AFC, the various state film bodies, and the industry. At time of going to press, it is rumoured that the major post­

2 — September CINEMA PAPERS

for any of the options, evidently preferring to keep all options — including, presum­ ably, some not mentioned in the AFC docu­ ment — open.

All options, however, have their opponents. According to Film Victoria Director Terence McMahon, the Film Vic Board has 'very reluctantly’ reached the decision that, if it came down to a choice between the prescribed government invest­ ment option and the licensed fundraisers, they would have to support the former.

The Australian Writers’ Guild has also come out strongly against the licensed fundraiser option, and there is some feeling that the strength of their opposition has removed this from its evident position as front-runner.

John Weiley, President of the Screen Pro­ duction Association of Australia, who still believes that, following the Coopers & Lybrand report, 10BA deserves to be re­ considered, rules out the direct subsidy option “ because that takes the decisions out of the hands of those who have some­ thing at stake. We’re violently opposed to the notion that decision-making should be centralized. No one can guarantee that the right decision will ever be taken, of course, but our best bet is to rely on a person’s burning ambition to be rich and famous.”

What does seem crucial is that, in the next few weeks, a measure of agreement is reached within the industry — to the extent, of course, that this is possible. As Weiley points out, the industry has to overcome some fairly entrenched attitudes. “ The real problem is that there are sensible things to be done that are politically impossible, and things that are politically possible but aren’t really sensible. We’re not dealing with very sophisticated arguments: we’re dealing with prejudice.”

No time for Aunties Public broadcasting systems come under fire It has, over the past few months, been open season on the Australian Broadcasting Cor­ poration. Though this can hardly be a new situation for the ABC, the attacks have been coming from so many quarters and with such a degree of violence that it is begin­ ning to look very much like crisis time for the venerable institution. Matters have not been helped by the fact that the Cor­ poration itself has, by and large, responded with all the articulate elegance of a grouse with its tail full of buckshot.

Though discontent has been building for some time, it seems to have been changes in the news that sparked off the present flood of criticism. Evidently seen by the Cor­ poration as an attempt to provide a deeper contextualization of the news (see Cinema Papers No 52, ‘Getting in on the Action’ by John O’Hara), The National has been seen by the Corporation’s critics as taking on “ the tones of trendy hucksters who are not even good at selling” .

The phrase comes from an 11 August letter to the national press by what has come to be known as the Gang of Thirteen — a group of thirteen literary, artistic and

News Plus

other luminaries including Patrick White, Pat Lovell, C.J. Koch, Thomas Kenneally and The Hon James ‘Diamond Jim ’ McLelland. McLelland returned to the fray the following day with attacks on the ABC’s chief executive, Geoffrey Whitehead, and the Chairman of the Board, Ken Myer.

If the attacks have been somewhat im­ precise — the Gang of Thirteen’s letter was strong on rhetoric, but contained very little in the way of concrete suggestions or even precise criticisms — the ABC’s own response has left something to be desired.

Given the traditional analogy that the Cor­ poration is like an aircraft carrier which takes a while to turn around, it has begun of late to look more like the HMAS Wollon­ gong — holed, but kept afloat by bags of (hot) air.

There have been massive defections from the ABC’s ranks, with that of Huw Evans the most public. 350 of the Corpora­ tion’s staff have reportedly taken advantage of generous redundancy plans, The National has been axed and the ABC has been seen to be in considerable disarray.

In the week following the Gang of Thir­ teen’s letter, however, the publicity depart­ ment pulled its socks up, and sympathetic interviews with the Directors of Television and Radio were prominently featured in the press. Currently, there seems to be some­ thing of a gentleman’s agreement that the season is closed.

Not in Canberra, however, where the attacks originated. Although plans for sponsorship or even direct advertising on the ABC have been dropped, the budget allocation of $395 million, $48 million up on last year, will be eaten into heavily by the cost of AUSSAT, and is likely to mean a 3% cut in real terms. In general, the ABC is going to have to continue its staff cuts and programme cancellations to come in in the black.

It has, indeed, not been a terrific two months for television of any kind. The US media has been under attack for its hand­ ling of the Beirut hostage crisis. And the BBC has been engaged in a major crisis which has clear implications for the ABC. The senior Aunty’s problems centered around an apparently innocuous docu­ mentary in which Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein was interviewed. In an escalating debate, which appears to have been fuelled by The Sunday Times, Mrs Thatcher complained about terrorists being given “ the oxygen of publicity". The BBC’s Board then viewed the programme and decided to have it withdrawn. Whether or not they did so under direct threat from the Prime Minister is unclear. What is clear is that the decision was taken in response to political pressure, rather than in the interests of the Corporation or its longestablished independence.

On the other side of the ballpark, Aus­ tralia's commercial networks have been axing their favourite sons left, right and centre in the face of a cash crisis caused by the slide in the value of the dollar and a general decline in advertising revenue.

Whether this last factor had anything to do with the government’s decision not to open the ABC up to advertising is hard to say: if the cake is shrinking, giving Aunty a slice of it is not going to help.

But the related problems at the two ends of the spectrum — the ABC’s role model (and source of many of its current produc­ tion staff) in Britain, the commercial stations which it is being accused of aping — seem to spell an uncertain future for the Corpora­ tion.

Like the debate on the film industry, it is not one in which reason can really compete with passion, as the Gang of Thirteen’s letter made clear. But what does seem to have started is a gradual erosion of the ABC’s position: letterwriters to The Austra­ lian continue to attack it for being left­ leaning, while its traditional constituency has hit out at it for being commercially minded. It is not a position from which the Corporation is going to find it easy to fight back.

Obituary: Miranda Downes Producer David Elfick pays tribute to the Australian screenwriter On the evening of 3 July, Miranda Downes was murdered on a beach just north of Cairns. This appalling crime cut short the career of one of our most promising screen­ writers.

In writing about her career, I cannot but think how this senseless act, which occurred on a public beach at the height of the tourist season, has deprived us of so much.

Miranda was an extremely talented person. She had an honours degree in English, spoke five languages, played guitar and sang. She had travelled exten­ sively, particularly in Asia, and had written poetry before beginning her screenwriting career.

Her first screenplay was Undercover, which I produced as a feature film. While the film performed below our expectations, the process of seeing her first screenplay made into a film was a valuable one.

In the next three years, she worked extremely hard. She wrote a screenplay for David Puttnam’s First Love series, The House That Jack Built, and The Last Resort for New Zealand producer Lloyd Phillips. With the assistance of the AFC comedy fund she wrote Psychograph, a screenplay which Bob Weis has just optioned.

Her work for me since Undercover has been the adaptation of the novel, Cane, into a feature film script. Adaptation was a new challenge. After three drafts, Miranda had produced a really hot screenplay, but we felt that it was a mini-series property rather than a feature.

The Cane script served as the first two hours of a four-hour mini-series. Miranda and Robert Marchand then completed the storyline for the final two hours. The English television production company, Zenith, thought that it was a fantastic property and wanted to fund the production.

On Friday 2 July, Miranda delivered the final tidy-ups for the storyline before she took off for a well-earned two-week holiday.

In her screenwriting career, she had quickly learned her craft and then, comfort­ able with the process, was able to use her

intelligence and knowledge to develop characters with depth, dignity and under­ standing. All of her screenplays have this quality, and one is sad when one con­ templates what more she would have achieved.

‘Relevant’ films to Garden state blooms get a boost Boost to Victorian film and television production from Bicentennial Authority to endorse productions

Crawford’s package

Crawford Productions has announced a $16.1-million package of feature films and mini-series to be produced in Victoria over Perhaps mindful of the recent rumblings the next twelve months. about excessive first-class travel yielding Present at the announcement of the deal, negligible results, the Australian Bicenten­ Victorian Minister for the Arts Race nial Authority has announced an endorse­ ment policy for selected film and television ■ Mathews declared that the four mini-series and two features represented “ the largest projects. The aim is to encourage enter­ single package of film and television ever prises of special relevance to the 1988 cele­ put together in Victoria” . And, to illustrate brations. the fact that the state government has The endorsement process will be avail­ designated film and television as “ high able for features, mini-series, documen­ priority development areas” , it has backed taries, telemovies and specials. Successful the enterprise, through Film Victoria, with applicants will be able to use the Bi­ $1.6 million up front — the largest single centennial logo and will be given pro­ investment by the corporation to date. motional support by the Authority.

Though destined not to have the desired Applications for endorsement must come effect on the Nunawading by-election, from a producer or production company. which was announced two days earlier and Prior to consideration, projects must be fully involved the electorate in which Crawford scripted and costed, and details of key Productions is located, the project is aimed, personnel — director, producer, major cast according to Mathews, at restoring members — must be supplied.

Victoria’s mantle as the “ capital of film pro­ Specialist panels from the film and tele­ duction in Australia” , and will generate vision industries will be assessing the 100-150 jobs. applications and are on the look-out for Three years ago, the state’s contribution those that are “ distinctive, original and to national production had dropped to innovative” , and have relevance to the Bi­ 20%, a rate that had doubled by the centennial's aims.

1984-85 financial year. However, with this These include “ strengthening national package, the 1985-86 period should see a pride, promoting the Bicentennial theme, further climb in Victoria's percentage of the ‘Living Together’, increasing national country’s film and television production. understanding and reaching the widest possible audience” .

Mathews stressed that the government’s involvement did not take the conventional Deadlines for applications for features form of a grant, but was, rather, a pump and mini-series will be mid-January; for priming operation, designed to produce a other categories, applications must be “ true revolving fund of investment” , lodged by late February.

producing profits that can be ploughed back into further production.

The first production in the package, I Live With Me Dad, a $1-million feature with producer Ross Jennings and director Paul Moloney, started shooting on 1 July and is currently in post-production. The executive producers on this, as with all the other projects in the package, are Hector Craw­ ford, Ian Crawford and Terry Stapleton.

The other feature in the group, One Perfect Day, has a budget of $4.2 million and will be produced by Alan Hardy and directed by George Miller. Miller devised the concept for the film, which will be written by John Reeves.

Chronologically, the next cab off the rank will be The Far Country, a four-hour mini­ series with a budget of $2.8-million. A tenweek shoot will start on 9 September with Michael York and Sigrid Thornton in the lead roles. Based on the novel by Nevil Shute, the series will be produced by John Barningham, directed by George Miller and written by Peter Yeldham.

Whose Baby?, Alice to Nowhere and My Brother Tom, all four-hour mini-series with budgets of $2.7 million, $2.8 million and $2.6 million respectively, complete the package. Whose Baby? will be produced

by Mark DeFriest and written by Vince Moran and Peter Schreck.

Alice to Nowhere, based on the book

by Evan Green, will be adapted by David Boutland and My Brother Tom, based on the novel by James Aldridge, will be written

by Tony Morphett.

CINEMA PAPERS September — 3

News Plus

High-level film visitors from the People’s Republic Chinese delegation scouting for suitable local product With the People’s Republic of China fast becom ing one of A u stra lia ’s more important trading partners, a high-ranking Chinese delegation toured the country in July and early August.

Led by Shi Fang Yu, director of the China Film Bureau, the delegation was the guest of the AFI, which is sponsoring the present broad retrospective of 50 years of Chinese cinema, under the title of ‘Romance and Revolution’. The season, which extends from The Road and The Goddess, two silent films made in 1934, to last year’s Why Was I Ever Born? and Life, is the most extensive retrospective ever assembled for an Australian audience. It will screen in all capital cities.

The delegation’s visit, however, was as much commercial as cultural. Chen Xiaolin, director of international trade with the China Film Export and Import Corporation, was scouting for local films to meet China’s voracious film needs. According to figures supplied from Beijing, 70 million Chinese go to the cinema every day (though this figure sounds like a calculation based on every member of the population going to the cinema once a week).

Foreign films are increasingly popular, and should ideally fit into the action-adven­ ture category, with some underlying moral message (though a recent report that Rambo is due to be shown in Shanghai indicates that other, more political factors — the current anti-Vietnam sentiments, for example — can take precedence).

However, as members of the delegation viewed 30 local films, dating from the seventies to the current crop, including Bliss, The Coca-Cola Kid and The Boy Who Had Everything, action adventure films were not really on the itinerary (with the possible exception of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome). The delegation was making a preliminary selection for five

titles to be shown in three to five cities towards the end of 1986. As there is no censorship classification in China, the dele­ gates were specifically looking for films with broad general appeal. Other titles viewed by the visitors included Newsfront,

Sunday Too Far Away, My Brilliant Career, Starstruck, The Man From Snowy River and Gallipoli.

Since the delegation did not contain any representatives from the Ministry of Tele­ vision and Broadcasting or any specialists in documentary film, selections were tenta­ tive. However, viewings were also con­ ducted with a broader retrospective of Aus­ tralian films in mind. The second series could take place in 1988, and would feature a wider selection of films aimed at audiences of film industry personnel in China.

The other area of interest for the visitors was the possibility of co-productions, currently being actively pursued in the People’s Republic. Despite considerable logistical difficulties, there have been some 60 international co-productions in recent years, with Japan as the main partner, as a result of a thaw in relations between the two countries.

Australia is currently an attractive part­ ner, and Shi Fang Yu was especially interested in the potential for joint ventures, to be made in Australia and exploring the problems facing Chinese families living here.

Other members of the delegation were Shen Songsheng, principal of the Beijing Film Academy, Chen Jingliang, deputy secretary general of the China Cinema Art Research Centre and deputy chief of the China Film Archives (who will be back for the FIAF meeting in Canberra next year), and Zhang Xingyuan, ubiquitous inter­ preter extraordinaire on all such dele­ gations to English-speaking countries.

Briefly . . .

■ The AFI Awards will be telecast nation­ ally on Saturday 14 September through the Ten Network. The two-hour telecast will cover the ceremony, to be held at Her Majesty's Theatre in Sydney, and will be compered by Garry MacDonald. Accord­ ing to publicists from the station, guest pre­ senters will include Bryan Brown and wife Rachel Ward in their first public appearance together, and "everyone from Jacki Weaver to Angry Anderson” .

■ Burke and Wills will have its gala premiere in Melbourne, in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Proceeds from the night will be donated to the Cancer Institute of Victoria and the Variety Club.

The $9-million feature, directed by Graeme Clifford and starring Jack Thompson, Nigel Havers and Greta Scacchi, is currently completing post-production.

■ Following the AFI Awards, the AFI, in conjunction with the Australian Film and Television School, is organising a series of seminars with AFI award winners. The seminars will be aimed at practitioners, with areas to include Director, Cinemato­ grapher, Script, Costume and Production Design, Original Music Score, Sound and Editing. Dates and times will be announced soon after the awards.

9 While the issue of corporate sponsorship causes heated discussion when raised in connection with the ABC, the National Film and Sound Archive has begun a campaign to attract sponsors, in the hope of achieving greater independence. The plan, con­ ceived by special projects officer Mike Lynskey and Sponsor Brokers of Australia, offers sponsors exclusive promotional rights to packages of material financed for preservation by the archive. It is hoped that the scheme can raise $1 million per year.

AWARDS: Though currently embattled by funding crises and staff cuts on one front and the controversy over content on another, the past glories of the ABC have been recognised at the 1985 Awgie Awards, which cover writing for screen, television, stage and radio.

Aunty scooped seven of the seventeen categories for scripts including The Gillies Report (Patrick Cook, Don Watson, John Clarke and Phil Scott), Mother and Son

........................................................................................... .. « ■ » T M llB T K fm w rU iE g a im 'M g H —

4 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Screenwriting Awgies went to Paul Cox and Bob Ellis for their original screenplay for My First Wife. The major award went to Ray Lawrence and Peter Carey for their adaptation of Carey's novel, Bliss.

In addition, the Writers Guild awarded critic, publisher and theatre critic Katherine Brisbane the Dorothy Crawford Award for her outstanding contribution to the profession.

John Baxter is a film reviewer for The Aus­ tralian and author of numerous books on the cinema.

Rod Bishop teaches film at the Phillip Institute of Technology.

Susan Bredow is a writer for the arts pages of The Australian.

Pat H. Broeske is a freelance journalist and writer on film and television based in Orange, California.

Lorenzo Codelli is a freelance journalist based in Trieste, a contributor to Positif and Italian correspondent for the International

Film Guide.

Franco di

Chiera is a filmmaker, researcher and writer on film, currently working as a director at SBS TV. Mike L, Downey is a writer and presenter of an English-language programme for TV Belgrade.

Helen Greenwood is a freelance book editor and writer on film.

Fred Harden is a film and television pro­ ducer and has a regular column on tech­ nical information in The Video Age. Paul Harris is co-host of Film Buffs’ Fore­ cast on 3RRR and a regular contributor to The Age Weekender.

Sheila Johnston is a London-based writer and film critic for LAM magazine.

Dorre Koeser is a freelance writer currently

Press.

Adrian Martin is a tutor in film studies at

The kids come off better than the technology course, all their respective counterparts in Japan.

To an INXS soundtrack, the Sydney girls presented a fairly sophisticated production, with highlights such as a boy eating a meat pie and explaining it to the camera. Both works were plagued with lighting problems, but the Bunrin product was somewhat less stylish. At times, in fact, it was plain bad: in both form and content, it suggested a rigidity and discipline which contrasted with our own home-grown version of educa­ tional anarchy.

The questioning was cumbersome, with translations required; but the main problem was that all the corporate and political adults wanted to have a large finger in the pie, leaving one with the feeling that the whole presentation should have been left to the students.

Film Australia gave quite a lot of help to the Sydney girls, but one Japanese student, responding to a question, bluntly observed that they got virtually no help.

Both groups of students complained about lack of time to make their films, but both also paid tribute to the work of the Inter­ national Red Cross in helping to create world unity and peace.

OTC was hoping to use the occasion as a demonstration of tele-conference facilities and capabilities. But it was the divergence

Letters

based in Los Angeles.

Irene Kotlarz is Director of the Cambridge Animation Festival.

Peter Krien is a film critic for the Sunday

Cultural values contrasted in satellite link-up The most interesting aspect of a live satellite link-up between Sydney and Tokyo on 25 July was the way in which it highlighted the cultural and life-style differences of Aus­ tralian and Japanese children.

In a subtle but positive way, the medium proved to be outdone this time by the message, despite the context of a self­ important event that threatened to drown its own purpose.

OTC and the Red Cross, with help from several other organizations, set up the link as a gesture of international goodwill and, especially, as a symbol of optimism in the present International Year of Youth.

Girls from the film studies class at Sydney Girls’ High were asked to make a fifteenminute documentary about aspects of their life at school. The students at their sister school, Tokyo’s Bunrin High, were asked to do the same, and the documentaries were then shown prior to the live cross. The satel­ lite link was open for 45 minutes, during which students from the two schools exchanged questions about their respec­ tive lives.

First, though, there were amusing intro­ ductions by Rod Quantock (of Australia, You’re Standing In it fame), speeches from Federal Communications Minister Michael Duffy, OTC Managing Director George Maltby, the school Principal and, of

(episode The Funeral by Geoffrey Atherden), Singles (episode Stefan by Linda Aronson) and One Summer Again (Bill Garner).

Other television awards went to Leon Saunders for Beyond All Reason, an episode of Carson’s Law; Morris Gleitzman for his episode of the Winners series, The Other Facts of Life; and Alma de Groen for her adaptation of Man of

in social customs and educational methods between the two countries which really emerged.

Australian children, as exemplified by Sydney Girls’ High, are strong individual­ ists, only casually controlled by the school as far as dress and hair are concerned, attend school only five days a week, do casual work on Saturdays and are quite outspoken.

By contrast, the Japanese students are disciplined to a far greater extent, have six days school a week, conform more readily, are somewhat reticent about commun­ icating and are not permitted to do casual work.

The function had no revelation to make technically, and invited guests had to watch the two large projection screens through the brightly-lit auditorium (to allow video cameras to record the event for internal and public viewing), which detracted from the quality.

The live link ended with the Sydney and Tokyo girls singing ‘We Are the W orld’ more or less together, which would have made a desirable closer. Sadly, though, more speeches and some presentations — all most worthy — had still to be made, which rather blunted the warm inner glow of youthful optimism.

Andrew L. Urban

the Melbourne College of Advanced Education.

Sue May is the editor of the New Zealand motion picture industry magazine, OnFilm.

Warren Mayne is a media writer for New Zealand’s National Business Review and contributor to OnFilm magazine.

Brian McFarlane is a lecturer in English at Chisholm Institute.

Belinda Meares is a New Zealand-born freelance writer working out of Paris.

Tony Mitchell teaches film and theatre at the University of New South Wales.

Dieter Osswald is a journalist based in Germany and a contributor to Filmecho.

Don Ranvaud is the editor of Framework magazine, a film festival consultant and a documentary filmmaker.

Bill Routt is one half of a couple of Mel­ bourne academics.

Tom Ryan is a lecturer in Media Studies at Swinburne, a contributor to The Video Age and film reviewer for the 3LO Sunday show.

Sally Semmens works in the documentary division of Film Victoria.

David Stratton is the host of Movie of the Week on SBS TV and reviews films for

Variety.

Andrew L. Urban is the managing editor of Event magazine and a regular contri­ butor to the arts pages of The Australian.

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News Plus — Festivals and markets

Back on the rails again Revived Melbourne Film Festival does well despite problems After last year’s disaster, the 1985 Mel­ bourne Film Festival could have been called a success just for happening. As it was, however, the Festival came up with an imaginative programme, good public response and a number of interesting related events.

The latter included an ‘Age Lecture’, with British director Alan Parker as the inaugural guest; a 30-year Oberhausen retrospective, attended by the short film festival’s retiring director, Wolfgang Ruf, which played to full houses; and a number of interesting seminars. ~ Then there was the Short Film com­ petition, a FIAPF-endorsed event with $12,000 in prizes. The top one — the $4,000 City of Melbourne Award for Best Film — went to Les Blank’s In Heaven There is No Beer, about polka fanatics.

The event attracted little media attention, however — the Age reserved its smallest point size for announcing the winners — and its profile is probably best measured by the fact that, a month after the Festival was over, it took the Festival office fifteen minutes to check on the name of the winner.

Financially, the Festival came in $7,000 under its $224,000 budget, but subscrip­ tions were also down on the projected figure. And there were some grumblings about the colour-coded admission tickets, with patrons unhappy at being unable to get into half-empty screenings which happened to be the wrong colour.

Festival Director Paul Coulter is looking for a more flexible system next year. There is some doubt about whether he will be on hand to oversee it, however. Despite his success at getting the Festival together in six months and ensuring a more or less problem-free run, the Director’s job is being re-advertised (though Coulter has been invited to re-apply). Melbourne’s problems seem reluctant to go away completely.

On the film front, the winners of the informal — and somewhat unreliable — audience poll were Marleen Gorris’s

Gebroken Spiegels (Broken Mirrors), reviewed elsewhere in this issue, and the Swedish fantasy romp, Ronja Rovardotter

(Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter).

In common with Sydney, Melbourne tried to hit a balance between films with a com­ mercial appeal which would soon be in release, and the ‘best of world cinema’ recipe common to most non-market-related festivals. Indeed, some sort of film market looks increasingly to be an area into which Melbourne should consider developing.

Among the soon-to-be-released films were Birdy, Blood Simple, Broken

Mirrors, Dance With a Stranger, Les nuits de la pleine lune (Full Moon in Paris), Heimat, Insignificance, Red Matildas, Repo Man and Rok spokojnego sonca (The Year of the Quiet Sun).

The two Australian features, The Boy Who Had Everything and Wrong World, are

described in the programme booklet as ‘measured’, is pretty much of a piod.

I wish, too, I could like Satyajit Ray's

Ghaire-Baire (The Home and the World) more. Seemingly the perfect Ray project — a moment of personal crisis with historical ramifications — it is told so economically, with such discreet emphasis on the words and such a fierce refusal (except in one brief sequence) to open out the story, that it becomes stagey and static.

Unlike most people, I really liked Helke Sander’s Der Beginn aller Schrecken 1st die Liebe (The Trouble with Love), which had a high walk-out rate. Far better co-ordinated than her previous film, Die

subjektive Faktor (The Subjective Factor), it took a while for its sense of irony

and humour to register. When it did, however, what emerged was a sincere and simultaneously self-mocking portrait of a woman (played by the director) who believes in love, but also believes that it ought to be possible to end a relationship still looking for distributors, but got rationally. generally good responses. .

Inevitably, she is disabused in both In the in te rna tiona l sm org asb ord cases, as much by her self-obsessed category, Melbourne showed Banbianren partner, the improbably-named Traugott (Ah Ying) by Allen Fong (Fong Yuk-Ping) (Lou Castell), as by her female friends, who which, like Fong’s earlier Fuzi Qing are initially supportive, but seem unpre­ (Father and Son), gives a charming, pared to deal with her emotional traumas. beautifully modulated but hard-edged and “ If it was rape,” she complains, “ a solid­ accurate picture of life in Hongkong. In it, arity committee would be sitting here.” the colony comes across not — as its com­ Tony G atliff’s Les Princes (The mercial movies suggest — all martial arts, Princes), a heartfelt story about semi­ kiss-kiss bang-bang and car chases, but a s . urbanized gypsies in contemporary France, a place of special pressures and problems. is undoubtedly an extraordinary first The film, though, left me wanting a little feature. Its hero, Nara (Gerard Darmon), more backbone to the story. tries to hold together his family, now Theo A ngelopoulos’s Taxidhi sta reduced to his ageing mother and his Kithira (Journey to Cythera), which inex­ young daughter, after he has kicked out his plicably won the Best Screenplay award at wife for taking contraceptives. It is a life of Cannes last year, confirms the director as a petty crime and occasional work, caught master political showman, able to deal in between official hostility and local racism. stunningly broad canvases and epic Finally, the trio takes to the road in search of moments, but a little cavalier when it comes an impossible justice, and the old lady (a to dramatic structure. His masterpiece, O magnificently exaggerated performance by Thiassos (The Travelling Players), was Muse Dalbray, the only professional in the held together by its sense of history, which cast) dies after consuming an entire dish of also more or less patched up Angelo­ cous-cous. poulos’s subsequent I Kinigi (The The problem with The Princes is that its Hunters). Journey to Cythera certainly anti-social anarchy is too often expressed has its stunning moments, most notably as self-centred machismo, while the film has near the end, when the characters gather in a relentlessly single point of view. But it a rain-swept port. But the rest of the film, deserves to be remembered, if only for the Romany theory of the creation. God, it seems, was baking some clay dolls. The Memories o f a nuclear past: one o f the inhabitants o f Rongelap A toll in Dennis first batch he forgot and overcooked, pro­ O ’Rourke’s documentary H alf Life, which ducing black men; the second he was was shown at Melbourne. nervous about, took out too soon, and came up with white men. The third batch he got just right, and made gypsies.

The Festival’s two high spots came for me, however, from two very different films about the nuclear age. Geoff Murphy’s The Quiet Earth, a characteristically anarchic combination of post-apocalypse drama and zany humour, is discussed at greater length elsewhere. And anyway, it seems wrong to link it with Dennis O’Rourke's magnificent documentary, Half Life, about the effects of America’s Bikini Atoll nuclear tests on the inhabitants of the neighbouring Marshall Islands.

Slowly, meticulously and to ironic steelguitar music, O’Rourke builds up a more or less irrefutable case for Rongelap Atoll and its inhabitants having been used as guinea pigs. The film’s greatest strength lies in the fact that it is neither strident nor emotional, though the material must have made that tempting.

But no one who has seen it is likely to forget the unstressed contrast between a racist fifties documentary about a visit to a US medical research centre by a group of Marshall Islanders, and the quiet account, by the father of one of the group, of his son’s subsequent death.

Intelligent, moving and unmanipulative, Half Life is the kind of film that justifies festivals, demonstrating audience response for films of which distributors are likely to be wary, but which deserve to be seen in public, rather than on television. Coming near the end, Half Life was Melbourne’s coup.

Nick Roddick

6 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Ticket sales down at the Sydney Film Festival Japanese films provide this year’s highlights The five-to-six per cent decline in ticket sales for this year’s Sydney Film Festival, which ran from 7 to 23 June, somehow seems to have provoked more discussion than the films themselves.

The reasons for the fall-off given by Festival Administrator Patricia Watson were the trend towards home entertainment and the number of international films currently shown on SBS-TV. But the excuse sounds a little thin. The fact that eight of the 32 features were either released commercially during the Festival or are due to be released later this year, is evidence that the Sydney Film Festival is deliberately choosing to appeal to the very audience that would see the same films in a cinema — and would, therefore, demand something more from a film festival.

Thus the decline in ticket sales seems to indicate a lack of foresight. At all events, Festival Director Rod Webb has said that there will be some restructuring before next year's Festival.

This year, the highlights were Japanese.

Without doubt, the most compelling docu­ mentary was Masaki Kobayashi's Tokyo Saiban (Tokyo Trial), which tested the endurance of festivalgoers with a running time of four hours, 25 minutes (though it was a minor test when compared with the Melbourne Film Festival’s fifteen-hour

Heimat!).

Tokyo Trial documents the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal of the Far East in their trial and judgement of prominent Japanese war leaders. Although not as personally confronting as Robert Kramer’s Unser Nazi (Our Nazi), the brilliantly edited American footage brings to life Japanese activities in Asia in the seven­ teen years before World War II. It also throws into question the validity of the charges, the conduct of the trial and the behaviour of the victorious Allies, the US in particular. Kobayashi’s direction and editing ensured that, just when one felt one had had enough, the tone and pace of the film shifted, and once again became intriguing.

Two other films, one indirectly Japanese, drew different pictures of Japanese society.

Tokyo Ga, Wim Wenders’s tribute to and portrait of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu and his country today, was a study in cinema and in the weaving of thoughts and images. Gyakufunsha Kazoku (Crazy Family), directed by Sogo Ishii, treats as a black, bizarre comedy the breakdown of the family structure and of traditional Japanese ways. It also reveals the current obsession of Japanese filmmakers with the effects of Westernization.

A fiction feature from Holland, Schatjes!

(The Little Darlings!), directed by Ruud Van Hemert, shared its theme and absurd humour with Crazy Family, A wickedly funny, child-like fantasy of being able to turn on one’s parents and successfully drive them out of their home and their minds, it indicated that the generation gap was universal.

Aside from Japan, other fascinating examples of the diversity in documentary filmmaking were Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s Dance Black America, all joy and lightness and careful observation of the beauty of the human spirit and body; Which Side Are You On?, Ken Loach’s controversial record of the British miners’ strike — passionate, gritty and un­ ashamedly partisan; and Mike Leigh’s Four Days in July, a quasi-documentary, quasi-fictional account of two Ulster

News Plus — Festivals and markets

Fanny Ardant in Alain Resnais’s Love Unto Death, a strange mixture o f mysticism and metaphysics, which was one o f the film s on show at Sydney.

L’amour à mort (Love Unto Death) and Godard’s Prénom: Carmen (First name: Carmen). My Country is

Jean-Luc

families, and, by extension, of the 'troubles’ in Northern Ireland.

Daniel Schmid’s II bacio di Tosca (Tosca’s Kiss) is a warm, deferential look at the ageing, fading opera stars that inhabit the Casa di riposo established by Giuseppe Verdi in Milan in 1902. No remorse and no regrets appear in the faces and voices of these graceful, charming old people, full of the foibles of youth and memories of past conquests. Schmid has created a fantasy world, almost a fiction, from reality.

Another ode to old age, and one of the

finest shorts in the festival, was Mamasuncion, directed, written and produced by Chano Pineiro. Beautifully shot in glowing, warm light, it is an elegant story of a gentle, simple woman who waits 40 years for a letter from her son abroad. Moving and passionate, and only 21 minutes long, it rekindles one’s admiration for filmmaking done under difficult circumstances but with much imagination.

Three films whose reputation preceded them to Australia were Lino Brocka’s Bayan Ko (My Country), Alain Resnais’s

courageous cinema marred by the film­ maker’s need to create a conventional climax. At some point, one crosses from realist cinema to dramatic convention, and much of what is penetrating about the film — the sense of class struggle, the clutter of Filipino urban life — is lost as people become characters, and events become dramatic situations.

Resnais’s Love Unto Death, a romantic view of love, tinged with mysticism, lay metaphysics and bowdlerized theology, was, in the end, unsatisfying. It is imposs­ ible to identify with the filmmaker’s percep­ tion, no matter how much one agrees with his ideas, because one feels alienated from the characters and wary of his methods.

Godard’s First Name: Carmen was both a disappointment and a delight because it contained Godard’s own dis­ appointment and delight with the cinema.

Too obvious to be provocative but too biting, at times, to be ignored, it could have been entitled ‘Jean-Luc Godard by JeanLuc Godard’; the best moments occurred when Godard was on the screen.

Finally, from two badly maligned film industries, there were two offerings that would contradict the current lore. Dead­ head Miles, a 1971 American film, directed

by Vernon Zimmerman and never released, was pure escapism. Toying with genres, laconic and full of stranger-than-fact characters, Deadhead Miles proves that some of the best American cinema has not been seen and that the early seventies was a time of zany innovation.

On the Loose, directed by Jane Oehr, is an Australian documentary that is an intelli­ gent look at the difficulties teenagers experience at school and in finding jobs.

Tightly scripted, well acted by a mainly non­ professional cast and totally lacking in con­ descension, it showcases the talents of Jane Oehr and some of the interesting work being done in the area of sponsored documentaries.

Helen Greenwood

Standing room only at Munich’s third Filmiest Two Australian shorts are among the highlights ‘Urgently require one more ticket’ was the theme of many a notice pinned to the bulletin board in front of the sold-out box office at the third Munich Film Festival, which experienced an unprecedented audience boom this year.

120 films were screened from 22-30 June in twelve of the Bavarian capital’s cinemas, including successes from Venice, Berlin and Cannes, a season of ‘new German films’, a solid and reliable programme of US independents, children’s films, music films and, for the first time at the Festival, a small but high-quality film market.

It was in the market that Australia’s only entries were to be found, in the form of five short films assembled with the help of the Australian Film Commission’s Creative Development Branch and the Australian Film Institute. The five were Peter Jordan’s Iwana Station, Franco di Chiera’s La Scala, Lo Scalone, Jackie McKimmie’s Stations, Margaret Dodd’s This Woman is Not a Car, and Toby Zoates’s The Thief

of Sydney.

The last two in particular generated a good deal of enthusiasm, with one local newspaper referring to them as one of the highlights of the Festival. Also on show in the market was Gaylene Preston’s likeable New Zealand horror movie, Mr Wrong, which attracted interest from German tele­ vision and a German distributor.

The German films on show were gener­ ally reckoned to be disappointing. 1985 seems to be shaping up in Germany as conventional and unexciting on the film scene, producing the sorts of works that, with the exception of Maria Knilli’s Lieber Karl (Dear Karl), could just as easily have been made for television.

Lieber Karl was on show in Cannes, and has recently been awarded the golden Filmband, for best adapted screenplay. A first feature by a young woman filmmaker, it is an impressive tale about a boy growing up in the protected environment of a small town in Austria.

Of the better-known films at Munich, most have already appeared at festivals or been on general release elsewhere: Jean-Luc Godard’s Détective, for instance, an in­ accessible crime story that neither press nor public seemed disposed to tackle; and Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion, an amusing ‘problem film’ with a light touch, which belongs among Russell’s best work.

Carlos Saura's Los Zancos (Stilts), on the other hand, turned out to be a boring, lightweight love story featuring an older man and a young woman. Using the folksy bohemianism of a travelling theatre group as its monotonous background, it ranks among Saura’s weakest films.

Among the American films on offer were Peter Bogdanovich’s Mask, the moving

story of a boy with a terribly deformed face who tries to live a normal life, and Michael Ritchie’s Fletch, a high-speed crime comedy, in which a journalist (Chevy Chase) stumbles on a police drug ring. With the hottest word-of-mouth at the Festival, Fletch could be described as a kind of intelligent sequel to Beverly Hills Cop. ‘Intelligent’ is also the word for Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, a horror film in which young Nancy is tracked through her nightmares by a cold-blooded murderer. Soon, however, her nightmares become reality . . . Craven makes deft use of the horror genre, without ever taking it too seriously.

Also popular at Munich were Desper­ ately Seeking Susan and Insignificance, and particularly Alan Parker’s Birdy, surely one of the year’s best films. And then there was a German film set in Australia: Totes Herz (Dead Heart), by 23-year-old Oliver Herbrich. According to the synopsis, the film is set in “ Birdsvilie — 23 houses and a bar in the dead heart of Australia, where the crows fly backwards to keep the red sand out of their eyes. Dead Heart is about the craziest weekend party on earth — an annual event which takes place in conjunc­ tion with an insignificant and unimportant horse race . . . ” The film itself, sadly, was more boring than anything else.

Dieter Osswald

Kurosawa’s/?«« towers over the Tokyo festival $1.5-miHion prize split three ways Cinemas close early in Tokyo, and late arrivals for the premiere screening of the first International Tokyo Film Festival were discomfited to find that the event’s major coup, the world premiere of Akira Kuro­ sawa’s Ran, had started at an unaccus­ tomed 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

The film had been completed only ten days earlier, and the formally-attired audience — including the Crown Prince, various politicians, Bernardo Bertolucci, Harrison Ford, Donald Sutherland, Claude Lelouch, Rod Steiger and Glenda Jackson (but excluding Kurosawa himself) — was in a fine state of anticipation when the film, helpfully shown with English subtitles, began.

Their expectations were well rewarded, despite an alarming lack of focus in the opening reel. Ran is based on King Lear, except that the three daughters have become three sons. Lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) has reached his 70th birthday and decides to divide his kingdom, ignoring the sound advice of his youngest son, Saburo (Daisuke Ryu). Soon enough, his elder sons, Taro (Satoshi Terao) and Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), urged on by Taro’s evil wife, Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada), are invading their father’s castle, providing the film with its superbly staged central battle scene.

As the battle begins, K urosaw a eliminates all natural sound, so that all we hear is Toru Takemitsu’s mournful music, as arrows impale bodies and the castle goes up in flames. Then, suddenly, a treacherous gunshot kills Taro, and the din of battle is heard for the first time. The great sequence ends with a genuinely Shake­ spearian moment, as the maddened Lord silently appears at the entrance to his ravaged home, and the soldiers melt away to let him pass.

Ran — the title means ‘chaos’ — is certainly one of Kurosawa’s finest achieve­ ments, a film whose epic sweep and heart­ rending drama becomes totally involving.

Not since the days of El Cid has a medieval epic been handled with such style and scope.

The director's misogynistic streak is apparent once again, though, in the character of the scheming, evil Lady Kaede. Superbly played by Mieko Harada, she is a first cousin to the Lady Macbeth of Isuzu Yamada in Kumonosu-Jo (Throne of Blood, 1957).

After Ran, just about everything else seemed small beer. But the lucrative Young Cinema competition sparked off a good deal of interest, if only because the prize money totalled a staggering US$1.5 million.

Sixteen films competed — none from Australia and New Zealand, but a few which, like the two British entries, 1984 and The Company of Wolves, had been around for some time.

The jury, chaired by David Puttnam, eventually split the prize money three ways. $750,000 went to the Japanese entry, Shinji Sohmai’s Typhoon Club, a film with a striking resemblance to The Breakfast Club, since it is also about a group of precocious teenagers staying over in school during the weekend, the difference being that, in the Japanese film, they’re trapped by a typhoon, not a detention.

It was not a terribly original piece of work, but — as with most Japanese films — it was strikingly shot (by Akihiro Itoh). The second competition prize (of $500,000) went to a four-year-old Hungarian film, Peter Gothar’s excellent Megall az ¡do (Time Stands Still), which was greeted

CINEMA PAPERS September — 7

News Plus — Festivals and markets

with hostility in some sections of the Hun­ garian community when I showed it as Movie of the Week on SBS some months ago. Third prize — and $250,000 — went to Ali Ozgenturk’s At (The Horse, 1982), a Turkish variation on Bicycle Thieves.

Apart from the competition, the Festival included some well-attended public screen­ ings of such current blockbusters as A Passage to India, Witness, Mask and The Killing Fields, a section of films by women, a fantasy programme (which included the world premiere of Philippe Mora’s disappointing Howling II), an animated section, and a programme of Japanese films.

For foreign guests, the latter was poten­ tially interesting, especially since all the films had English subtitles. But the selection turned out to be most bizarre, with few major films from the last couple of years included. Instead, the aim seemed to be to show examples of genre films (youth films, yakuza thrillers, soap operas, broad comedies), some of them as much as twelve years old. Slim pickings indeed for the visitor eager to see the best of recent Japanese cinema.

David Stratton

Animators play it safe to win the prizes Annecy’s anniversary lacks sparkle, but is strong on scatology Given that the Annecy International Festival of Animation was celebrating its 25th anni­ versary this year, there was a disappointing lack of razzmatazz about the place. Pre­ Festival excitement was such that an unpre­ cedented 3,000 delegates turned up, many of whom soon began to feel less than welcome as accommodation ran out, and the Festival organization was stretched to its limits.

Far from dancing the night away, dele­ gates waited forlornly in the early hours of every morning for shuttle buses to transport them back to hotels that were in some cases miles away. A colour-coding system to separate delegates into the three daily competition screenings soon created a hierarchy and a division. The reds never met the blues, and the greens never met anybody.

The Market, opened by French Minister of Culture Jack Lang, was this year’s

Taormina goes H ollywood Top-rated Sicilian festival emerges as the ‘Italian Deauville’ It was a big risk, but the gamble paid off: the third American Film Week (aka the ‘Italian Deauville’) brought crowds to the spectacular Teatro Antico, and filled Taor­ mina with stars like Tony Curtis, Esther Williams, Jacqueline Bisset, Gina Lollobrigida, Claudia Cardinale and Natassja Kinski. It did not, however, bankrupt the Festival’s cultural ambitions.

Now in its 31st edition, Taormina produced a strong challenge to Venice, both in terms of closer collaboration with the Americans, and in its competitive sections, which remain the raison d'etre of Italy’s only other FIAPF-approved festival.

The MPAA’s Jack Valenti headed the Hollywood contingent at Taormina, and declared — after visiting the village near Palermo where his grandparents came from — that he would make sure that, even if every other festival fell into the sea and disappeared, Taormina would stay afloat.

In the competition, first prize was attri­ buted without the slightest polemic to Juzo Kami's Ososhiki (The Funeral) — featured in the last issue of Cinema Papers, but a no­

show at the Melbourne Film Festival — thus confirming the arrival of the ‘young Japan­ ese cinema’ (Sogo Ishii’s Gyakufunsha kazoku [The Crazy Family] won top prize and $10,000 to boot at the other major competitive Italian festival, Salsomaggiore, in April).

Slightly more eccentric was the awarding of second prize to the Hungarian Sortuz

egy fekete bivalyert (Volley for a Black Buffalo), directed by Laszlo Szabo, better known outside Hungary for his acting abil­ ities in most Godard movies since Alphaville, as well as in loselliani’s Les favoris

de la lune (The Favourites of the Moon) and Rohmer’s Les nuits de la pleine lune (Full Moon in Paris).

Essentially a tale of growing up in a rural community in postwar Hungary, Volley for a Black Buffalo stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Jean Rochefort, and revolves around such moments as the blowing up of

The fam ily in Juzo Itam i’s The Funeral, clear winner o f the first prize in competition at Taormina this year.

success story. Animation generally has problems finding outlets, so the Market should provide a space for filmmakers to sell their work, as well as an economic infra­ structure for the Festival.

In honour of its anniversary, Annecy pre­ sented a full programme of retrospectives from a distinguished line-up of celebrities, including Jan Svankmajer, Raoul Serváis and Bruno Bozzetto. A screening of Disney’s Oscar-winning shorts provided a pleasurable reviewing of classics such as The Three Little Pigs and The Tortoise

Een griekse Tragedie (A Greek Tragedy), was a popular choice, also

Taormina’s strong showing this year is particularly important in the European context. The Festival is obliged, by the 15,000-20,000 seats of the Teatro Antico, to attract American cinema, but it also shows every sign of being able to continue its innovative policy towards independent cinema. As such, it succeeds in providing a unique mix which ought to be worrying Venice.

The only blemishes in an otherwise rosy future are the continuing delays in the con­ struction of the equivalent of a Cannes Palais des Festivals. The building looks finished, and indeed has been for some ten years, but the politicians are still haggling over a mysterious breach of contract. As it stands, the only alternatives to the main venue are a couple of poorly appointed cinemas which are really beginning to show their age.

winning the Prix du Public. The first film by Flemish animator Nicole van Goethem, it was the story of the struggle of three bedraggled caryatids to hold up the last remains of a Greek temple. An outstanding first film, it was nevertheless a bit slight to merit the Grand Prix on such a prestigious occasion.

Two films shared the Prix Special du Jury: Ishu Patel’s dazzling Paradise, a film about exile and cultural difference by an Indian filmmaker who has found the best conditions for his kind of labour-intensive animation at the National Film Board of Canada; and Rein Ramaat’s Hell, based on the work of a nineteenth-century Estonian artist — visually impressive, but rather too long.

In a lighter vein (though perhaps ulti­ mately with something more serious to say), Richard Condie’s truly hilarious The Big Snit (Canada) won the Critics’ Prize. The ‘snit’ — a small quarrel — is between a married couple who battle it out over a game of Scrabble, while the outbreak of a nuclear world war goes unnoticed.

A film less weighty in its theme was Guido Manuli’s Incubus (Italy), which won the prize for Best Scenario, featured the scato­ logical nightmares of a little man. Bodily functions were a leitmotif at Annecy this year — of men, cows and, especially, dogs.

A refreshing oasis among the adolescent fantasies of middle-aged animators was provided by the student films. Alison Snow­ den’s Second Class Mail (Britain, National Film and Television School), about a woman’s disappointing experience with an inflatable man, shared the prize for a First Film with John Minnis’s Charade (Canada, Sheridan College). And Susan Young, whose Thin Blue Lines was shown two years ago, goes from strength to strength, winning the prize for Best Animation with her superb Carnival (Britain, Royal College of Art).

So, what has Annecy achieved in 25 years? Along with the many other animation festivals which have burgeoned in its wake, it has helped bring about the 'festival film’, tending towards safe ‘artiness’ and cheap humour.

American independent animator Jane Aaron commented that her experimental, non-narrative films are on the fringes of acceptability at Annecy. Monique Renault, a feminist animator who was at the Festival as a buyer for Dutch television, no longer even attempts to enter her own films there, though they do well at feminist and short film festivals, and are shown widely in Holland.

And the reality of industrial animation in countries such as Britain is commercials and titles, including some of the most stunning work being made at the moment.

The few examples in competition this year, however, looked oddly out of place.

Annecy seems to have produced in the minds of its audience and its filmmakers a conception of films which speak to the selection committee and the jury. In the main, it excludes the wide range of prac­ tices necessary for the development of the medium.

The vast majority of the public meanwhile continues to think of animation as Mickey Mouse. Is Annecy any more likely to contri­ bute to changing that perception over the next 25 years than it has in the first quarter century?

Until it can encourage films which either speak to real people about the real world — which doesn’t, for most people, mean giant nipples and endlessly pissing dogs — or else genuinely push forward the boundaries of animation through real experimentation, there doesn’t seem much chance.

Don Ranvaud

Irene Kotlarz

and the Hare.

Other programmes failed to live up to expectations, however. ‘Little known’ films

by Hollywood animators turned out to be quite familiar to most of us, and the Chinese and Russian screenings bore the depress­ ing imprimatur of official selections. In any case, delegates had to be quick off the mark to catch everything. It took most

a cat, the explosion of an old land mine, and the discovery of genital difference inside an abandoned German tank.

Third prize went to BennoTrautman’sThe Somersault Man (Germany) — significant insofar as it displays the inventiveness of experimental cinema on a low budget, with the right dose of Straubian quirks and a wandering narrative.

Two of the acting prizes were collected by the British entry, A Private Function, which also walked off with both critics’ prizes (the Sicilian and the National Association). Inexplicably forgotten, except for an almost insulting ‘special mention’ for Sir John Gielgud, was the excellent New Zealand film, Leave All Fair, directed by John Reid, and already seen at the Sydney Festival.

The American competition entry, 1918, was never a serious contender for the prize, although had Susan Seidelman’s Desper­ ately Seeking Susan not attracted so much attention at Cannes it, too, would have qualified for competition and, in all likelihood, fared better. As it was, it became the highlight of the week.

The American Film Week consisted of seven films, ranging from the John Travolta/Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle, Perfect (directed by James Bridges), to the latest 007 extravaganza, A View to a Kill, directed by Bond veteran John Glen and the best so far.

The remaining fare can best be des­ cribed as respectable. Particularly well received, though, was the information section which, after the Festival, will tour the Sicilian villages for about a month. This includes Sydney’s big hit, Les ripoux (My New Partner), the Canadian musical, Night Magic (a tribute to Leonard Cohen), and Luis Berlanga’s excellent Vaquilla

(The Calf).

8 — September CINEMA PAPERS

people a couple of days to decipher the programme, and by then it was too late.

In competition, the Grand Prix-winner,

‘STRANGE, HAUNTING’ - Tim e O ut, London

‘A WORLD OF MAGIC AND MYSTERY’ - La Presse, Montreal

‘ASTONISHING’ ‘POWERFUL’ - Cinem a, Paris

‘COMPELLING’ - Le M atin, Paris

‘SUPERB* - Los Angeles Times

A FILM BY VINCENT WARD

starrin g PENELOPE STEWART - BILL KERR A JO H N M A Y N A R D P R O D U C T IO N in association w ith th e Film In vestm en t C o rp o ra tio n of N ew Z ea lan d and the N ew Z e alan d Film C o m m issio n

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News Plus — Overseas reports

United States by Pat H.

Britain by Sheila Johnston

Broeske

Rambo bumper stickers and a Spielberg summer Since its strategic release on Memorial Day weekend, Rambo: First Blood Part II has been taking deadly aim at the US box office. The third largest-grossing opening of all time (after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Return of the Jedi), it has generated much critical scrutiny, intense media analysis, and domestic ticket sales in excess of $107 million.

On top of this, of course, is the film’s still­ snowballing merchandising campaign.

According to a representative of One Stop Posters, based in Monterey Park, Cali­ fornia, “ there hasn't been anything this hot since Michael Jackson” .

The company is issuing bumper stickers with slogans like 'Need an Army? Hire Rambo’ and ‘Beware: This Vehicle is Pro­ tected by Rambo’. “ I expect to see that one on every pick-up in America,” says the man from One Stop.

There will also be Rambo action dolls (complete with pants, shirt, bow and arrows, and automatic rifle), Rambo water pistols (including a two-foot-long aquatic machine gun), Rambo watches, Rambo pinball machines, Rambo bubble gum cards and Rambo comic books.

Never mind that the Tri-Star film is Rrated, and therefore supposedly not for kids. Rambo is being heralded as the new John Wayne. In theatres in blue-collar neighbourhoods, audiences (some of them wearing khaki) are reportedly standing on their seats, applauding Rambo’s winning ways with warfare.

The reasons for Rambomania have been attributed to everything from the re­ emergence of the macho heterosexual male to a new burst of patriotism. Rambo star Sylvester Stallone declares himself ‘humbled’ by the hero. “ I sit there and I marvel at his feats. Rambo is trying to find a glorious place to die, he really is. He is a symbol of the men who died at Valley Forge and Normandy.”

For the (rather ironic) record, the 39-yearold Stallone did not pass his own draft physical. As he tells it, with straight-faced sincerity (though there are other versions), he once fell asleep after drinking too much at a Canned Heat concert, leaned against a speaker “ about the size of a small cave” , and woke up with his hearing impaired.

But the Stallone physique remains in apparent tip-top shape. It had better. After completing the now-filming Rocky IV (in which the Philadelphia southpaw squares off against — no kidding — a Russian) for MGM-United Artists, Stallone goes onto Over the Top, an arm-wrestling tale for Cannon Films and, according to recent reports, the inevitable Rambo sequel.

Apparently, the character isn’t too anxious to die.

Elsewhere, it’s been a Steven Spielberg summer. In its first six weeks of release, the Richard Donner-directed The Goonies, for Warner Bros, based on a Spielberg story and ‘presented’ by Spielberg, grossed more than $41 million. With glowing reviews, Universal’s just-released Back to the Future, another Spielberg ‘presenta­ tio n ’, this time directed by Robert (Romancing the Stone) Zemeckis, also looks to be a summer winner. In fact, it may emerge as the summer champ, though E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, the top grossing movie in history, has still to make a re-landing.

Meanwhile, Spielberg’s Amblin Entertain­ ment is wrapping up Young Sherlock Holmes and The Money Pit for Christmas release. Amazing Stories, Spielberg’s television anthology (for NBC), will debut in September. Already, episodes have been directed by Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Irvin Kershner and Paul Bartel.

Spielberg himself is in North Carolina,

10 — September CINEMA PAPERS

New cinemas built as audiences continue to dwindle

Sylvester Stallone as Rambo: the actor failed his own Vietnam physical. directing The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker’s novel about Southern blacks.

Also in front of the cameras: At Close Range, starring Christopher Walken and Sean Penn as father-and-son criminals.

Directed by James (Reckless) Foley, it is based on a real-life crime spree that took place in Pennsylvania in the late seventies.

The Parker Bros board game, Clue, is also coming to life. Currently shooting at Paramount — with four endings, so that even the cast will not know whodunnit — Clue stars Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Lesley-Ann Warren and Colleen Camp.

Karen Black and her real-life son, Hunter Carson, play mother and son in Cannon Films’ Invaders from Mars. The remake of the classic 1953 sci-fi tale is being directed

by Tobe Hooper, and includes a cameo by Jim Hunt. Formerly known as Jimmy Hunt, he starred in the original. Little wonder that Hunt, who this time plays a lawman, says: “ I feel I’ve come full circle.”

New Zealand

As the over-hyped British Film Year cam­ paign continues to trumpet its slogan of ‘Cinema — The best place to see a film ’, the outlook on the exhibition front is very mixed indeed.

In terms of theatres, the picture is one of expansion, with an average of two new independent screens opening every month. The most spectacular to be announced is a ten-cinema complex due to open in the Midlands town of Milton Keynes in late October.

With a seating capacity of 2,050, it will be Britain’s largest movie venue. The devel­ opers are Bass Leisure and American Multi­ Cinema. The latter, an experienced pro­ moter of ‘multiplexes’ in the United States, hopes to lend the concept fresh appeal over in Britain, where jerrybuilt conversion jobs in the early seventies have given the multiple-auditorium cinema a bad name.

At the other end of the exhibition spec­ trum, the long-established leftie distribution company The Other Cinema recently unveiled plans for a new first-run house which, according to the grandiloquent press release, will epitomize “ old-fashioned cinema luxury” , with a canopied foyer and moving searchlights playing over the facade.

Also scheduled to open in the autumn, this project is largely bankrolled by the soon-to-be-disbanded Greater London Council, as one of its last pot-shots against Thatcherism, but is incongruously located in the Trocadero, a kitsch palace of consumer capitalism in the heart of the West End. But, despite pledges from the major circuits, Rank, Thorn EMI and Cannon Classic, to commit £12 million ($24 million) to much-needed cinema refurbishment during the British Film Year, the trade press has still been filled with letters from irate patrons about the generally tacky experi­ ence of a night at the flicks. And there are no signs that savings from the 25 May abolition of the Eady Levy (a long-standing tax on cinema admissions) have been passed on to the punters.

What is more, two recent independent surveys offer the gloomy prognosis that attendance figures will plummet from 51 to 31 million over the next four years, and a sobering reminder that the percentage of Brits who never go to the cinema has risen from 44% in 1983 to an alarming 49%.

In the short term, the brief recent upsurge in cinema admissions has been curtailed somewhat by the tardy arrival of the Great

British Summer. Last winter’s local hits (A Passage to India, Dance With a Stranger, A Private Function and The Killing Fields) have continued to perform solidly in London and the provinces, along with Amadeus.

But more recently, there has been a slew of British flops — Chris Petit’s inscrutable C hinese Boxes, J o s e p h L o s e y ’ s Steaming, the Bob Geldof vehicle, Number One, and two follow-ups to the hugely successful Educating Rita: Lewis Gilbert’s Not Quite Jerusalem, and Rita star Julie Walters’s She’ll Be Wearing

Pink Pyjamas.

Predictably, the summer’s big earner looks set to be the new Bond, A View to a Kill, which took over £100,000 ($200,000) in its first week in London, breaking the theatre’s house record, and has been making box-office killings up and down the country ever since.

The other big hit of the spring, Peter Weir’s Witness, which earned £70,000 ($140,000) in its first week in May, stayed at No. 1 until shot down by Double-O-Seven.

This summer’s production season is well under way. No Surrender, a ‘deadpan farce’ by Alan Bleasdale, who wrote the TV serial, Boys from the Blackstuff, wrapped in early May. Julien Temple’s Absolute Beginners finally started shooting after interminable delays, while fellow rock-video graduate Russell Mulcahy is working on a bizarre-sounding historical extravaganza called Highlander, which is set in sixteenth-century Scotland and present-day New York. Sean Connery and cinema’s sexiest Tarzan, Christopher Lam­ bert, star.

Another Australian director is also film­ ing in Scotland: Richard Franklin, whose Link is a thriller starring Terence Stamp.

Jim (Dark Crystal) Henson’s new puppet fantasy, Labyrinth, continues at Elstree studios, while the Merchant-Ivory partner­ ship has commenced principal photo­ graphy on an adaptation of E.M. Forster’s

A Room With a View.

Hugh Hudson’s Revolution recreates eighteenth-century New York in Norfolk, Michael Winner’s Death Wish 3 simulates modern Manhattan in St Thomas’s Hos­ pital, South London. But, if advance rumours are true, the prize for ingenuity must go to Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket which, according to one probably apocryphal report, will shoot the Vietnam sequences on Hackney Marshes when it goes into production later this summer.

by Sue May

Lots on the screen, but little on the set In a new spirit of industry-wide co-operation that would have astounded those who re­ launched the New Zealand film industry eight years ago, this year’s festival season is screening more New Zealand films than ever.

Festivals in the four main centres are now nationally programmed by the Federation of Film Societies, and held in cinemas belonging to the major exhibitors, Kerridge Odeon and Amalgamated Theatres. Audi­ ences have seen the world premiere of Barry Barclay’s feature-length documen­ tary, The Neglected Miracle, and Austra­ lasian premieres of features Leave All Fair, directed by John Reid, and Mr Wrong, directed by Gaylene Preston, plus five short films.

New Zealand films are also to feature in several American showcases in the next few months. The American Film Institute is running a month-long session of 30 films in the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington in October. Shortly before that, the New

Zealand Film Archive will be presenting a season of archival and modern films at the Pacific Film Archive in San Francisco in September, to coincide with the acclaimed Te Maori exhibition. And the Mill Valley Festival is holding a tribute screening of twelve New Zealand films, also in Septem­ ber. There is even a summer school on NZ cinema at the University of California’s Santa Barbara campus.

Back home, things aren't looking so good. The 1984 production boom may have resulted in twelve new films on display at Cannes in May, but the difficulty of financing features under the revised tax rules is now becoming truly apparent.

There has only been one feature pro­ duced since the 30 September 1984 cut-off — Ian Mune’s Bridge to Nowhere — and there are perhaps two more likely to start shooting before 30 September this year, which contrasts dramatically with the six features made simultaneously between July and September 1984.

Heather Bolton in Gaylene Preston's Mr Wrong, shown around the N Z festivals.

Major production this year is in television projects, mainly co-productions with over­ seas companies (like Britain’s Central) and TVNZ. There have been two mini-series: Phillips Whitehouse’s Heart of the High Country, directed by Sam Pillsbury, and Finlayson Hill’s Terry and the Gun­ Runners, directed by Chris Bailey.

There is also a children’s series, Cuckoo Land, produced on video by the Gibson

News Plus — Overseas reports

Germany by Dieter Osswald

Italy by Lorenzo Codelli

Re-issue of Wilder film wows them in Berlin

Festivals take over as Italian cinema closes down for the summer

The main talking point on the German film scene this early summer has been the announcement by the Hollywood-based Cannon Group of a plan to buy up 200 German cinemas, thereby consolidating Cannon’s recent acquisitions of the Classics chain in the UK and Holland's Tuschinski cinemas. In Germany, Cannon’s Menahem Golan is currently also negotia­ ting with the Riech group, which owns the majority of the country’s cinemas.

The other big talking point is of a rather different nature: the huge and unexpected success of a re-release of Billy Wilder’s 1961 comedy, One, Two, Three, which has been playing to sell-out crowds in West Berlin’s biggest cinema, the Delphie, for several weeks. Critics and audiences have been bowled over by the film, which origin­ ally coincided with the building of the Berlin Wall, and had its release shelved in Ger­ many because its parody of Cold War anti­ communism seemed a little too acute.

Otherwise, comedies and TV spin-offs seem to be what directors have considered the best bets of late. The successful TV show, Formel 1 — a collection of hit songs and videos — has spun off an identicallynamed film with stars like Limahl, Pia Zadora and Meat Loaf. Germany’s top comic, Otto, has made his cinema debut, there is a Berlin New Wave film with Nena (of ‘99 Luftballons’ fame), and the musical nonsense comedy group, Trio, has also made a movie.

Producer of the last-named is Bernd Eichinger of Neue Constantin, who was behind Das Boot (The Boat) and The Neverending Story. Eichinger is also currently producing a film version of Umberto Eco’s bestseller, The Name of the Rose, which Jean-Jacques Annaud is directing in the monastery at Maulbronn.

Meanwhile, Margarethe von Trotta is at work on a totally different project, Ich war,

ich bin, ich werde sein: Die Geduld von Rosa Luxemburg, about the life and political struggles of the German revolution­ ary between 1900 and 1910, taking over what was to have been Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s next project.

Box office returns rather than art seem to be the key to Joey, the second film by Roland Emmerich, whose Das Arche

Noah-Prinzip (The Noah’s Ark Principle) caused some ripples at the 1984 Berlin Festival Like The Neverending Story, Joey has been made for the US market — in English, with American actors and an American setting. It is the story of a boy

Group, and directed by Yvonne Mackay; and Hibiscus Films’ Seven Tales for Tele­ vision, funded by the New Zealand Film Commission — a series of short dramas produced by John Maynard (producer of Vigil) and Bridget Ikin, which involves seven new directors. All of these are now in post-production, however, and there are no others currently in production.

Despite the failure of their efforts to win a tax rebate scheme for investors, industry politicians continue to lobby, this time for access to production funding from tele­ vision. Main targets are Broadcasting Tri­ bunal hearings of warrant applications for the third television channel, and the Royal Commission into Broadcasting and Related Telecommunications, both just started.

But these are long-term concerns, and are not expected to bear fruit within the year. In the short term, attention is focused on the Film Commission’s spending plans.

To offset the effect of the tax changes, the NZFC has been given an additional NZ$3.4 million to spend. This is not generally regarded as enough to maintain feature production at 1983-4 levels, but the industry is working in close consultation with the Commission to develop the plans.

who establishes telepathic contact with his dead father and it looks, predictably, like a copy of Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist.

Mention should also be made of the new films by the enfant terrible of German cinema, Herbert Achternbusch, who caused a stir two years ago with Gespenst (Ghost). He has two new films due out shortly: Blaue Blumen, about his trip to China, and Föhnforscher, whose tagline is ‘Das Leben ist so kurz wie eine Badehose’ (life is as short as a bathing costume).

On the box office front, the three top money-earners in May were Beverly Hills Cop, Amadeus and Eis am Stiel (other­ wise known as Lemon Popsicle 6), while The Bounty and Purple Rain both per­ formed below par. For June, top place went to Police Academy II, followed by Wit­ ness and, again, Amadeus. The other top

James Cagney and Pamela Tiffin in Wilder’s One, Two, Three, now a hit in Berlin.

June

moneymakers

were,

in

order,

Beverly Hills Cop, The Man With Two Brains, A Passage to India, All of Me, Success is the Best Revenge, Into the Night and the unm eltable Lemon Popsicle 6. Chief among the June dis­ appointments were Baby and City Heat.

Mention has already been made of the surprise success of One, Two, Three; other notable long-running successes have been Stop Making Sense and the German thriller, Der Bulle und das Mädchen, with Jürgen Prochnow, star of

Das Boot

In Italy, summer is a traditional dead zone for new openings, but this summer is without even the remotest shadow of an Italian film. After some Christmas hits, the Italian film industry has quietly closed down, leaving the country’s cinemas to Woody Allen, Peter Weir, Blake Edwards and Hollywood.

In April, a new financial law promised interesting innovations like tax shelters (‘‘Too late!” cried several producers) and larger sums of money available from state banks. Because it covers other sectors like theatre and television, this legislation has merely underlined the urgent need for a companion law covering film and connec­ ted media. That is promised for the autumn.

Before going to sleep for the summer, the state-owned RAI-TV offered two very original late shows, which built up large followings. Enzo Biagi’s Linea diretta, a current affairs programme, was very free of speech and touched on many social ills.

This didn’t make it popular with the Socialist Party, which now heads the government, and most of whose best sup­ porters are in the area of private broad­ casting.

The other hit was Renzo Arbore’s madcap nightly cabaret, Quelli della notte. Arbore, a well-established spotter of new talent and unconventional entertainer, came up with a few new comedians who threaten to invade next season’s movie theatres with a rush of cheap comedies.

RAI money was invested in most (if not all) of the ambitious pictures now nearing completion, and announced for Venice premieres. Federico Fellini’s Fred e Ginger stars a bald-headed Marcello Mastroianni (looking more and more like a self-portrait of the director) and a grannyish Giulietta Masina, as two performers trying to make a comeback during a stormy private TV show. It looks like part of the Master’s revenge against the wild treatment of his

F r a n c e by Belinda Meares All-night film session attracts back the vanishing spectator Despite the media fanfare of the Cannes Film Festival, French cinema attendances dropped by 15% in the first third of 1985.

So, to revive the public’s flagging interest, a ‘longest night of the cinema’ was declared on Friday 14 June. For the price of a single ticket, film fanatics could spend from 2 pm to 6 am watching a succession of movies in any theatre or theatres of their choice. It is an experiment that will almost certainly be repeated, since door takings doubled.

On the production front, cinema and video producers have welcomed the government’s announcement of new tax shelter arrangements for the industry.

These are particularly timely for video pro­ duction, which is stagnating because of heavy costs and competition from cheap fare from foreign (mainly American) sources.

The long-awaited pronouncements on the structuring of the new television system — which, for the first time in France, is to include private national and local channels — were made on 21 May. Two commercial national channels are envisaged, to complement Canal Plus, the private sub­ scriber station that came into existence last year. Of the three public channels (TF1, Antenne 2 and FR3), one is to go private. In its place, a new ‘cultural’ public channel, Channel One, will be transmitted through­ out Europe via France’s new satellite, TDF1, due to be launched in July 1986.

May and June box office figures reflect a

certain loyalty to local production, although

Amadeus and The Terminator have been in the limelight for many a long week, followed by The Killing Fields, Passage to India and Brazil.

French films that have scored include the rock video-like Subway, directed by Luc Besson, and starring Christopher Lambert (of Greystoke) and Isabelle Adjani, Les spécialistes, Marche à l’ombre, and Claude Zidi’s Les ripoux (released in the USA as My New Partner).

Of the French entries at Cannes, André Techiné’s Rendez-Vous (which won the Best Director prize), has come out way ahead of Chabrol’s Poulet au vinaigre and Godard’s Détective, both of which have been largely passed over. Top of the list currently are two Cannes favourites, Witness and The Purple Rose of Cairo.

French movies which have been making a modest impact include Mehdi Charef’s Le thé au harem d’Archimède, Renaud Victor’s La meilleur de la vie (starring Sandrine Bonnaire of A nos amours), Escalier C, directed by Jean-Claude Tacchella (of Cousin, Cousine fame), Jacques Demy’s Parking, and Marguerite Duras’s first comedy, Les enfants, which was on show at Berlin.

Films now in production include Agnès Varda’s first movie after an eight-year absence, A saisir, again with Sandrine Bonnaire (currently France’s busiest actress); Daniel Vigne’s Une femme, ou

movies on the private channels, which he recently sued.

Ettore Scola puts Mastroianni and Jack Lemmon together in Maccheroni, where they play two wartime companions who renew their friendship in present-day Naples. And neo-realist Alberto Lattuada comes back to the movies with La spina nel cuore, from Piero Chiara’s popular novel, after the experience of his flawed TV epic, Cristoforo Colombo And, before retiring, Luigi Comencini is directing a gigantic tragi-comedy, La storia, from Elsa Morante’s novel, starring Claudia Cardinale.

Among the younger directors, Marco Bellocchio has done a re-make of Le diable au corps, titled II diavolo in corpo; Peter Del Monte returns to the world of children with Piccoli fuochi; Adriano Celentano, still the top box-office star despite his recent meagre vehicles, stars in and directs Joan Lui, a big-budget religious extravaganza about an updated Christ; and Lamberto Bava, son of the unforgettable Mario, promises chilling horrors in Demoni, hopefully more stylish than those of his producer, Dario Argento.

As ever, summer means festival time in Italy. More than 70 rare or ultra-rare Indian films were shown at the Mostra del Nuovo Cinema in Pesaro, and two huge volumes on Le awenturose storie del cinema indiano were published to mark the event.

Spy and crime stories abounded at the ever-growing Mystfest at the beach resort of Cattolica, which included a major homage to John Le Carre. Hammer Films were honoured during Spoleto’s Festival dei Due Mondi, soon to become a three-city festival next year, with the inclusion of Mel­ bourne, and inaugurated this time by Bruce Beresford’s staging of Puccini’s La

fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West), with sets by Ken Adam, but poor critical reactions.

The spaghetti western was studied in depth during an academic meeting in Turin. James Ivory had his first retrospec­ tive during the Bergamo Film Meeting.

Melodramas swarmed in Gabicce, screen­ writers in Gorizia, children’s pictures in Giffoni Valle Piana, ballet movies in Florence, sea adventures in Ancona . . .

But why so many local events, important or otherwise? And why no national co­ ordination or larger cultural projects? Why more and more films shown just once at one of those festivals, while national dis­ tributors offer practically none of them?

Why the anarchic broadcasting of thousands of films, old and new, with no information, planning or selection? How did we ever come to love this state of permanent disorder?

deux, starring Gérard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver; and José Pinheiro’s Parole de flic, in which Alain Delon gets to play a clown.

There are also a few exciting projects on the horizon: a film by Chabrol about Camille Claudel, starring Isabelle Huppert; a new Claude Miller film with a cast of adoles­ cents, among whom is Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of Serge G. and Jane Birkin; Gérard Depardieu in Bertrand Blier’s Rimmel; Isabelle Adjani and Bernard Girardeau in Claude Pinoteau’s La bicyclette bleue; Godard’s King Lear, a Golan-Globus production which was signed up at Cannes this year, with (it is wildly rumoured) Marlon Brando and Woody Allen; Police, by Maurice Pialat, again starring Depardieu; and the new film from Jacques Beneix, the director of Diva and La lune dans le caniveau (The Moon in the Gutter), 37.2° à l’ombre, starring actor/rock singer Murray Head.

CINEMA PAPERS September — 11

Since it first came out in 1980, the Australian Motion Picture Year Book has been the one vital reference book on every Australian filmmaker’s bookshelf.

Now it has been updated in a new compact format — ideal for location and production office use — and is being published in conjunction with B.L. Kay Publishing of London, who bring out the internationally renowned Kay’s Production Manuals.

The new Cinema Papers Production Yearbook contains over 3,500 listings — including New Zealand as well as Australia — and is being distributed internationally by Kay’s. Your listing — or your advertisement — could be on the desk of every major film, video and television producer in the world.

The 1986 Production Yearbook is a pocket-sized mine of information on the Australasian film and video industry, with names and addresses of all the major production companies, rental and facility houses, TV station department heads and freelance professionals.

If you think you ought to be listed and we haven’t contacted you yet, return the slip at the bottom of the page. Or call us now on (03) 329 5983.

Forget the phone book: this is the one book you really need!

Order now and get it for $19.95, instead of the official price of $25.00.

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News Plus — People ■

Emir o f Cannes “ You know,” says Yugoslav filmmaker Emir Kusturica, “ I’m not the sort of director who sits round in the cafes, biting my nails and waiting for the final decision of the Jury. So, I left Cannes and went back to Sarajevo to help my mate fix his central heating and replace the floorboards. I’m an expert at that.”

Kusturica, a 30-year-old graduate of Prague's famed FAMU film school, is as unassuming and modest as he sounds. He was sitting in a cafe when I found him, ' though, just round the corner from the Kozara cinema in Belgrade, where the Yugoslav premiere of this year’s surprise winner of the Palme d ’Or at Cannes was already under way. Anywhere else in the world, the director of Father on a Busi­

ness Trip (Otac na sluzbenom putu) would have been mobbed by journalists and photographers. Not in Yugoslavia, though, where the press seems to have a healthy respect for the privacy of its stars.

The local press, however, had made something of a meal out of Kusturica not being on hand to accept the Cannes prize, and he is defensive about it. “ As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter a bit whether or not I was in Cannes to accept the award.

The press has got the whole thing out of proportion: they’re more interested in that than in the award. It doesn’t matter who actually received the thing: the point is that it is here in Yugoslavia, and that gives me more pleasure than anything else.”

Father on a Business Trip is set in Sarajevo in 1948, the year of Tito’s crucial split with the Kremlin. It tells the story of a young official (Miki Manojlovic) working at the Ministry of Labour, who one day lets drop his dissatisfaction with anti-Soviet sentiment to his discontented lover (Mira Furlan), who consequently has him arrested as a Cominform sympathizer. He is sent to the island labour camp of Goli Otok, notorious for its brutal methods of punish­ ment. Seen almost entirely through the eyes of his young son (Moreno de Bartolli), the film has about it a universality which is rare in Yugoslav cinema. “ Of course,” says Kusturica, “ I faced all the same old problems that most Yugoslav filmmakers have to face at some time during their careers. The people who decide what is going to be produced, especially in the case of films that deal with sensitive political matters, are very cautious. “ All of a sudden they become guardians of socialism, and I keep asking myself,

For deaf, read Italian ‘Who the hell are they protecting socialism

from?' Is it from the generation born in 1955 — my generation? Or are they merely trying to protect their own comfortable lifestyles, which are permitted only by their politics?

I’m used to it now. But a lot of time will have to elapse before some of our leaders realise that my generation’s love of its country is as great as theirs, if not greater.”

Kusturica’s first film, Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (Sje6as li se Dolly Bell?), also scripted by the Bosnian poet, Abdulah Sidran, is set in the late fifties, when Western fashions, music, motorbikes and hairstyles were slowly penetrating the country. For that film, Kusturica won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the 1981 Venice Festival, as well as the FIPRESCI award.

Even with a Golden Lion already in the bag, however, making Father on a Busi­ ness Trip was no easy matter: Kustirica had to set out on a two-year odyssey merely to find a producer willing to back him. “ I was sick to death,” he says, “ that no one would give me a straight, yes/no answer.” One of the major reasons was that the subject has suffered from a kind of over­ kill in Yugoslavia in recent years, with Antonije Isakovic’s book about Goli Otok, and Dusan Kovacevic’s film and theatre success with The Balkan Spy (Balkanski

spijun).

The new film had one false start in 1983, and at the outset the actors and crew worked for nothing. Finally, Forum Film of Sarajevo took over the project, marking an adventurous experiment for a small producer/distributor which had previously made only shorts and documentaries.

When it was finally in the can, however, Forum knew they were onto a winner. Gilles Jacob, in charge of the selection for Cannes, saw it in January and immediately gave a written assurance that it would be in competition, since it was already in demand for FEST, the Belgrade International Festival of Film, who wanted to open their programme with it.

Rumour also has it that Gian Luigi Rondi of the Venice Film Festival wanted to include it sight unseen in his programme but, despite persistent attempts to get an answer from Forum, heard nothing until its official selection at Cannes was announced.

Emir Kusturica (inset) and a scene from Father on a Business Trip, this year’s top Cannes prizewinner.

Rosa Colosimo has finally got a feature in the can. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever met her — Rosa is a remarkably determined lady — but it does occasionally seem to surprise her, if only because she has been knocked back a couple of times on projects that looked pretty cast-iron. One even had a Colleen McCullough tie-in, with a portion of the book royalties accruing to the production company.

Books are familiar territory for Rosa: her business career started with the only Italian bookshop in the southern hemisphere. “ That made me a fairly wealthy lady in a short period of time,” she explains. “ But I can tell you, I’ve used all that money since then to keep myself and to help develop projects. “ On Moving Out, I worked as produc­ tion consultant, because of the ethnic content. I was initially hired just to write the Italian dialogue, but they found out I was useful in other areas as well. The same thing happened on Waterfront: I was hired to write the Italian dialogue and I ended up getting them copies of the 1928 socialist

He was not amused. The Belgrade news­ paper, Vecernje Novosti, quoted him as saying at Cannes: “ It’s far from correct behaviour, and I’m sad: because of that attitude and while I’m head of the Venice Festival, there will be no Yugoslav film in competition there.”

As Kusturica reluctantly goes off to make his public appearance and take his bow at the Kozara Cinema at the end of the premiere, one is bound to wonder whether his laid-back attitude towards the estab­ lished institutions of the film world may not cause him problems some day. For instance^ he believes that he has a chance for the Best Foreign Film Oscar next year, and has cancelled all his production plans in the hope that the film can pull it off.

If it does, he would be well advised to turn up for the presentation. At Cannes, Jury chairman Miloé Forman spent four days believing that Mirza Pasió, the pro­ ducer who accepted the award on Kusturica's behalf, was Kusturica. And the Hollywood establishment is unlikely to be amused if he phones through on the big night to say he can’t be there because he is fixing his mate’s central heating.

Mike L. Downey

newspapers from the Socialist Party head­ quarters in Italy — you know, that sort of thing. Obviously it’s where my ethnic back­ ground has been an advantage; but it really isn’t what I’m doing at the moment.”

The feature she has just done is a short, sharp, low-budget movie called The Still Point. And, apart from a minor character (someone’s mother) and a hint of accent in the male juvenile lead, there isn’t an ethnic character in sight. For Italian, though, read deaf: The Still Point is the story of a teenage girl from a middle-class home (Sarah, played with surprising intensity by Nadine Garner, star of The Henderson Kids), who has a hearing impairment.

Sensitively directed by Barbara BoydAnderson, making her feature debut after a number of documentaries, and shot by the director’s husband, Kevin Anderson, with a fluidity and grace that belies the limitatons of time and money, it is more a study of adolescence than a problem picture.

"It’s a whole combination of things,” explains Rosa: “ the fact that Sarah’s an adolescent, that she’s in a new school as a result of her parents' marriage breaking up, that she idolizes her father, that she sees her mother’s new boyfriend as a th re a t. . .

The hearing problem aggravates all that.

The hearing I saw as a sort of metaphorical thing.”

Rosa’s explanation of the nature of the metaphor takes her straight back into the area of ethnicity, however. “ My whole attitude has always been that a hearing impairment is yet another problem one has to cope with. You can be grossly over­ weight, you can have dreadful BO so that no one comes near you, you can be a migrant . . . It’s something you have to cope with.” For deaf, in other words, read Italian.

The story of The Still Point is about Sarah breaking out of an isolation that is partly the result of her deafness, and is partly self-imposed. “ I was originally inspired by a house that sits on the cliff overlooking Mount Martha,” explains Rosa: “ the most beautiful part of the bay. But it’s got these little slit windows: it reminded me of a house with heavy Victorian furnrure and heavy drapes. And I saw this girl walking through this beam of light, parting the curtains, looking down and seeing all these young people on the beach — colourful and gay and bright and alive. It’s in total contrast with what is going through her mind. That was the way she really wanted to be.”

The idea evolved into a script early last summer, after the prospectus for a much bigger feature, Blowing Hot and Cold, had failed. “ I sort of had a miniature nervous breakdown, in morale at any rate, so I started working on a different story.

Between September and Christmas, what I did was a scene-by-scene breakdown of a story called Summer in Mount Martha.

Then I put it in a drawer.”

The money for the film suddenly started coming together earlier this year, and a first draft was written in three days, with two more drafts the following week. On the final draft, B arbara Boyd-Anderson also collaborated.

In Rosa’s resume, however, The Still Point still stands out as an exception.

Blowing Hot and Cold, for instance, is “ the story of an Australian fellow and an Italian fellow. They sort of start off as dreadful stereotypes initially. But, through intermingling and having to work together, they shed their stereotypes and can race off and do things together” .

The other project has an even stronger Italian connection, with Italian director Lina Wertmuller already signed to direct. This is the one with the Colleen McCullough screenplay, and its full title — of a length that could be guaranteed to appeal to Wert­ muller — also gives a fair idea of the story:

Daniel in the Lion’s Den Discovers Among the Aboriginals in Terra

CINEMA PAPERS September — 13

News Plus — People

Australis that Only Sons of Bitches Can Change the World Explains Rosa: “ It’s the story of a young man whose parents are Italian, and who is thus faced with certain choices. The British institutions have nothing to offer someone of Italian origin. The American crap which is forced down our throats from the moment

we can breathe has absolutely nothing to offer, either. We go back to the old country, and that turns out to be fool’s gold. For me, the only solution there is is to wipe it all out — to wipe the whole lot out. It isn’t even a case of retaining those pretty dances from overseas and those wonderful ethnic foods.

You’ve got to start afresh.

"I see both of them as being potentially really important films,” she says. “ But I think that the way I see them in my develop­ ment is that they’re things that I have to get out of the way before I move on to o th e r... not necessarily more universal topics, but certainly less ethnically-oriented ones.”

Nick Roddick

Haydn Keenan is the son of a butcher who was named after a Welsh fly half. As a film­ maker, however, he has averaged only one film every seven years. He blames what he describes as his “ snail-paced rise to mediocrity” on his outspoken acceptance speech when his first feature, 27A, won the AFI award in 1968: he told the audience that anyone who said a 22-year-old couldn’t make movies could get stuffed.

After that, not surprisingly, he was considered something of a naughty boy, and says the Australian Film Commission was reluctant to assist him. Though he has had a little help with script and marketing, he has never received government produc­ tion money, despite applying 37 times.

Funding for his films has come from ‘straight’ financiers — the sort of people, he says, who break your legs if you can’t pay the interest. That he walks without a limp is a fair indication that, although he hasn't made a fortune out of filmmaking, he hasn’t done too badly, either.

In 1983, after much trauma and drama, he produced Going Down, a traumatic and dramatic tale of things a lot of people would rather not know about, like drugs, prostitution and the Kings Cross under­ world.

He likes making films about ‘grot’, and believes there is a strong market for them among “ kids who want a night out, and who would love to see themselves on screen: they pay $7, and there they are.

They may not be junkies or maniacs them­ selves, but they know what the film is talking about,” he says.

Keenan prefers making low-budget films with quick shoots, and his latest, Pande­ monium, will be no exception. Ideally, he says, when he starts the shoot in August, he would like to roll the cameras on Friday night and to have finished by Monday morning. At any rate, he hopes to have it completed for $600,000.

14 — September CINEMA PAPERS

In his screenplay for Pandemonium, he has jammed total evil up against complete purity, in what he describes as “ a surrealist pantomime of ratbag larrikinism” . It has former Playboy Playmate of the Year, Amanda Dole, playing the gorgeous Azaria, who has been brought up in the desert by dingos, and whose mother is a sex-starved beauty queen, trapped in a wheelchair and feeding a dead baby in a camera case. It has nothing, he says, to do with a certain infamous murder trial, but it does have comedy, in the shape of David Argue, who plays the dingo, Azaria’s lover.

It is an 85-minute film with 150 scenes, so that no one can accuse him of making another dreary, slow-moving Australian movie. “ There’s nothing in it that we haven’t pulled out of the newspapers, though,” says Keenan. “ You ask me, ‘Why the subject matter?’ I could ask you, 'Why all the column inches devoted to foetuses at the Revlon factory in Paris, or found in the garbage at Bondi?’ All w e’re doing is dish­ ing it back in a form that will be very cheap, racy and comic. It's going to have Fred Nile out in front, screaming for our blood, which is going to attract a crowd. But, in the end, it’s the old Romulus and Remus story, the old Oedipus story . , . Overseas, they don’t want to know where you’re from: they just want to know if they can make some money out of you.”

As a result, Keenan is after something tight, intelligible and Australian, that can make a lot of money, and maybe change Australia’s contribution to movies on an international level. The so-called ‘New Wave’ of Australian film has hardly been a turning of the tide — a mere ripple, accord­ ing to Keenan: certainly nothing to rock the boat. “ We have imitated the Americans very efficiently. That is not a new wave.

What was called a new wave in France was a different thing: it was against the main­ stream.”

But the potential is there, Keenan believes, to come up with some one-off beauties. “ With our strange, Anglo-Saxon mentality in our Dali landscape, in the middle of Asia, in a timeless place which blows Europeans’ minds, we have the basis for some explosively original art, if we could get a little bit of social dynamics going. But current funding is no incentive: how can you run a decent business making shoes for $1 when you only need a return of 10c? “ I think the closest thing to 10BA is the Australian dairy industry: it would be cheaper to bring milk from New Zealand, but we want a dairy industry. If the govern­ ment wants a film industry aimed at produc­ ing low-budget — say $1-2 million — features aimed at the US cable market, they’ve done it very well. They’re turning out what I can only call family movies, which are not going to offend anyone and are not going to attract anyone. Our movie is being made for those under 35” — Keenan himself is 37 — “ and that’s a market segment. They-know what bad act­ ing is, because they watch it on television every night of the week.”

Traipsing around Europe last year trying to sell Going Down taught Keenan a few lessons about what to put in a film. “ I said, ‘Look, I’ve got a beautifully sensitive social film here with four young girls’, and they’d say, 'Not very good looking broads, are they?’ I’m trying to show 90 minutes worth of film, and other people have got some 10x8 stills of a couple of blondes chained up under Notre Dame getting whipped, and there’s people forming a queue to buy their stuff.”

Paul Cox, doing his “ idiosyncratic, angstfilled, Euro-Aust art films” , and Kennedy­ Miller of the Mad Max films are the only Australian filmmakers worth congratulating, reckons Keenan: the rest are in the middle of the road, fighting for ground. And where does Keenan see himself? “ W e’re on the left-hand shoulder, getting into the gravel, and just keeping control of it.”

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O

One of a handful of Australian actors with a real overseas reputation, Bryan Brown is still adamant about his Australian identity, as Dorre Koeser found out when she talked to him in Hollywood about his latest Australian picture, The Empty Beach. “ Acting is expression,” says Bryan Brown, “ and what I express is the fact that I ’m very Australian. I ’m con­ ditioned by the Sydney western suburbs, the lifestyle, the country, and the fact that I ’ve been fairly political and community-minded — those are the things that made it easy for me to express myself in Australia and as an Australian.”

Brown’s career in films now spans almost ten years, from his first role in Love Letters from Teralba Road (1977), to the wise-cracking, sardonic private detective, Cliff Hardy, in his latest Australian film, The Empty Beach. The latter is a project of some standing. “ I’ve liked the idea of playing Cliff Hardy since I read the books,” says Brown. “ I liked the fact that here was a very identifiable Aus­ tralian, written very well and with all the ingredients that I like in a male character: not trying to impress, a sense of humour, capable — a man who doesn’t make excuses. That sort of detective has been presented in American movies before — in Ray­ mond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. But here was an Australian one that was just as identifiable, just as strong and good as what the Americans had written. And quite likeable, too!”

Brown was first approached about four years ago to do one of the Hardy books. At the time, Dick Mason was going to produce, Stephen Wallace direct, and Peter Corris — author of the Hardy books — was to adapt his own novel, White Meat. Like many

Bryan Brown projects, it slipped away, however, to be resurrected two years later by John Edwards and Tim Read, who had acquired the rights to the Hardy books. As well as being invited to play the lead, Brown was also offered involvement in the creative side o f the picture’s production — something which he eagerly accepted.

Although several drafts were written

by Peter Corris, the film’s screenplay was eventually turned over to Keith Dewhurst. But it was Corris’s wish that the project remain true to the character he had invented, regardless of any changes to the plotline; and Brown emphasizes that this was their central objective throughout the making of the picture. “ My main concern,” he says, “ was not to deviate from the Cliff Hardy that Peter Corris wrote. You go back to the reason why you decided to make the movie. And the thing that originally caught our attention was this character, Cliff Hardy. It would have been pretty silly for us to spend two years making a movie that changed the character that Corris developed. The structure of a movie is always going to change, but we couldn’t let it wander off some­ where where Hardy wouldn’t let it wander. We set out to make a strong private detective yarn, and not muck up Peter Corris’s Cliff Hardy. I think we were there in 90% of the cases.”

One thing Brown is emphatic about is that Cliff Hardy is not an Australian superhero. “ H e’s certainly not James Bond. It’s true we are working on a sequel” — Corris is scripting White Meat — “ and I’d like to do Hardy again, but I don’t see the Cliff Hardy books as being world-beaters, or big epics. I would like to see us put out good, strong, solid stories every few years that do averagely well at the box office. I want to present a man that different people will like, but who isn’t necessarily everybody’s cup of tea.”

The Hardy character may be the core of the film, but his personal life is only hinted at in The Empty Beach. “ He is not the type of bloke who wants to explain away too m uch,” says

Brown, who feels that is one of the things that identifies him as an Aus­ tralian character.. “ It’s like, ‘hold it in, sit on it’. T hat’s got a lot to do with us, with what makes us a bit different to the Americans or the English. I don’t think Cliff would particularly like to sit down and talk to too many people about his private life.” And of the pos­ sibility of a romance with Ann Winter (Anna Maria Monticelli) — something which seems to be on the cards but never materializes — Brown says that, after extensive talks about whether Corris’s Hardy would have had “ a number with this girl or n o t” , they decided against it. “ I prefer the reality where, for whatever reasons, they didn’t. It’s another point about the man, and you can draw your own con­ clusions from it.”

Brown does not feel, however, that Cliff is without emotion. One scene he was adamant about saving — and one that director Chris Thomson originally wanted to lose — comes after Hardy has witnessed an innocent man being shot to death. He has been up all night, and in the morning graphically — and rather nastily — describes the gory scene to his flatmate. “ I wanted him to be hard and harsh,” says Brown, “ and Chris gave way on that. For me, it was very important that you saw that, if he didn’t hold himself together, this guy was liable to go under. It says in another book that Hardy could have wound up at the pub, playing pool with his mates all day, and having a whinge about how the world should be. In Corris’s book, the guy is human. He doesn’t get badly beaten in spirit, and he w ill keep coming back.

But the reality of Hardy is that he also has a bloody heart, and he has to fight to keep on top of things. The scenes that showed how he could lose himself but instead got on with it — these were Aftermaths o f violence in The Empty Beach. Facing page, Cliff Hardy (Brown) pulls the body o f the journalist, Henne­ berry (Nick Tate), from the surf Below, Anna Maria Monticelli as Anne Winter, in the wreckage o f her apartment.

“The thing that originally caught our attention was this character, Cliff Hardy.

It would have been pretty silly for us to spend two years making a movie that changed the character Peter Corris developed’’ the ones that I thought were very necessary to the character, and I fought for them. Sometimes, I fought too hard!”

Brown’s beginnings in the acting profession, for all the ‘Australian content’ of his movie roles, actually happened overseas, and in a fashion atypical of the NIDA-trained genera­ tion of actors who dominate the Aus­ tralian film industry. After spending four years in amateur theatre, beating the blahs of a boring insurance job, he decided to give professional acting “ a bloody good run” , his goal being to get a professional job within five years. It took a couple of months, but only after he decided to go to England: according to him, they were telling only English or American stories on the Australian stage at the time, and he decided to go there rather than learn it second-hand at home.

In Australia, Brown has worked with many of his directors at least twice: Stephen Wallace, Tom Jeffrey, Donald Crombie, John Duigan, Bruce Beresford. His major criterion for choosing a film or a director is a personal connection, and the con­ sideration of the reasons those involved give for making a film, rather than their track record. “ I ’m not the sort of person who gets very impressed by what someone has done. I like working with people I get along with, and whose ideas and enthusiasm I like.

I’ve liked every movie I’ve been

involved with: I ’ve never had a bad tim e' on a movie. I’ve never found people jumping up and down and screaming, hating this or that person.”

Brown is even generous in his opinion of The Thorn Birds, his first overseas project — more generous than were most Australian viewers. He cites “ the obvious criticism: where are the Australians? What is Barbara Stanwyck doing in the outback?” And he understands that, when the country was just beginning to forge its identity in film, it was difficult to see another country telling one of its stories. But it was a question of economics. “ It would have been terrific if Australia could have told the story, but the thing about it was that it was a big melo­ drama, and the people who told it knew how to deliver that kind of melo­ drama. And it pulled everybody in, just like the Dynasties and the Dallases do. The Americans owned it, and they were going to make it the way they wanted to. That makes sense, to o .” To prepare for the role of Luke O ’Neill, though, Brown had to enrich his Aus­ tralian experience by learning the art of sheep-shearing. “ It took three weeks before I could shear a sheep without beads of sweat falling off me in the first five seconds — three weeks of the most physical, back-breaking work I’ve ever done, to be able to deliver something to make it easier for the director to photograph.”

When choosing his roles nowadays, however, Brown has another con­ sideration: that he and his wife, actress Rachel Ward, should travel together.

He would have loved to take the opportunity of doing the Doll Trilogy on the Sydney stage last year, but turned it down because Rachel was working out of state. “ I don’t know how other people do it, but most of the time I see it all falling apart for them.

It’s up to you to find your own way.

Things fall into line when you know what you’re on about.” And he has no regrets over any opportunities lost because of their arrangement. “ People say a movie can change the course of events, and it does — in a certain way.

Bryan Brown

“ To give up telling Australian stories because of money is bloody stupid: it’ll leave nothing behind for Australia in a hundred years when they look back and say, ‘Oh, they made that rubbish, did they?”

But there is no one thing that is so important it has to be done. It all comes down to the opportunity to act: you get some and you don’t get others.

You dictate how your life is going to be in the choices you m ake.”

Now in preparation for playing the title role in the $30-million Dino De Laurentiis production of Jam es Clavell’s Tai-Pan, Brown is currently studying martial arts and working with an accent coach. After a sixteen-week shoot in China, he, his wife and their daughter, Rosie, will return to Sydney, where he will continue developing the next Cliff Hardy picture, as well as start work on a movie version of Back­ yard, a play he did four years ago at the Nimrod. In March, he and Rachel W ard will star in their first film together since The Thorn Birds: The Umbrella Woman, to be directed by Ken Cameron.

Like Cliff Hardy, Brown’s attitude towards his future career is to get on with it. And his greatest concern for the Australian film industry in general is for it not to be influenced by the pressure to make money overseas as the primary impetus for the type of films that are produced. “ We have to be careful that we don’t stop telling Australian stories, because as soon as we do, we don’t have an industry.

Whatever we’ve got will last twelve or eighteen months, and after that it’ll all be over, because B-grade American stories are uninteresting to us and also uninteresting to Americans. What we do need is expertise in the marketing of our movies, which will help us more than thinking we must make movies that Americans will like. We have to make movies that Australians like, and some of those will be transferable to another area. To give up telling Aus­ tralian stories because of money is bloody stupid: it’ll leave nothing behind for Australia in a hundred years when they look back and say, ‘Oh, they made that rubbish, did they?’ Instead, they’ll look back at the movies made about Australia, and they’ll find that interesting.”

Brown is also unapologetic about the fact that much of his recent work has been abroad. There have been two features in England: Give My Regards to Broad Street, in which he played Paul M cCartney’s Aussie manager; and Parker, the story of a businessman who is kidnapped for no apparent reason and, after his release, becomes obsessed with finding his captors.

Then there has been F/X , an action film recently completed in New York, which is the story of a movie special effects man who becomes involved with the underworld, and uses the skills of his profession to save his skin.

Although not specifically written for an Australian actor, the latter part was Seeing red: Brown as Joe Harman tells Jean Paget (Helen Morse) about A Town Like Alice — “red, as fa r as the eye can see”.

18 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Bryan Brown

something to which Brown brought his Australian accent and manners. “ Once you’ve got to the stage of being a well-known actor at home, the next barrier to break is the fact that, in stories set around the world, you don’t see too many Australians. Getting people used to the fact that Australians exist in the world, and exist as capably as anyone else does, will help in marketing any product that comes out of Australia: it’ll get them used to us.”

But, for all his worldwide conscious­ ness-raising about Australia, Brown doesn’t lose his strong sense of home. “ There are times you move among other communities of filmmaking, but you have your own community. I ’m an Australian actor, and part of that com­ munity, with the opportunity to work internationally, just as Matt Dillon does a movie in Australia, or Robert De Niro does a David Puttnam movie in England. It’s good for me person­ ally, but also very good for the Aus­ tralian film community. It’s good if we get a bit of clout.”

After nearly a decade in films, has Bryan Brown acquired a certain image? “ There’s no way a character comes from somewhere you’ve never been, or something you’ve never thought about, or an instinct you’ve never felt. There is something revealed about yourself every time you play someone: an intelligence, a lack of intelligence, a sensitivity, an insen­ sitivity, an emotional quality that those characters portray, and it has to come from something which has to do with me. But I don’t believe I have to

uphold an image or anything, because I ’m not particularly aware of what it is. The image and what you really are are usually as different as chalk and cheese.”

In fact, Brown expresses a genuine fondness for all his characters, singling out Len from Teralba Road with the sort of sentimental affection reserved for a first screen role. But he also liked Joe Harman from A Town Like Alice, and even Tiger Kelly from the recent Rebel — a character who “ would buy and sell anything: the absolute street con man of World War II” . About Rob McGregor, his character from Winter of Our Dreams, Brown speaks at length, almost in Rob’s defence.

A spread o f Brown-bred characters. Above, Brown as con man and black marketeer Tiger Kelly in Rebel and (inset) as Len in Love Letters from Teralba Road, his first film. Bottom o f the page: with Judy Davis (Lou) in Winter o f Our Dreams, in which he played Rob, a character he is ready to defend.

“ People have said to me, ‘What a cold bastard, what a rotten way he treated the girl!’ But I knew exactly what the character was on about. Here was a man who, in his early twenties, had been a passionate radical, then started to live a more middle-class, comfor­ table life. The death of someone he knew back then sparks off a sort of reappraisal. He would never have picked himself ten years later being in this position. Then the character of Lou [Judy Davis] — a prostitute and drug addict, living on the raw edge of

life — makes him feel this rawness coming out again, and that became stimulating to be around, but not because he was in love with the girl. He didn’t want to lead her on. Everyone took advantage of her except him. He gave her respect.”

As Rob McGregor never anticipated living the sort of life in which he found himself ten years later, how does Bryan Brown feel about his last ten years? “ Ten years ago, I was acting.

I’m still acting. T hat’s a bit surprising: I always thought I ’d get found out! I think most actors do. You think they’ll find out I’m no good. Later on, you think: ‘I’m probably quite good at things, but why don’t they use someone else anyway?’ I’ve been acting for thirteen years now, but only in the last couple of years have I come to the conclusion that I ’ll probably be acting in another twenty!” +

“ Ten years ago, t was acting. I’m still acting.

That’s a bit surprising: I always thought I’d get found out!”

CINEMA PAPERS September — 19

Hector Crawford

ISSU E S

The first point I always try to get over is that my stand on importing a limited number of overseas artists has nothing to do with Australian artists not being good enough: it is purely for box-office reasons. To have a drawcard, or a box-office name — or whatever you like to call it — has been a part of show business since time immemorial. There will always be drawcards in the theatre, in the concert hall, on the television screens and in the cinemas. But you can’t build stars overnight: it’s a long, long process. Sooner or later, those Australians who have the charisma will be the drawcards. We are doing it slowly, but there are still not enough of them: there’s Mel Gibson, Jack Thompson, Bryan Brown, Tom Burlinson, Judy Davis, Sigrid Thornton . . . I don’t know about others. Our people are starting to be recognized inter­ nationally; but it’s a long, slow, laborious process, which we’ve got to work at.

In film and television, America is the major market: that’s where the money is. And, in America, they must have faces that are known to the American public. With All The Rivers Run, which was all Australians, we just could not get press coverage in America, because there was not a face that anyone knew. They don’t print your face to be nice to you, you know: they print it to sell magazines. And magazines sell on well-known faces. That’s what it’s all about.

By now, we should have been able to have those faces, but we’re such a wretchedly backward country when it comes to tele­ vision. We were about the last developed country in the world to have it, and what did we do? We introduced it in black and white, so help me God! We had black and white television in this country up until about 1975. If a country is in colour, they don’t want to know you if you are in black and white. So, we were not able to get out and establish ourselves in the export markets that we already had in radio. We expected to move over, but the way into television exports has been slow.

We’re still caught with a country that has vast distances and a small population, which is a big problem for manufacturing, no matter what you make. In feature films and television pro­ grammes, there is little or no protection against the imported 20 — September CINEMA PAPERS

product. Over 25 years ago, in 1959, I produced a little booklet about commercial television programmes in Australia. I wrote: “ Australia as a nation cannot accept, in this powerful and persuasive medium, the present flood of another nation’s culture, without danger to our national identity. This does not imply a criticism of the values of American television programmes. They may be eminently suitable for the American audience, but a pro­ gramme structure which may be excellent from an American point of view may not be the best for Australia. What we need and must have is television which is distinctively Australian in programme character. “ Australians have proved many times in the field of entertain­ ment that their talent compares with that of other countries. We have the singers, the writers, the actors, musicians and producers;

“ If we are to sustain and improve the quality of our product, with a consequent increase in the employment of Australian actots, writers, directors and technicians, we must continue to expand overseas, particularly in the vast and rewarding US market” " but they, like the personnel of all other branches of the industry, cannot compete economically against the goods dumped in Australia and sold so far below their cost of production. In many instances, they have been compelled to journey overseas to obtain employment for their talents. “ The dominance of America in the Australian motion picture

Hector Crawford

ISSU E S

Hector Crawford is one of Australia’s most senior producers: from radio drama in the fifties, to television, mini-series and feature films in the eighties, he has been active in the Australian production industry for over 30 years.

Just recently he has, like a lot of producers, been coming into conflict with Australian Actors and Announcers Equity over the use of foreign stars in his productions, particularly on last year’s Fortress, a Crawfords Production that Equity objected to, was cancelled, then restarted. Here, in conversation with Cinema Papers Editor Nick Roddick, he argues that Australian film and television drama needs imported actors if it is to grow and prosper.

field must not be repeated in the even more persuasive medium of television. Australia has derived and, I hope, will continue to enjoy great benefits from our association with America, but these we must accept only on our own terms, and insist that they are woven into an Australian fabric of our own making and design.”

That is precisely what I am still advocating today: I haven’t moved an inch. Our television has got to be predominantly Australian. But the game has changed to a degree, in that it is now possible to contemplate getting into the overseas markets in a sub­ stantial way. The considerable support given to Australian film and television drama production over the last three years by 10BA has enabled this country to develop the capacity and ability to make programmes of a standard which can be marketed overseas.

Although our industry is small by comparison with the United States of America and the United Kingdom, our programmes are beginning to be sold to these countries, and are telecast success­ fully in this highly competitive broadcasting environment.

Nevertheless, we are still only in the early stages of establishing an Australian television export industry. If we are to sustain and improve the quality of our product, with a consequent increase in the employment of Australian actors, writers, directors and tech­ nicians, we must continue to expand overseas, particularly in the vast and rewarding US market. In order to be able to produce high-budget, quality television drama in Australia, we must be able to sell these programmes to the US market, thus generating the substantial financial returns that are needed to make them economically viable.

A lot has been said about what happened to the industry in Great Britain, where they had a far higher penetration of overseas actors, technicians and directors than we have ever had. But, when you get down to brass tacks, you say to them: “ What did happen?” And they say, “ Oh, the Americans all went away and the whole place closed down: we’ve never been able to recover!”

It’s a load of rubbish! Their trouble is — and ours is even worse — that they have a relatively small population, and they speak English. If you speak English, you need a population of around a

hundred million to be viable in the film business. We’ve got fifteen-and-a-half million, and we speak English. If we spoke Arunta, we’d be ever so much better off, because at least they’d have to go to some costs and and dub it. The small population and being English-speaking is what has knocked us.

Now, we’ve got to compensate for that somehow. 10BA has been a help — a considerable help, and we’ve got to stay with it.

And we’ve got to use it to get into export markets. If we’ve got to have two Americans to get the picture into America, we should use two Americans. It’s as simple as that. But I would never have a foreign person play an Australian, because I don’t believe they can. Nor do I believe Australians can play Americans. I find nothing more embarrassing than to go to the theatre when the whole cast is speaking American, and they’re all Australians and

“ W e’ve got fifteen-and-a-half million people, and we speak English. If we spoke Arunta, w e’d be ever so much better off, because at least they’d have to go to some costs and dub it’’ their accents are terrible! By the same token, I don’t believe Americans can play Australians.

In the end, it’s all a question of budgets. The cost per hour of producing a mini-series in Australia can vary a great deal, depending mainly on quality, number of episodes and the subject matter of the story. The majority of mini-series currently produced would cost between $600,000 and $900,000 per hour. A sale to an Australian network of Australian rights would yield a gross return of the order of $200,000 to $250,000 per hour. This CINEMA PAPERS September — 21

David B Simmonds (left); Bill Bachman (centre).

A mixture o f mini - series and features, local talent and imported artists. Left to right, Sigrid Thornton and John Waters in A ll the Rivers Run; Rachel Ward in Fortress; and Lorna Patterson — TV’s Private Benjamin — and Andrew McFarlane in The Flying Doctors.

means that only about one third of the cost of quality drama pro­ duction can be recouped within Australia. We must make sales to the vast American market to provide most of the other two thirds.

Should the government’s invaluable support under 10BA ever be withdrawn without our first firmly establishing ourselves in the American market, our industry would collapse.

With Fortress, when we sold the picture to Home Box Office for 50% of the budget, it was on the condition that they have a face that was known to the American public. But Equity refused to support the issue of a permit for one person to work, and there are about 85 speaking parts in the picture! That left us stranded: the deal with HBO was that it had to be a face that was known.

There was to be no other condition: apart from that, we could cast anybody. So, when the Minister was not prepared to overturn the decision, that left us with no option but to cancel, at a cost of about $700,000, which had already been spent. As time wore on, of course, Rachel [Wardl married Bryan, was living in Australia and was available, so we went back. But the cancellation and the

“ What I can’t understand is why Paul Cox is able to bring out an actress, and Crawford Productions aren’t” time costs and all that were a very, very solemn and bitter pill. I think Equity gambles to some degree that a producer won't cancel. But they take so long to give you an answer that you are left with a choice. Our choice was to cancel.

Generally, though, we get on very well with Equity: our objectives are almost identical. The only difference could be that they want more money for less work, and we want much more work for less money! That’s an over-simplification, of course!

Apart from that, they want things that are Australian: they want 22 — September CINEMA PAPERS

employment of Australian writers, actors and so forth. So do we.

What we’re on about is to get a good return for our investors, and to get employment for Australians. Now, importing one or two actors is not going adversely to affect employment here: it is going to create it. It is going to mean you can go ahead and do things that, otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to do. I think it helps the financial success of the project, and therefore it’s good for the industry, it’s good for programming, and it’s good for feature films. It’s not the thin end of the wedge or anything like that: if you let too many in, the whole business goes out of the window.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that we should bring in cartloads of foreign actors. I would be quite happy to have an absolute maximum of three imported artists.

What I can’t understand, though, is why Paul Cox is able to bring out an actress, and Crawford Productions aren’t. Equity will say, “ Paul couldn’t cast it in Australia” . I couldn’t cast it in Australia, either. You are allowed to bring out an overseas star to make a commercial, and that’s just to sell product to Australians!

I ask you! Talk about discrimination in our industry! Equity last year let in seventeen theatrical companies, plus 409 overseas artists. So people were coming here by the cartload: they’re allowed to be in the restaurants, in the clubs, opera, ballet, concerts, they’re allowed to be making commercials on television and for plays, but not for film and television production . . .

It is ironic — and regrettable — that the opportunities for Australian actors and their fellow television workers should, in the long term, be limited by the restrictive policy of their union towards imported artists. Contrary to being a ‘defence of employ­ ment’, the union’s policy is restrictive in that it inhibits the pro­ duction of films that are more likely to sell internationally. This is a policy which has been drawn up without any consultation with producers who have experience of the overseas marketing of Aus­ tralian programmes, and who have invested considerable effort and capital in the development of an export market for the Australian film and television industry. It is a policy which is holding back that development and, if allowed to operate as it has to date, will stifle and may well destroy the industry. ★

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With a population of just over three million, New Zealand is too small to sustain a film industry without government help and/or overseas sales. And, although the past few years have seen some pretty impressive films emerge from the Land of the Long White Cloud, the future is currently a little uncertain.

This time last year, what is now hanging over the head of the Australian film and television industry — the withdrawal of tax concessions — happened in New Zealand. Nick Roddick looks at the state of the Kiwi movie industry in 1985 and finds that, although things have certainly changed, the islands are by no means shrouded in gloom.

a—

Depending on how you look at it, film­ making in New Zealand is either get­ ting on for 90 years old, or else will be celebrating its eighth birthday in 1985.

The discrepancy is not hard to account for: although films were made on a sporadic basis from 1898 through to the mid-seventies, there was nothing that could remotely be described as a film industry before an expatriate Aus­ tralian called Roger Donaldson, who had gone to NZ to avoid the Vietnam draft, made Sleeping Dogs in 1976-7.

1977 also saw Geoff M urphy’s Wild Man, Tony Williams’s Solo and Michael Firth’s Off the Edge.

Before that, says veteran producer John O ’Shea, “ it was all pretty much Grandma Moses stuff’’ (though the enterprising New Z ealand Film Archive has been filling halls and cinemas all over the country with pro­ grammes of this rare historical footage). O ’Shea himself provides a bridge between the very early films and the late seventies boom: with minimal means and boundless optimism, he made three features — Broken Barrier, co-directed with Roger Mirams in 1952; Runaway in 1964; and Don’t Let it Get You in 1966. Before Murphy, Donaldson et al., the only other New Zealand filmmaker to deserve even passing mention is Rudall Hayward who — again against all the odds — managed to make seven feature films in a career spanning five decades, from My Lady of the Cave in 1922 to To Love a Maori in 1972. As the American film historian, Robert Sklar, has written, “ few other figures in An unlikely alliance between Billy T. James and Peter Bland in Came a Hot Friday.

world cinema can match his half­ century of active film production . . . and Rudall Hayward’s films rank with the few good Hollywood films that depict contemporary society and the past with humour, compassion and insight” (Landfall, June 1971).

1977, however — and Sleeping Dogs in particular — was the start of the New Zealand film industry. It was a birth complicated by a number of factors. First, there was the campaign for a New Zealand Film Commission, along the lines of the AFC, but with a somewhat different charter and, at any rate initially, a form of funding (via the state lottery) that protected it against criticism of misspending the hard-earned Kiwi tax dollar. Secondly, there was the growth of television.

Thirdly — and paradoxically — there was the shrinkage of that same strifetorn and constantly restructured government television system (see Warren Mayne’s article on page 36 of this issue), which forced a new genera­ tion of filmmakers to go it alone.

Pressure for a Commission had been building up since the early sixties, was given a shot in the arm by an Arts Council report in 1970, and was finally established, after the kind of delay which only governments can manage, by an Act of Parliament in October 1978. In the years which have fol­ lowed, the NZFC has become a vital part of the New Zealand film industry.

The vast majority of the features made in the country have passed across its desks at some stage in their life, and a fair proportion have received either script development money or direct investments. As one might expect, the Commission has come in for a fair amount of criticism from filmmakers

who have been turned down or who, in a familiar echo of the Australian situa­ tion, question its suitability as a repre­ sentative of the industry in discussions with the government.

1981:

Roger Donaldson

Director of S Dogs id The __ Smash Palace (1984), .... ... lore the Zealand release of Smash Palace.

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release a movie in a competitive: three bt to go to I qect to see :o the best -T v %whatever — you can’t deliver Star in terms of the special effects, you’ve at least got to deliver some­ thing that gets them going — some­ thing that’s controversial in some way or another. Sleeping Dogs did that, I think.

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Criticism or no, the Commission has been extremely successful in represent­ ing the films that have been made in New Zealand on a world scale. Before the emergence of a couple of local film “ W h a t’s h a p p en ed in New Zealand is that, over the years, a couple of people have surfaced and made some films, but they didn’t really capture the public’s imagina­ '* With the advent o f television tion. and soap opera, people came to accept that U l C U jyou f M l* L could U U 1 U hear J your U U 1 Uown W I1 accent spoken, and you didn’t cringe with embarrassment and die on the floor. They really did cringe and die on the floor at John O ’Shea’s movies. “ It’s very difficult to talk about the future of any film industry, because the only one th at’s really guaranteed to be continuing for some time is the American one. But there are a number of people here who are getting the expertise to do it: half the man-hours worked at the moment must be spent on feature projects.

There’s a lot of people trained up to do the jobs and, if we’re lucky, we might just be able to keep making them. “ For myself, I’m quite committed to the New Zealand film industry.

Well, I’m committed to my own movies, really: the New Zealand film industry is something that’s just happened. There are real advantages here, though: Smash Palace is my movie, and I couldn’t have made it anywhere else. 1 definitely have more chance to make m y movies here: in Los Angeles, I’d be just another hack director.”

CINEMA PAPERS September — 25

New Zealand — Overview Valerie Gogan in the lead role o f Ceci in Heart o f the High Country, a $5-million mini-series co-produced by Britain’s Zenith and New Zealand’s Phillips- Whitehouse.

1982:

John O’Shea

Senior New Zealand producer/director and. more recently, producer of Pictures (1981), Among the Cinders (1984) and Leave A ll Fair (1985), talking at the time of the London release of Pictures.

“ I was extraordinarily fortunate in the way I got started. Nowadays, I would have to go to film school and start at the bottom and work my way up. As it was, I just moved in to pro­ duce and direct a feature, Broken Barrier. If you went to the Film Commission with that these days, they’d laugh at you! And, if I ’d been given much more money, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. Not that they have that much money these days: I don’t know any pro­ ducer or director in this country who’s riding round in the sort o f vehicle that directors o f commercials in London have. Anyway, I believe in permanent insecurity: it’s a great stimulus. “ It’s not quite an industry yet, I don’t think. Well, it’s more of an industry than the English one; but, until it makes a marriage with tele­ non and until there’s another outlet for the crews, so people can keep in constant employment, there won’t really be an industry. Still, we can’t

26 — September CINEMA PAPERS

continue to be represented visually by documentaries which depopulate the place! “ I think the start of the feature film industry was in the early seven­ ties, when t re New Zealand Broad­ casting Corporation decided to get into independent programming. We were in it: Pacific Films made about 20 television programmes with Geoff Steven and Roger Donaldson. The second channel ended th at. When the Labour government came in and ‘liberalized’ television, the first thing they did was to clobber the independents St ! t started it a different way: that’s when Roger went and made Sleeping Dogs.’’

marketing companies in the past year — The Gibson Group and the Challenge Film Corporation (the latter fronted by ex-Goldcrest marketing director, Bill Gavin) — it has been the NZFC which has hawked the movies round the world, from festival to festival and from market to market.

With remarkable success, too. Of the nine new films that were taken to Cannes this year, most of them came away with something, capped by the $2 million-plus worth of sales done by Shaker Run, the Larry Parr-produced, Bruce Morrison-directed action adven­ ture movie. The fact that it was actually handled by Challenge should not detract from the NZFC’s long­ term achievement. It has been remark­ ably successful in establishing a profile and a precedent, thanks to indefatig­ able publicity (year after year, there are more New Zealand posters in Cannes than there are from anywhere else) and the dedication of Marketing Director Lindsay Shelton and Distri­ bution Manager Judy Russell. There is perhaps also a lesson to be learned in some areas from the fact that the whole operation is run by a staff of eight full-timers and one part-timer.

For the past couple of years, the NZFC has turned up at Cannes with an annual catalogue of nine new movies — the final flowering of a tax shelter deal which, much like 10BA, allowed investors to take their profit at the

front end, rather than wait for the film to go into profit on the world film market. Tax write-offs could, by astute financial management, be geared up to two or even three times the actual investment. Like 10BA, the legislation which made this possible was adapted from other areas of high-risk invest­ ment. And, although it certainly had the effect it was designed to have — it created a film industry, jobs and an ancillary supply industry — it didn’t (like, say, a kiwi-fruit farm) leave much to show afterwards. As such, it became a thorn in the treasury’s side: in New Zealand, as in Australia, cultural arguments cut comparatively little ice with fiscal planners. And, although the film industry’s overseas marketing record was impressive and its international image-building role invaluable, the (then) M uldoon government moved to end the tax shelter in its 1982 budget, giving it a two-year run-down period. 30 Sept­ ember 1984 was the deadline. After that date, the tax concessions would no longer apply.

The effect of that deadline has been immediate: whereas this time last year there were eleven feature films in various stages of production or post­ production, since 1 October 1984, only one feature has been completed, with another due to go later this month and another possible, but by no means certain, in November. As Wellington producer Dave Gibson says, “ I think there might be one or two pictures at Cannes next year, but th at’ll be it.”

Things are not quite as bad as they look, however. This time last year, with the September deadline looming, there was a general air of pessimism in the industry. This spring, things look decidedly brighter. And, whereas no one — with the inevitable exception of Geoff Murphy — used to go on record attacking the tax concessions for fear that the government would take it all away, now that the government has taken it (almost) all away, there is a kind of relief. “ The only good thing about it all,” says Gibson, “ is that you knew what the date was and that, after that, you had to get your act together and do something else.”

There are also fairly frequent com­ ments that some — though no one will say which — of the 1984 movies shouldn’t have been made: that their genesis lay in a tax deal rather than in a burning desire to make a film. Larry Parr, producer of Constance, Shaker Run and Came a Hot Friday (as well as Bridge to Nowhere, the only feature to have been made this year) hints at that in his equally positive reaction to the change. “ As a result of that favour­ able investment climate,” he says, “ some of us got the opportunity to build up a track record. Money is not so easy to come by now, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing: it’ll sort out the players from the stayers.”

To judge by the films that were on show at Cannes this year, not too many ropey ones slipped through.

Apart from a couple of robust if indifferent low-budget movies pro­ duced and marketed by Grahame M cLean, shot back-to-back and aggressively marketed on the home turf, the standard was well up to previous years. Indeed, one of the striking things about the New Zealand film industry is how few films that have been made under the tax shelter

CONGRATULATIONS to New Zealand’s Ü.S. distributors MGM/UA CLASSICS X . ■

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’• 5 A T L A N T IC RELEASING — Smash Palace. \ .

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FRANK MORENO C O M PANY ■— The Scarecrow. NU-IMAGE — Skindeep. . \ .

SATORI — Beyond Reasonable D oubt. W ild Horses, Sleeping Dogs.

'• - v Two-thirds o f the titles in the current New Zealand feature film catalogue have been sold fo r U.S. distribution More than 50 per cent o f the deals have been finalised in the last 12 months . . . ' proving the growing reputation fo r New Zealand movies in the w o rld ’s biggest single market. ' And 1985 is the best year yet fo r New Zealand movies in the United States — not only ten new titles in first-release theatric release, but also a 30-day. 30-film retrospective at the John F. Kennedy Center in : Washington presented by the American Film Institute, plus a season at the Pacific Film Archive .

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Future shock on the left, ‘shocking’ TV on the right: Bruno Lawrence in The Quiet Earth (left); and, facing page, Georgina Beyer and Richard Hanna in Jewel’s Dari, one o f Seven Tales fo r Television.

have simply vanished without trace.

From an industry that, over the eight years of its existence, has produced just short of 50 films (including co­ productions not handled by the NZFC), the total failure rate has been not much over 10%.

The nine new films shown in the market this year — there was no New Zealand film in either the competition or the Directors’ Fortnight — all definitely looked like they ought to have been made. Best of them was The Quiet Earth, audience favourite at this year’s Melbourne Film Festival and G eoff M urphy’s valedictory New Zealand movie before taking off for Hollywood. It is a science fiction movie in which Bruno Lawrence wakes up to find himself alone in the world: everyone else has vanished as a result of a dimensional experiment that got

1983:

Geoff Murphy

Director of Wild Man (1977), Goodbye Pork Pie (1981), Utu (1983) and The Quiet Earth (1985), talking in Cannes where Utu was an ‘official selection out of competition’.

“ At the moment, the big Hollywood film tends to be straight entertain­ ment, with the accent on audience manipulation and technique, rather than art for art’s sake. I think th at’s what I try for, too. With Goodbye Pork Pie, what I wanted to make was a film that would be very popular — which it was — but which also said things about an individual’s reaction to a terribly over-regulated society, and the desire for them to set their

28 — September CINEMA PAPERS

out of hand. It is an interesting premise, but by no means a cast-iron one. In the film, though, Murphy has perfected his ability to combine moments of anarchic humour with an edge-of-the-seat adventure movie.

Whereas in Goodbye Pork Pie, the jokes and the stunts co-existed uneasily, and in Utu the virtuoso juggling with history and the audi­ ence’s expectations left many un­ certain as to whether they were watch­ ing a New Zealand western or a serious slice of nineteenth-century history, in Quiet Earth the tone is unified.

Lawrence’s outrageous acts of self­ liberation — dressing in female under­ wear, making himself president and blasting Christ from an altar crucifix — never hide his angst and never detract from the tension that underlies the first half of the movie. And, in the own goals, no matter how absurd they were. But I didn’t want to put that message in huge letters, so that the audience felt I was giving them a sermon. Same with Utu. People go to a film for some sort of release and entertainment, and I feel an obliga­ tion to give them what they go for.

The sort of films I most admire are the ones that succeed in doing that without short-changing the other side of things. “ One thing I feel is that, when you shoot a feature, you’re in a much more difficult medium than tele­ vision. The audience has to travel and put itself out and pay money out o f its pocket, stand in the rain, find parking spots, hire babysitters . . .

So, you have to offer something that makes it feel it was worthwhile. And, to do that, I feel you have to be pre­ pared to take risks while you’re shooting. The concept o f doing a production where every decision that you make is safe will finish up as a soap opera. “ Just recently, I think the tax situation has been getting out of hand. Everyone’s been making their money on the way in: the investors are showing tax breaks, the pro­ ducers are writing themselves fat fees, there’s more money and the crews get paid great amounts: every­ body makes their money when the film’s made, and then you could put it in the can and bury it and no one’s going to be particularly upset. The constraints of the marketplace have to be felt.” ' . '

second half, where he meets up with two more survivors (Alison Routledge and Pete Smith), Murphy manages to develop character relationships far more successfully than he did in Pork Pie. Like Utu, The Quiet Earth is clearly the work of a major filmmaker — of someone who cares about his craft and cares what he does with it.

But, unlike Utu, it melds all the elements into a whole to come up with a satisfying adventure film with a good deal of depth to it, and one whose quirks and oddities need no allowances to be made for them.

This year’s other films need no apology, either. Came a Hot Friday, from the novel by Ronald Hugh Morrieson, is a comedy that fills the screen in almost every sense. The direc­ torial debut of Ian Mune, actor and writer on Sleeping Dogs, writer of Smash Palace and several other films, it looks at a couple of con men running a racing scam in a small North Island town in the fifties. More than any film since Smash Palace, it captures the spirit of rural New Zealand, though not in a nostalgic or condescending way. M une’s style is definitely in the over-the-top category. But it is con­ sistent, reaching its finest in the per­ formance of Maori entertainer Billy T. James as the Tainuia Kid, a colourful

lunatic who wears Mexican bandit clothes, uses comic-book Mexican dialect and brings a general south-ofthe-border ambience to the rural back­ water.

The other five films are more horses for courses — an area which the New Zealand film industry has served fairly efficiently in the past. Michael Firth’s Sylvia is the true if rather soft-focus story of educator Sylvia AshtonW arner (Eleanor David) and her struggle to change New Zealand educa­ tion in the forties; Leave All Fair, directed by John Reid, is a leisurely study of the relationship between Katherine Mansfield (Jane Birkin) and John Middleton Murry (Simon W ard as a young man, John Gielgud as an old one); Kingpin, a grittily realistic and exciting story about a youth deten­ tion centre, is a local story that travels well; Shaker Run is a sparse, neatly orchestrated stunt movie from the director of last year’s Constance, Bruce Morrison, which had the market audience cheering; and Mr Wrong, a stylish feminist thriller about a woman who buys a haunted car, is directed by Gaylene Preston, with Heather Bolton giving an excellent performance in the main role.

But what of the future? Apart from Bridge to Nowhere, about a group of city kids at threat from Bruno Law­ rence as what the synopsis calls “ a volatile individual” (a role which Law­ rence has all but made his own), and Queen City Rocker, described by its producer, Larry Parr, as “ an urban youth picture” , there is nothing much in the offing for the big screen. Parr has got those two off the ground by way of overseas pre-sales. For Bridge to Nowhere, he says, “ the deal was with Embassy Home Entertainment, for all rights, worldwide. But the budget was very low — NZ$1.3 million, which at the time we did the deal was US$600,000. Queen City Rocker is a less contained picture, and the budget is going to be about NZ$2 million. T hat’s US$1 million, and it’s Below, Eleanor David in the title role o f Sylvia, a biopic about Sylvia AshtonWarner, New Zealand’s education pioneer.

New Zealand — Overview

going to be a little more difficult to get a pre-sale that covers that budget.”

Indeed, production has already been put back a month, partly because of logistics, and partly because the finance is not yet finalized. And although Parr, with his track record, is one of the most successful producers in New Zealand, there is a note of caution about what he says that wasn’t really discernible when I spoke to him pre-September 1984. “ On all the pre­ vious films I’ve been involved with, I’ve been prepared to go on the line myself financially, but I ’m going to make sure the money is in the bank before I start this one. I think I’ve taken enormous risks in the past and, although I ’m not losing my gambling instinct, you can’t go on taking those risks and getting away with it all the tim e.”

Such caution is obviously a crucial part of any firmly based industry (as opposed to a bunch of dedicated people making films, come what may), and there is currently a sense of the New Zealand film industry growing up, a fte r the experim ents and enthusiasms of the early eighties.

According to Don Reynolds, producer of last year’s Trial Run and Heart of the Stag and this year’s The Quiet Earth and Sylvia, “ pre-sales are obvi­

ously going to be the crucial thing: writing scripts that can be sold offshore.” For Reynolds, last year’s crisis has proved quite salutary. “ The scripts have got to be more polished now, and the film has to have a sales track to go down, because having a pre-sale is really determining that the film has potential outside New Zealand. I actually still believe that we can make some wholly New Zealand films, done entirely from New Zealand money, be it a mixture of television and Film Commission, or television and private funding. They should still be saleable offshore because of that, but it’s very difficult to fund them through a pre-sale.”

Reynolds has a couple of features that he hopes to get going in the next year or so: Dangerous Orphans, an urban thriller set in Wellington, with John Laing directing and a budget of NZ$2Vi-3 million; and Melanie Read’s first 35mm fe a tu re , Mandarin Summer, with a NZ$l!/2-2 million budget. Dangerous Orphans is currently slated for November 1985, and Mandarin Summer a year later.

John Maynard, who produced Vin­ Below: Jane B irk in and John Gielgud in Leave All Fair, in which B irk in also plays (inset) Katherine Mansfield.

cent W ard’s Vigil, which was in com­ petition at Cannes last year, and which opens in Australia this month, will produce W ard’s next feature, with the working title of Navigator. Ward is currently immersed in books about the Middle Ages, and Navigator promises to be every bit as personal a film as Vigil. But Maynard isn’t sure whether Vigil’s track record will make it any easier for him to raise the money for the new film. “ I don’t know if it’s helped, because we haven’t tried to finance the next one yet. But what it has done is show everybody that we can make world-class cinema at quite reasonable rates, and that we know how to deliver world-class cinema to that great second-stream audience out there.”

Government money — which helped considerably with Vigil — hasn’t dried

1984:

up completely, of course. To replace the tax concessions, the new Labour government has allocated NZ$3.4 million to the NZFC for ‘certified’ New Zealand movies, in addition to its annual $750,000 in lottery money. This was not a move that was particularly welcomed by the Independent Pro­ ducers and Directors Guild, who were looking for a 24<£-in-the-dollar rebate on investments, and were worried about the idea of certification. The new fund will be available only to movies that have a discernible New Zealand content. What this is tanta­ mount to saying is that there will, in future, be two kinds of New Zealand movies: local ones, with a limited local market and a certain amount of curiosity interest overseas; and pre­ sales pictures, which could well degenerate into ‘numberplate films’ — those in which you have to peer closely at the front end of the cars to see where the film was made. This hasn’t happened so far, but it is a de facto situation the New Zealand film industry will have to struggle hard to avoid.

The other direction in which New Zealand producers have been moving since last September is television. This is somewhat ironical, since nearly everyone I spoke to last year was at pains to rubbish TVNZ for what pro­ ducer John Barnett called “ reneging on its responsibilities” (i.e. not doing enough local drama). It is even more ironical, since it was television’s withdrawal of an outlet from the independent production industry that got feature filmmaking going in the mid-seventies. But things are changing now. Last month, TVNZ ran a second season of New Zealand features, for which they paid double the price obtained for the last package, back in 1981. More importantly, the imminent arrival of a third channel — discussed in Warren Mayne’s article — has opened up a lot of possibilities.

Melanie Read

One of three women filmmakers to make films in 1983-4, talking during post-pro­ duction on her feature, Trial Run (1984).

“ It was a fluke that Merata [Mita, director of Patuî], myseif and Yvonne [Mackay, director of The Silent One] were all working on feature films at the same time. I think some people thought, ‘Wow! It must be the women’s filmmaking paradise of the world!’ If it is easier for women filmmakers in New Zealand, it’s simply because the industry is so small: we’re not incredibly producer­ dominated yet, and we’re certainly not studio-dominated. For women — unfortunately we can’t say the same for any other minority groups yet — the climate of the New Zealand film industry probably makes it a little bit easier. “ In terms of the sexism, racism and classism of the industry, though, I think it’s the same as any other film industry in the world. And also its domination by Hollywood: that’s the same as anywhere else. I think the only thing that makes New Zealand different is the New Zealandness of it. “ For myself, though, I’ll stay in the mainstream, because my aim is to make commercially viable political films. It’s very difficult: I’ve always been aware of the compromises that I have to make, but Trial Run has taken all o f those compromises onto

Annie Whittle in Melanie Read’s Trial Run.

a much bigger level. And Trial Run is still little fish compared with a lot of the stuff that gets done here. “ I think what is important now is for the minority voices to be heard — anything to break the Hollywood monopoly, as far as I can see, whether you want to do it in nationalistic fields or smaller sub­ groups. Which ever way you look at it, I think that it’s an important thing that’s happening here now. So I’d call myself a New Zealand filmmaker and a feminist filmmaker.”

CINEMA PAPERS September — 29

New Zealand — Overview Don Reynolds, like many producers, sees the third channel as offering potential for the independent industry. “ If we can get in the region of 5 or 10% of their advertising revenue, which would seem reasonable, it would seem enough.” Rob Whitehouse, how­ ever, co-producer of The Scarecrow, Battletruck and Savage Islands, is a lot more dubious. “ Y ou’ve only got to sit down and work out even some of the inflated figures they say they’re going to get in advertising,” he says, “ to know that, by the time they’ve paid off the interest on their equipment — you know, $100 million plus capital costs and from there on down — they’re not going to have much money to spend on outside drama. The third channel isn’t going to be the saviour of the independent industry.” Dave Gibson doesn’t believe they will be getting much work directly from the third channel, but he does think that the competition it offers to TVNZ, Violent images, varying budgets: top, King­ pin; centre, the young people (Matthew Hunter, Margaret Umbers, Shelley Lux­ ford, Stephen Judd) in Bridge to Nowhere; bottom, C liff Robertson, Leif Garrett and Lisa Harrow in Shaker Run.

together with the latter’s tied budget, will force TVNZ to turn to the independents for some of their drama. “ They will disguise that with some really nice phrases; but basically, they’ve seen the writing on the wall.”

Almost all New Zealand producers have some form of television deal going. Finlayson-H ill, who were behind John Laing’s Other Halves, which did n ’t make it to Cannes but which has been doing good business at the local box office, have Terry and the Gunrunners in p ro d u c tio n .

Phillips-W hitehouse, the company Rob Whitehouse runs with Lloyd Phillips, has just completed an impres­ sive six-hour mini-series, Heart of the High Country, made in association with Britain’s Zenith and TVNZ. With a budget of just under NZ$5 million and a primetime British network air date in November, it looks like being one of the more promising productions of 1985.

Don Reynolds is similarly looking at a number of TV projects, and John Maynard has just completed a lowbudget series of Seven Tales for Tele­ vision, keeping up his record of giving opportunities to first-time directors and first-time writers. “ They’ve been

1985

Rob Whitehouse

Co-producer of The Scarecrow (1982), Battletruck (1982) and Savage Islands (1983), talking just after completion of his mini-series, Heart of the High Country.

“ I’ve been something of a preacher of doom, in that I believe it’s going to be very difficult to make Films.

Now, everybody’s jumped around and said, ‘Oh, we’ll make low-budget films’. And my argument has been, ‘It doesn’t matter what the budget is: there’s no reason for people to invest in films’. First of all, you can’t say that New Zealand films have made money, and now there’s no tax incen­ tive, there’s actually no reason for people to invest: there aren’t any people out there wanting to put money into films for the sake of it.

30 — September CINEMA PAPERS

pre-sold to TVNZ,” he says, “ but they have actually been made for an inter­ national television audience. They’re really quite specific and quite local, though: urban, contemporary and set in Auckland. All of them are a bit naughty, some of them are quite fun, and all of them are quite serious. I don’t talk about budgets, but the budget for these ones was pretty sm all.”

And the Gibson Group has also got a big television series in post-produc­ tion: Cuckoo Land, which is six 25-minute stories, shot on video, and making use of all sorts of advanced video techniques which, to judge by th e sectio n s w hich have been completed, should have no difficulty in attracting buyers when it is on offer at the London Market in October.

Says Dave Gibson, “ we’re doing what I think a lot of people are doing, which is moving right away from features” — Gibson’s produced last year’s The Silent One — “ and into television. And th at’s purely because of the risk factor. There might be only one or two features at Cannes next year, but there’ll be a hell of a lot of television. Television is safer. You can actually look at it and be fairly sure that, if you make this sale to France and this sale to the UK and this sale to Germany and a few sales to the US and Australia, you’ll end up with about what the budget was.”

The New Zealand film industry, then, looks like it will make it to its tenth and/or ninetieth birthday. The high-profile world of feature films may be temporarily in recession, but the past eight years has built up enough expertise, enough business sense and enough commitment to see it through the crisis. And, judging by econom ic indicators outside the immediate production industry, film­ making in New Zealand in 1985 is cautious but healthy. “ You see,” says Reynolds, “ I actually feel more opti­ mistic than I did this time last year. In fact, we’ve just spent half a million dollars on a new sound studio in Well­ ington.” (Reynolds is also behind Associated Sounds, and the new stateof-the-art studio is part of a multi­ million dollar ‘Production Village’, an impressive facilities centre which is growing up around the burgeoning equipment hire and servicing com­ pany, Film Facilities.) “ I think,” con­ cludes Reynolds, “ that the industry is going to consolidate and move in a very positive direction and in a very commercial way. And then we will have a Mad Max or something like that: we’re on the brink of it.” + “ So then the argument that every­ one has put up is, ‘Oh, well, we’ll pre-stII our films’, which I think is a bit funny too, because there aren’t large numbers of buyers sitting out there with big cheque books looking for New Zealand films! “ I think it’s a shame that the situa­ tion got out of control, and that legislation was brought in to stop it, because it was a very necessary thing to get the industry going. But I think people were a little bit casual about the kinds of films they made. Having been on the other side of it as a lawyer, for people who, as clients, put money into films, I know their points of view. And what those people are saying now is, ‘Movies?

Forget it! I could have put my money in a kiwi-fruit farm, got the same deduction, and now at least I would have had an appreciating asset. You filmmakers can all go stuff it!’ ”

Thanks Lizzie Birdsworth, Dave Sullivan, “Skippy” and everyone else in Australia for entertaining us over the past 25 years -i r H* H L± J T E L E V IS IO N N E W ZEALAND GNAK 597

Vincent Ward’s Vigil, which opens in Australia this month, was the first New Zealand film to be invited to compete at Cannes — quite a tribute for the debut feature by a director still in his twenties, working in a country set well apart from the cinematic centre of things.

But, as Tony Mitchell found out, he has turned this isolation firmly to his advantage.

“ Vigil is the strongest, most personally inspired film to come out of New Zealand to date. It establishes in a single blow the place of its creator, 27-year-old Vincent W ard, as a unique film talent.” So declared Variety in May 1984, on the eve of Vigil’s appear­ ance at Cannes, as the first New Zealand film to be accepted into com­ petition. “ It will not be an overnight com­ m ercial b lo ck b u ster in cinem as throughout the w orld,” Variety went on (with some accuracy) to prophesy, “ but it seems destined to do strong business on the increasingly lucrative art film circuits.” More than a year later, Vigil is finally being commer­ cially released in Australia — by Ronin Films — having picked up an impres­ sive list o f eulogies throughout E u ro p e , C a n a d a an d the UK. Audiences at the Prades Festival in France voted it most popular film, and, at last year’s Sydney Film Festival, it came eighth in the audience poll — no mean achievement in view of the tradi­ tional Australian scepticism towards its su p p o s e d ly u n d e rd e v e lo p e d neighbour.

Vincent Ward is an intense, cautious interviewee, who leaves strands of thought dangling in mid-air to pursue a contingent point, and is then prone to loop back to tie up the loose ends.

His careful pursuance of the right way to express a particular idea is also a detectable feature of his films. Vigil is in fact his third, if you count the 52-minute State of Siege, based on a novel by Janet Frame, which he made when he was 21; and In Spring One Plants Alone, a 45-minute documen­ tary about an old Maori wom an’s life with her mentally retarded son, made two years later.

32 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Both films picked up awards in their rounds of the festivals (a circuit which NZ producers cultivate far more assiduously than their counterparts here). State of Siege won a Golden Hugo at the 1978 Chicago Film Festival and a Special Jury Prize in Miami the same year, while In Spring One Plants Alone got a Silver Hugo and was joint winner of the Grand Prix at the Cinéma du Réel at the Beau­ bourg Centre in Paris in 1980.

The two early films deal with characters in situations of extreme isolation. “ All the characters in my films are in isolation,” says Ward. “ For each film, there is a long search to find the right individuals to ‘people’ it. Inevitably, there are some New Zealand qualities there, but I don’t find I easily identify with the style or tradition of other films made in NZ. A lot of films here come out of a realist tradition, tempered by American genre films. But my interest lies elsewhere: I’m looking for pockets of the outside world which match my own interior vision.” In other words, Ward turns the isolation — physical, geographical and cultural — of New Zealand into a virtue, using its blank canvas as a posi­ tive, minimalist force.

It was while he was studying paint­ ing at the Ilam School of Fine Arts in Christchurch that Ward decided he wanted to translate some of his ideas onto celluloid, and he used the school’s equipment to make State of Siege. The result was something more than just another student film: his assistant director was Geoff Murphy (also interviewed in this issue). And Siege conveyed a chilling sense of horror in the psychological disintegra­ tion of the art-teacher protagonist (played by Anne Flannery), without having to resort to any special effects (which would, in any case, have been out of range of the film’s budget). In one scene, the woman is painting a picture on the edge of a coastal cliff. “ What I like about that scene is its visual irony,” says Ward. “ The waves explode against the rocks with a ferocious and totally wild energy, yet she’s trying to capture the scene with refined little brush-strokes, using a delicate watercolour brush!”

In State of Siege, the camera is like a prowler, playing off pinprick light sources against, at times, almost total darkness, and brooding over muddy

34 — September CINEMA PAPERS

textures. This, and W ard’s subsequent work, comes out of a background in painting, as opposed to photorealism. “ In painting,” he explains, “ you’re always distanced from your subject matter. The more beautiful the surface of the picture, the more it operates like a window pane, and separates you from the content. In film, you have to break the lovely surface of things — smash your fist through the panel of glass and pull the people out from behind it.”

The 45 minutes of In Spring One Plants Alone are, in fact, the result of a two-year period spent with the 82-yearold protagonist and her son. Ward would set up his camera and hope the old woman would walk across the frame, having reached the point of being able to predict her movements throughout the day. He worried at his subject, shooting take after take, and filming the surrounding landscape repeatedly, in an attempt to show how it reflected his subject’s state of mind.

At one point, as he tells it, he got the particular light he wanted just when his c in e m a to g ra p h e r — A lu n Bollinger, who has worked on all his films to date — was taking a break, so Ward had to drive the van and film at the same time. “ The particular qualities I wanted were spiritual,” he says, “ and I didn’t want the camerawork to intrude. I wanted it very still, but without losing the immediacy. Everything had to support the interior quality I was after.

But that way of working is the quickest way to send yourself crazy!” The result — a highly-textured visual chronicle of a vanishing aspect of New Zealand civilization, embellished by a crystalline orchestration of vocal and natural sounds by composer Jack Body (who also provided the music for Vigil) — could easily be mistaken for a Tost’ documentary by Werner Herzog.

For Vigil, Ward was fortunate enough to find a producer, John May­ nard, sympathetic enough to allow him to continue to indulge his quest for interior qualities. To find the right location, Ward drove more than 10,000 miles around the New Zealand countryside before finding a suitable valley in Taranaki. Then the farm settlement he wanted had to be specially built and aged. Ward also visited hundreds of schools and saw, he claims, 16,000 schoolgirls, looking

Ward’s two short films: above, Anne Flannery in A State o f Siege; below, the old woman o f In Spring One Plants A lone.

for someone to play Toss, the film’s twelve-year-old protagonist. Finally, he settled on an Aucklander, Fiona Kay. The script, which he co-wrote with Graeme Tetley, “ started off with clusters and constellations of images — there were two nightmares, for example — and the scripting was like detective work, deciphering those images and letting them build. It was like being in a mist or fog, through which you catch glimpses of things and try to grab hold of them and work out what they’re about, rather than saying: ‘This is my story’.” In that sense, Vigil runs very much against the prevalent grain in Australasian cinema where, as Ward sees it, “ the plot takes over from the characters, so the characters can’t exist on their own: they must always bend to an inflexible line going through the film, rather than there being the sense of an experience lived or a story coming out of a character.”

Ward used two Australian actors to play two of the key figures. Bill Kerr makes a comic, eccentric figure out of Birdie, the old man whose junk machine finally works. “ He’s not so much a visionary,” says Ward, “ as a man of vision. They live in a swampy environment, and the old man thinks he can save the place if he can blow a hole in the top of the valley — like pulling the plug out of a bath. So he

constructs a machine for this.” Mel­ bourne actor Penelope Stewart plays Elizabeth, Toss’s mother, a resilient coper who gradually succumbs to the persistent blandishment of the inter­ loper, Ethan (Frank Whitten), an ominous, shadowy figure. But the film relays the characters’ psychological tensions through the textures of the environment they people. Bollinger’s camera seems to caress both objects and characters, and the editing is as fluid and unobtrusive as possible, almost in emulation of the elegant, languid pace of a Dreyer film — W ard’s only acknowledged influence.

There is a lot of long-lens photo­ graphy, stressing a non-literal, figura­ tive perspective.

In fact, W ard’s approach to filming, character and storyline in Vigil is un­ remittingly subjective. The somewhat sub-Lawrencian plot — Toss’s father dies falling from a cliff while trying to rescue a stray sheep; her grandfather builds his bizarre drainage machine; and her mother is pursued by a mysterious, intruding hunter, while Toss herself approaches puberty — is filtered through the girl’s imaginary world. Coming from an isolated rural community himself, largely outside the sphere of TV or radio, Ward is, he says, ideally placed to empathize with his protagonist. “ As a child growing up on a farm, you are alone for long periods of time. You invent imaginary worlds. Vigil is precisely that: the story of a solitary child who watches,

“ In film, you have to break the lovely surface of things — smash your fist through the panel of glass and pull the people out from behind it” fantasizes and dreams. The fragments of reality she perceives are put together according to her own logic.” It is this subjective perspective which links Vigil with W ard’s earlier films, where imagery and symbolism — like the dead hawks strewn across the wires — take precedence over narrative. “ My prime interest,” says Ward, “ is in the way my characters perceive things, and in what separates them out from other people, rather than the wider social fabric that holds people together.”

If Vigil at times lacks a clearly focused plot impetus, this is partly because it aligns itself with a very European cinematic tradition. Various people have seen, quite justifiably, affinities in W ard’s work with Bresson, Tarkovsky, Herzog and even the Taviani brothers — august company for a first feature by a director working more than 12,000 miles away from those alleged influ­ ences. Currently, Ward is at work on another, as yet untitled, feature. Vigil certainly shows the promise which, combined with a surer grasp of the demands of a full-length commercial feature, should launch him beyond the art-house circuits. “ I’m more inter­ ested in people on the perimeter, the circumference, than people in the middle,” he has said. “ I suppose I’m interested in people with some sort of vision, some view of the world which is not necessarily an objective view.”

The isolation of rural New Zealand has, it seems, furnished him with the ideal location for this interest. ★

22563

T

J L h e people who set up New Zealand population numbers could probably television had one overriding priority have supported several years ago. But, in mind: coverage. What concerned when the warrants are handed out for them was not what the new medium that third private network, it will be showed, but how many people1 it required to go on air undertaking to reached. Viewers, after all, are also reach 90% of the population within its voters. And that, more than anything first two years, once more enshrining else, explains why New Zealand the dictate that rural dwellers should television, while boasting a reasonable not be left behind. tradition of home-produced program­ Such universal coverage is doubtless ming, even in the field of drama, was an admirable ambition. But the first essentially a late starter — especially in quarter century of Kiwi television has drama — and has been an erratic í¿qti'finually d e m o n s tra te d how performer ever since. . * >ÜH?mpts to reach program m ing Throughout its first 25 years, tele­ ^fria’turity have been stunted by vision has slavishly obeyed the politi­ demands for coverage. And, whenever cians’ first priority: that the signal — the political straitjacket has been tem­ first one channel, later two state-run porarily overcome, state television has networks — should reach every last been hobbled by another one of the rustic nook and cranny of a country politicians’ foibles: the recurring com­ that is a geographical nightmare for pulsion to restructure the system. television transmission engineers. The First, from 1960 to 1962, it was the result? 99.8% of the New Zealand New Zealand Broadcasting Service, a population can receive TV1, with only government department; that was 2% fewer in range of TV2. Even after followed by the purportedly auto­ 63 years, AM radio still reaches only nomous New Zealand Broadcasting 80% of the population.

Corporation, with its single-channel For this to work, the television monopoly. That structure lasted over a system requires some 450 transmitters, decade, ending with a 1973 decision repeaters and translators for each (which took two years to implement) network, with some of the translators to split the NZBC into three separate serving no more than half a dozen corporations, one for state radio (run farmhouses. They provide the kind of by the man now in the firing line at the saturation coverage that the Australian ABC, Geoffrey Whitehead), a newo u tb a c k c o u n te rp a rts o f New look Television One, and a fledgling Zealand’s remotest farmers will not second network, TV2, later called finally get until next year, when the South Pacific Television.

Aussat domestic satellite brings half a That system, however, was given million of them within range of the little more than a year to bloom. With ABC’s homestead community TV the arrival of the Muldoon govern­ service. ment, the three corporations were Coverage, then, rather than choice merged back once more into a new has been the difference in priorities version of the NZBC, called (with between the television systems on great inventiveness) the Broadcasting either side of the Tasman. Only now Corporation of New Zealand. Tele­ are the major metropolitan com­ vision One and South Pacific Tele­ munities in New Zealand coming vision were, however, allowed to within sight of a third, privately- continue as separate, competing owned network — something their organisations.

36 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Even this remnant of the 1973 reshuffle didn’t last long, however: with all kinds of funding under pressure, Muldoon froze the TV licence fee (paid by all set owners) at 1975 levels, and inflation eroded its contribution to BCNZ coffers from the traditional 50% of revenue, to a 1985 figure of 13%. So, in 1979, to redress the imbalance in commercial revenues between Television One and South Pacific Television, the hardpressed BCNZ decided to amalgamate the two networks into the present Tele­ vision New Zealand, which runs a co­ ordinated commercial two-network system. This decision was probably the most resented of all the restructurings, since it forced back together broad­ casters who, for five years, had competed against one another, and its repercussions can still be sensed at TVNZ, six years on.

Politics, in other words, took its toll right from the start. After setting up studios in the four main centres of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin between 1960 and 1962, the timorous NZBC took until the end of 1969 before it linked these separate stations into a network, and then only for a nightly newscast and a twiceweekly current affairs programme.

Not until 1973, on the eve of the changeover to colour transmission, did the NZBC finally network the whole of its transmission, ending a system that allowed program m es1 to run in Wellington one night, a week later in Auckland, and a week later still in Christchurch and Dunedin. Viewers in the far south thus saw an episode of Peyton Place or whatever two weeks after those in the capital. All the while, however, the transmitters got further A lesson in history fo r TVNZ? Hone Heke (George Henare) and missionary Williams (Grant Tilly) at Waitangi in The Governor.

New Zealand — Television

This year, New Zealand celebrates 25 years of television — which, in effect, means 25 years of ‘Television New Zealand’, the state-run network which has been through a bewildering variety of organisational changes. Warren Mayne looks back over the first quarter-century of Kiwi TV, particularly at its drama output, which had its golden age in the late seventies, and looks at the imminent arrival of private broadcasting on the other side of the Tasman.

New Zealand — Television

The faces o f New Zealand television drama. Top row, Rawiri Paratene as Koro in Joe and Koro (left), The Children o f Fire Mountain (centre), and Jim Moriahy, Joanne Simpson and Phillip Gordon in Inside Straight (right). Bottom, Terence Cooper (standing) in the title role o f Mortimer's Patch (left), Larney Tupu as the Country G.P. (centre) and (right) David Gwillim in the title role o f the new TVNZ series, Hanlon.

and further into the back country.

Never mind the quality, feel the width.

The old NZBC was clearly the brain­ child of a generation of top executives who had spent most of their lives in radio, as public servants in a govern­ ment department whose local news up to 1961 consisted solely of one bulletin of governm ent press statem ents nightly. Timid in current affairs and even more cautious with other pro­ gramming, the NZBC’s local output was a minuscule percentage of the total transmission time. And most of it, in the early sixties, consisted of amateur­ ish musical shows — the products of shoestring, studio-bound ingenuity. In 1965, however, came the first local drama, a stagey three-acter called The Evening Paper, originally penned for radio by stage dramatist Bruce Mason, author of The Pohutukawa Tree and End o f The Golden Weather. Small and self-conscious beginnings indeed.

A few drama workshop one-offs followed in 1967 — a fleeting flurry of activity that barely atoned for the statistics: all up, the NZBC managed only ten hour-long plays in five years — an average of two hours of drama a year. But, while these fledgling efforts introduced to the medium some actors who would later do better across the Tasman, the real drain was from the

38 — September CINEMA PAPERS

production ranks: Brian Bell, Alan Martin, Alan Morris (though the two last-nam ed returned in 1975 as Directors-General of Television One and South Pacific Television respec­ tively) and, a little later, a talented young man called Chris Thomson, who has since directed Waterfront and The Empty Beach in Australia. But, before leaving, Thomson was to mastermind — wonder of bonders — the NZBC’s first attempt at a con­ tinuing drama: a somewhat thin, sixepisode spy serial called The Alpha Plan. Another humble start.

In 1971, the NZBC made another tentative advance with Pukemanu, the C orporation’s first attempt at a continuing series in self-contained episodes, and the first to set out to capture the public imagination as a slice of genuine Kiwi life, rather than continue the sad tradition of affected, one-off exercises in ‘meaningful’ drama or badly disguised adaptations of BBC-style scenarios. Pukemanu’s timber-town setting made a star, from episode one, of Pat Evison, and wove in other regulars who would becom e fam iliar talents of the seventies and eighties, notably the burly Ian Watkin, a comic second lead in many late seventies features, and Ian Mune as the local yob.

Ironically, however, it was not the stop-go dram a departm ent th at debuted a hippy rock drummer destined to become the New Zealand movie actor. Bruno Lawrence got his acting break, playing a drummer, in a dramatized documentary about a runaway teenage girl, and collected a Feltex award for it.

Meanwhile, the NZBC continued to experiment as timidly as ever in differ­ ent genres. Spotlight was a repertory series of one-offs written to show the versatility of a chosen foursome — of whom, however, little has been seen in later years. And a second feature series, Section Seven, with a proba­ tion-service setting, may be seen as a great breakthrough in that, for the first time, NZBC TV drama was trying to grapple with urban social issues.

Essentially, however, the series was built round an expatriate New Zealander, Ewen Solon, who had co-starred in the BBC’s Maigret series. Its long-term significance, though, was the second billing accorded to Ian Mune, who would rapidly emerge as the beaten­ faced matinee idol of Kiwi TV drama.

Overall, however, the real measure of NZBC drama thinking was its falling back on Chekhov and Strind­ berg adaptations, as well as on a pro­ duction of Pinter’s The Dumb-Waiter,

built around Coronation Street’s Len Fairclough, Peter Adamson. The area most neglected was comedy. The only NZBC foray into sitcom was a wan, laughless piece of gaucherie about mixed flatting called Buck House, memorable only for the TV debut of a young John Clarke, who had to turn to the current affairs programmes, Gallery and, later, Tonight at Nine, for his big chance to develop his real alter ego, Fred Dagg.

Then it all changed, near enough over­ night, with the conversion, on April Fool’s Day 1975, of NZBC-TV into Television One under newer, younger management. It was followed two months later by the Auckland/Christchurch debut of the new TV2, aka South Pacific Television. Born of a new optimism and a reaction against the caution and constraints of the old NZBC, Television One inherited the just-opened Avalon television produc­ tion complex outside Wellington, which in its day was the most ambitious facility in the southern hemisphere, designed for two-network operation but ironically never used since, or even fully commissioned, for this full potential.

With pre-oil crisis expectations of advertising bonanzas, Television One set about rubbing the old NZBC’s nose

rom Edited by Peter B eilby and Ross Lansell

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WORDS AND IMAGES Words and Images is the first Australian book to examine the relationship between literature and film. Taking nine major examples of recent films adapted from Australian novels — including The Getting of Wisdom, My Brilliant Career and The Year of Living Dangerously — it looks at some of the issues in transposing a narrative from one medium to the other. This lively book provides valuable and entertaining insight for all those interested in Australian films and novels.

Published by Heinemann Publishers Australia in 210 pp association with Cinema Papers.

Australian Movies to the World At the end of the 1960s Australia had virtually no film industry. By 1983 its movies were being shown throughout the cinema-going world, from mainstream theatres in America to art houses in Europe.

In a rapid transformation, a country which had previously been best known for its kangaroos and koalas produced something new and surprising: to quote Time magazine, “ the world’s most vital cinema, extravagantly creative, fiercely indigenous” .

Australian Movies to the World looks at how this transformation came about and how those movies broke into the international market. And, through interviews with Australian and overseas directors, producers, actors, distribution executives and critics, it tells the story of the people who made it all possible.

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David Williamson. Ray Harryhausen. Peter Weir.

Gillian Armstrong. Ken G. Hall Tariff Board Report.

Antony I Ginnane The Cars That Ate Paris

Violence in the Cinema.

Alvin Purple. Frank Moorhouse Sandy Harbutt.

Film U n d e r A lle n d e Nicholas Roeg. Between Wars

Jo hn P a p a d o p o lo u s .

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The True Story of Eskimo Nell

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Phil Noyce. Eric Rohmer.

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Emile de Antonio. Aus­ tralian Film Censorship.

Sam A r k o ff. R om an Polanski The P icture Show Man Don's Party.

Storm Boy

Kenneth Loach, Tom Haydon. Bert Deling. Piero Tosi. John Scott. John Dankworth. The Getting of W isd om J o u rn e y Among Women

Louise Malle. Paul Cox John Power. Peter Sykes.

Bernardo Bertolucci. F.J. H olden. In Search of Anna Index: Volume 3

Number 20 March-April 1979

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Bill Bain. Isabelle Hup­ pert. Polish Cinema. The Night the Prowler Pierre Rissient. Newsfront. Film Study Resources.

Index: Volume 4

John Lamond. Dlmboola.

Indian Cinema. Sonia B o rg A la in T a n n e r.

Cathy’s Child. The Last Tasmanian

A n to n y I. G in n a n e Jeremy Thomas Blue Fin. A ndrew S a rris . Asian C in e m a S p o n s o re d Documentaries

Number 25 February-March 1980

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Number 27 June-July 1980

Chain Reaction David Puttnam C en so rsh ip .

Stir Everett de Roche Touch and Go Film and Politics

The Films of Peter Weir.

Charles Joffe. Harlequin Nationalism in Australian Cinema The Little Con­ vict.

Index: Volume 6

The New Zealand Film Industry The Z Men. Peter Yeldham. Maybe This Time. Donald Richie.

G r e n d e l, G r e n d e l, Grendel

Number 28 August-Septem ber 1980

Number 29 O ctober-Novem ber 1980

The Films of Bruce Beresford Stir Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals.

Breaker Morant. Stacy K e a ch R oadgam es

Bob Ellis Actors Equity D e b a te U ri W in d t C ru is in g The L a s t Outlaw. Philippine Cin­ ema The Club

Ken Cam eron. French Cinema. Jim Sharman.

My Brilliant Career Film Study Resources. The Night the Prowler

Bruce Petty. Albie Thoms.

N ew sfront Film Study R e s o u rc e s K o s ta a Money Movers. The Aus­ tralian Film and Tele­ vision School.

Index: Volume 5

Brian Trenchard Smith.

Palm Beach Brazilian Cinema Jerzy Toeplitz.

C om m unity Television.

Arthur Hiller.

Number 36 January-February 1982

Number 37 March-April 1982

Number 38 June 1982

Number 39 August 1982

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Number 41 December 1982

Number 42 March 1983

Kevin Dobson. Blow Out, W om en in D ra m a , Michael Rubbo, Mad Max 2 Puberty Blues

Stephen MacLean on Starstruck. Jacki Weaver, Peter Ustinov, Women in Drama. Reds. Heatwave

G e o ff B u rro w e s and George Miller on The Man F ro m S n o w y R iv e r, James Ivory, Phil Noyce, Joan Fontaine.

Helen Morse on Far East, Norwegian Cinema, Two Laws, Melbourne and Sydney Film Festival reports. Monkey Grip.

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Igor A u z in s , L o n e ly Hearts, Paul Schrader, Peter Tammer, Liliana Cavani, We of the Never Never, Film Awards, E.T..

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Number 43 May-June 1983

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Special Tenth Anniversary Issue, History of Cinema Papers, David Stevens, Phar Lap, Mini-series, Man of Flowers.

Paul Cox, Street Hero, Razorback, Jeremy Irons, A n n ie ’ s Com ing Out, Alan J. Pakula, the NFA.

Richard Lowenstein, Rob­ bery Under Arms, Wim Wenders, David Bradbury, The B o u n ty , S ophia Turkiewicz, Hugh Hudson.

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New Zealand — Television in the dirt, counting up its drama output hours and proclaiming that it had turned out more drama in its first year than the NZBC had in thirteen.

Though this was true, the figures were largely boosted by a twice-weekly domestic soap opera called Close to Home, which was destined to limp on for eight years and 818 mostly mediocre episodes. A training work­ shop that just happened to go on air, Close to Home was the intended springboard for a massive search for the indigenous Kiwi identity through the medium of television drama.

In its headlong rush to prove itself, Television One concentrated all its energies on in-house production, com­ pletely shunning the independent film houses and even the National Film Unit, which had produced so many worthwhile one-off documentaries on commission for the NZBC, including some dramatized ventures of singular merit, such as Paul M aunder’s Gone Up North for a While.

The 1976 season was a vintage one for One, which came up with a four-parter called Epidemic, blending Maori tapu into a thriller storyline, and Ian M une’s adaptation of the Ian Cross novel of a Catholic country childhood, The God Boy, which was destined to give young Jaime Higgins the break that led him into years of The Sullivans. Mune also brought off something of a tour de force: in the same week, he starred as the trade union secretary in the Moynihan series, co-produced with the ABC, and

Not until 1973 did the NZBC end a system that allowed programmes to run in Wellington one night, a week later in Auckland, and a week later still in Christchurch and Dunedin. Viewers in the far south thus saw an episode of Peyton Place or whatever two weeks after those in the capital. as The Shiner in the John A. Lee story of the legendary tramp of Depression days — the first of a series adapted from notable writers under the title Winners and Losers, produced by Aardvark Films. This was a first pro­ duction partnership between Mune and Roger Donaldson which, the following year, took them on to the first feature film of the ‘modern’ New Zealand moviemaking era, Sleeping Dogs.

Television One’s Head of Drama, Michael Scott-Smith, and his pro­ ducers still had the big one in hand, however: The Governor, a lavishly conceived mini-series tracing the life of colonial Governor (later premier) Sir George Grey, played by imported star Corin Redgrave. In effect, it was to be a tapestry encapsulating the first 50 years of New Zealand colonial history.

The scale of this epic production, ambitious beyond any previous aspira­ tions, enraged the frozen-out indepen­ dent production industry, spawned rumours of immense waste, and finally spilled over into the political arena, with Prime Minister Robert Muldoon

(who was waging an undeclared war on One because of its perceived anti­ government bias) getting a parliamen­ tary public expenditure committee to conduct an inquiry into costs. The result was a disaster for One, even­ tually establishing The Governor’s costs as $NZ1.4 million — three times the budget that had been claimed.

Worse still, the audience largely failed to relate to a series whose episodes treated the Governor’s life them atically instead of chrono­ logically. Artistic integrity there may. have been in the concept, but precious few sales. The ABC hung back, and major re-editing was required before it eventually got its Australian airing, to indifferent reviews.

While Avalon seemed the dreaming tower of New Zealand television, taking upon itself the role of con­ fronting Kiwiland with its national identity, Scott-Smith’s counterpart at South Pacific Television, expatriate John McRae, brought back from years as a period serial producer with the BBC (and an Emmy for Tom Brown’s Schooldays), had the wider world in view. The Auckland-based second channel, with far fewer facilities at its disposal and limited coverage of the country, cut its drama teeth carefully with a soap opera, two repertory collections of one-offs and an impres­ sive period play, The Park Terrace Murders. But McRae was determined to take SPTV drama into the world markets, with a combination of co­ production with overseas broadcasters and exploitation of the almost virgin ‘kidult’ market.

Co-production came off well when SPTV and Scottish Television pooled resources on The Mackenzie Affair, a series tracing the life of a mysterious Scottish sheep-stealer of South Island high-country lore. Like the series with which it begged comparison, One’s The Governor, it had a British star, James Cosmo. But, with the first two episodes shot in Scotland, it was guaranteed an ITV network showing in Britain, and garnered other sales abroad, recouping costs on a produc­ tion budget far below that of its limited-sales-appeal rival. McRae’s shrewd assessment of the worldwide shortage of family-hour fare paid real dividends with Hunter’s Gold, how­ ever, a thirteen-parter set in the Otago goldfields of the 1860s, which notched up sales to 50 countries and encour­ aged SPTV into follow-up kidult shows with a historical setting like Gather Your Dreams and Children of Fire Mountain. Fiqally, though, McRae took off for a stint with what was then the Victorian Film Commis­ sion (he has since returned as TVNZ’s Head of Drama).

On more modest levels, Television One succeeded with children’s serials such as The Mad Dog Gang and Sea Urchins, which each spawned sequel series, and found modest success with a sitcom called Joe and Koro, about two flatmates, one Pom, one Maori.

Finally, One stumbled on real success with a telemovie of playwright Roger Hall’s international hit stage play of civil service life, Glide Time, which spawned a sitcom, Gliding On, still running six years later.

Meanwhile, with Edwin Morrisby’s Castaways docu-dramas, shot all over the South Pacific, SPTV showed that it could match Television One in profligacy. McRae’s most polished Lots o f wheels, but not enough legs? The truck from the Wellington-made series, Roche, which didn ’t get a repeat.

Prime Minister Robert Muldoon (who was waging an undeclared war on One because of its perceived anti-government bias) got a parliamentary inquiry into costs. The result was a disaster for One, eventually establishing The Governor’s costs as $NZ1.4 million — three times the budget that had been claimed. production, though, was a series of six Ngaio M arsh adaptations, while SPTV’s truly shoestring breakthrough was the political satire review, A Week of It, since reshaped around its stars as McPhail and Gadsby.

Then, at the end of the decade, it all came to a near-end. The BCNZ, strapped for funds, instituted savage production cutbacks, and local tele­ vision drama all but ceased. Casualties included a major project for adapting the works of a posthumously redis­ covered provincial author, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, whose abandonment was a bonus of sorts for the feature film industry, which has since turned three of his novellas, The Scarecrow, Pallet on the Floor and Came a Hot Friday, into theatrical successes.

The pain and anguish that the cut­ backs caused at Television One and SPTV were intensified by the loss of autonomy when the networks merged on 16 February 1980. The emerging TVNZ immediately switched its pro­ duction priorities to live sport, variety and gaihe shows in order to match the local quotas of the predecessor networks on far slimmer budgets. On their deathbeds, however, Television One and SPTV bequeathed two concepts to TVNZ that have proved modest winners: Mortimer’s Patch, a country cop series which had proved itself with an ordeal by fire (scheduled opposite Fawlty Towers, it still won the battle for the audience). Mor­ timer’s Patch, however, was bedevilled with BCNZ indecision over plans for succeeding series, as production was cancelled, reinstated, then cancelled again with a rapidity that bewildered producer Tom Finlayson. In des­ peration, Finlayson finally developed the series into a rather unsuccess­ ful feature film, Trespasses, in which ‘special guest’ Patrick McGoohan' eventually relegated the cops to bit­ part status. And then there was the

one-off from One, High Country, which gave TVNZ a rustic spin-off character for a series called Jocko, which provided a gift of a role for the weather-beaten Bruce Allpress.

TVNZ has slowly started closing the gap without necessarily matching, let alone surpassing, the achievements of 1977-1978. With Inside Straight set in the seamy side of Wellington nightlife, and the more recent truckie saga, Roche — a vehicle for tall, lean char­ acter-actor John Bach and wide boy Andy Anderson, late of The Sullivans — it has come up with some credible urban series drama, but in both instances has failed to clinch a second series. Children’s sci-fi, in the form of Under the Mountain and Children of the Dog Star, is in the SPTV kidult tradition, albeit in contemporary settings. And, in the wake of Close to Home, the rural period feel of the Country GP series — it is set in the late forties — has capitalized on nostalgia in much the same way as The Sullivans did across the Tasman. It has also made a heart-throb star out of a young Samoan actor, Larney Tupu, who plays the Maori doctor of the title (though it has not left him with much prospect of future work).

This month (August), TVNZ will know whether it has managed to over­ come the Governor jinx, with the first historical drama series on an equiva­ lently ambitious scale undertaken since then: Hanlon, dramatizing the cases of a turn-of-the-century criminal lawyer.

Television production in New Zealand has remained an in-house affair, however, though there have been occasional impressive contributions from the independent industry, notably the telemovie Iris, which won Helen Morse a Feltex Best Actress award for playing the thirties writer, Robin Hyde. And, in July, TVNZ repeated its highly successful 1981 exercise in running a week-long season of New Zealand-made feature films.

But the private production lobby is looking elsewhere. The four major consortiums seeking the warrant for a private network are now putting their cases, and each lays a strong emphasis on commissioning the bulk of their drama, documentary and entertainment product from outside production houses. Perhaps this will finally provide a way for New Zealand television to realise the promise and variety prematurely and precociously signalled a decade ago, but which, since, has been somewhat stunted. ★

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Nie Roeg we talked, Roeg didn’t yet know this — was something called ‘The French Technical Commission Prize for Tech­ nical Excellence’, which sounds like an award given to a piece of kitchen equipment.

Roeg, though, is distrustful of all competitions. “ The most beautiful woman in the world, the best baby in the world . . . it doesn’t mean a thing.

Being here for a director is a bit like going into a maternity hospital to see your own wonderful baby and finding the place overflowing with everyone else’s wonderful babies. I felt that with one of my boys, when he was first born. I went to visit my wife, and there was this long, long room, full of rows of cots, all going ‘W aah!’ I remember thinking, ‘Where is he, the most beautiful baby? Is that him, over there, third from the left?’ ’’ I include that story not for colour or to be cute, but because it is an exact measure of the way Nic Roeg talks — and not just about himself, either, because any reference to his films is likely to extend into reflections on related issues and personal events. And vice versa. For Roeg, it’s all one world and, very much like his films, his conversation is multi-faceted, pointing to a world view that refuses to be tied to normal chronology. It all happens at once.

Roeg himself once found the perfect visual metaphor for all this, in the bank of television sets in front of which a perplexed but fascinated Thom as Jerom e N ew ton (David Bowie) installed himself in The Man Who Fell to Earth. W hat makes the films different from the television sets, however, is that they manage to structure this multiple view into an interlocking whole. They have what Roeg calls emotional continuity: for him, what critics have called flash­ backs are all part of the same continuum. And, like all those who have tried to push beyond naturalism, from the German expressionists via the French surrealists to the magical realism of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Roeg defends this structure in the name of a greater authenticity to the way things really are. “ We’re all very complex, every one of us, desperately complex. And I want to get closer, in a visual way, to how human beings actually behave in front o f each other. When I talk about boyhood, I need to get a reference of how I felt. So I see it: I take myself back there. When we’re talking, we’re all the time going like th at” — he looks around the bar of the Carlton Hotel, where we’re sitting, focuses on a few o f the people sitting there, then stares off into the distance, then studies the ashtray in front of him. “ You’re thinking this, I ’m thinking that, as we talk. T hat’s how we read stories, too: we read images. We don’t have to think, ‘Where am I?’ all the time. We know. And I think of that as a basic piece of film grammar. I don’t know” — an evasive smile — “ maybe I ’ve been getting it wrong!”

On the basis of his track record, Roeg has hardly been getting it wrong.

Facing page: R oeg’s gallery — scenes from five o f the director’s films. Top, Gary Busey (left) as The Ballplayer in Insignifi­ cance and (right) Theresa Russell as Milena Flaherty in Bad Timing. Centre, David Bowie (left) in The Man Who Fell to Earth and (right) David Gulpilil and Jenny Agutter in Walkabout. Bottom, Mick Jagger (left) as Turner, in the tub with Michele Breton and Ann Sidney in Performance and (right) Theresa Russell and A rt Garfunkel (Dr A xel Linden) in Bad Timing.

“ Being at Cannes for a director is a bit like going into a maternity hospital to see your own wonderful baby and finding the place overflowing with everyone else’s wonderful babies” His seven films as a director in fifteen years are one of the most artistically consistent bodies of work in modern cinema, even if, commercially, there have been some hiccups, notably with Eureka (1983). But he has always made movies with stars. His last three, though, have been produced by Jeremy Thomas, the most innovative of Britain’s independent producers, who did Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983) with Nagisa Oshima, and who is currently working on a huge co-production with the People’s Republic of China, The Last Emperor, which Bernardo Bertolucci is due to begin shooting early in 1986.

Insignificance’s independence is the reason Roeg is around to hold its hand at Cannes. “ An independent film needs help and exposure, because there isn’t any organization exposing it.

Generally, this place is a market, for producers and distributors and sales reps and things — not for directors and artists, because they did their work a year ago. But it’s like the corner shop fighting the supermarket, isn’t it? It’s a beautiful little delicatessen, and it’d be a shame if it got wiped out!”

The size of a picture is something that has always entered into Roeg’s planning: he has an industry back­ ground, not an art-house one, and he isn’t making films for little cinemas. “ With Eureka,” he explains, “ I wanted to take big figures. Even in the casting: Rutger [Hauer] is a big actor, Gene Hackman is a big man, Theresa [Russell] is a big woman. Even with M aiakovsky” — the dim inutive Mafioso trying to get his hands on Hackman’s island paradise — “ he was very small: he was bigly small! I wanted them all to be larger than just The Father, The Son, The Daughter, The Mother and so o n .”

But there is probably another reason, too. Nic Roeg is a professional filmmaker, reared on and used to the structures and trappings of full-scale filmmaking. His films may be the nearest thing British cinema has produced to a cinéma d ’auteur, but he is an auteur with oily fingers, more at home with a camera than a critic’s pen, and the canvases on which he draws his' intricate, Moebius curve-like movies are broad, glossy and colourful, not grainy and underlit. If, to use Alexandre Astruc’s phrase, the key to the New Wave is the ‘caméra-stylo’ — the camerapen — then Roeg is more of a word-processor person, an artist at home with lenses, lights and cutting rooms. His style of filmmaking is based on, rather than threatened by, the technology of the modern movie set.

Born in London in 1928, Roeg has worked his way up to directing features — he made his first at the age of 40 — via a route that used to be standard, but which has been replaced o f late by the u n iv e rsity /film school/TV drama route. He entered the industry in 1948 as a clapper-

loader. Before long, he was a camera assistant, then camera operator, then lighting cameraman. And he was cinematographer on some of the most remarkable features of the sixties: he did the second-unit work on David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962), shot that gaudy, baroque nightmare, Masque of the Red Death, for Roger Corman in 1964, the lush, pastoral melodrama, Far From the Madding Crowd, for John Schlesinger in 1967, and did two of Dick Lester’s American features, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) and Petulia (1968).

Performance was his first feature as a director, but he shared the credit with writer Douglas Cammed. And it was customary at the time to see Cammed as the one with the structural ideas, while Roeg just put it ad into pictures. Thus David Thom son, writing in 1975, declared that “ there was more reason to hope that Douglas Cammed might one day make a film in which his Borgesian pre-occupations were worked out temperately, than that Roeg might direct a film in which the photography was only a means to an end” .

Cammell’s contribution to Per­ formance may have been crucial (and Roeg has always stressed it), but his only solo feature to date, the strange and rather nasty electronic nightmare, Demon Seed (1977), in which Julie Christie gives birth to a microchip, has proved Thomson wrong. As, of course, have Roeg’s own subsequent features. Performance was followed

by Walkabout (1971), an Australian made feature that anticipated a lot of the concerns of the subsequent film industry renaissance; Don’t Look Now (1974), a gothic thriller in which the fragmented style that was to become Roeg’s trademark first ready made its appearance; The Man Who Fell to Earth, which has had a shelf-life that its slightly uneven opening would never have allowed one to guess at; Bad Timing, whose explicit sexual scenes caused problems in the USA; and Eureka, which United Artists virtually refused to release. Later this year, he is to do a kind of adult Walkabout: a film version of Lucy Irvine’s Castaway, about a woman who answers a newspaper advertise­ ment and spends a year alone on a desert island with a man she hardly

“ When I talk about boyhood, I need to get a reference of how I felt. So I see it: I take myself back there. And I think of that as a basic piece of film grammar” knows, which is due to start shooting at the end of this month in the Cook Islands.

These days, Roeg is reluctant to talk about his beginnings as a director of photography — “ Oh God! Must we?

I’d rather not!” — but he takes a keen interest in the way his films look when they get shown in cinemas. This does not always make him popular.

Cinemas tend — in Britain at any rate — to regard films as product they have to peddle, like popcorn, but with a lower profit-margin. With The Man Who Fell to Earth, Roeg once went to

see the film, and found it being shown out of focus. He pointed this out to the m anager. “ So w hat?” said the manager, “ who are you?” “ The director,” said Roeg. “ W hat’s that got to do with it?” said the cinema manager.

R o eg ’s relu ctan ce to become involved with the business side of Cannes does not, however, mark him off as an artist uninterested in the commercial side of filmmaking. He is keenly interested in what happened to Eureka, for instance, which ran for a week in London, then vanished. “ Poor old Eureka! I don’t know what happened: they didn’t tell me, so I can only surmise. I ’ve been told — which is really incredible — that it was not allowed to be shown in cinemas that wanted it! The Scala” — a London repertory cinema — “ tried to book it, and they were refused. They said they’ve never been refused by a company that had a film. When I asked the distributor, U IP, they said, ‘We’re re-thinking the release pattern’.

There are only two copies in England, and I don’t see how you can ‘re-think a release pattern’ around two copies.

Then the British Film Institute wanted

“ It’s like the corner shop fighting the supermarket, isn’t it? It’s a beautiful little delicatessen, and it’d be a shame if it got wiped out!” to screen it. UIP said no. So I said, ‘Look, this is a screening for me and my work: I must show it’. They said, ‘OK, you can show it . . . but only if you go with it and talk about it afterwards’. Well, you can do that just so many times. I did, I think, five.

Then the Cambridge Arts Cinema asked for it, I said, ‘Right: I’ll go’; but, on that occasion, I just couldn’t: I was sick. And they checked up\ Can you believe it? They said, ‘We warned you about this!’ After that, when Nigel Andrews [film critic of the Financial Times] wanted to show it in his Critic’s Choice at the National Film Theatre, they refused to let him have it.”

This whole narration — the sort of thing that drives other directors (Peter B o g d anovich, for the sake of argument) to legal action and press conferences, is delivered by Roeg in a tone of mystified amusement. “ I don’t want that thing of bitterness, because th at’s what I do: I make films. And I like making them. What would I do if I didn’t? I ’m not equipped for any other profession: I don’t have a medical degree or anything like that. Anyway, I enjoy it: I love making movies.”

That love comes out strongly in Insignificance which, for my money (see the review in this issue), is a film o f both consum m ate skill and enormous affection — the work of a filmmaker who thinks out loud, but in images. As usual with Roeg, though, the project was brought to him. “ I saw the play, then some months later I was approached to direct the film. I don’t read anything much with a view to filming it, unless it’s brought to me: I’m not a producer. I have a life to live as well” (an early interview with Roeg — Sight & Sound, Winter 1973/4 — gives exactly the same genesis for Don’t Look Now). In both cases, though, the important thing was that CINEMA PAPERS September — 43

Nic Roeg

the story gelled with some of the ideas that were going round in his head at the time. “ For me,” he says, “ the plot is a shell in which the human beings — the characters — live. After Eureka, I’d just been doing what everyone does — living one’s life, getting up in the morning, watching telly . . . And I’d been thinking about an aspect of the human condition — about how little we know about each other. Insignifi­ cance contained that plot and that idea perfectly. I think books and things are just a shell for what one feels oneself at a given time. You know: you fall in love, and you find that everything you read is about falling in love. Insignifi­ cance was an idea I thought I could use. I liked its detachedness, and I liked its iconography. And, linked to that, there was an idea that I think we’re all confused by: that identity equals reality. We see something and, because we can identify it, we immediately think: th a t’s what it is!

“ I wanted to take big figures. Rutger Hauer is a big actor, Gene Hackman is a big man, Theresa Russell is a big woman” But no one knows anything completely about anyone else. It’s like the lover’s eternal question: ‘What are you thinking about?’ ‘I’m thinking about you, darling. What are you thinking about?’ ‘I’m thinking about you, too . . .’ No one really knows anyone else.”

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44 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Dark dreams: Gene Hackman and Theresa Russell in a m oment o f togetherness in Eureka. Right, the dreamer: Roeg on the set o f Bad Timing.

In Insignificance, each of the characters is readily identifiable with a major cultural figure of the postwar period — with Marilyn Monroe and A lb e rt E in s te in , S e n a to r Jo e McCarthy and Joe DiMaggio. But we don’t know them, and they don’t know each other. Only at the end of the film do they really know them­ selves. At first, each carries his or her identity like a mirror, reflecting something predetermined and ‘known’ back to the others and to us. Behind that, though, the real person is divided and totally alone — a ghost behind the mask of the public image, like R.D. Laing’s ‘Ghost in the Weed Garden’.

Being alone is a recurrent theme in Roeg’s film, and the progress in them is either towards disaster or towards a self-knowledge that recognizes this aloneness. For, despite all the ideas, his films are basically about character — about people. In Performance, Chas (James Fox), Turner (Mick Jagger) and Pherber (Anita Pallen­ berg) are islands of aloneness brought together with catastrophic results in the Notting Hill house; in Walkabout, the girl (Jenny Agutter), the boy (Lucien Brown) and the aborigine (David Gulpilil) are three lonely cultural identities — three willing slates on which race and gender have already gouged deep marks — in the neutral setting of the outback. Thomas Jerome Newton has fallen to earth on a strange planet. Above all, the sexual couplings which recur in Roeg’s films simply take to the limit the notion of human aloneness at the point of most

apparent togetherness. Nothing could make this clearer than the scene in Don’t Look Now, in which John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) are making love, and Roeg intercuts shots of them calmly dressing for dinner. Their bodies are performing but they — their minds — are elsewhere. In Roeg’s films — and nowhere is tj^s truer than in Bad Timing — the closer the contact, the more pervasive the aloneness.

Insignificance, too, is about that, though it is not about sex. Roeg cites the discussions between The Actress (Theresa Russell) and The Ballplayer (Gary Busey) about ending their marriage, in which the need to preserve their identities conflicts with habit and security, and with a misguided desire to ‘protect’ the other. “ Even if you’re unhappy in a relationship,” says Roeg, “ it’s a big thing to tear unhappiness apart. There’s a point in their lives which probably begins with the shock of ‘Do you want to end it? Shall we get a divorce?’ And he says, ‘Yes’.

Although she’s egged him on to it, it’s like jumping into the unknown for her.

He says, ‘I called a lawyer. We gotta do something’. So, things are getting closer to her. And she says, ‘I gotta go to the bathroom ’. You know, our lives are mixtures of happiness and unhap­ piness. But they’re ours, and we can’t let go. To give up our own chance of happiness to support what you think is someone else’s happiness is an insult to our own lives and to theirs. You wouldn’t do it to their unhappiness.”

For all its passion and unhappiness, th o u g h , Insignificance has the structure of a farce: people come and go from the hotel bedroom like clock­ work automata, narrowly missing one another, hiding in the bathroom, or coming in on each other at the wrong moment: after explaining relativity to The Professor (Michael Emil), The Actress reckons its only fair he should show her his legs; embarrassed, he does so. And in comes The Ballplayer. “ For m e,” says Roeg, “ the bigness of Insignificance is that it is farce.

Tragedy contains farce, and farce contains tragedy. They are drama, at either end of the spectrum. In between

“ That’s what I do: I make films. What would I do if I didn’t?” comes light comedy and domestic drama and situation comedy. But at either end are farce and tragedy.”

More than any other Roeg film, Insignificance is about coming to terms, not by compromise, but by accepting one’s aloneness and one’s real identity — by rejecting the easy compromises which shield one from knowledge. “ In adolescence,” he says, “ a curious thing happens to almost every human being. There’s a moment when, in a blinding flash, you have the answer to everything. You may be going upstairs in a bus or anything — but it comes. And, as it comes, it goes.

I remember one of my boys coming to me and saying, ‘I had the most extra­ o rd in ary thing happen to me: suddenly, I seemed to know absolutely everything about school and . . . and I can’t remember what it was!’ It goes.

And that moment leaves you realising that you’re alone — that, for the first time, you truly can’t explain yourself.

T hat’s when you become an adult.” ★

FILM D E V E L O P M E N T D IV IS IO N — S P E C IA L P U R P O S E F U N D IN G P R O G R A M The Australian Film Commission provides limited funds for special purpose grants, investments and loans to qualified practitioners in film and video in Australia.

Preference will be given to those activities which are of significant benefit to the film and video community. The AFC also expects that, where appropriate, complementary funding support will be provided by state governments and the private sector.

The AFC now invites applications for activities in the following categories scheduled to commence during the period January 1-June 30, 1986.

The form of funding, whether by way of grant, loan or investment, will be at the AFC’s discretion.

— -■ “ “ “

™ _ ~

b)

Domestic travel to enable Australian film and video practitioners to attend appropriate events or organisations within Australia. c) Attachments to appropriate organisations in Australia and overseas. d) Visits to Australia by suitably qualified overseas personnel.

4. R esearch and D e v e lo p m e n t of new technology and software intended to increase the technical or creative capacity of the Australian film and video community.

1. P u b lic a tio n s a) The research and writing of critical works on subjects related to the cultural and aesthetic aspects of film and video. Publishing subsidies are not available in this category. b) Resource and reference publications contributing to the wider dissemination of information within the Australian film and video community. Periodicals associated with industrial or craft guild associations are not eligible in this category.

ZZ

2. S p e c ia l E ven ts

M ™ -■ “

Festivals, awards, seminars, conferences etc., with the following objectives: a) The exploration of cultural, aesthetic and industrial matters. b) Recognition of achievements within the Australian film and video community.

«

3. T ra v e l an d S tu d y

■■ ■■ “

a) Overseas travel for the purpose of obtaining information for dissemination to the Australian film community, or to undertake research and development (see category 4).

Australian Film Commission

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Please note: the deadline for applications for activities commencing during the period 1 July to 31 December 1986 is 31 March, 1986.

For copies of application forms and further information please contact: The Project Officer — Special purpose funding (02) 922-6855 Toll free (008) 22-6615.

Applications must be made in writing on the appropriate application form and addressed to:

Cultural Activities Co-Ordinator Australian Film Commission GPO Box 3984 SYDNEY. NSW. 2001 Organisations in receipt of general purpose grants from the AFC are not eligible to apply for assistance under this scheme.

N .B .

8 West Street, North Sydney, Box 3984 G.P.O. Sydney NSW 2001

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Deadline for applications: 30th September, 1985

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AUSTRALIAN FILM COMMISSION

On location In a period that saw more film industry activity than has been evident for some months, directorial debuts were a notable feature. In Melbourne, Nadia Tass com­ menced a six-week shoot on Malcolm on 29 July. Malcolm is also characterized by double functions: Tass is co-producing with stills photographer David Parker, who is also the director of photography. The cast in this tale of an inventive Tramways Board employee includes Colin Friels in the title role, John Hargreaves and Lindy Davies.

In Sydney, production on the first Aus­ tralian feature to boast a script by William Shakespeare began at the Balmain Bijou on 5 August. Twelfth Night, marking the feature debut for director Neil Armfield, who directed the stage production for the Light­ house Company (State Theatre of South Australia), stars a number of the original cast members, including Jacqy Phillips (Olivia), Peter Cummins (Malvolio), John Wood (Sir Toby Belch) and Geoffrey Rush (Sir Andrew Aguecheek).

Two new additions to the cast are Ivar Kants as Orsino and Tracy Harvey as Maria. It is described by publicist Peter Kemp as ‘‘a deceptive carnival in which pleasure spirals and reality begins to blur, fun borders on cruelty and love becomes confusion” . The production is aiming at a distinctive look, created by production designer Stephen Curtis, who did the design and costumes for the stage produc­ tion, and is also making his first attempt at feature work.

In collaboration with cinematographer Louis Irving, Curtis has gone for a design reminiscent of a ritzy — if slightly jaded — holiday resort, a travel brochure, or, as Kemp describes it, “ a fantasy partyland” .

Adaptations to make the film a little more contemporary include a bowls hat for Sir Toby, calypso music by Allan John, and a modification of Shakespearean English to distinctive Australian accents, which Cinema Papers is assured will stop short of strine.

In and around Melbourne, the first of the recently announced Crawfords package (see ‘News Plus’) got under way on 1 July and wrapped seven weeks later, on 16 August. 1 Live with Me Dad is a feature with a budget of around $1 million, and is being produced by Ross Jennings, one­ time Head of Drama at TVNZ, who recently turned the beleaguered Special Squad series into a critical (if not a ratings) success. It is being directed by Paul Moloney.

The film tells the story — written by Peter Pinney, from a concept by Derry Moran — of a six-year-old (Haydon Samuel) who, as the title implies, lives with his father (Peter Hehir), a former crocodile hunter turned urban alcoholic. Most of the locations have been city-based, but the company went up to Mulwala, near Yarrawonga, in mid­ August, to shoot the crocodile-hunting scenes. Plans to hire a live crocodile, how­ ever, had to be abandoned when the safety of the cast and crew could not be guaran­ teed. The T is played by an eight-year-old veteran of many a TV commercial, and the cast also includes Rebecca Gibney,

Bottom line: left, Peter Hehir and Haydon Samuel in Crawford Productions’ I Live with Me Dad; right, Nicholas Eadie in The Lancaster Miller Affair.

46 — September CINEMA PAPERS

currently in The Zoo Family, as a well­ meaning social worker.

And the problem project of the ‘News Plus’ pages in our last issue, The Lan­ caster Miller Affair, finally got going on its fourteen-week schedule on 11 July.

Nicholas Eadie and Wayne Cull play the male lead roles, with Kerry Mack as Chubbie Miller. Although producer Paul Davies is at pains to stress that it is not a flying story, a lot of interest is bound to be generated by the plane in which the couple flew their main exploits. The only flying Avro Avian left in the world, it was rebuilt by a 70-year-old enthusiast and is insured for $70,000. The “ enormous problems” (Davies) of the dispute with Equity resulted in production being postponed, and sent the budget up from the original $4.7 million to something over $5 million. The Nine Network plans to air the first episode early in 1986. ' Elsewhere on the feature production front, the intriguingly titled Dead-End Drive-In, promising much car-crunching action, is scheduled to start shooting on 9

September. Cactus, the latest Paul Cox feature, co-scripted by Cox and Bob Ellis, is scheduled to commence ten days later, while The Fringe Dwellers, written and directed by Bruce Beresford, is due to start a seven-week shoot on 16 September.

Further down the production track, Samson Productions’ Going Sane started shooting, as did Filmside’s Australian Dream The SAFC’s Playing Beatie Bow began post-production. th e television industry again proved a hive of activity, much of it generated from PBL Productions in Sydney. While Double Sculls and The Body Business moved into post-production, The Trailblazer is due to begin production on 23 September and The Great Bookie Robbery started rolling on 26 August.

Coinciding with this examination of the famous, unsolved heist, is the Indian Pacific Films production, Robbery, for Network Ten, produced and directed by Michael Thornhill. This telemovie, hypothesizing the highly organized forces behind the crime, started shooting on 22 July and completed

Top three pictures: above, Hal McElroy; centre left, Rebecca Gilling, Kevin Dobson and Peter Cousens; and, below, Peter Gwynne and Rebecca Gilling on the Return to Eden set.

production four weeks later. Meanwhile, Roadshow, Coote and Carroll’s Archer moved into post-production and the company wrapped The Perfectionist.

Activity from the beleaguered ABC should also spark some faint optimism. In Melbourne’s drama department, the thriller Pokerface completed production, while in Sydney, production started on the third series of Mother and Son and on Dancing Daze, which completed its production late in August.

A six-part series from the team that created Sweet and Sour — Jan Chap­ man, Michael Cove and Martin Armiger — Dancing Daze was shot in the ABC studios and on locations around Sydney. It features choreography by Chrissie Koltai and songs composed by Sharon O'Neill, Steven Cum­ mings, Red Symons and former Beach Boy Ricky Fataar.

The cast promises some new faces for local television. Playing the two Green sisters, who depart the country life of the pig farm in Wagga for the bright lights of the Harbour City, are Meryl Tankard, a former principal soloist with the Pina Bausch Tanz­ theater, and Patsy Stephen, an ex-student of the Sundance Institute. Other cast mem bers include Laurence Clifford, Norman Kaye, Paul Chubb and Jane Clifton.

In Sydney, the $8-million production of Return to Eden commenced shooting in mid-May, at the hurriedly converted premises of the Five Dock industrial estate.

The 22 episodes are expected to be in pro­ duction until Christmas. The complex currently houses more than nine large sets, production offices and construction areas, in a space reminiscent of a Hollywood backlot from bygone days. Hal and Jim McElroy have leased the premises for five years, anticipating further exploits at Eden — or, if that fails, facilities for other McElroy

productions or space for hire to other pro­ ducers.

Though executive producer Hal McElroy dislikes the comparison, stressing that Eden will be “ uniquely Australian” , thoughts of the supersoaps spring quickly to mind. The plot lines, featuring the familiar ingredients of wealth, power, revenge, rivalry, family conflict and surprise revela­ tions from a dark past, coupled with Larry Eastwood’s opulent production design, costumes by George Gross, Harry Who and Susan Hannaford, and a fleet of classy cars, consolidate the comparison.

And, while Kevin Dobson, who is directing a number of episodes, jokingly describes the style and content as “Dynasty down under” , McElroy sensibly points out that, from a production point-ofview, “ we could never emulate them, because they spend $1 million an hour — four or five times more than we have to spend” . He adds, however, that “ we didn’t set out to make Dynasty or Dallas per se.

But it’s prime time, adult-oriented melo­ drama, so, necessarily, it will have the same sort of qualities.”

McElroy speaks with great pace and enthusiasm about the project, which is due to premiere in the US in September. “ No one else in Australia has done melodrama,” he asserts. “ They have done soap opera, which is the next step past melodrama; but with Eden we did, and are doing, melo­ drama.” He emphasizes that the rules for melodrama in television series are different from those in other media and formats.

Packed with plot twists, enormous doses of conflict, and emotions and plot pitched at the level of “ heightened reality” , the plot lines do not require detailed exposition of motivation. Emotional rationales, based on the most outlandish premises, can work effectively in this context and there is “ no need to show characters ‘paying the cab’,

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as the Americans call it,” explains McElroy.

He adds that, to span 22 episodes — and, ideally 44 or 66 — the series demands “ strong glue” to bind the characters into a dramatic circumstance that can endure years of manipulation and contortion. To strengthen the adhesive, two new episodes have recently been written to head the series, kicking it off with the revelation that Jilly (formerly Wendy Hughes, now Peta Toppano) is the half-sister of the remarkably resilient Stephanie Harper (Rebecca Gill­ ing). “ Now, we’ve got glue,” McElroy enthuses: “ two beautiful sisters fighting each other — it’s much better than two beautiful women!”

On this day of shooting episode 2, which is being shot after episodes 1,3, 4, 5 and 6, Kevin Dobson is orchestrating a nasty m o th e r-a n d -s o n c o n fro n ta tio n over $25,000 in the offices of Harper Mining.

Gilling and her ‘son’, Peter Cousens, go through their paces amid the plush grey leather lounges, coffee table books on gemstones, high-tech black fittings and fake view of the Sydney skyline, ostensibly from a skyscraper-level office.

Despite the impressive scale of the complex, there are apparent problems, no doubt the legacy of converting a ware­ house to a studio on a tight budget in minimal time. Sound-proofing hitches are the most obvious: a visiting dumpster on its daily rounds halts shooting while cast and crew stand around in frustration. A bird chirping merrily outside the office window, ostensibly way too high to encourage such feathered visitors, sends first assistant Barry Hall into agitated action. "Go for the throat,” he bellows to a bird hunter over the walkie-talkie.

To date, four directors have been con­ tracted to shoot Eden — Tim Burstall, John Power, Rod Hardy and Dobson — with two more currently under negotiation. McElroy

explains that “ when we’ve got to shoot an episode in seven days, we must have very experienced people. We need a classy product, and you can’t throw a beginner into that, no matter how talented they may be. We need six minutes of finished screen time a day, which is nearly three times as fast as a feature.”

Producer Tim Sanders adds that “ we can’t do things in feature-film style, though we strive, as far as we can, for a level of excellence in look and style. But, we find that if we drop a scene, change, rewrite or add one, it’s part of the daily process. No one has a heart attack and runs screaming from the room. They say ‘Oh well, that’s what happens with series-making’. You’re never going to hit the mark 100%, every single minute of the day, for 32 weeks. On a feature, if you drop a shot, it can be catas­ trophic for the call sheets and schedules.

Everyone runs around looking to kill some­ one.”

In spite of some flexibility at this level, however, Dobson finds certain constraints necessary in the creative sphere, outlining his most pressing choices for the day as “ will I shoot a two-shot or a close-up?”

Clearly, the McElroys see Eden as the first likely Australian contender for a super­ soap title in the international marketplace.

Hal McElroy is, however, refreshingly blunt about its aims, limitations and target audience. “ People watch television not to be educated, not to be informed, but to be entertained (at best) and as a soporific,” he argues. “ We have to accept that as an industry. What we set out to do was make unabashed, prime time entertainment. We are not talking prestige television. With a m ini-series, like The Dismissal or Threads, you can say, ‘Just for this week, stop everything and have your life changed’. Over 22 weeks, you can’t change people’s lives.” ic

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Paul Harris in Sydney (Ph: (02) 888 2766), or Peter Hobson in Melbourne (Ph: (03) 329 5155) would be grateful for any information leading to their recovery.

news after he has his leg almost ripped off by Scriptwriters......................... Tony Morphett, TERRA AUSTRALIS a giant crocodile, heroically he drags himself Sonia Borg, Prod, company......................... Yoram Gross for a week through croc-infested waters and Stephen Cross Film Studio survives to tell the tale. In fact the story gets Based on the novel b y......... Grahame Webb Producer....................................Yoram Gross better every time it’s told. Especially by his Exec, producers.............. Antony I. Ginnane, Director................................................. YoramGross manager/director/partner Wally Riley.

William Gavin Scriptwriters............................................GregFlynn, Laboratory........................................ Colorfilm YoramGross DEAD-END DRIVE-IN Budget.......................................... $4,808,232 Help us make this Production Photography........................ Graham Sharpe Length.................................................95 mins Prod, com pany..........Springvale Production Survey as complete as poss­ Director of Gauge...................................................35 mm Pty. Ltd. ible. If you have something model design................................. NormanYeend Shooting stock..................................Eastman Consultant zoologist..................Dr M. Archer Dist. company............NSW Film Corporation which is about to go into pre­ Scheduled release...............December 1986 Producer............................................. Andrew Williams AVENGERS OF THE CHINA SEAS Length..........................................................80mins production, let us know and we Synopsis: A huge rogue crocodile terrorises Director.......................Brian Trenchard Smith Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Prod, company.................... Nilsen Premiere the inhabitants of Darwin. will make sure it is included.

Scriptwriter.............................. Peter Smalley Synopsis: Based on scientific findings, the Producer................................................... Tom Broadbridge Based on the novel by............... Peter Carey Call Debi Enker on (03) film is set in prehistoric Australia.

THE DISTANCE Director..................... Brian Trenchard-Smith Photography.............................. Paul Murphy 329 5983, or write to her at Scriptwriter...........................................PatrickEdgeworth (formerly Daisy) Sound recordist......................... Leo Sullivan Cinema Papers, 644 Victoria TRANSMISSION Based on the original idea Editor.............................................. Alan Lake Prod, company........... Argus Motion Pictures S treet, North M elbourne, b y ......................................................PatrickEdgeworth Prod, company.......................................HelenBoyd Prod, designer........................................ LarryEastwood Producers............................................... HughKitson, Victoria 3051.

Editor.............................................. Alan Lake Productions Pty Ltd Composer............................. Frank Strangio Colin Borgonon Producer’s assistant.......... Virginia Bernard Producer.................................... Helen Boyd Prod, co-ordinator..................... Judith Differ D irector.............................Richard McCarthy Laboratory........................................ Colorfilm Scriptwriter................................ Jeff Holland Prod, manager........................... Gay Dennis Scriptwriter........................................AnthonyWheeler Budget.......................................... $4.6 million Based on the original idea Prod, accountants............................... ValerieWilliams, Based on the original idea Length.................................................94 mins by............................................ Jeff Holland Moneypenny Services by..;.................................Anthony Wheeler Gauge.............................35 mm anamorphic Length........................................................120mins Prod, assistant.......................... Michelle Day Prod, designer....................... Phil Monaghan Synopsis A contemporary action-adventure Gauge.................................................. 35 mm 1st asst director..................Adrian Pickersgill Composer..................................................KenWalther story set on the South China Sea. Continuity.................................................SienHughes Line producer..........................................BasilAppleby Casting....................

Maziels and Associates, Prod, manager......................................... PamBorain THE BEE-EATER Sien Fatouros Budget........................................$2.47 million Prod, secretary....................................Maggie Hegarty (working title) Camera operator......................... Kevan Lind Length.................................................95 mins Prod, accountant...... Moneypenny Services, Key g rip ....................................................Noel McDonald Gauge...............................35 mm Panavision Prod, com pany........ Daedalus Films Pty Ltd Marie Brown Asst g rip ...............................................WayneMarshall Producer................................................ HilaryFurlong Synopsis: Jackie knew that she had Budget......................................................$2.4million Art director...............................................

Nick McCailum witnessed a murder down on the farm; the Director............................................... GeorgeOgilvie Length.............................................. 100 mins Asst art director....................... Rob Robinson others were not so sure. But when they Scriptwriter............................................ HilaryFurlong Gauge...................................................35 mm AUSTRALIAN DREAM Costume designer.............................AnthonyJones opened that Pandora’s box, the con­ Based on the unpublished Cast: Michael York (Simon Etherton), Pat Make-up............................ Robern Pickering Prod, company...........................Filmside Ltd sequences were horrific for everyone. short story b y ........................... Jane Hyde Evison (Daisy).

Hairdresser.......................... Penny Morrison Producers.................................. Susan Wild, Budget......................................... $2,478,561 Synopsis: A kind of love story that explores P rops....................................George Zammit Jacki McKimmie GREAT EXPECTATIONS — THE Cast: John Hargreaves (Neil McAdam). human need in circumstances that are Director............................... Jacki McKimmie Special effects.......................... Chris Murray Synopsis: A bitter-sweet comedy about love, sometimes hilarious and sometimes tragic.

AUSTRALIAN STORY Stunts co-ordinator....................... Guy Norris Scriptwriter..........................

Jacki McKimmie sex and growing up in the sixties.

Simon Etherton, a well groomed English­ Prod, company.................. International Film Still photography...................Robbie Gribble Based on the original idea man, on the run from a domestic tragedy Management Ltd. Runner...........................................

JohnathanTate THE BIG HURT b y ..................................... Jacki McKimmie meets Daisy, an earthy old bushwoman im­ Dist. company................................. ABC TV/ Location manager...................................... IanGoddard Photography......................... Andrew Lesnie prisoned by her environment — the pitiless Prod, com pany....................The Big Hurt Ltd Hemdale Leisure Corporation Laboratory........................................Colorfilm Editor.........................................Sara Bennett outback. Their relationship is tentative at first Producer.......................................Chris Kiely Producers................................. Tom Burstall, Prod, designer.....................Chris McKimmie Budget.......................................... $2.3 million and develops into a moving climax.

Director...................................................BarryPeak Ray Alehin Length.................................................95 mins Exec, producer......................Ross Matthews Scriptwriters...........................................BarryPeak, Director......................................................Tim Burstall Mixed a t.................................................. Atlab Gauge...................................................35 mm DOT AND THE TREE Sylvia Bradshaw Scriptwriter............................................... TimBurstall Laboratory...............................................Atlab Synopsis: Set in a quirky, futuristic world, a Based on the original idea Based on the original idea Prod, company.....................................YoramGross Budget..............................................$600,000 young man becomes trapped in a drive-in. b y ..............................................Barry Peak by..........................................................TomBurstall Film Studio Pty. Ltd. Length................................................ 90 mins Photography..................... Malcolm Richards Exec, producers.............. Antony I. Ginnane, Producer...............................................YoramGross DOT AND THE BUNYIP Gauge..................................................16 mm Sound recordist.........................John Rowley Christopher Muir Director.................................................YoramGross Shooting stock..........................Eastmancolor Prod, company.....................................YoramGross Exec, producer......................... Phillip Dwyer Assoc, producer.................. Sigrid Thornton Scriptwriter..............................................GregFlynn Film Studio Pty. Ltd. Cast: Noni Hazlehurst, Graeme Blundell.

Prod, supervisor................................. MichaelQuinlan Animation director................................. AtholHenry Studios................................ABC TV Studios Dist. company......................... Cori Films Inc. Prod, manager................................Ray Pond at French’s Forest Synopsis: A contemporary comedy. A witty, Assoc, producer................................. SandraGross Prod, c e r...............................................YoramGross uncompromising expose of the sexual and Prod, accountant...................................MareeMayall Laboratory........................................ Colorfilm Length................................................ 75 mins Director.................................................Yoram Gross 1st asst director.......................................RossHamilton Budget.......................................... $5,970,077 social mores of life in a typical middle-class Gauge...................................................35 mm Brisbane suburb, where all is not what it Scriptwriter..............................................GregFlynn Focus puller.............................................John Ogden Length..............................................

90 mins Synopsis: Dot and Old Tom, the violinDirector of photography...... Graham Sharpe seems.

Key g rip......................................................OrvMudie and 6 x 60 mins mini-series maker, find the spread of a big city threatens Director of anim ation...........Jacques Muller Boom operator...........................................RedHaggerty Gauge...................................................35 mm their lifestyles.

CROCODILE DUNDEE Assoc, producer................................. SandraGross Art director.............................................PaddyReardon Shooting stock..................................Eastman Prod, co-ordinator.................................... MegRowed Producer................................... John Cornell Wardrobe................................................Anna Jakab Scheduled release...............December 1986 DOT IN CONCERT Prod, manager..................................Jeanette Toms Director......................................Peter Faiman Runner.................................................Angelo Sartori Cast: John Stanton (Magwitch), Sigrid Prod, company.....................................YoramGross Administration.........................................JoanBrown Photography..............................Russell Boyd Laboratory.........................................Cinevex Thornton (Bridget).

Film Studio Pty. Ltd. Prod, accountants..............

Libay de la Cruz, Sound recordist........................ Gary Wilkins Budget............................................ $690,000 Synopsis: The adventures of Magwitch, the Producer...............................................YoramGross Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. Editor.........................................David Stiven Length................................................97 mins convict hero of Charles Dickens’s immortal Director.................................................YoramGross Animators......................................... JacquesMuller, Prod, designer................................... GrahamWalker Gauge........................................Super 16 mm classic, in Australia.

Scriptwriter................................

John Palmer Athol Henry, Line producer...............................

Jane Scott Synopsis: It would have just been the day he Assoc, producer................................. SandraGross Brenda McKie, Assoc, producer.................................. WayneYoung got out of prison if it weren’t also the day Lisa KANGAROO Length..........................................................75 mins Wal Louge, Prod, co-ordinator...................................

Julie Foster entered his life. Until now he’d just been a Prod, company..................Introndie Pty. Ltd. Nick Harding, Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Prod, manager........................Peter Sjoquist hard-bitten journo doing time for contempt Dist. com pany........... Filmways Australasian John Burge, Synopsis: Dot and her friends team up for a Unit manager..........................

Phil Patterson . . . Lisa dragged him into a sleazy under­ ’ Distributors Pty. Ltd. Stan Walker, musical special which features a “ live” star Prod, secretary..................Amanda Bennett world and a search for a dead man.

Producer................................... Ross Dimsey Andrew Szemenyei, performer.

Prod, accountants.................. Pieta Hurcum, Director......................... A............Tim Burstall Paul McAdam, Anne Phillips BLOWING HOT AND COLD END OF THE LINE Scriptwriter................................ Evan Jones Rowen Smith, 1st asst director...................... Mark Turnbull Prod, company........................ Celsius Prods Bela Szeman Based on the novel b y ........... D.H. Lawrence 2nd asst director....................... Craig Bolles Prod, company.......................................Helen Boyd Producer.................................. Basil Appleby Photography..............................David Eggby In-betweeners..............................Paul Baker, 3rd asst director..................................... PeterVoeten Productions Pty Ltd Director......................Brian Trenchard Smith Steve Becker, Cast: Judy Davis, Colin Friels.

Continuity...........................................DaphneParis Producer....................................

Helen Boyd Scriptwriters...................... Rosa Colosimo, Synopsis: Kangaroo, which is an autobio­ Lu Rou, Casting........................ Full Cast Consultants Scriptwriter................................ Jeff Holland Reg McLean Vicky Robinson, graphical novel, is a film of ideas. It deals Camera operator.................................... PeterMenzies Length........................................................120mins Script editor.......................Everett De Roche with an unusual and little known period of Maria Haren, Focus puller........................................... GeoffWharton Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Exec, producers....................... Reg McLean, Australian history. As with most of Law­ Clapper/loader.................................... ConradSlack Domingo Rivera, Synopsis: The film is based on the true story Rosa Colosimo rence’s works, the film is basically about Jan Stephen, 2nd unit camera of the Varischetti rescue at Bonnievale in Cast: Giancarlo Giannini (Nino), Arkie people. The love story between Lawrence Judy Howieson, assistant.............................................

David Pedley Western Australia in 1907.

Whiteley (Sally). and his wife, Frieda, their relationships with Murray Griffin, Key g rip .....................................................RayBrown Synopsis: The story of a friendship between their Australian neighbours, the Calcotts, Joanna Fryer, Asst grips................................ Tony Larkins, FIRESTORM two men who struggle to conquer differences and the ambitious, ruthless and charismatic Greg Farrugia, Stuart Green, of culture, temperament and values in ordei character code-named “ Kangaroo” .

Prod, company........................................... DeRocheHanka Bilyk, Ian Bird Phelan Film Prods to survive the dangers of their adventures Roland Chat, Genny operator....................... Jason Rogers and achieve their goal. The action moves PANDEMONIUM Producer.................................................. TomBurstall Clare Lyonette, Gaffer.................................Brian Bansgrove from the vast expanses of the Australian Director..............................Everett De Roche Kathie O’Rourke Electrician............................................... ColinChase Prod, company........... K.F.M. Pandemonium desert to the peaks of treacherous, snow­ Scriptwriter........................ Everett De Roche Layout a rtist........................................Nobuko Yuasa Boom operator......................Mark Wasiutak Pty. Ltd. capped mountain ranges.

Based on the original idea Painting & tracing..................Robyn Drayton, Art department Producer................................ Robert Francis b y ..............................................Max Phelan ~ Mimi Intal, co-ordinator..................................... PhillipaBanks D irector................................. Haydn Keenan CACTUS Photography..........................................DavidConnell Corallee Munro, Art department runner........John Paul Lucini Scriptwriters..............................Peter Gailey, Joseph Cabatuan, Sound recordist......................................

Gary Wilkins Costume designer.............

Norma Mariceau Haydn Keenan Prod, company.................................. DophineLtd Paulette Martin, Make-up............................. Elizabeth Fardon Photography......................David Sanderson Producers.................................................PaulCox,Editor............................................ Adrian Carr Prod, designer............................Leslie Binns Annamaria Dimmers Hairdresser....................... Elizabeth Fardon Sound & music director........ Cameron Allan Jane Ballantyne Composer..............................................BruceRowland Standby wardrobe..................... Suzie Pullen Backgrounds...............................Amber Ellis, Editor............................................. Paul Healy Director............................................ Paul Cox Sheila Christofides, Ward, assistant.............................. Mel Dykes Budget............................................. $600,000 Screen Adaptation.................................. PaulCox,Exec, producer.........................................MaxPhelan Barry Dean Assoc, producer................. Brian D. Burgess Props master............................. Martin O'Neil Cast: Amanda Dole, Candy Raymond, Ian Bob Ellis, Prod, manager........................................John Chase Special fx painting.................

Jeanette Toms Model makers......................................... JohnMurch, Nimmo, David Argue, Richard Moir, Mercia Norman Kaye Prod, co-ordinators..............

Meredyth Judd, Graphics.........................................

Eric David Kim Hilder Deane-Johns, Henk Johannes, David Based on the scenario b y ............... Paul Cox Jenny Tosi Asst editor.............................................. Stella Savvas Standby props................. Karen Monkhouse Bracks.

Photography................................. Yuri Sokol 2nd asst editor................................... StephenHayes Casting...................................................... LeeLamer Special effects.......................................

Chris Murray, Synopsis: A pagan passion play set under Editor............................................ Tim Lewis Extras' casting............................................ Jo Larner Publicity........................ Helena Wakefield — ' DaveHardy and on the shores of Bondi beach, with bulk Art director.................................... Asher Bilu Costume cu tte r.................................... JamesWatson International Media Marketing Pty. Ltd. ratbaggery and meaning.

Cast: Isabelle Huppert (Colo), Norman Kaye Art director.................................. Leslie Binns Laboratory........................................Colorfilm Story board artist............. Sabastian Lakosta Make-up................................Fiona Campbell (Tom), Robert Menzies (Robert).

Length.................................................75 mins Scenic a rtist............................................. Billy Malcolm Special effects........................................Chris Murray THE ROBOT STORY Synopsis: A love story between two blind Gauge...................................................35 mm Carpenters..............................................Andy Hickner, Wardrobe................................................

Jane Hyland people who teach one another to see.

Prod, company.........................Yoram Gross Cast: Character voices: Robyn Moore, Keith Marcus Smith, Scenic a rtist.........................................RobertMancini Film Studio Pty. Ltd. Scott.

Andy Chauvell, Musical director.....................................BruceRowland THE CRICKETER Producer.............................................. YoramGross Synopsis: A circus owner attempts to Geoff Howe Sound editor...........................................TerryRodman Director................................................ YoramGross Prod, company........................Monroe Stahr capture a mysterious Bunyip, but Dot and Construction manager.......................... DenisSmith Still photography...................................Sterio Stills Scriptwriter....................................Greg Flynn Productions Ltd. her bushland friends attempt to foil his plans.

Asst editor...............................................PeterCarrodus (David and Lorelei Simmonds) Assoc, producer................................. SandraGross Producer....................................... Chris Kiely Dot soon discovers that the circus is merely Standby painter.................... Allan Armethec Publicity............................. Burson-Marsteller Length................................................ 75 mins Director.........................................Barry Peak a Stunts co-ordinator.................................. MaxAspinfront for an international wildlife smuggling Budget......................................................... $5million Gauge...................................................35 mm Based on the original idea Animal co-ordinator......................Dale Aspen operation.

Length........................................................120mins Synopsis: Set in the future, the film involves b y .............................................. Barry Peak Still photography....................................... Jim Sheldon G auge.............................35 mm anamorphic a group of young people and robots who use Photography..................... Malcolm Richards DOT AND THE WHALE Paul Hogan’s as s t.......................... Lee Dillo Cast: Gus Mercurio (Ugo Mariotti). both primitive and high-tech equipment to Exec, producer........................Phillip Dwyer Nurse.......................... Jacqueline Robertson Synopsis: The story of a man’s rise to Prod, company......................... Yoram Gross survive.

Prod, supervisor...................Michael Quinlan Trades assistant............................... MatthewConnors leadership in an emergency, when a Film Studio Pty. Ltd. Prod, manager................................Ray Pond Driver.......................................................... IanFreeman Dunkirk-style evacuation is used to rescue Dist. company......................... Cori Rims Inc. SOMETHING GREAT Prod, accountant..................... Maree Mayall Helicopter pilot................................Terry Lee thousands of holiday-makers from a bushfire Producer....................................Yoram Gross Casting......................................... Ian McWha Prod, company.................... Boulevard Films Transport manager........Jeremy Hutchinson on the Mornington Peninsula.

Director...................................... Yoram Gross Budget............................................ $690,000 Director............................................ JonathanHardy Mechanic............................................... DavidThomas Scriptwriter................................

John Palmer FRENCHMAN’S FARM Gauge........................................Super 16 mm Scriptwriters..........................Frank Howson, Best boy....................................................PaulGantner Based on the original idea Synopsis: There’s a stranger in town whose Jonathan Hardy Runner................................................... KerryJackson Prod, company...................................... MavisBramston b y ...........................................Yoram Gross skill with a cricket bat is almost unnatural. . .

Exec, producers................... Frank Howson, Publicist................................................. SuzieHowie Productions Ltd. Photography...................................... GrahamSharpe he’s gotta have a secret.

Peter Boyle C atering..................................................JohnFaithfull Producers............................................ JamesFishburn, Director of anim ation................................RayNowland Prod, accountant........................Newell Lock Catering asst...................... Steve Warrington Matt White Assoc, producer.......................Sandra Gross DARK AGE Cast: Paul Hogan (Crocodile Mick Dundee), Director..................................................... RonWayBudget......................................................$5.5million Prod, co-ordinator.................................... MegRowed Linda Kozlowski (Sue Charlton), John Length..............................................

120 mins Scriptwriter.............................................

Keith Dewhurst Prod, company........... Argosy Films Pty. Ltd. Prod, manager........................................VickiJoyce Meillon (Walter Riley), David Gulpilil (Neville Synopsis: The true story of the trials and Based on the original screenplay for International Film Management Ltd. Prod, accountants.............. Libay de la Cruz, triumphs of Australia’s golden boy of boxing Bell), Maggie Blinco (Ida), Steve Rackman by.................

William Russell Dist. com pany................... RKO Pictures Inc. Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. (Donk), Gerry Skilton (Nugget). who fell from grace as a result of World War through Embassy Home Entertainment Photography........................... Ron Johanson Administration.........................................JoanBrown I’s conscription hysteria and was resurrected Synopsis: Crocodile Mick Dundee is a Composer............................... Tommy Tycho Producers............................. Stephen Cross, Photography.......................................... Ricky Vergara, friendly larrikin crocodile hunter from the as a hero, when he died in Memphis, lonely, Exec, producer.......................Colson Worner Geoffrey Gardiner Erik Bierens, bewildered and reviled at the age of 21. wilds of Australia. He becomes national Art director.............................................Phillip Warner D irector.................................. Stephen Cross Graham Binding

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CINEMA PAPERS September — 49

Animators....................................Wal Louge, Nick Harding, John Burge, Stan Walker, Ariel Ferrari, Paul McAdam, Andrew Szemenyei, BelaSzeman, Rowen Smith, Gairden Cook In-betweeners..............................Paul Baker, Steve Becker, Clare Lyonette, Kathie O’Rourke, Lu Rou, Vicky Robinson, Maria Haren, Domingo Rivera, Jan Stephen, Judy Howieson, Murray Griffen, Joanna Fryer, Greg Farrugia, Hanka Bilyk Layout artists........................... Ray Nowland, Nobuko Yuasa Painting & tracing................. Robyn Drayton, Mimi Intal, Corallee Munro, Joseph Cabatuan, Paulette Martin, Annamaria Dimmers Backgrounds.............................. Amber Ellis, Sheila Christofides, Barry Dean Special fx painting..... Christiane Van der Casseyen, Jeanette Toms Graphics........................................ Eric David Asst editor.................................Stella Savvas 2nd asst editor...................... Stephen Hayes Publicity........................Helena Wakefield — International Media Marketing Pty. Ltd. Laboratory....................................... Colorfilm Length................................................75 mins Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Cast: Character voices: Robyn Moore, Keith Scott.

Synopsis: In a desperate bid to rescue a whale stranded on a beach, Dot and Neptune the dolphin hunt the ocean depths searching for a wise, old octopus called The Oracle who knows how to save whales.

Length..... ;.......................................100 mins Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Shooting stock........................ Eastmancolor Cast: John Waters (Martin Brown), Judy Morris (Ainslie Brown), Linda Cropper (Irene Carter), Kate Raison (Nosh), Frank Wilson (Sir Colin Grant), Jim Holt (Irwin Grant), Anne Semler (Marta Owen), Tim Robertson (Owen Owen), Mervyn Drake (Alistair), Maggie Blinco (Miss Griffiths).

Synopsis: Going Sane is a comedy about a man’s obsession with the passing of time.

Ward, assistant........................... Kate Green Art dept co-ordinator............................ PennyLang WINDRIDER Costume designer.................. George Liddle Ward, standby....................... Julie Middleton Prod, company................... Barron Rims Ltd. Pattern makers......................... Judy Parker, Design assistant................................. WarrenReid Dist. company.................... Barron Films Ltd. Kerry Barnett Make-up................................ Bob McCarron, Producer................................................. PaulBarron Wendy Sainsbury, Props buyers......................Sandy Wingrove, Director...................................Vince Monton Ivonne Pollock, Jock McLachlan, Scriptwriters..................... Everett De Roche, Sonja Smuk Miv Brewer Bonnie Harris Hairdresser..........................Shayne Radford Standby props...............................Tony Hunt Photography.............................................JoePickering Wardrobe.................................... Anna Wade Scenic artists............................ Ray Pedler, Sound recordist........................... Mark Lewis Brian Nickless Standby wardrobe................ Julie Middleton Editor.............................................John Scott Carpenters...............................Geoff Howe, Asst standby wardrobe......... Annie Peacock Composer.................................... Kevin Peak Andrew Tickner, Wardrobe assistants...............Andrea Hood, Exec, producer........................................PaulBarron Errol Glassenbury, Jean Turnbull, Assoc, producer....................... Bonnie Harris Andrew Chauvel, Linda Mapledoram, MY COUNTRY Prod, supervisor........................ Terri Vincent David Stenning, Jeanette McCullogh, 1st asst director........................ Steve Jodrell Prod, company....... Warhead Rims Pty. Ltd. Grant Longley Rita Crouch Continuity.............................................. ChrisO’Connell Producers.............................. Angus Caffrey, Set construction...................... Alan Fleming Props......................................................... IanAllan Casting consultants...............

Michael Lynch Ali Kayn Asst editors.........................................Pamela Barnetta, Props buyers............................ Peta Lawson, Key g rip ..............................Karel Ackermann Director................................... Angus Caffrey Gai Steele ' Brian Edmonds, 2nd unit photography......George Greenough Scriptwriters..........................Angus Caffrey, Brushhand............................................

Gillian Nicholas Sally Campbell, Special fx Ali Kayn Peter Forbes Model maker..............................Warren Field photography.............. Ron & Valerie Taylor Photography.............................. Ray Boseley Musical director..................................

Nathan Wax Standby props..........................................IgorLazareff Sound recordist......................................PeterFalkArt director............................................... PhilMonaghan Asst standby props.......................Aran Major Editing assistants...............................PamelaBarnetta, Costume designer.................................. NoelHowell Editor.................................Clayton Jacobsen Gai Steele Special effects.................................... Mirage Asst editor..................................................LizGoldfinch Prod, manager..................................Ali Kayn (Andrew Mason, Still photography...................................VivianZink Sound edito r...................................Greg Bell 1st asst director........................ Paul Caffrey Tad Pride) Best boy.................................... Matt Slattery Stunts co-ordinator......................

Peter West Casting......................................... John Flaus Runner.................................................. AdamSpencer Set dressers............................................ PetaLawson, Camera assistant.......................................JoBell Mixed a t................................................. Atlab Brian Edmonds, Transport.......................... Sue & Ralph Clark Laboratory..............................................Atlab Key grip.....................................Michael Roof Publicity............... Marita Blood & Associates Sally Campbell, Lab. liaison........................................... BruceWilliamson Sound editor.............................. Ray Boseley Peter Forbes Unit publicist.................................. MadeleineRead Budget..................................................... $2.3million Laboratory........................................... V.F.L. Catering.................................................Kaos, Scenic artist...............................................

Ian Richter Length.............................................. 100 mins Budget............................................$325,000 ' Kathy Trout, Asst scenic artists.................................. PeterCollias, Gauge......................................................... 16mm Gauge................................................ 35 mm Helen Rixon Chris Read Shooting stock................................. Eastman Shooting stock............. Kodak Eastmancolor Studios.............................. Pyramid, Mori Bay Art dept runner.......................................Peter Forbes Scheduled release............................

April 86 Cast: John Flaus (Danby), Susanna Lobez Laboratory........................................Colorfilm Standby carpenter................................DerekWyness Cast: Tom Burlinson (PC), Nicole Kidman (Angela), Lee Harding (The Surgeon).

Lab. liaison......................Richard Piorkowski Carpenters.......................................BrendanShortall, (Jade), Bud Tingwell (Simpson Senior), Jill Synopsis: The true story of the discovery of Geoff Howe, Budget........................................$3.8 million Perryman (Miss Dodge).

Australia. Sort of.

Kevin Kilday, Shooting stock......................................Kodak Synopsis: Windrider is: *A fast-moving con-, SimonMiller, Cast: Helen Buday (Teresa), Hugo Weaving temporary comedy/romance about two THE STEAM DRIVEN ADVENTURES Gordon McIntyre, (Jonathan), Hugh Keays-Byrne (Andrew), people whose lifestyles and patterns are as Rory Forrest, Judi Farr (Aunt Bea), Regina Gaigalas OF RIVERBOAT BILL different as night and day. *A celebration of Peter Longley, (Jean), Nicholas Opolski (Lance), John Prod, company......................... PhantascopeLtd. wind, waves and love. *A movie of music Allan Brown, Poison (Leo), Odile le Clezio (Kitty), Sam and action including all the colour and Producer..................................................PaulWilliams Boris Kosanovic Neill (James Quick), Linden Wilkinson (Miss excitement ofwindsurfing’s most spec­ Director................................................... PaulWilliams Haviland). tacular activity: wave-jumping.

Construction managers......... Denis Donelly, Scriptwriter................................... Cliff Green Danny Rollston Synopsis: The story of a young girl’s Based on the novel by...................Cliff Green Construction runner............. Daniel Morphett passionate search for love and sexual fulfil­ Photography..............................Diane Bullen ment, and the men who help her find it.

Asst editor............................Jeanine Chialvo Sound recordist.....................Brian Laurence 2nd asst editor.......................... Liz Goldfinch Composer.............................. Kevin Hocking FORTRESS Sound editor..................................Lee Smith Animation...............................Gus McLaren, Still photography................................... DavidParker Prod, company................................CrawfordProds Paul Williams, Livestock co-ordinator.... Kayleen Donnellan Producer................................................... RayMenmuir Maggie Geddes Horsemasters...... Heath and Evanna Harris, Director................................................... ArchNicholson Laboratory..........Victorian Film Laboratories AUSSIFIED Alan Rtzsimmons Scriptwriter.........................Everett De Roche Length................................................75 mins THE FRINGE DWELLERS Prod, company............... Screencrafts Prods Horsemasters’ assistant........... Ann Stevens Based on the novel b y ......... ...Gabrielle Lord Gauge..................................................16 mm Producer..............................Ralph LawrenceMarsden Coachmaster.........................Graham Ware Prod, company..................... Fringe Dwellers Photography......................................... DavidConnell Shooting stock..........................Eastmancolor Director................................Ralph LawrenceMarsden Productions Pty. Ltd. Wranglers.............................................. HughBarnet, Sound recordist..................................AndrewRamage Cast: Voice overs: Frank Thring, Brian Scriptwriter........... Ralph Lawrence Marsden Producers........................... Bruce Beresford, Derek Rsher, Editor.................................................... RalphStrasser Hannan, Hamish Hughes, Beate Horrison, Sue Milliken Photography....... Ralph Lawrence Marsden, Bruce Emery, Prod, designer........................... Phil Warner Debby Cumming.

Director................................ Bruce Beresford Stewart Neale Max Mitchell, Exec, producers..................................HectorCrawford, Synopsis: Animated adventure set on the Scriptwriter...........................Bruce Beresford Sound recordist..........Peter Mandel (Britain) Don Rtzsimmons, Ian Crawford, Murray River at the turn of the century.

Composer (in part)..................................SeanOre Photography............................................ DonMcAlpine Robert Watchirs, Terry Stapleton Riverboat Bill and his crew attempt to protect Sound recordist.......................................MaxBowring Casting adviser.......................Marcel Cugola Stephen Moxham, Assoc, producer.................................MichaelLake an illegal bunyip from the long arm of the Editor........................................................ TimWellburn Casting consultants...... The Actor’s Agency, Daphne Phillips, Prod, co-ordinator........................... ElizabethSymes law.

Prod, designer................................... HerbertPinter Frog Promotions, Emma Erback, Prod, manager...................................... HelenWatts Exec, producer..................................DamianNolan Sascha Management Gale Coutts, Location unit manager....................Grant Hill 3 F.U.K. FM (106,3 ON YOUR DIAL) Prod, co-ordinator............ Rosemarie Probyn 2nd unit photography................. Wilf Watters Mandy Beaumont Prod, accountant...................................Vince Smits Prod, manager........................... Helen Watts (Britain) Camel dresser.......................John Wittacker Continuity.................................... Jenni Tosi Prod, company.....................MS Productions Prod, accountant...... Moneypenny Services, Music performed by (in part).......... Sean Ore Producer....................................Martin Burke Best boys................................................ColinChase, Casting........................... Maizels and Assoc.

Gait & Nuefrunt Paul Gantner Lighting cameraman............................. DavidConnell Directors................................... Martin Burke, 1st asst director...................................... MarkEgerton Laboratory...............................................VFL Steve Edwards Runners....................................Lionel Curtin, Camera operator...................................DavidConnell 2nd asst director..... Carolynne Cunningham Length.........................................................90mins Scriptwriters.............................Martin Burke, Robin Newell Focus puller................................. Greg Ryan Continuity....................................... Jo Weeks Shooting stock..................................... Kodak Steve Evans Voice coach...................................Gina Pioro Clapper/loader.......................................BrucePhillips Focus puller...................................... MalcolmBurroughs Cast: Chris Waters (David), Amanda Mc­ Music............................................. The Pulse Music teacher.....................................ColleenLeonard Gaffer...................................Robert J. Young Key grip.................................................... PhilShapira Namara (Wendy), Bronwyn Gibbs (Chrissie), Length................................................90 mins Doctor...................................................GillianDeakin 3rd electrics........................................... BruceTowers Gaffer.................................................. RobbieYoung Gauge....................................... Super 16 mm Christine Andrew (Claire), Peter Tabor Researcher...................................... ChristinaNorman Boom operator..........................................JoeSpinelli Make-up.................................................... VivMepham Synopsis: Super Rat and Ferel (alias James (George), Susan Mantell (Stephanie), Martin Vet.................................................Dick Jane Art director.................

Phil Warner Wardrobe............................................... KerryBarnett Maddock and Doug Hunter) are two popular Trainor (Barry), Esme Gray (Bea), Con Unit publicist....................Santina Musumeci Props buyer........................................ PaulineWalker Standby wardrobe................................JudithParker Babanoitis (taxi driver), Margaret Younger FM disc jockeys who find themselves Catering................................................. JohnFaithfull Asst art director/ Still photography................................. RobertMcFariane suddenly out of work, and in need of money (disco lady).

Catering assistant...................................GaryFrame props buyer...................... Nick McCallum Best boy.......................................Laurie Fish quickly. They implement a series of get-rich- Synopsis: Contemporary drama set in Budget..................................................... $8.9million Costume designer................................. ClareGriffin Catering...................................John Faithfull quick schemes as well as elaborate cons to London and Melbourne.

Cast: Jack Thompson (Burke), Matthew Make-up.................................................. JosePerez Synopsis: A contemporary film about an set up a pirate radio station. But not without Fargher (King), Ralph Cotterill (Gray), Chris Aboriginal family. setbacks from ASIO and the Broadcasting Haywood (McDonagh), Drew Forsythe Make-up assistant..............................LynetteHarding BURKE AND WILLS Tribunal.

(Brahe), Monroe Reimers (Dost Mahomet), Standby wardrobe..........Margot McCartney, Prod, company..............

Hoyts Edgley Prods Phil Eagles GOING SANE Greta Scacchi (Julia), Nigel Havers (Wills), in association with Barry Hill (Landells), Ron Blanchard Standby props.................Shane Rushbrook Prod, company.......................... Sea-ChangeFilms Graeme Clifford Special effects........................................Brian Pearce TWELFTH NIGHT (Patton).

Ry. Ltd. Producers.......................... Graeme Clifford, Prod, company...........Twelfth Night Pty. Ltd. Synopsis: The story of the first two explorers Scenic artists.......................................... JohnHedges, Producer................................Tom M. Jeffrey John Sexton David Francis, Producer.................................................. DonCatchlove to cross the continent from south to north Director..............................................MichaelRobertson Director................................Graeme Clifford Martin Kelloch Director.....................................Neil Armfield and back.

Scriptwriter............................................ John Sandford Scriptwriter.......................... Michael Thomas Carpenters............................................... RodHayward, Scriptwriter.................. William Shakespeare Based on the original idea Photography.......................................

Russell Boyd Hugh Bateup Photography...............................Louis Irving by........................................................ JohnSandford FOR LOVE ALONE Sound recordist................... Syd Butterworth Best boy................................................LaurieFish Sound recordist..........................Rob Stalder Photography............................. Dean Semler Editor.......................................Tim Wellburn Runner.............................................Margaret Eabry Prod, company....................

Waranta Pty Ltd Editor..................................... Nick Beauman Sound recordist...................Syd Butterworth Prod, designer........................................RossMajor Cave construction..................................... WillFlint Producer................................ Margaret Fink Prod, designer.......................Stephen Curtis Editor................................... Brian Kavanagh Assoc, producer.................

Greg Ricketson Director..............................

Stephen Wallace Weapons consultant..............................

John Fox Composer.............................................. AllenJohn Prod, designer..................................Igor Nay Prod, co-ordinators................. Lynda House, Scriptwriter.........................Stephen Wallace Teachers/chaperones.............. Jan Harfield, Prod, supervisor....................... Steven Salgo Composer..............................Cameron Allan Julie Forster, Script editor........................................ SandraLevy Jo Buchanan, Pre-prod, manager............................ PatriciaBlunt Exec, producer......................John Sandford Jane Griffin Based on the novel by........... Christina Stead Steven Hartley Prod, secretary.................................. PhoebeAtkinson Prod, manager..........................Tony Winley Prod, manager.......Carolynne Cunningham Photography..........................

Alun Bollinger Prod, accountant........................ Martin Ellis Publicity..... ................Chris Day Enterprises Prod, co-ordinator................................MargoTamblyn Location unit manager............Ron Stigwood Sound recordist................... Syd Butterworth Catering..............................Christina Frolich 1st asst director................ Com Soeterboek Unit manager.............................................TicCarroll Asst location unit manager...... Mason Curtis Editor...................................... Henry Dangar Continuity..........................Danuta Morrissey Laboratory.............................................. Atlab Location manager................................. DavidMalacari Sydney location manager.......... Elaine Black Prod, designer....................... John Stoddart Lighting cameraman................... Louis Irving Lab. liaison...............................Peter Willard Prod, accountant........................................JillCoverdale Sydney location assistants.... Peter Lawless, Composer........................................... NathanWax Camera operator..........................Louis Irving Prod, assistant..................................... DonnaWillis Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Henk Prins Exec, producer....................................... UAA Shooting stock......................................Kodak Focus puller........................................... DerryField 1st asst director.......................Colin Fletcher Transport manager...............................RalphClark Assoc, producer...................................SusanWild Clapper/loader..................................... LaurieSzafranek 2nd asst director................................. MurrayRobertson Cast: Rachel Ward (Sally Jones), Dennis Prod, accountant...............Spyros Sideratos Prod, co-ordinator..........Suzanne Donnolley Gaffer........................................Peter O’Brien 3rd asst director...........-........ Elizabeth Lovell Miller (“ Father Christmas” ), David Brad­ Accounts assistants............

Catherine Ryan, Prod, manager.....................................SusanWild Electrician............................................ AlleynMearns Continuity................................................... JoWeeks shaw ("Pussycat” ), Vernon Wills (“ Dabby Lorraine McDermott Location manager...............................MaudeHeath Art director.......................................ClarrissaPatterson Duck” ), Roger Stephen ("Mac the Mouse” ), Producer’s assistant......... Christine Gordon 1 st asst director......................Mark Turnbull Unit manager..........................................Chris Jones Costume designer............................ AnthonyJames Casting................................................... FaithMarlin Sean Garlick (Sid O’Brien), Rebecca Rigg 2nd asst directors................... Tony Mahood, Prod, secretary...................................MichaelDavis Make-up................................................. LloydJames Extras casting........................................... SueParker (Narelle), Anna Crawford (Sarah), Beth Craig Bolles Prod, accountant.................................. ElaineCrowther Hairdresser............................................UoydJames Camera operator...................................DavidWilliamson Buchanan (Leanne).

(Aboriginal sequences) Accounts asst.........................Trish Griffiths Wardrobe...........................................ShaunaFlenady Focus puller.......................................RichardMerryman Synopsis: A group of school children and 3rd asst director.................................... CraigSinclair Prod, assistant....................... Robin Newell Props..................................... Bryce Kershaw Clapper/loader........................ Garry Phillips their teacher are kidnapped by four men.

1st asst director...................... Mark Turnbull Asst director Draughtsman............................................ ianRobinson Key g rip ..................................................MervMcLaughlin The story tells of their fight to escape.

(Aboriginal sequences).......Annette Boyes 2nd asst director..... Carolynne Cunningham Models.............................................. AmandaLovejoy Asst grip.................................................... PatNash 3rd asst director........................Peter Voeten Continuity...................................Moya Iceton Set decorator.......................................

Louise Kerrigan G affer........................................John Morton Continuity...... ..........................Daphne Paris Director’s assistant....................Michele Day I LIVE WITH ME DAD Scenic artist............................................ AlanCraft Electricians....................Darren McLaughlin, Extras casting......................... Nene Morgan Casting..................................................M & L Casting Carpenter.................................................BobPatton Dean Bryan Prod, company.......... Crawford Productions Casting consultants................M & L Casting Extras’ casting............................. Sue Parker Set construction.....................................BrianHocking Boom operator.................................Sue Kerr (Drama) Pty. Ltd. Lighting cameraman...............Alun Bollinger Camera operator......................Nixon Binney Musical director.............................. CameronAllan Asst art director....................... Sam Trumble Producer.................................Ross Jennings Camera operator..................................DannyBatterham Focus puller.....................Peter Menzies Jnr Still photography...........Francine McDougall Costume designer....................................JanHurley Director....................................

Paul Moloney Focus puller.........................Andrew McLean Clapper/loader...................................... GarryPhillips Publicity...................................... Peter Kemp Make-up.....................................................VivMepham Scriptwriter................................Peter Pinney Clapper/loader....................................... ChrisCole Camera assistant.....................................RobAgganis Catering............................................... NancyWahlquist Hairdresser............................................ JoanPetch Based on the short story Front projection Studios...............................................BalmainBijouKey g rip........................................ Ray Brown Stand-by wardrobe............... Julie Middleton b y..........................................Derry Moran technician............................... Ken Arlidge Grip.......................................... Stuart Green Laboratory............................................... CFL Props buyers............................Peta Lawson, Photography...........................James Doolan Key grip.................................................. RossErickson Asst grips.........................

Brendan Shanley, Lab. liaison............................................PeterWilson Jane Johnston Sound recordist.....................John Wilkinson Asst g rip ....................................Geoffrey Full “ Greg Mossop Budget............................................ $591,400 Standby props......................................AlisonGoodwin Editor..................................................... GrantFenn Gaffer....................................... Reg Garside Length.......................................................100mins2nd unit photography................ Louis Irving Asst editor................................ Peter McBain Exec, producers................Hector Crawford, Second electrics.....................Alan Dunstan 2nd unit camera assistant........... Terry Field Gauge..................................................35 mm Still photography................................. RobbieGribble Ian Crawford, Boom operator.........................................

Sue Kerr Gaffers...............................

Brian Bansgrove, Shooting stock.........................................Agfa Best b o y ..................................................AlanDunstan Terry Stapleton Peter O’Brien Art director..........................John Wingrove Runner.................................................... BizziBodiScheduled release................................. 1986 Assoc, producer.......................Michael Lake Art dept co-ordinator.........

Christine Dunstan Electrics........................John Bryden-Brown, Publicity................................................ IngridBergCast: Peter Cummins, Tracy Harvey, Gillian Prod, supervisor..................C. Ewan Burnett Colin Chase Art dept asst......................................MatthewCummings Jones, Ivar Kants, Russel Kiefel, Stuart Catering............................Marike Janavicius Prod, co-ordinator...................................GinaBlack Costume designer............................... JennieTateProd, manager....................................... ChrisPage Boom operators......................... Phil Tipene, McCreery, Jacqy Phillips, Geoffrey Rush, To be mixed a t....................................... Atlab Gerry Nucifora Make-up..........................Lesley Vanderwalt Igor Sas, John Wood.

Laboratory.............................................. AtlabAustralia Prod, accountant...........Robert Threadgold Hairdresser.......................................... CherylWilliams Art director..............................Brian Hocking Synopsis: Shakespeare’s first Australian Lab. liaison.......................Bruce Williamson 1st asst director........................................ PhilJones Asst art director.............................. Kim Dary Wardrobe.............................................LesleyMcLennan feature film.

Budget......................................................$2.1million 2nd asst director........... Richard Clendinnen

50 — September CINEMA PAPERS

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318 WILLOUGHBY ROAD, NAREMBURN, SYDNEY STATION WAGONS • SEDANS • HI-ACE VANS • 4 X 4 TOYOTA LANDCRUISERS • ACTION VEHICLES • TRAY TOPS • BUSES

David Hardy, Editor.......................................................... JillBiicock 3rd asst director/ (Evangelist), Paul Bertram (Connelly), Gillian 2nd asst director...................................... PaulGrinder John Armstrong Jones (Mrs Hoddel).

Prod, designer...................... Josephine Ford runner........................................... StrachanWilson 3rd asst director.....................................DerekWatkins Composer.............................................. PeterBestMovement coach.....................Michael Fuller Synopsis: A touching story of a very likeable Continuity........................................... KarindaParkinson Continuity.........................................Liz Perry Scenic artists...............................Ian Richter, but somewhat slow teenage boy who is led to Story editor......................... Tony Cavanaugh Producer's assistant....... Deborah Goldsmith Assoc, producer...................Greg Ricketson Peter Collias Prod, co-ordinator.....................Lynda House believe that he has bought the Harold Park Focus puller............................................. RexNicholson Casting............................................... GrahamMoore Construction Prod, manager.....................Trish Hepworth Clapper/loader............................ Lee Parker Racecourse for $20. His warm, ingenuous Focus puller....................,............... Louis Puli managers............... John Whitfield-Moore, Key g rip ............................. Brendan Shanley Unit manager.........................................LeighAmmitzboll nature wins over the personnel at the race­ Clapper/loader......................... Craig Barden Wayne Allen Asst grip..................................... Ken Connor Prod, accountant.................Belinda Williams course and they accept him as the owner.

Key grip................................ Joel Witherden Asst editor............................................DeniseHaratzis Gaffer......................................Robbie Young Prod, assistant..........................................KimTyshing Asst grip..................................Rob Hansford 2nd asst editor.............................. Pip Karmel Boom operator...................................... SteveHegarty 1st asst director.................................... AdrianPickersgill THE LEONSKi INCIDENT Gaffer................................... David Parkinson 2nd asst director.................................HamishMcSporran Sound editor..........................................FrankUpson Make-up................................................. SallyGordon Best boy...................................................GaryScholes Prod, company........................... A Bill Nagle/ 3rd asst director....................................SimonRosenthal Mixer....................................................JamesCurrie Wardrobe........................Lucinda McGuigan Boom operator.......................Chris Rowland David Hannay Production Continuity...................................................

Jo McLennan Stunts co-ordinator...............................GlennBoswell Props buyer....................

Steve Jones Evans Art director........................... Sally Shepherd for Suatu Film Management Producer’ s assistant............................ JudithHughes Stunts.................................... Glenn Boswell, Standby props......................................

Martin Perkins Wardrobe supervisor.................... Keely Ellis Producers.................................................. BillNagle, Ric Bowe, Carpenter......................................

Ian McLay Lighting cameraman...............................

Dan Burstall Make-up/hair............................ Maggie Koiev David Hannay Tim Perry, Art department assistant........Joe Bogdanov Focus puller........................................... BarryHelleren 2nd hairdresser..................... Christine Miller Director.................................... Philippe Mora Asst editor...............................

Simon James Clapper/loader.......................................

Louis Puli Mike Read Wardrobe standby.............................. MarionBoyce Scriptwriter................................................ BillNagle Still photography...................... Greg Noakes Key grip................................................... PaulAmmitzboll Props buyer............................................AnneBeach Still photography....................................GregNoakes Based on an historical event in 1942 Best boy......................................

Laurie Fish Asst grips.................................................

Ken Connor, Dialogue coach...................................AudineLeith Standby props.........................................TaraFerrier Photography.......................................... LouisIrving Runner............................Veronica Maughan " StuartCrombie Voice coach........................ Edward Caddick Special effects.............. Vivienne Rushbrook Sound recordist..................................... GeoffWhite Catering.....................................Rod Murphy Gaffer..................................................... BrianAdams Dressers................................................. John Rouch, Animal handler....................................... LukeHura Editor.............................................John Scott Genny operator..........................Kevin Hunt Mixed at.........................................Soundfilm Storyboard a rtist................ Scott Hartshorne Len Barratt, Exec, producers....................................OscarScherl, Laboratory....................................... Cinevex Boom operator..........................................RayPhillips Tutor..........................Colleen Van Der Horst Simon Carter Richard Tanner Budget.............................................$999,000 Make-up/hair.......................................... JoanHillsBest boy..............................................WernerGeriach Set construction...................... Gordon White Assoc, producers...............................HonnonPage, Length.............................................. 90 mins Asst make-up/hair...............................LeanneWhite Asst editor............................................JacquiHorvath Runner..................................................MasonCurtis Richard Jabara Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Wardrobe................................................AnjeBosPublicity.................... Suzie Howie Publicity Neg. matching........................................JuneWilson Prod, supervisor................. Geoffrey Pollock Shooting stock............. Kodak Eastmancolor Ward, assistant..................... Anna McAllister Catering................................................ FrankManley Music editor.......................................... DavidHolmes Prod, co-ordinator...............Vicki Popplewell Cast: Colin Friels (Malcolm), John Har­ Props buyer................................Warren Hoy Sound editor........................ Ross Chambers Studios...............................................HendonStudios Prod, manager...................................... DavidClarke greaves (Frank), Lindy Davies (Judith), Chris Standby props............................John Stabb Sound editing Mixed at..............................................HendonStudios Unit manager.........................................LeighAmmitzboll Haywood (Willy), Beverley Phillips (Mrs Tam­ Set decorator.................Steve Jones Evans, assistant...........................Owen Johnston Laboratory........................................Colorfilm Prod, secretary.........................................SueEvans arack), Bud Tingwell (Supervisor), Deborah Neil Angwin Stunts co-ordinator.............. Chris Anderson Lab. liaison..................... Richard Piorkowski Prod, accountant............................... HowardWheatley Lee Furness (Barmaid), Reg Evans (Pedes­ Set construction....................................DavidFranks, Still photography...........................Mark Prytz Asst accountant................................AnthonyShepherd Budget......................................... $4.4 million trian).

James Gannon Dialogue coach............................Peter Hehir Length.........................................................

90mins Prod, associate................................ JeanetteLeigh Synopsis: The apparently simple Malcolm Asst editor............................................AdrianBrady Tutor/chaperone................................. SandraWalloch Gauge.................................................. 35 mm 1st asst director..................................... BrianGiddens Hughes loses his job at the tram depot after Sound editor..........................................SteveLambeth Publicity......................................Susan Wood Shooting stock......................................Kodak building himself a one-man tram and taking Still photography................................MerryleJohnson, Catering.................................................. KeithFish2nd asst director............. Hamish McSporran Cast: Peter Phelps (Judah), Imogen 3rd asst director..................................... PeterCulpan to the streets. His enforced poverty leads to “ DavidParker — Food For Film Annesley (Abigail), Mouche Phillips (Beatie), Continuity...........................................JoanneMcLennan his mechanical ability being used in a series Best boy.................................................... JonLeaver Laboratory..........Victorian Film Laboratories Moya O’Sullivan (Granny), Nikki Coghiii Producer's assistant................................

Sue Robinson of eccentric crimes.

Runners............................Bruce Thompson, Lab. liaison..............................................JohnHartley, (Dovey), Don Barker (Samuel), Lyndell Rowe Casting consultants..................... Lee Larner Ian Neyland Steve Mitchell (Kathy), Barbara Stephens (Justine), Jo Focus puller.................................

Derry Field MARIE CLAIRE Art dept runner.................................... AlistairReilly Length................................................ 90 mins England (Doll), Damian Janko (Gibbie). (working title) Catering................................................. JohnFaithfull Gauge..........................................................35mmClapper/loader..................................... LaurieKirkwood Synopsis: Teenage Abigail finds herself Key g rip............................................Ian Park Security..................................................

Willy Davidson Shooting stock...................ECN 5247 & 5294 transported through time to the Sydney of Prod, company.............Collins Murray Prods Grips..................................................... Jamie Leckie, Cast: Peter Hehir (Sid McCall), Haydon one hundred years ago where she must fulfil Producer................................John B. Murray Laboratory..............................................Atlab Barry Brown Lab. liaison............................................

Peter Willard, Samuels (Christopher McCall), Dennis Miller the Bow family prophecy before she can Director................................................... ScottMurray Gaffer..................................................... TonyHoltham Bruce Williamson (Joe Karrirak), Rebecca Gibney (Jill return home. Through a series of extra­ Scriptwriter.............................................ScottMurray Asst electrix...............................................LesFrazier Gauge............................ 35 mm anamorphic Harkness), Robyn Ginnes (Della McCall), ordinary adventures Abigail succeeds in Script consultant...................John B. Murray Generator operator...............................AdamWilliams Shooting stock................. Kodak 5247/5294 Gus Mercurio (Waldo Scrimm), Esben Storm Photography....................... Andrew de Groot Cast: Judy Morris, Barry Otto, Victoria saving the Bow’s Celtic “ Gift” as well as Boom operator....................................... ChrisGoldsmith (Blindman), Tony Hawkins (Major Briggs), finding love and then losing it again along Sound recordist................... Laurie Robinson Longley, Owen Johnson, Lewis Rtz-Gerald, Art director............................................. GeoffRichardson Nigel Bradshaw (Mr Ross). the way.

Editor............................................ Tim Lewis Asst art director............................... Jill Eden Peter Carroll.

Synopsis: Six year old Christopher McCall Exec, producer..................... Peter C. Collins Synopsis: Contemporary story about role Costume designer.............................. SandraTynan SHORT CHANGED lives with his Dad, who drinks all day, Line producer.......................................... TomBurstall Make-up............................... Deryk De Neise, reversal and relationships. doesn’t work, doesn’t own or rent a place to Prod, company............Magpie Films Pty Ltd Prod, manager....................................... John Hipwell Michelle Lowe live in. They sleep on park benches and eat Producer............................... Ross Matthews Location/unit manager..............Stuart Beatty from the Salvation Army. The authorities Asst make-up.......................................... NickSeymour Director.................................George Ogilvie Prod, secretary..............................Ann Mudie PLAYING BEATIE BOW Hairdresser........................................StephenMahoney decide it is time to separate them.

Scriptwriter...........................Robert J. Merritt Prod, accountant.............Pauline Montagna Wardrobe supervisor................Gerry Nixon Prod, company..........SAFC Productions Ltd Based on the original idea 1st asst director......................... Tom Burstall Standby wardrobe............................ AmandaSmith, Dist company...........................................CEL by.......................................Robert J. Merritt 2nd asst director...................

Marcus Skipper I OWN THE RACECOURSE Gail Mayes Producer................................................. JockBlair Photography.......................................... PeterLevy 3rd asst director............. Nicholas Reynolds Props......................................................

Keith Hanscombe Prod, company.................... Barron Films Ltd Director............................................... DonaldCrombie Sound recordist......................................PeterBarker Continuity............................... Shirley Ballard Props buyer.............................................. PhilChambers Dist. company...................................... NilsenPremiere Scriptwriters.................................Irwin Lane, Editor......................... Richard Francis-Bruce Casting asst/unit runner.......... Nimity James Standby props........................................ John Stabb Producers...............................John Edwards, Peter Gawler Prod, designer................

Kristian Fredrikson Casting consultant........................Lee Lamer Based on the novel by.............................RuthPark Special effects....................................... BrianPerace Timothy Read Assoc, producer..................................... RossMatthews Camera operator.............. David Williamson Set decorator................................... Jill Eden Director..............................................StephenRamsey Photography..........................................GeoffSimpson Prod, manager.......................

Barbara Gibbs Focus puller........................................JeremyRobins Construction manager.......Geoff Richardson Sound recordist......................... Rob Cutcher Scriptwriter............................................. John Edwards Unit manager........................................ PhillipPatterson Clapper/loader..................................... MandyWalker Stunts co-ordinator....................................BillStacey Editor................................... Andrew Prowse Based on the novel b y ......Patricia Wrightson Prod, secretary........................................Dixie Betts Key g rip ................................................. DavidCassar Still photography.............Martin Glassborrow Photography..............................Geoff Burton Prod, designer........................George Liddle Prod, accountant.................................. JennyVerdon Asst g rip ............................................. MarcusMcLeod Military adviser/ Sound recordist..................................... KevinKearney Composers......................... Garry McDonald, 1st asst director....................Steve Andrews Gaffer..................................................... John Engeler safety officer......................... Ken McLeod Editor................................................... DeniseHaslem Laurie Stone 2nd asst director.................................... ChrisWebb Boom operator............................Grant Stuart Armourer............................................. RobertHempenstall Assoc, producer.................................... BruceMoir3rd asst director.................... Henry Osborne Exec, producer........................................ PaulBarron Art director............................................Paddy Reardon Period vehicle co-ordinator.......Rob McLeod Prod, manager................................. AdrienneRead Prod, supervisor.............Pamela H. Vanneck Continuity....................................................Jo Weeks Asst art director..................................... KerithHolmes Best boy.................................... Dick Tummel Prod, co-ordinator..............................BarbaraRing Unit management/ Focus puller............................. Bill Hammond Costume design Runners.............................. Chris Gilmartin, Unit manager...........................................RonStigwood Location manager..............Filminc Pty Ltd/ Clapper/loader.........................Mark Sullivan consultant...................................Rosemary Ryan Melinda Foster Jake Atkinson Prod, accountant........................ John Burke Key grip....................................................PaulThompson Make-up.......................

Amanda Rowbottom Publicity.....................Les Jabara and Assoc.

1st asst director.................................... PhilipHearnshaw Prod, secretary....................................... Julie Plummer Asst grip................................ George Tzoutas Hairdresser..................Amanda Rowbottom Unit publicist..............................................LesJabara 2nd asst director.......................Judith Ditter Prod, accountant......................................LeaCollins Gaffer.......................................................SamBienstock Costumes and wardrobe Catering.............................. Beeb Fleetwood 3rd asst director........................ Vicki Sugars 1st asst director.....................................ComeSoeterbeck Electrician............................... Brett Keeping standby...........................................FrankieHogan Continuity................................... Ann Walton 2nd asst director.............................. AdrienneParrLaboratory.............................................. Atlab Boom operator...............................David Lee Ward, assistants............Bernice Devereaux, Lab. liaison.................................Jim Parsons Producer’s assistant............................. ChrisHoward 3rd asst director.............................Kit Quarry Make-up......................................................LizFardon Michelle Leonard Budget.......................................... $3,000,000 Casting............................................... AudineLeith Continuity....................................... Stephanie Richards Hairdresser................................................ LizFardon Standby props..........................................Rob McLeod Length....................................................... 105mins Casting consultants.Maizels & Associates Extras casting........................................JenniKubler Wardrobe...............................................Anna French Asst editor............................................. PeterLitton Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Camera operator...................................DavidForeman Focus puller.............................................. KimBatterham Ward, assistant.......................................ChrisMawdsley Sound editor...............................

Craig Carter Shooting stock......................................Kodak Focus puller..........................................MartinTurner Clapper/loader.................................... DarrenKeogh Standby props................

Karen Monkhouse Sound transfers................................. EugeneWilson Scheduled release...................................Late1985 Clapper/loader.......................................DavidWolfe-Barry Key g rip .............................................BrendanShanley Asst editor............................................ LouiseInnes Asst sound editor......................... Rex Watts Cast: Bill Hunter (Adams), Maurie Fields Trainee camera assistant...........................JoMurphy Gaffer......................................Rick McMullen Sound editor..............................................Tim Jordon Still photography.......... Giorgio Mangiamele (Martin), James Coburn (Dannenberg), Reb Key g rip .................................................RobinMorgan Boom operator............................. Eric Biggs Still photography................................ CarolynJohns Best boy.................................................

Peter Maizey Brown (Leonski), Don Gordon (Fricks).

Asst grips..................................................JonGoldney, Art director.......................................... RichardRoberts Best b o y ................................................. ChrisFleet Runners............................ Stephen Shelley, ~ RodBoiton Synopsis: The violent crimes of Private Costume designer............................ MirandaSkinner Runner.............................................JonathanCohen Dylan Hyde Edward J. Leonski of the American Army in 2nd unit photography............................ DavidGraham Make-up............................................ AmandaHunt Publicity........................... Elizabeth Johnson Production asst/ Melbourne during May of 1942, his Steadicam operator................................... IanJones Ward, assistant....................................... SuzyCarter Catering..............................Janette’s Kitchen unit runner................................

Annemarie Kiely subsequent apprehension and the political Special fx photography....................... Mirage Props buyer...........................Louise Carrigan Lab. liaison.......................Warren Dolbridge Production office asst...............................Kim Jonsson and military ramifications of his trial and Gaffer...................................................TrevorToune Standby props.......................Louise Carrigan Budget..................................... 51.25 million Catering.......................Bande Aide Catering, Electrician.............................................. KeithJohnson execution.

Asst edito r.............................................CathyChase Cast: David Kennedy(Stuart), Susan Leith Food For Rim Boom operator..................................... ShaneWalker Dubbing editor...................................... CathyChase (Alison), Ray Meagher (Marshall), Mark Little Edge numberer..................................... OliverStreeton MALCOLM Trainee boom operator..........................ScottHeysen Still photography.......................... Vivian Zink (Curly), Jamie Agius (Tommy).

Laboratory....................................... Colorfilm Art director..........................................AndrewBlaxland Tutor...................................................... ClaireCarmichael Prod, company........Cascade Rims Pty. Ltd. Synopsis: A young aboriginal shearer fights Lab. liaison................................................BillGooley, Design assistants................................... NickiRoberts, Best boy................................................ShaunConway Producers.................................. Nadia Tass, to be reunited with his part-aboriginal son.

Richard Piorkowski Vicki Niehus Runner................................. Michael Lavigne David Parker Length.........................................................95minutes Art dept co-ordinator............ Wendy Huxford Catering.....................Out To Lunch Catering Director..................................................NadiaTass Gauge.................................................. 35 mm WILLS AND BURKE Art dept runner........................................JohnCollias Laboratory.............................................. Atlab Scriptwriter............................................ DavidParker Shooting stock.........................Eastmancolor Make-up......................Lesley Lamont-Rsher Prod, company.............Stony Desert Limited Lab. liaison............................................ BruceWilliams Photography.......................................... DavidParker Synopsis: A love story.

Hairdresser............................................ SashLamey Budget............................................ $700,000 Sound recordist...................................... PaulClarke Dist. company............. GUO (Australia only) Wardrobe supervisor............................. AnnaWade Length......................................................... 73minutes Editor........................................................KenSallows Producers...................................... Bob Weis, Ward, assistant....................................... JeanTurnbull Gauge........................................Super 16 mm Prod, designer......................................... RobPerkinsTHE MORE THINGS CHANGE Margot McDonald Shooting stock............. Kodak Eastmancolor Prod, company................ Syme International Ward, standby.......................................PeterBevan Composer...............................Paul Coppens Director......................................... Bob Weis Productions Asst ward, standby............................... KathyHerreen Cast: Gully Coote (Andy Hoddel), Safier Exec, producer....................... Bryce Menzies Scriptwriter.............................................PhilipDafkin Producer...................................... Jill C. Robb Props buyer/set dresser........ Brian Edmonds Script editor................................... John Wild Redseposki (Terry), Rodney Burke (Joe), Assoc, producer..................... Timothy White Director.....................................Robyn Nevin Props buyer..................Christopher Webster Based on the original idea Anthony Mangan (Mike), Brett Adlard (Matt), Prod, co-ordinator.................................LyndaHouse Scriptwriter................................Moya Wood Standby props........................................ LiamLiddleb y..........................................Philip Dalkin Tony Barry (Bert Hammond), Bob Noble Unit manager........................ Chris Haywood Photography............................. Dan Burstall Prod, accountant.............. Pauline Montagne Asst standby props................................ PeterDavies (Sgt. Willis), Brett Climo (Const. Eadie), Tim Director of photography..........Gaetano Nino Sound recordist......................... John Phillips Elston (C onst. Keogh), Rob Steele 1st asst director..................................... TonyMahood Special effects....................................... ChrisMurray, Martinetti

CINEMA PAPERS September — 51

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Sound recordist..........................................IanRyan Boom operator.......................................FionaDockrill Suzanne Wagner, Scott McBurnie (Melbourne) creatures on this planet. It will show the Editor....................Edward McQueen-Mason Art director..........................Empire Graphics David Morgan impact of whaling in Australia and how the Sound recordists...... Ruth Beech (Bathurst), Prod, designer...................................... TracyWattPhotography.......................................... TerryCarlyon Costume designer..............Empire Graphics death of this industry may have saved this David Goldfayl (Melbourne) Composer.................................................RedSymons Make-up.............................................. SandraLehane Sound recordist........................................BobCutcher natural wonder of the sea.

Editor....................................................... NeilBrown Prod, co-ordinator................... Leonie Jansen Hairdresser..........................................Stefan Exec, producer........Philippe de Montignie Exec, producer................................... MarcusBreen Prod, manager..,,.................................RosiynTatarka Props.................................................. AndrewNimmo Synopsis: A look at a team of Australian Assoc, producer.................................. DebbieBreen Location manager.............................. MurrayBoyd Props buyer....................................... AndrewNimmo volunteer eye surgeons who once a year Still photography....................Marcus Breen, Prod, accountants..................Margot Brock, Special effects...................................Andrew Nimmo come to the Solomon Islands to treat the ....................................................... DebbieBreen Pat Crazier Choreography.................................... SandraLehane island population.

Laboratory..........Victorian Film Laboratories Prod, assistant................................... MaggieDunn Set decorator......................Empire Graphics Length................................................45 mins 1st asst director......................................John Wild Scenic artist........................Empire Graphics DRAWING FROM MEMORY Gauge.................................................. 16 mm 2nd asst director................................ MichaelMcIntyre Asst editors........................................ Andrew Nimmo, Shooting sto ck................. Kodak 7294, 7291 Producer..................................................Paul Ozerski Continuity............................... Helen Gaynor John Nimmo THE MAGIC OF CRICKET Synopsis: Two young people from BroadDirector.................................................... PaulOzerski Casting....................................................... LizMullinar (Working Title) Musical director.....................Mary Doumany meadows, a working-class suburb on the Scriptwriter............................................. PaulOzerski Casting consultants................ M & L Casting Music performed by...................

Fluba Sextet northern outskirts of Melbourne, spend their Photography........................................... PaulOzerski Prod, company.................. The South Pole Lighting Sound editor............................... Ross Wilson Production Co. lives preparing their motor cycles and racing cameraman................................... GaetanoNinoSound recordist.......................................PaulOzerski Stunts co-ordinator............

Dr David Nimmo them. From the preparation and activity in Editor..................................................... BasiaOzerski Producer..............................Stephen Powell Martinetti Stunts................................................ .AndrewNimmo Broadmeadows, the film documents their Director................................Stephen Powell Camera operator..............................GaetanoNinoProd, assistant............................PiotrZimon Animation..........................................

AndrewNimmo efforts at the annual Easter motor cycle Lighting cameraman............................... PaulOzerski Scriptwriters...................... Michael Hughes, Title designer......................Empire Graphics Martinetti Neg. matching................................. Colorfilm Stephen Scerri, races at Bathurst in New South Wales.

Best boy.................................................FionaDockrill Focus pulle r......................................... PhillipCross No. of shots................................................ 95 Berg Krikorian, SPIRITS Runner...................................................FionaDockrill Clapper/loader.................... Leigh McKenzie Stephen Powell Music performed Publicity.......................... The Fluba Troupe Key grip............................... Paul Ammitzboll Prod, company......................Meaningful Eye b y ......................... Waldemar Wawrzynivu Photography........................... Berg Krikorian Asst grip.......................................Ken Connor Unit publicist...................................... AndrewNimmo Contact Pty. Ltd. Opticals............................................ Colorfilm Composers......................... Michael Highes, Gaffer.........................................Brian Adams (with assistance from the Creative Catering..............................................AndrewNimmo Laboratory........................................Colorfilm Stephen Powell Laboratory...................................... Cinecolor Electrician.................................... Jon Leaver Development Branch of the Budget................................................ $9500 Length................................................50 mins Boom operator............................. Ray Phillips Australian Film Commission) Budget.............................................. $14,000 Gauge................................................. 16 mm Gauge................................................. 35 mm Art director.................................. Tracy Watt Producer....... ................... Alexander Proyas Length...............................................30 mins Shooting stock............................ 7247, 7291 Shooting stock....................................Kodak Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Asst art director.............................. GeorginaGreenhill Synopsis: The story of one year long journey Synopsis: In a few remote islands in the Director..........................................AlexanderProyas Shooting stock................ Kodak Colour Neg. Costume designer...................... Rose Chong to Australia told by four children. A docu­ Pacific, they have found a substitute for Scriptwriters..................................AlexanderProyas, Make-up................................. Kirsten Veysey Peter Smalley Cast: John Nimmo (Sam), Andrew Nimmo mentary film about immigration, based on head-hunting and war. They play the Game (Dog), Barbara Fawcett (Sally), Tony Phelan Hairdresser...................................... RochelleFordtheir experiences and supported by the Little Based on the original idea of Cricket to settle their disputes . . .

(Chilla), Victoria Arthur (Betty), Lex Luther Wardrobe.................................. Karen Merkel b y ............................................... AlexanderProyas Art Paint Gallery as they draw from images (Tony), Jennifer Flowers (Mrs Ledke), Rod Ward, assistant........................Robyn Adams MURDER CAFE Sound recordist......................................PeterMiller of the “ Emigration Camp” in Austria.

Lumer (Policeman), Catriona Macleod (Lady Props buyers.............................................JanHing, Editors..........................................

Alexander Proyas, Prod, company............................Eye and Ear with Migraine).

Carl Habal Craig Wood EORA CORROBOREE Dist. company.............................Eye and Ear Synopsis: The Whistler and His Dog — a Standby props.......................................HarryZettel Composer..............................................

Peter Miller Producers.......................Pantelis Roussakis, Prod, company................. Corroboree Films children’s film. Sam has won the Gold Lotto Choreography.................................... JoanneRobinson Prod, supervisor............................... NormanNeeson Kimbel Hann Pty. Ltd. and invests his money and time in marketing Scenic artist...................................... GraemeGalloway Prod, manager...................................NormanNeeson Director............................................. PantelisRoussakis Producer........................Michael Le Moignan his invention — “ The Fizz-Stop-Bottle-Top” .

Set construction................... Nick Hepworth, Prod, accountant............. G&S Management Scriptwriter........................................ PantelisRoussakis Directors.................................................. YuriSokol, Ken Hazelwood, Services The Dog is a sickly but magical stray who Based on the original idea Michael Le Moignan befriends Sam’s special friend, Sally, and James Gannon, 1st asst director.................................NormanNeeson b y ................................................... PantelisRoussakis Scriptwriters................ Michael Le Moignan, chooses Sam as his master. The Dog lures Martin Kellog, Art director............................................. SeanCallinan Photography................................. JohnathonLarson Larry Lucas Sam and Sally away from the invention and Matthew Scott Costume designer............................. CarmenDirigible Editor.................................................PantelisRoussakis Based on the original idea to a newsagency, which they buy, and the Asst editor.................................. Erwin Husch Choreography........................................ TonyCarmona Composer.............................................. ColinTimms by..............................

Michael Le Moignan, three live happily.

Neg. matching..................................Cinevex Neg. matching.................................NegativeThinking Prod, co-ordinator................................ CathyHughes Larry Lucas Musical director.........................Red Symons Music performed by............................... PeterMiller Prod, managers............. Pantelis Roussakis, Photography........................... Michael Edols Editing assistant.....................Colin Tudhope Sound editor.......................................... CraigWood Cathy Hughes Sound recordist....................... Mark Brewer Mixer......................................................PeterMiller Stunts co-ordinator............... Glen Ruehland Casting........................................Eye and Ear Editor..........................................................LizStroud Still photography.............................. “ Fuzzy” Night Still photography........................ Rosie Cass Clapper/loader.................................... StevenMackerras Consultant producer................................WillDavies Animation.......................................CatherineLinsley Wrangler............................................ EvanneHarris Camera assistant................................StevenMackerras Assoc, producer.....................................

Larry Lucas Tech, adviser.......................................... AlanStewart Runner........................................ Mark Davis Make-up.......................................... ElizabethHallPublicity....................................................... F.Ferguson Prod, co-ordinator.................................... BeeReynolds Publicity...................................... Chris Ryan Hairdresser..................................... ElizabethHallLaboratory........................................ Cinefilm Prod, secretary................................. Jo-anneDuncan Unit publicist................................................ DiWhite Special effects.......................................PeterMullins Prod, accountant................................ DianneBrown Laboratory.........................................Cinevex Budget............................................... $73,000 Still photography.................................. CathyHughes Prod, assistant......................................Susie Aboud Length................................................50 mins Lab. liaison................................ Bruce Braun Catering................................................ MariaRoussakis 1st asst director......................................... LizStroud Gauge..................................................16 mm Length....................................... 100 minutes Laboratory....................................... Colorfilm Shooting stock........................................7291 Producer’s assistant............................ CaseyRyan Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Length................................................20 mins Camera assistant..................................... RodHinds Scheduled release...........................mid-1986 Shooting stock.......................Kodak 5247/94 Lighting assistant.............................Peta Hill Gauge......................................................... 16mmSynopsis: A crippled man and his fanatically Cast: Gary McDonald (Robert O’Hara Shooting stock........................Eastman 7291 Make-up............................Wendy Sainsbury religious sister live in a shack in the middle of Burke), Kim Gyngell (William Wills), Roy Asst editors......................... Matthew Tucker, Cast: Kimbel J. Hann (woman), Steven a vast desert. The man dreams of leaving in ALCOHOL Baldwin (Charlie Gray), Mark Little (John Stockw ell (cook), Colleen O ’ Rourke a flying machine of his own invention. A Ruth Beach Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia King), Rod Williams (George Landells), Peter Neg. matching......................... Kut the Kaper (waitress). comedy of the ironic.

Collingwood (Sir William Stawell), Jonathan Dist. company..........................................

FilmAustralia Musical director......... Frankie Franklin Kelly Synopsis: Is it a daydream in a cafe? Or Producer.............................................. MacekRubetzki Hardy (John Macadame), Alex Menglet Mixed at............................. Jon Marsh Studio ritual execution? When our fear outgrows the THE UNBROKEN SPIRIT Director...............................

Philip Robertson (William Brahe), Henry Maas (Charles), Laboratory......................................... CinefilmLab real world.

(Working title The Stockman) Photography...............................T ony Wilson Nicole Kidman (Julia Matthews) Lab. liaison...........................Kelvin Crumplin Sound recordist.................Bronwyn Murphy Synopsis: “ Wills and Burke” — The Untold Prod, company..................... Gittoes & Dalton Budget............................................$162,000 MY LIFE WITHOUT STEVE Story. When the writer Philip Dalkin Productions Pty Ltd Editor......................................... Ray Thomas Length.............................................. 60 mins Prod, company.................................. Galfilms Producers.......................................... GeorgeGittoes, Assoc, producer........................... Ian Adkins researched the history of Burke and Wills Gauge..................................................16mm Producer............................................... DigbyDuncan expedition he found a story that could only Gabrielle Dalton Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Synopsis: Playwright Bob Merritt has a Director......................................Gillian Leahy Synopsis: One of the “ Real Life” series, the be told as a comedy: truth being funnier than dream of an artistic revolution, leading to a Scriptwriter.................................Gillian Leahy Director...............................................GeorgeGittoes film follows a group of patients from a drug fiction. Dalkin traced the epic journey across Scriptwriters.......................................GeorgeGittoes, renaissance of Aboriginal culture. To make Photography................................Erika Addis and alcohol treatment clinic during their last the continent that ended in tragedy that Gabrielle Dalton this dream a reality, he’s founded the Eora Editor.................................................. DeniseHaslem days in the clinic and the first few weeks of should have been victory but for the incom­ Photography.......................................

George Gittoes Centre for the visual and performing arts — Casting consultants......................... Forecast their return to the community as they petence and blundering of Burke and his Sound recordist............................... GabrielleDalton with an initial enrolment of 60 full-time AborCamera assistant............. Nicolette Freeman struggle to cope with a world without drugs. back-up team. A comedy of errors, Editor..................................................GeorgeGittoes ginal students.

Art director................................................ JanMacKay ridiculously improbable and strange; and a Musical director.....................Elizabeth Drake Editing asst........................................... GinnyHeydon ARTISANS OF AUSTRALIA HEAVY METAL tale of extraordinary heroism.

Laboratory....................................... Colorfilm Video effects............................... Image East SOLID PLASTERING Laboratory....................................... Colorfilm Prod, company....................................... ABCTV Lab. liaison............................................ KerryJenkins Lab. liaison......................Richard Piorkowski Dist. company........................................ ABCTV Length................................................45 min Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Length................................................58 mins Education Dist. company.......................................... FilmAustralia Gauge................................................. 35 mm Synopsis: The new generation of Northern Producer...............................................RobinJames Producer..........................................ElisabethKnight Cast: Jenny Vuletic (Liz).

Directors.................................Robin James, Synopsis: Liz has split up with her lover and Territory stockmen carry on a unique Austra­ Director.................................................. KeithGow lian tradition and lifestyle. This dramatized Peter Cooke Photography.............................. Kerry Brown is now living alone in a bedsitter overlooking Scriptwriter............................................RobinJames Sound recordist................ Rodney Simmons the waterways of inner city Sydney. Her documentary allows the audience to get to know these characters, and the drama and Sound recordist......................Quentin Black Editor......................................................KeithGow attempts to get herself out of her depression BELLEVUE REVISITED Editor..................................... David Halliday and to understand it, form a discourse about excitement of their way of life, through a Assoc, producer..................Virginia Pridham season in the saddle.

Producer’s assistant.............. Debbie Overall Prod, company..................................RichardOxenburgh Length......................................................... 12mins pain, obsession and romantic love.

Lighting cameraman............................. PeterCooke Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Productions WHEN I KISSED YOUR LIPS THIS Camera operator.....................Colin Hertzog Synopsis: A fifth in the Artisans of Australia Dist. company.................................... RichardOxenburgh SEA MORNING Neg. matching......................Barry McKnight series produced for the Heritage Commis­ Productions Prod, company.................................. SBACL Sound editor...........................David Halliday sion. Larry Harrigan is a third generation Producer............................................RichardOxenburgh Prod, company....................... Somnambulist Producer..................................... John Barker Mixer...................................... Quentin Black plasterer from Ireland. He has been working Director..............................................RichardOxenburgh Productions Director...................................... John Barker Director.................................... Greg Opticals....................................................KenPhelan on the exterior of the Collingwood Town Hall Scriptwriter.........................................RichardOxenburgh Masuak Scriptwriter................................. John Barker Camera operator.............. Bronwyn Nicholas Mixed at..................................ABC Brisbane for seven years.

Length................................................24 mins Based on the original idea Laboratory.......................................Colorfilm Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Length.......................................... 20 minutes by............................................. John Barker Gauge...................................................16 mm Length................................................20 mins BETTER BIKING Shooting stock....................................... 7291 Gauge......................................................... 16mmPhotography............................... John Barker Progress........................................Production Synopsis:The rebuilding and re-opening of Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Sound recordist..................... Barbara Barker Cast: Kris Wyld Shooting stock.............. Eastmancolor 7247 one of Western Australia’s oldest goldmines Dist. company.......................................... FilmAustralia Editor........................................... John Barker Synopsis: A black comedy about a woman Scheduled release........ 5th November 1985 in the North East Gold Fields.

Producer.............................................ColleenClarke Prod, designer.....................Christine Barker Synopsis: The final programme in a series who suddenly decides to clear her life of all Director................................................... NickFrazer Exec, producer............................John Barker of young people’s documentaries about THE BROTHERHOOD OF memories, including those of herself.

Scriptwriter..........................

Peter Thoeming Animation................................... John Barker people living and working in Northern AusST. LAURENCE Photography...........................................Ross King Length................................................11 mins tralia.This film looks at life on board a large Assoc, producer.........................................Ian Host Prod, company...............................IndiginataFilmnic THE WHISTLER AND HIS DOG Gauge................................................. 16 mm bauxite carrier, on journey from Weipa to Unit manager.......................

Marguerite Grey Producer........................................ IndiginataFilmnic Synopsis: ‘Sea’, part one of the ’Earthlight’ Gladstone.

Prod, company................. The Fluba Troupe Director................................................. ErwinRado Length......................................................... 15mins trilogy, explores the expressive potential of Producer............................................ AndrewNimmo Scriptwriter............................................ErwinRado RETURN OF THE LEVIATHAN Gauge............................................Videotaperelease line and color. Exploiting the theories of Director.................................................. RossWilson Shooting stock..............Eastmancolor 16 mm Photography........................................... KeithHead abstract and kinetic art the film attempts to Prod, company................Dreamtime Images Scriptwriters...........................................RossWilson, Sound recordist.................................... AlisonHead Betacam reveal the unity of nature.

Productions Hugh Watson Synopsis: Made for the Federaland Composer.............................................. Bach Department Producer....................................Ross Isaacs Based on the original idea Neg. matching.......................................AdamBahoudian of Transport, the program presents better SELLING IS COMMUNICATION Directors....................................Ross Isaacs, b y ........................................................RossWilson riding techniques for motorcyclists.

No. of shots.............................................. 216 Michael Fanning Photography...........................Ben Ambrose Prod, company......................................MovieCraft Music performed by.......... Sviatoslav Richter Scriptwriter............................... Ross Isaacs Sound recordist............................ Ruth Berry Dist. company.......................................MovieCraft Sound editor........................................... KeithHead Photography......................Michael Fanning, Editors.................................................... RossWilson, BETTER RICH THAN RED Producer................................................DavidColdham Mixer...................................................... PeterFrost Ross Isaacs Director....................................Brian Muhling Steve Rhodes Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Narrator..................................................TerryLane Editor................................................... RobertBlasdall Prod, Scriptwriter........................................... DavidColdham designer................... Empire Graphics Dist. company.......................................... FilmAustralia Still photography.............................. DyrandaPrevost Composer............................................ SandyPollard Composer.......................... Mary Doumany Based on the original idea Tech, adviser....................................DyrandaPrevost Producer.............................................. MacekRubetzki Exec, producer.......................... John Isaacs Exec, producer.....................Andrew Nimmo by....................................................... DavidColdham Mixed a t............... Film Soundtrack Australia Director....,............................................

Curtis Levy Prod, accountant....................... Brian Grace Assoc, producer..................................... JohnNimmo Crew............................................................ B.Muhling, Laboratory..........Victorian Film Laboratories Photography.......................................... AndyFraser Prod, assistant...........................Kim Cardow Prod, supervisor...................Chris Battersby D. Coldham, Budget............................................... $11,000 Sound recordist........................................Rod Simmons Continuity.................................. Kim Cardow Prod, co-ordinator............... Andrew Nimmo P. Clark Length..........................................................21minsField assistants......................................DeanLee, Editor.........................................................TimLitchfield Prod, manager.....................Andrew Nimmo Photography............................................... B.Muhling Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Assoc, producer........................................

Ian Adkins Mike Osmond, Prod, accountant.............. Malcohm Badgery Budget.................................................... $850 Shooting stock........................................ECN Unit manager.........................................GerryLetts Mark Simmons Length.........................................................20minsProd, assistant.....................Sandra Lehane Synopsis: A flavour of the diverse activities Length......................................................... 48mins Scientific adviser...................................HelenSneath 1st asst director...................................... JohnNimmo Gauge...............................................

Super8 ot The Brotherhood of St. Laurence, one of Gauge..................................................16 mm — Pacific Whale Foundation Continuity............................ Sandra Lehane Shooting stock........................................ K 40 Australia’s most respected welfare agencies.

Synopsis: A film about the top stratum of Underwater cameraman............Ross Isaacs Script assistant..........Fluba Workshop Team Synopsis: Comedy documentary on selling, commercial and social life in Hong Kong.

It Asst editor.................................. Kim Cardow Casting................................................... RossWilson, incorporating comedy situations, animation, CURIM SICKNESS BELONG EYE U.L. p ilo t................................................PeterReed Andrew Nimmo, centres around the Royal Hong Kong Jockey stills and narration. Basically an entertaining Club, observes the values which once made Laboratory....................................... Colorfilm Prod, company...............de Montignie Media sales training film.

John Nimmo Britain a great colonial power, the clubs, the Prod, liaison.....................Damian McGreevy Productions Pty. Ltd. Lighting cameraman.............. 8en Ambrose Taipans, the servants and the good life. Yet, Dist. company.................................All Media (Q.N.P.W.S.) Camera operator.....................Ben Ambrose SOME BROADY BOYS for this world, the days are now numbered.

Enterprises Pty. Ltd. Length.........................................................50mins Focus puller..........................Michael Phillips Gauge..................................................16 mm Producers................... Philippe de Montignie, Prod, company......Verbal Graphics Pty Ltd Clapper/loader........................ Fiona Dockrill BLUEPRINT FOR FIELDCRAFT Shooting stock............................. 7291,7294 Suzanne Wagner Producer.............................................MarcusBreen Camera assistant.................... Fiona Dockrill INSTRUCTION Director....................................David Morgan Synopsis: A documentary about one of the Director............................................... MarcusBreen Key grip................................... Fiona Dockrill most mysterious, graceful and intelligent Scriptwriters...............Philippe de Montignie, Photography..........Steve Mason (Bathurst), Gaffer.......................................Fiona Dockrill Prod, company.......... ..............Film Australia

SHORTS

GOVERNMENT FILM PRODUCTION FILM AUSTRALIA

DOCUMENTARIES

52 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Synopsis: Television commercials for the they struggle to make a home and a living in Synopsis: Cut-out animation and laconic THE FRENCH COLLECTION Dist. company.......................... Film Australia State Emergency Service to warn of flooding the face of a well-organised bureaucracy. narration feature in this animated interpreta­ ' for Dept of Defence Prod, company............................... MT Prods and fire dangers. tion of Australian writer Dal Stivens’ Ironbark Producer........................................Ian Nance Producer................................Steven Cozens SINGLES Bill stories. The legendary Ironbark meets Director.........................................Ian Nance Director.................................. Steven Cozens SURVIVE his first challenge with a high-spirited horse Scriptwriter..........................................RussellUnwood Prod, company.........................Film Australia Liaison........................................Juliet Grimm who bucks her riders so far up they vanish.

Photography........................................... JohnHosking Dist. company...........................Film Australia (Film Victoria) Prod, company.....................Tasmanian Film Corporation Pty. Ltd. Sound recordist................Rodney Simmons Producer...............................................MacekRubetzki Exec, producer.................Vincent O’Donnell IT HELPS TO BE SEEN Dist. company...........Focal Communications Editor.......................................................BrianHicks D irector..................................... Karl McPhee Length............................................. 23 mins Assoc, producer................... Patricia de Heer Photography.............................. Tony Wilson Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Gauge............................................ Videotape ............. Don Anderson Unit manager...................................... SharonMiller Sound recordist........................ Leo Sullivan Dist. company...........................................FilmAustralia Synopsis: A film about Madame Toussaint’s ........... Robin Levinson Lighting................................................... John Hosking Editor..................................... Lindsay Fraser Producer............................................. ColleenClarke visit to Australia to study the Neville Scott Scriptwriter...............

Photography............. .........Russell Galloway Camera assistant..................................... RodHinds Director.................................................... ChicStringer Length................................................ 90 mins Collection. ..................Julian Scott G affer.........................................................IanBosman Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Scriptwriter.......................... Peter Thoeming Editor........................ ..........Ross Thompson Narrator.................................................... PaulBicketts Synopsis: One of the “ Real Life” series, the Photography........................................... GregParsons INTEGRATION OF DISABLED Continuity................................Wendy Rimon Length................................................ 29 mins film is a foray into the world of the Sound recordist...................................... DougMcMurdo PEOPLE INTO CAMPING Camera assistant................. Adam Kropinski Gauge........................................... Videotape unattached. Charles is recently divorced and Editor.................................................. AndrewBlain PROGRAM Key g rip................................. Gary Clements Shooting stock.............................. Betacam Assoc, producer......................................... IanHoststruggling to get his life together. He is in Boom operator.....................Mark Tomlinson Synopsis: A training program targeted to love and trying to establish a relationship. At Prod, company........................Can-Aus Films Unit manager........................................RobertScott Make-up...............................Margaret Pierce instructors demonstrating the ideal method­ the same time, a small group of women vie Director....................................................MikeBoland Narrator.................................................. BarryDonnelly Hairdresser.......................... Margaret Pierce ology of giving lessons in combat skill Sound recordist...................................GeorgeCraig Length..........................................................10minsfor his attention.

Neg. m atching...................................Cinevex subjects. It follows the format of an example Exec, producer................Vincent O’ Donnell Gauge........................................... Videotape Editing assistants................. Karen Weldrick lesson on, “ Crossing Artificial Obstacles” 1 st asst director.........................Tanya James THE VISIT Shooting stock................... Kodacolor 35 mm Mixer............................................Julian Scott and emphasises lessonstructure and Camera operator..................................... MikeBoland Synopsis: Made for the Federal Dept of Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Mixed a t........... Tasmanian Film Corporation content.

Musical director.....................Chris Copping Transport the program encourages motor­ Dist. company...........................................FilmAustralia Laboratory..........................

Cinevex M ixer...............................................Geoff Hill cyclists to be more conspicuous in Producer...............................................MacekRubetzki A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS Lab. liaison............................................ BruceBraun Laboratory......................................... Cinevex appearance when riding by presenting Director................................................... TonyWheeler Length................................................ 15 mins Budget................................................$24,000 various traffic situations.

Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Photography..............................Tony Wilson Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Length................................................ 20 mins Dist. company...........................................FilmAustralia Sound recordist........................ Leo Sullivan Shooting stock..........................Eastmancolor Gauge.................................................. 16 mm KIDS IN TROUBLE Producer.....................................................IanMacarthur Editor..........................................Sue Horsley Cast: lain Lang (Steve Roberts), Jan Kuplis Shooting stock.................................... Kodak Director................................ Tony Wellington Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Assoc, producer.....................................ClareEdwards (Maggie Smith), Richard Davey (Sergeant Synopsis: A film aimed at encouraging and Scriptwriter...........................Tony Wellington Dist. company.......................................... FilmAustralia Gauge..................................................16 mm Taylor), Murray Hamilton (Inspector Grant), Photography.......................................... PeterViscovitch Producer...............................................MacekRubetzki Synopsis: One of the “ Real Life” series, the promoting the integration of disabled people Barrie Muir (Peter Jackman), Gwyn Dixon into residential camping programs.

Sound recordists......................................RodSimmons, Director..................................................... SueCornwell film is about a Vietnamese refugee family (Mrs Johnston), Cliff Barwick (Mr Johnston), Paul Bok Photography..............................Tony Wilson and the visit to Australia of a son they Philip Green (Paul Johnston), Joan Green NATIONAL HERBARIUM Editor........................................ Andrew Plain haven’t seen for four years. A moving film Sound recordist........................ Leo Sullivan (Joan Johnston).

Assoc, producer..................................... NigelSaunders Editor.........................................................LesMcLaren which witnesses the family’s attempts to Scriptwriters.................................. Jill Morris, Synopsis: This film looks at a typical Unit manager........................................JennyPannell Mary Lancaster bushwalking group, setting off for a weekend Length......................................................... 90minscome to terms with their past and to share Camera assistant......................................JimWard Length......................................................... 20minutes Gauge.................................................. 16 mm their present with their son. walk.

The weather deteriorates and one Narrator............................ Margaret Throsby Gauge..................................................16 mm Synopsis: One of the “ Real Life” series, the member of the party dies from hypothermia.

Length................................................ 53 mins Scheduled release...............December 1985 film is about the criminal justice system and YIRRKALA ADVENTURE It is a tragedy that could have been avoided if Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Synopsis: A film to delve behind the bland its treatment of juvenile offenders. The film the partywas properly equipped and Prod, company.........................................FilmAustralia Synopsis: A documentary program looking includes, for the first time, footage shot in an scientific walls of an herbarium, to reveal the observed the normal safety procedures.

Dist. company...........................................Film Australia at the National Kangaroo Management rich matrix of history, scholarship and Australian Court while cases are being Producer..................................................... IanDunlop Program of the Australian National Parks common utility found there. heard.

Director.................................................

Edwin Scragg TASMANIA — THE FREE and Wildlife Service and the reactions to it of Scriptwriter............................................ EdwinScragg ENTERPRISE STATE various interested conservationist groups MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA Photography.........................................Edwin Scragg and individuals.

Prod, company.................... Tasmanian Film Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Sound recordist....................................RobertCutcher Corporation Pty. Ltd. Dist. company...........................................FilmAustralia Editor..................................................... EdwinScragg DEMOCRACY Producer.................................Don Anderson Producer............................... Colleen Clarke Assoc, producer....................Nigel Saunders Director....................................................JohnHoney Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Scriptwriter............................John Patterson Camera assistant................................... AllanDunstan Scriptwriter.............................John Patterson Dist. company....................

FilmAustralia Assoc, producer..................Virginia Pridham Narrator................................................Patrick O’Hara Photography........................................RussellGalloway Producer........................... Macek Rubetzki Running tim e..................................... 10 mins Running tim e..................................... 50 mins Sound recordist....................................

JulianScott Director.............................................. GrahamChase Length................................................... 400 ft Length..................................................1885 ft Editor...................................Ross Thompson Photography.......................

T ony Wilson Gauge.................................. 16 mm Eastman Gauge...................................................16 mm PLAY IT SAFE Prod, assistant....................................

Wendy Rimon Sound recordist......................... Leo Sullivan Synopsis: A program designed to entertain Shooting stock......................... Eastmancolor Prod, company............... YOHO Productions Continuity............................................WendyRimon Assoc, producer........................... Ian Adkins and inform visitors to the Museum of Aus­ Synopsis: A party of children and two Producer................................................

Grant Young Camera assistant.................Adam Kropinski Gauge.................................................. 16 mm tralia of the innovative plans of the Museum. teachers from Canberra’s Ginninderra High Director.............................Michael Hohensee Boom operator.................... Mark Tomlinson Synopsis: One of the “ Real Life” series, the School visit Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Scriptwriter................................. Bob Jewson Asst editor..............................................KarenWeldrick film follows a political candidate in a Land. As guests of the Aboriginal people NEWS Photography.......................... Gary Maunder Neg. m atching...................................Cinevex marginal seat through the seven weeks of they take part in a variety of activities both at Sound recordist..................................... RalphSteele Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Sound editor........................Ross Thompson the campaign to the numbers coming in and Yirrkala and also at one of its remote clan Editor....................................................... NickGlover Dist. company.......................................... FilmAustralia Mixer......................................................Julian Scott the gathering of the faithful for the election homeland centres, where they experience Producer...............................................MacekRubetzki Exec, producer........................Peter Dimond Narrator.....................................................lainLang night party. living off the land. By the end of their twoM ixer.............................................. Jon Leslie Director.............................................. GrahamChase Mixed a t........... Tasmanian Film Corporation week stay a real bond of affection has been Mixed a t..................................... Dubbs&Co. Photography...........................................KerryBrown Pty. Ltd. DIABETES established between the Canberra and Yirr­ Laboratory....................Cine Film Laboratory Sound recordist........................................ BobHayes Laboratory......................................... Cinevex Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia kala kids.

Length................................... 8 mins 53 secs Assoc, producer........................... Ian Adkins Lab. liaison................................ Bruce Braun Dist. company...........................................FilmAustralia Gauge...................................................16 mm Camera assistant........................... Jim Ward Length................................................ 19 mins Producer..........................................ElisabethKnight Shooting stock.........................Eastmancolpr Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Director......................................... Keith Gow Synopsis: Designed for school children in Shooting stock..........................Eastmancolor Synopsis: One of the “ Real Life” series, the Assoc, producer.................................Virginia Pridham the 13 and over age group, this film demon­ Synopsis: The Tasmanian Development film is an inside study of life at the Sydney Length................................................ 20 mins strates the foolishness of taking risks with Morning Herald. The film looks at the daily Authority was set up to assist Tasmanian Gauge..................................................16 mm safety when travelling by train, and the process from the editorial decision-making, businesses establish and develop export Synopsis: Mature onset diabetes is a stupidity of committing acts of vandalism. the news gathering, the meetings, to the late markets. This film looks at several success­ common problem with older people. This film night rolling of the presses. ful examples of this new program. shows us what diabetes is, how to manage it TAKE CARE ALL IN TOGETHER with diet and foot care and is a practical aid THE NEW WORLD THE TOUCH Prod, company............... YOHO Productions for use by people with diabetes.

Prod, company...................... Can-Aus Films Prod, company........................Film Australia Producer................................................ GrantYoung Prod, company............................. TasmanianFilm Dist. company...........Focal Communications Dist. company.......................... Film Australia Director............................

Michael Hohensee Corporation Pty. Ltd. Producers.................................. Mike Boland, DOCTORS Producer.................................Colleen Clarke Scriptwriter.................................Bob Jewson Producer.............................................DamianBrown Tarni James Director...............................Cynthia Connop Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia Photography.......................... Garry Maunder Director............................................... DamianBrown Director....................................................Mike Boland Scriptwriter......................... Cynthia Connop Dist. company.......................................... FilmAustralia Sound recordist..................................... RalphSteele Scriptwriter................................... Marion Ord Photography............................................ MikeBoland Assoc, producer................. Virginia Pridham Producer...............................................MacekRubetzki Editor....................................................... NickGlover Based on the novel/ Sound recordist.................................. GeorgeCraig Length................................................ 20 mins Director................................................... TonyWheeler Exec, producer........................

Peter Dimond original idea by......................... Marion Ord Editor...................................................... TonyPatterson Gauge........................................... Videotape Photography..........................................SteveMason Mixer...................................Maurice Wiimore Photography...................... Russell Galloway Exec, producer..................................

Vincent O’Donnell Shooting stock................................... Various Sound recordist........................................ MaxHenser Mixed a t...................................

Dubbs&Co. Sound recordist................ John Schiefelbein Prod, co-ordinator.................................. Sally Semmens Synopsis: Made for the Department of Editor.........................................................SueHorsley Laboratory....................Cine Film Laboratory Editor..................................Ross Thompson Musical director.................... Chris Copping Immigration, the program presents an Length................................................ 90 mins Length..................................10 mins 35 secs Assoc, producer.................................... RobinLevinson Mixer....................................................... TonyPatterson historical overview of human settlement in Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Gauge...................................................16 mm 1st asst director........................... John Wilde Laboratory........................................Cinevex Australia.

Synopsis: One of the “ Real Life” series, the Shooting stock.........................

Eastmancolor 2nd asst director..................................WendyRimon Budget.............................................. $25,000 film follows Dr Bruce Shepherd through the Synopsis: A robot called Klitty Klack shows Continuity............................................ShirleyBallard Length...............................................23 mins aftermath of the Medicare dispute. Shepherd children in the junior age group (7 to 13 Camera assistant.................................. AdamKropinski Gauge.......................................................... 16mm NO SIMPLE SOLUTION is committed to the privatisation of health years) the principles of safety when travelling Key g rip ................................................... GaryClements Synopsis: A film made for the Department of Prod, company........................................ FilmAustralia care and the film explores the personalities by train, as well as the futility of committing Asst g rip ...............................Mark Tomlinson Sport and Recreation and the Victorian Dist. company...........................................FilmAustralia and the lifestyle of the surgeons and their vandalism.

Gaffer................................................. MichaelMato Camping Association concerning the for Public Service Board relationships with the community.

Art director.................................Jon Bowling integration of disabled people into the Producer..................................................... IanNance Make-up............................. Margaret Pierce, Residential Camping Program.

Director.....................................................NeilBrown FIREPOWER Isobelle Fowler Scriptwriter............................................... NeilBrown W ardrobe.....................................Ann Moore Prod, company........................Film Australia COMPETITIVE EDGE Photography........................................... JohnHosking Props b uyer...................................... Kay Alty Dist. company..........................Film Australia (formerly Beyond 2000) Sound recordist................. Rodney Simmons Standby props....................................... PeterCass Producer............................................. ColleenClarke Editor..................................................... AntonHorak Asst editor..............................................KarenWeldrick Prod, company........................................ VTC Director................................................... NickFrazer Assoc, producer...................Patricia de Heer Still photography................................Jacquie Gardner Producer................................................

Janet Coleman Scriptwriter.............................................. NickFrazer Unit manager................................ MargueriteGrey Length......................................................... 52mins Director...................................................... MaiBryning Photography............................

Ross King DIABETES MELLITUS — THIS IS Lighting...................................................

John Hosking Cast: Kit Taylor (Neal Walker), Lyndell Rowe Scriptwriter..............................................

Alex Dumas Sound recordist................................. HowardSpry2nd unit photography...............Keith Watson YOUR LIFE (Ingrid Walker), Libby Wherrett (Renate Sound recordist................................Ian Ryan Editor.................................................... NancyAllan G affer.......................................Ian Bosman Paul).

Editor.......................................................John Barber Prod, company....................Tasmanian Film Assoc, producer................. Virginia Pridham Narrator....................Penne Hackforth-Jones Corporation Pty. Ltd. Synopsis: This is the story of a 13 year old Composer.............................................. .ChrisCopping Unit manager.................................MargueriteGrey Length................................................ 22 mins girl, one of the thousands of children in Aus­ Exec, producer......................................Vince O’Donnell Producer................................................ RobinLevinson Lighting.......................................................IanBosman Gauge............................................Videotape tralia each year who are victims of incest. It D irector................................................. RobinLevinson Prod, assistant...............................SamanthaToffoletti Camera assistant......................... Ivan Kacer Synopsis: An informational awareness is also the story of a family in crisis when dis­ Scriptwriter............................................ RobinLevinson Art director............................................. ChrisWorrall Narrator................................... John Downes closure of the secret causes disintegration, Length..........................................................10minsprogram on Repetitive Strain Injury within Mixed a t................................................... VTC Photography........................................ RussellGalloway Commonwealth departmental keyboard Gauge........................................... Videotape Laboratory................................................VTC Soundrecordist.......................... Julian Scott shatters the system of relationships and screen-based office areas. It is aimed at Editor................................... Alvin de Quincey poses frightening questions for the future. It Shooting stock.................................Betacam Lab. liaison.........................................MichaelConkey management/supervisor level and uses a Prod, manager........................ Wayne Cowen is hard-edged drama based firmly in fact, but Synopsis: Made for the Department of Budget................................................$80,000 narrative reportage approach to follow the Mixed a t........... Tasmanian Film Corporation its thrust is positive and it allows a safe Defence Munitions Filling Factory, St. Length..........................................................20mins progress of a manager’s initial confronting Pty. Ltd. conduct zone on the far side of the minefield.

Mary’s, to show the operations of the factory.

Gauge.............................................................1inch an RSI case and the educative and remedial Its aim is to raise awareness of incest in the Length............................................... 20 mins Shooting stock............................... Videotape actions open to him.

IRONBARK BILL IN THE Synopsis: Victorian promotional film for use Gauge............................................... 1” video community, and to show that the result of breaking the silence surrounding it can be Synopsis: This film is about coping and with senior m anagem ent personnel, CHAMPION BUCKJUMPER RUNNING FROM THE GHOST especially corporate investors and in living with a diabetic child and the effects on positive rather than a continuing victimisa­ Prod, company....................... Film Australia tion of the child. the family unit.

European and thenorthernPacific ring Prod, company.........................................FilmAustralia Dist. company......................... Film Australia countries.

Dist. company...........................................FilmAustralia Producer.......................................Don Ezard FIRE AND FLOOD Producer...............................................MacekRubetzki Director...................................................PhilipPepper FREE CLIMBING Prod, company............................. TasmanianFilm Director...................................... Nick Torrens Scriptwriter............................................... LisaNoonan Corporation Pty. Ltd. Producer.................................................Sally Semmens Photography.............................

Andy Fraser Photography...............................Don Ezard, Producer..............................................WayneCowen Director................................................NatalieGreen Sound recordist....................... Rod Simmons Philip Pepper D irector..................................

Robin Levinson Scriptwriter...........................................

Louise Sheoard Editor..........................................Nick Torrens Editor..................................Peter Somerville Photography........................................ Natalie Green Scriptwriter............................ Robin Levinson Assoc, producer........................... Ian Adkins Assoc, producer.................Virginia Pridham Photography........................

Russell Galloway Exec, producer..................................

Vincent O’Donnell Unit manager......................................... GerryLetts Prod, assistant.........................................LisaNoonan Editor................................... Alvin de Quincey Exec, assistant........................................MaryGustavsson Interpreter............................................. SarahPoon Background artist.....................................LisaPfanner Continuity............................................Wendy Rimon Length..........................................................20 minutes Length......................................................... 48mins Music..................................................... PhilipPowers Camera assistant................ Mark Tomlinson Gauge........................................ Super 16 mm Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Narrator..................................... John Clarke Mixer......................................................Julian Scott Synopsis: A film set within the Chinese com­ Shooting stock..................................Eastman Animation.......................... Kathie O’Rourke Mixed a t...........Tasmanian Film Corporation Synopsis: A film thatpromotes rock munity of Hong Kong. Here, people know Running tim e....................................... 8 mins CALL ME MR. BROWN Pty. Ltd. little of the romantic social life generated by climbing and encourages others to try the Length................................................... 720 ft Prod, company..................The Kino Film Co. Length..................................................... 2 x 2 mins sport. The film will feature experienced British presence. The film is about two Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Gauge................................................1” video Producer................................Terry Jennings women climbers. hawkers, a squatter and their families as Shooting stock........................................5247

NEW SOUTH WALES FILM CORPORATION

FILM VICTORIA

TASMANIAN FILM CORPORATION

TELEVISION

PRE-PRODUCTION

CINEMA PAPERS September — 53

.’V .. '

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Director........................................Scott Hicks Scriptwriters......................... Terry Jennings, Scott Hicks Photography........................... Ron Johanson Editor.................................... Andrew Prowse Length.................................................90 mins Cast: Chris Haywood (Peter Macari).

Synopsis: A drama based on the extra­ ordinary events surrounding the 1971 Qantas bomb hoax.

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Synopsis: The programme is based on the successful cabaret produced in London and across Australia. Consists of songs, prose and poetry fitted together to make up a mosaic of new ways of looking at women.

Old images are juxtaposed with new lyrics, layers of irony and humour bring out startling meanings in familiar songs and new songs celebrate new women. ~

Prod, manager........................................John Jacob Producer...............................Suzanne Baker Lab. liaison......................Richard Piorkowski Prod, accountant........ Moneypenny Services Directors..................................Gary Conway, Budget..........................................$1.1 million 1st asst directors.................................... EddyPrylinski, Chris Adshead Length..................................... 8 x 5 0 minutes Euan Keddie Scriptwriters.........................John Patterson, Gauge.................................................. 16 mm 2nd asst director.............Hamish McSporran Anne Brooksbank, Shooting stock......................... Eastmancolor Continuity...............................Jenny Quigley Tony Morphett Scheduled release..................February 1986 Casting....................................... Joy Sargant Photography.......................................... GeoffBurton Synopsis: A worldwide investigation of tradi­ Lighting cameraman....................Ellery Ryan Sound recordist........................................ DonConnolly tions and methods of alternative healers.

Boom operator....................Chris Goldsmith Editor................................Stewart Armstrong The series shows there are methods of Art director..................................................IanGracie Prod, designer...................................... OwenWilliams healing, used for thousands of years, PETROV Wardrobe............................................... DavidRowe Composer................................................ MikePerjanik developed through constantly changing THE CHALLENGE Ward, assistant................. Kerry Thompson, Exec, producer.................................... JamesDavern societies but remaining essentially the same.

Prod, company................... PBL Productions Heather Laurie Prod, company........................... Roadshow, Prod, manager..... Rosanne Andrews-Baxter They work on the root cause of illness and Dist. company.....................PBL Productions Prod, co-ordinator............................ SusanneDarcey Coote and Carroll/ take the whole being into account, mind, Scriptwriter................................. Cliff Green Props buyer........................... Richard Hobbs Standby props........................................

John Osmond Unit manager....Christiaan Hoppenbrouwers body and spirit.

Golden Dolphine Production Based on the original idea Prod, secretary..................... Lynn Rowlands Producers..........................................TristramMiall, b y ............................................ Sam Lipski Set construction.................. Graeme Gilligan Weapons consultant...................... John Fox Prod, accountant.................. R. J. Chalmers, Bob Loader Length.........................................4 x 60 mins RETURN TO EDEN Unit publicist............................... Lyn Quayle Scriptwriter............................................ DavidPhillips Bolten & Assoc., Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Exec, producers......................... Greg Coote, Anne Holmes Prod, company.................Eden Productions Synopsis: The story of the defection of Length......................................... 6 x 60 mins Executive producer.................. Hal McElroy 1st asst directors.................................... JohnWarran, Matt Carroll Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov in Canberra Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Synopsis: On April 21, 1976 the unimagin­ Length.......................................... 6 x 60 mins Keith Heygate Producer................................... Tim Sanders in 1954.

Directors................................... John Power, able shattered the traditional calm of the Synopsis: The Challenge traces behind the 2nd asst director.................................... PeterKearney Tim Burstall, venerable Victorian Club in Melbourne. scenes winning by Australia of the America’s 3rd asst director....................................NicolaLong SAIGON Kevin Dobson, Masked gunmen burst through the doors to Cup. A full dramatization of the guts, deter­ Continuity.................................................. LizBarton Rod Hardy Prod, company............................

Roadshow/ relieve the bookmakers present of over $2 mination and the who-did-what-to-whom Casting............................................ Mary-AnnEckstein Scriptwriters.......................... David Phillips, Anglia Television/ million in untraceable cash. This mini-series stories that have never been told before.

Lighting cameraman................Geoff Burton Christine McCourt, Action Time comes as close to the truth as anyone may Camera operator...................... Geoff Burton John Alsop, Producer..................................... Matt Carroll IN BETWEEN Focus pulle r............................. Daren Keogh ever come. To this day no one has been Betty Quinn Director.....................................

Phillip Noyce charged with the crime.

Clapper/loader......................Miriana Marusic Prod, company........... In Between Television Scriptwriter........................... S. Lee Pogostin Key g rip .................................... Bruce Barber Based on the original mini-series Productions Pty. Ltd. created b y .....................Michael Lawrence Based on the novel b y ............. Anthony Grey Asst g rip....................................Guy Williams THE LANCASTER MILLER AFFAIR (A Trout Films/ Directors of photography............. Yuri Sokol, Photography............................ Geoff Burton Gaffer........................................Ian Plumber Open Channel Co-Production) Prod, company............................... LancasterMiller Martin McGrath Exec, producer....................... David Puttnam Producers.............................................. ChrisWarner, Best boy................................................ShaunConway Productions Pty. Ltd. Sound recordist.............................. Tim Lloyd Length..........................................7 x 60 mins Electrics assistant............. Jonathon Hughes Kim Dalton Dist. company................................

Lancaster Miller Supervising editor..................

David Huggett Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Directors.................................................ChrisWarner, Boom operator..........................................JoeSpinelli Productions Pty. Ltd. Prod, designer......................Larry Eastwood Synopsis: Based on Anthony Grey’s novel Art director.............................................OwenPatterson Mandy Smith Producer......................................Paul Davies Composer...................................... Brian May ‘Saigon’ the story races an American’s Scriptwriters...................Maureen McCarthy, Art dept co-ordinator............................ PennyLang Director...................................................HenriSafran Assoc, producer..................... Keith Aberdein experience in Vietnam from French colonial Costume designer..................................TerryRyan Shane Brennan Scriptwriter............................ Peter Yeldham Prod, manager.................Sandra Alexander days to the last helicopter out of the U.S. Based on the original idea Make-up..............................................Marjory Hamlin Photography......................... Ross Berryman Prod, co-ordinator................ Joanne Rooney Embassy. The broad sweep of a troubled b y................................ Maureen McCarthy Hairdresser...............................Willi Kenrick Sound recordist......................................RossLinton Location/unit manager................. Hugh Cann country seen from both sides.

Exec, producers........... Cinepak Investment, Wardrobe buyer...............................

Christian Chearer Editor.................................................. RichardHindley Asst unit manager..... Richard Montgomery Ward, assistant......................... Fiona Nicolis Management Services Ltd. Prod, designer........................David Copping Prod, secretary............................Jenny Ward TRACY Assoc, producer................ Andrew Wiseman Props buyer....................................Billy Allen Composer............................... Frank Strangio Financial controller................................ KevinWright Prod, company................... PBL Productions Prod, accountant................. Roseby & Lenny Standby props........................... Colin Gibson Assoc, producer.....................David Hannay Prod, accountant............................... MichaelBoon Dist. company....................PBL Productions Scenic artist................................... Eric Todd . .

Pty. Ltd. Prod, supervisor........................... Irene Korol Asst accountant................... Louise Lanceley Producer................................... Bill Hughes Mixed at....................................... Sound Firm Construction manager..............................PhilWorth Prod, co-ordinator...................................SallyAyre-Smith 1st asst directors...........................Barry Hall, Prod, manager..........................Terri Vincent Budget.........................................$1,192,000 Asst editor.......................................... MelissaBlanch Unit manager................. Steven Maccagnan James Parker Research.............................. Graham Shirley Length.........................................4 x 55 mins Sound editor.......................................... HughWaddell Prod, secretary.......................Antonia Legge 2nd asst director.............. Fiona McConaghy Length....................................... 6 x 6 0 mins Gauge.......................... 16 mm / 1” videotape Editing assistant....................................CathyFenton Prod, accountant............ Howard Wheatley 3rd asst director....................................... PaulManos Synopsis: In Between is a four-part madeGauge.................................................. 16 mm Runner....................................Peter Warman Asst, accountants............ Antony Shepherd, 2nd unit director................................. MichaelFalloon for-television mini-series about a group of Synopsis: A mini-series based on the true Nancy Bekhor Publicity............... Harrison Communications Continuity...............................................Nicky Moors story of cyclone Tracy, which virtually four adolescents from Turkish, Kampu­ Unit publicist............................. Mandy Cook Prod, office attachment........... Debbie Saffir 2nd unit continuity...................Gayle Pigalle chean, Yugoslav and Anglo-Australian back­ destroyed Darwin in December 1974.

Catering................................. Kaos Catering 1st asst director.................................. MichaelBourchier Script typist...............................Rose Hansen grounds, facing the challenges and 2nd asst director...................... Jake Atkinson Studios........................ Filmrep Ltd, Mort Bay Casting...................... Suzanne Johannesen dilemmas of growing up In a multi-cultural Mixed at.................................. Custom Video YOUTH IN AUSTRALIA ’85 3rd asst director.......................................NickAlimede Casting consultants.Liz Mullinar Casting society. It shows the pressures on them, the Laboratory.............................................. Atlab Camera dept co-ordinator......... Fred Harden (formerly International Year of the Youth) Directing attachment............................ ClaireDobbin conflicts and difficulties they have to face, Budget......................................... $4,595,000 Continuity............................................... JudyWhitehead Camera dept secretary......... Jo-Ann Duncan Prod, company..........Communique Pty. Ltd. and the decisions they have to make as they Length........................................ 10x50 mins Producer’s secretary............................ JanetClarke 1st camera operator..............Martin McGrath Producers............................................ HanafiHayes, are pushed into adulthood. ' Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Casting......................................................LeeLamer 2nd unit camera operator........Murray Ware Jim George Cast: Maureen Green (Young Maureen Focus puller............................Brian Breheny Focus puller................................... Chris Cain LONG TAN Prod, co-ordinator.......Roseanne Donaldson Quinn), Patricia Kennedy (Old Maureen 2nd unit focus puller...............................DavidDunkley Clapper/loader........................Mandy Walker Prod, manager........................... Brenda Pam Prod, company..........The Long Tan Film Co. Quinn), Patrick Dickson (Paddy Quinn), Clapper/loader................. Calum McFarlane Key grip..................................Barry Hanson Prod, accountant................................... DavidBarnes Benjamin Franklin (Kevin Quinn), Penelope 2nd unit camera (proposed) Asst grip.................................Darren Hanson Length..........................................8 x 30 mins Scriptwriters.........................David Horsfield, Stewart (Young Nesta Quinn), Melissa Jaffer Gaffer..................................... Lindsay Foote assistant.............................. David Dunkley Shooting stock...............................Videotape (Old Nesta Quinn), Drew Forsythe (Old Frank Key grip........................... Grahame Litchfield Lex McAulay, Electrician.............................. Greg Rawson Synopsis: The project is a series of eight Bruce Horsfield, Quinn), Melita Jurisic (Kathleen Quinn), Asst g rip.................................... Ian McAlpine Sound editor......................................... RogerSavage television programmes designed to reflect Jullanne Horsfield Peter Kowitz (Leo Quinn), Richard Moir Gaffer.......................................................MattSlattery Safety supervisor...................................PeterCulpan the realities of being a young person in Aus­ Based on the original idea (Dominic Quinn).

Still photography...................................... LesO’Rourke Electrician............................................. GrantAtkinson tralia in 1985. by.......................................................BruceHorsfield Synopsis: The saga of an Irish-Catholic Studio electrics........................................PaulJohnston, Dialogue coach Exec, producer..................................... BruceHorsfield working class family, set against the bitter­ (American).........................................SusanGorence Tony Lang Prod, accountant..... Manfred and McCallum ness, successes and disappointments of the Dialogue coach Boom operators........................................ PhilTipene, Length.............................................. 110 mins Australian labour movement through the (English)........................Michael Laurence Peter Giddings years 1890-1972.

Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Location manager/ Art directors........................................... MartaStatescu, Synopsis: A recreation of the Battle of Long aviation consultant............................ DavidClarke Steve Marr NEIGHBOURS Tan, when an Australian patrol of 108 men Pilot.............................................. Nick Daniel Make-up............................... Rosalina D’Silva fought off more than 1000 experienced Viet Stage hand/driver..............................AndrewWilson Hairdresser...........................Francia Smeets Prod, company.................Grundy Television Cong. Based on survivors’ own gripping Stage hand........................Rodney Hayward THE FAR COUNTRY .

Pty Ltd Wardrobe......................................Miv Brewer accounts, the story illustrates the thesis that Best b o y ....................................................Jim Hunt Ward, assistant..........................................PiaKryger Dist. company.................. Grundy Television Prod, company...........Crawford Productions the war in Vietnam was won militarily, but Unit runner............................... Robin Newell Pty Ltd Standby wardrobe..................................SuzyCarter (Mini Series) Pty. Ltd. Prod, office runner....................Joanne Roth lost politically.

Props buyer.......................................... JennyGreen Producer.................................................JohnHolmes Producer...........................John Barningham Publicity.............. The Rea Francis Company Standby props...................................JulianneWhite Directors.................................................GregShears, Director.............................................. GeorgeMiller Unit publicists..........................

Rea Francis, Art dept runner.........................................PaulTahan MOTHER AND SON Mandy Smith, Scriptwriter............................ Peter Yeldham Jan Batten Russell Webb, 2nd unit standby props............Michael Makin Script editor......................................... SusanSmith Series 3 Catering................................. “ Out to Lunch" Construction manager............Rob Ricketson Mark Joffe Based on the novel b y ............................NevilShute Prod, company...................................... ABC Boom operator...............................Phil Keros Scriptwriters................ Adrian Van Den Bok, Standby construction......... Brendan Shortall Photography............................................RonHagen Dist. company....................................... ABC Art director............................................... KenJames Stage hand..............................................

GlenFlecknoe Valda Marshall, Sound recordist..................... John Wilkinson Producer................................................ GeoffPortmann Asst art directors............................ JulieanneMills, Robert Leys, Second editor.............................. Kim Moodie Exec, producers................. Hector Crawford, Director.................................................. GeoffPortmann Kelvin Sexton, Asst editor...............................

Carrie Beehan Ginny Lowndes Ian Crawford, Scriptwriter....................................... GeoffreyAtherden Graham Blackmore Based on the original idea Dubbing editor..........................................LesFiddess Terry Stapleton Composer................................... Bill Motzing Costume designer................Bruce Finlayson Dubbing assistant.................................SimonSmithers b y .........................................................

RegWatson Assoc, producer................................

Michael Lake Exec, producer........................ John O’Grady Make-up/hairdresser.............................. JosePerez Still photography......................... Vivian Zink Editor.....................................................

David Jaegar Prod, supervisor...............C. Ewan Burnett Prod, manager.....................Coral Crowhurst Asst hair/make-up................................ JennyBoehm Runner........................Toby Churchill-Brown Exec, producer........................................ RegWatson Prod, co-ordinator..... Bernadette O’Mahony Prod, secretary.......................... Julie Vance Standby wardrobe..................................Julie Barton Unit publicist...................................... VictoriaBuchan Assoc, producer................................ AndrewHowie Prod, manager..........................................RayHennessy Prod, assistant........................... Anita Atkins Wardrobe mistress........... Lorna Darbyshire Catering...................MMK — Maree Manifold Prod, co-ordinator.........................Jan Irvine Location manager....................................Don Linke 1st asst director..................................... BrianSandwell Seamstresses......................................WiggyBrennan, & Michael Baty Prod, manager..............................

Mick Mills Prod, accountant.................................. VinceSmits 2nd asst director............ Geoffrey Newnham , EniaDeAngelis Studios................................................... EdenStudios, 1st asst director........................ Peter Askew 1st asst director..................................... BrianGiddens Length.......................................... 7 x 30 mins Draughtsman.........................................BrycePerrin Five Dock Casting...........................................

Jan Russ Continuity...................................................LizPerry Cast: Ruth Cracknell (Maggie), Garry Props buyer............................................DarylMills Mixed a t........................................... Videolab Make-up........................................M. Brown, Key grip.................................................... JoelWitherden McDonald (Arthur), Henri Szeps (Robert), Standby props....................... John R. Daniell Laboratory.......................................

Colorfilm B. Smith Gaffer........................................ Brian Adams Judy Morris (Liz).

Special effects.....................................WayneWood Length.........................................22 x 60 mins Hairdressers............................. Daryl Porter, Art director............................................ OtelloStolfo Synopsis: The continuing trials of Arthur as Assistant....................................................LesGough Gauge..................................................

16 mm Doug Glanville Asst art director............................BernadetteWynack he faces the problem of looking after Asst to art d e p t........................ Toby Copping Wardrobe......................Lucinda Cast: Rebecca Gilling (Stephanie Harper), McGuiggan Wardrobe supervision.......... Donald Lindsay Maggie, his ageing Mum. Art Dept attachment............................... Julie Cleland James Smillie (Dan Marshall),Daniel Abineri Ward, assistant...................Frennesey Cook, Props buyer......................................... MurrayKellyModel maker.......................................... PeterO’Brien Di Helbig (Jake Sanders), Peita Toppano (Jilly Stunts ' NOT SUITABLE FOR ADULTS Asst model maker........................Kim Sexton Stewart), Peter Cousens (Dennis), Megan Runner.......................... Marcus Georgiades co-ordinator..........New Generation Stunts Flying model maker......................Geoff Tuck Williams (Cassie Baker), Nicki Pauli (Sarah), Prod, company................It’s About Time Ltd Studios.................................................

HSV-7 Best b oy....................................................JonLeaver Head scenic a rtist........................Ray Pedlar Angelo D’Angelo (Angelo Poletti), Warren Producers...................................Pat Hunder, First released............................. March 1985 Catering......................... Bande Aid Catering Scenic artist............................................CliveJones Geoff Pollock Cast: Francis Bell (Max Ramsay), Dasha Blondell (Tom McMaster), Peter Gwynne (Bill Length.............. r.......................... 4 x 60 mins Brush hand......................................... MichaelRumpf McMaster). ' Performance director................ Leon Devine Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Construction manager........... Danny Burnett Blahova (Maria Ramsay), David Clencie Synopsis: The story begins seven years Visual director....................... Garry Dunstan (Danny Ramsay), Peter O’Brien (Shane Shooting stock............. Kodak; Eastmancolor Asst construction manager...........

Brian Cox later.

Stephanie Harper — Australia’s richest Art director..............................Gilbert Moase Ramsay), Alan Dale (Jim Robinson), Kylie Synopsis: Based on the Nevil Shute novel of Set makers..........................................PatrickCarr, Costume designers........ Chong and Merkel Flinker (Lucy Robinson), Darius Perkins woman — has been happily married to her the same name. A love story, set in Victoria’s Robert Hern, plastic surgeon husband; her two children Musical director..................... Greg Thomas mountain region, between an English girl Michael Hill, (Scott Robinson), Stefan Dennis (Paul are now young adults, involved in the Harper Budget.............................................$695,000 and a displaced Czechoslovakian immigrant.

Arthur Vette Robinson), Vicki Blanche (Julie Robinson), ’empire’ and their own problems. The Length.................................13x30 minutess Anne Haddy (Helen Daniels).

During World War II as a doctor In the Assistant editor...................Amanda Holmes Synopsis: A series for children/adolescents Synopsis: Love ’em or hate ’em, but every­ release of Jilly, ex-murderess and best German Army, Carl Zlinter did things he’d Mixed a t.........................................Soundfirm friend, from prison starts a dramatic chain of using comedy and music to explore the rather forget — but in his new life as a con­ Laboratory.........................................Cinevex one’s got ’em; Neighbours. Ramsay Street growing up process as experienced by a struction worker on a road-building project, .. . the stage for an exciting drama serial.. . events.

Lab. liaison............................................

Bruce Braun diverse group of 16 year old Australians. The he finds his past is Inescapable. * Budget..........................................$4,750,000 drawing back to curtain to reveal the intrigue world is explored through the eyes of the SHOUT — THE STORY OF Length..........................................5 x 60 mins and passions of Australian families . .. and adolescent and, as the title suggests, no THE GREAT BOOKIE ROBBERY JOHNNY O ’KEEFE Gauge.................................................. 16 mm their neighbours. adults are seen. The format is “ zany” and Shooting stock........................................7294 Prod, company....................PBL Productions different and explores controversial issues.

Prod, company....................................... ViewPictures QUEST FOR HEALING Scheduled release............................... March1986 ' Pty Ltd Pty. Ltd. Cast: Kerry Mack (Chubbie Miller), Nicholas Prod, company..... Independent Productions Dist. company.................... PBL Productions Dist. company........................Seven Network THE PACK OF WOMEN Eadle (Bill Lancaster), Wayne Cull (Haden Pty Ltd Pty Ltd Producer...................................................BenGannon Prod, company................Sideshow Alley Ltd Producer...................................... Ian Bradley Clarke), Malcolm Robertson (Carson), Dist. company........Independent Distributors Director..................................................... TedRobinson Dist. company..................Sideshow Alley Ltd Directors...................................Marcus Cole, Stephen Leeder (Hawthorne), June Salter Pty Ltd Scriptwriter...........................................RobertCaswell Producer.................................Diana Manson (Maud), Barry Hill (Edward), Maureen Producer.................................Richard Davis Mark Joffe Photography.............................................DanBurstall Scriptwriter...............................Robyn Archer Edwards (Alice), Stacey Testro (Marian), Bud Scriptwriter............................ Richard Davis Scriptwriter...........................Phillip Cornford Editor...................................... Robert Gibson Based on the play by............... Robyn Archer Tingwell (Sam Hayes).

Based on the original idea Based on the original idea Prod, supervisor................................. SandraMcKenzie Prod, designer...............................Roger Kirk Synopsis: A sweeping true life story of love, b y ......................................Phillip Cornford b y .......................................... Danae Brook Prod, manager........................Barbara Gibbs Composer........................................... Various scandal and breathtaking adventure set Photography...........................Hans Heidrich Photography................................Ellery Ryan Prod, secretary.............................. Dixie Betts against the epic days of pioneering long­ Sound recordist.......................... Noel Quinn Assoc, producer...............Sandra Alexander Sound recordists.....................Lloyd Carrick, Prod, accountant........................... Catch 123 distance aviation.

Prod, accountant........Rosenfeld, Kant & Co. Max Hensser(U.K.) Exec, producer........................... Gene Scott 1st asst director....................Steve Andrews Casting.............................Sideshow Alley Ltd Editor...................................... Kerry Regan Prod, manager................... Cheryl Buckman 2nd asst director..........................Chris Webb LAND OF HOPE Musical director...........................Andrew Bell Prod, designer........................Michael Ralph Still photography................Cheryl Buckman 3rd asst director.................... Henry Osborne Budget........................................$280,022.40 Prod, company................... Filmrep Limited Prod, supervisor................Christine Godfrey Mixed a t .......................................... Colorfilm Continuity.......................................Pam Willis Scheduled release........... ABC TV, Nov. 85 Dist. company....................JNP Films Pty Ltd Laboratory.......................................Colorfilm Prod, co-ordinator............... Vicki Popplewell C asting............................................... SandraMcKenzie

PRODUCTION

54 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Extras casting.................................. ChristineWoodruff Prod, manager.......................................RosieRosen Synopsis: A dramatization of Australia’s Boom operator......................... PhillipTipene TUSITALA Camera operator.......................................DanBurstall participation in World War 1.

Costume designer.................................HelenHopper Location unit manager.........................MaudeHeath Prod, company........................ ABC/Portman Focus puller............................... Ian Thorburn Make-up.................................................. SallyGordon Asst unit m anager................................... PaulFenton Dist. company.........................................ABC Clapper/loader...................... Felicity Surtees Hairdresser......................... Jan Zeigenbein Prod accountant..................................... AlanMarco ARCHER Producer................................................... RayAlehin Key grip................................Paul Thompson Ward, assistant....................Barbara Zussino 1st asst director.......................................MickColeman Prod, company............................ Roadshow, Director..................................................... DonSharp Asst grip............................... George Tsoutas Art dept asst........................ Daniel Morphett 2nd asst director....................................AlisonSpark Coote & Carroll Scriptwriter............................ Peter Yeldham G affer....................................................... RegGarside Props buyer.............................................PetaLawson Continuity..............................................Jenny Quigley Producer......................................Moya Iceton Photography.......................................... PeterHendry Electrician.........................................Gary Hill Standby props............................ Harry Zettel Focus puller................................................BillHammond Director.............................. Denny Lawrence Sound recordist........................................RonMoore Boom operator............................... David Lee Clapper/loader.......................... Mandy King Set dresser.............................................. PetaLawson Scriptwriter........................ Anne Brooksbank Art director............................................. OwenPatterson Editor................................... Tony Kavanagh Key g rip ...................................Phil Shapiera Asst editor............................. Vicki Ambrose Photography.......................Frank Hammond Asst art director..........................Dale Duguid Prod, designer.....................Laurie Johnson Asst grip .................................. Brett Keeping Stunts co-ordinator..................... Bob Hicks Art dept attachment....................Martin Wale Exec, producers..................................... ChrisMuir,Editor.............................................. Ted Otton Still photography................... Robbie Gobble Gaffer....................................................... SamBienstock Prod, designer.........................Herbert Pinter Costume designer.......................Jennie Tate Ian Warren Electrician...............................Brett Keeping Rowing coach.....................Rusty Robertson Composer.................................... Chris Neal Make-up........................... Lesley Vanderwatt Prod, manager..................................... DennisKiely Boom operator............................. Eric Briggs Runner................................... Jonathan Tate Exec, producers.........................

Matt Carroll, Hairdresser............................................ Ziggy Prod, accountant....................................JudyMurphy Art director...................................... Lisa Elvy Unit publicist................................Lyn Quayle Gregory Coote Ward, assistant............................Glynis Stow Costume designer................................JamesMurray Costume designer.......................Lisa Keogh Catering.........................

Feast Film Catering Prod, co-ordinator......................Julia Ritchie Props buyers.......................Sally Campbell, Still photography.....................................Sally Samins Make-up................................................... AnnPopiscnil Laboratory....................................... Colorfilm Prod, manager..............................Jenny Day Blossom Flint Unit publicist.......................... Leslie Jackson Ward, assistant....................................... DorisKurteff Lab. liaison..................... Richard Piorkowski Location manager...................................MarkThomas Standby props...........................................IgorLazareff Length..................................... 6 x 50 minutes Props buyer............................................... VivWilson Length................................................

94 mins Prod, accountant...................Jenny Verdon Set decorator...........................................SallyCampbell Synopsis: A series tracing the last four years Standby props.......................................... PhilEagles Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Set construction....................... Alan Fleming Asst accountant......................Therese Tran in the life of novelist Robert Louis Steven­ Set decorator........................... Jeremy Slater Shooting stock........................................7291 1st asst director.....................Deuel Droogan Asst e d ito r.................................. Jacqui Fine son, which were spent in the South Pacific, Art dept runner....................John Macdonald Cast: John Hargreaves (Sam), Chris Musical co-ordinator........Christine Woodruff 3rd asst director......................................TobyPease Sydney and Western Samoa. The title is Asst editor...........................................DanielleCooper Haywood (Paul), Angela Punch McGregor Sound editor............................... Jacqui Fine Continuity................................................ SianHughes taken from the name that the Samoans gave Armourer...................................................BobColeby (Edwina), Bill Kerr (Curly), Judi Farr (Ellen), Editing assistant.................................... ClareO’Brien Casting.................................................AllisonBarrett to their beloved friend. It means '“teller of Stunts co-ordinator...................... Dee Jones Mercia Deane-Johns (Melanie), Vincent Ball Best boy......................................Craig Bryant Focus puller............................................ RossEmery tales” .

Still photography......................... Jon Lewis (Stuart), Cecily Poison (Older Nursing Key g rip .................................................. PeterLedgeway Runner............................................. JonathanCohen Best b o y .......................................Chris Fleet Sister), Philomena Lonergan (Sr Arnott), Publicity................................................... PattiMostyn G affer....................................... Derek Jones Runner..........................................Tessa Say Colleen Clifford (Mrs Fenwick).

Catering........................................... Janette’sKitchen Asst art director........................Stewart Way Publicity................................................ LesleyJackson Synopsis: Sam Larkin allocates a year of his Production office Costume designer..................................AnnaSenior Catering.....................................

John Welch life to rehabilitate an alcoholic friend. The attachment......................................... Maria Phillips Make-up.................................Joanne Santry Length............................................. 120 mins means he uses is an attempt at the Austra­ Mixed a t......................................... Soundfirm Hairdresser........................... Joanne Santry Cast: John Sheerin (Taylor), Tony Rickards lian Rowing Championships in double sculls.

Laboratory...............................................Atlab Standby wardrobe................. Paula Eckerick (Stephenson), Tim Hughes (Shaw), Regina What first appears as a human and kindly Lab. liaison......................Bruce Williamson Props buyer.............................................JockMcLaughlin Gaigalas (Pearson), Duncan Waas (Murray), gesture soon blurs in intensity and in the Budget.........................................$2.2 million Standby props......................................RobertMoxham Rhys McConnochie (Webster), Joe Spano entanglements of the lives of the two men, ANZACS Length........................................ 2 x 60 mins Scenic artist........................................MichaelChorney (Jenkins). and the others who surround them.

Gauge...................................................16 mm Prod, company....................... The Burrowes Carpenter...........................................MichaelChorney Synopsis: One early November afternoon in Shooting stock...................................... Kodak Set construction..................................... John Parker Dixon Company Sydney, six men, in a carefully planned and HANDLE WITH CARE Cast: Terry Serio (Johnny O’Keefe), Producer...............................Geoff Burrowes Asst editor..............................Margaret Sixel executed operation, relieved bookmakers of Prod, company.......................... Alsof Pty Ltd Marcelle Schmitz (Marianne O’Keefe), 2nd asst editor....................... Linny Gompes Directors................................................. John Dixon, around $8 million within the hallowed walls of Producers............................ Andrena Finlay, Melissa Jaffer (Thelma O’Keefe), John Dubbing editor....................................... AnneBreslin George Miller, an exclusive gentleman's club. No one has Anne Landa been able to identify them . . .

McTernan (Lee Gordon), Candy Raymond Head wrangler.......................Evanna Harris Pino Amenta (Maureen O’Keefe), Tony Barry (Alan HefferDirector....................................................Paul Cox Wranglers.................................John Briggs, Scriptwriters............................................John Dixon, Scriptwriter........................Anne Brooksbank nan), John Paramor (Bill Haley), Max Moore Derek Fisher, John Clarke, (Ritchie Singer), Valda Marshall (Liz Harris).

Photography..................................Yuri Sokol A SINGLE LIFE Ian May, James Mitchell Synopsis: A dramatised recreation of the life Length................................................ 75 mins (formerly Below the Belt) Anne Stevens Based on the original idea o f Australia’s legendary King of Rock and Gauge..........................................................16mmProd, com pany......................Australian Film Best boy.................................................. PaulBooth b y.............................................. John Dixon Roll — Johnny O’Keefe.

Synopsis: The story of two women dealing Art dept runner......................................HelenMacaskill Assoc, producer..................... Dennis Wright Theatre Ltd with the spectre of breast cancer.

Production office Photography.......................... Keith Wagstaff Dist. company......................J. C. Williamson runner................................................Kristin Sanderson Sound supervisor................................... TerryRodman Film Distributors P/L 1000 ANIMALS Completion guarantor......... Film Finances — Sound recordists................................... LloydCarrick, Producer.................. Australian Film Theatre SWORD OF HONOUR Sue Armstrong John Schiefelbein Prod, company.................................... AnimalHouse Director................................................... JohnPower Prod, company........... Simpson Le Mesurier Catering..................................................JohnWelch Editor............................................ Philip Reid Productions in association Scriptwriter............................................. MarkPoole Films Pty Ltd Laboratory....................................... Colorfilm Prod, designer..................................... LesleyBinns with Happy Endings Based on the original idea Producer.......................... Roger Le Mesurier Lab. liaison......................Richard Piorkowski Composer............................................. BruceRowland Producer.............................................. SandyRingerby.........................................................MarkPoole Directors................................... Pino Amenta, Cast: Brett Climo, Nicole Kidman.

Prod, supervisor.........................................BillRegan Director...................................... Robert Boyd Photography..................................... VladimirOsherov Catherine Millar Synopsis: Archer is based on the true story Prod, manager....................................AndrewMorse Scriptwriter........................................... SandyRinger Sound recordist...................Chris Thompson Scriptwriters........................Roger Simpson, o f the horse that walked from Nowra, NSW, Prod, co-ordinator........................... Jan Stott Photography........................................... JohnLeeEditor................................................ Ian Lang Kathy Mueller, to Flemington Racecourse to win the first Location manager.................................... PhilMcCarthy Composer.........................................NickolusMoss Prod, designer.......................Chris Kennedy Peter Kinloch, Melbourne Cup. Unit manager........................................... RayPattison Video illustration Composer................................................ BrettGoldsmith Tom Hegarty & animation..................... Donna Watson Asst unit managers........................... DominicVillella, Exec, producer............................. Hugh Rule Based on the original idea THE BODY BUSINESS Post production................... Computer Video Danny Corcoran Assoc, producer................................... LucilleRogers by..................................... Roger Simpson Company Prod, supervisor..................................DenisePatience Asst co-ordinator.............................Jan Irvine Prod, company....................PBL Productions Photography.......................... David Connell Prod, accountant......................Stan Seserko Length..................................................13x24 mins Dist. company.....................PBL Productions Prod, manager................................. MargaretKossatz Sound recordist...................... Andy Ramage Gauge............................................ Videotape Account assistant................Natalie/Rothman Director.................................Colin Eggleston Unit manager............................................ SueByme Editor............................................... Phil Reid Cast: Presenters: Kate Bradley-French, 1st asst directors..................Bob Donaldson, Scriptwriters............................. Ted Roberts, Prod, secretary....................................MarilenTabacco Prod, designer........................Bernard Hides Phillip Hearnshaw, Michael Fisher Brad Hampton, Kym Lynch.

Prod, accountant............................... JenniferDavies Composer...............................Greg Sneddon Synopsis: Discover the inane, the bizarre, John Powditch Assoc, producer......................i ......Jan Tyrell Prod, assistant.....................................DebbiePackham Exec, producer.................... Roger Simpson the humorous, breathtaking and dangerous 2nd asst directors.................................StuartWood, Prod, co-ordinator................Cathie Flannery 1st asst director......................................... RicLappas Assoc, producer.................. Brian D. Burgess world of animals — and how to toilet-train 2nd asst director.................................. WendyClarke Paul Healey Casting....................................... Joy Sargant Prod, co-ordinator............Rosslyn Abernethy your puppy. The first children’s programme Continuity.............................................. RobinCrawford 3rd asst directors...................................PeterCulpan, Length........................................4 x 60 mins Unit location manager................ Paul Healey utilizing special effects via the Fairlight Casting................................... Lucille Rogers Linsay Smith Gauge.................................................. 35 mm Prod, assistant........................... Jenny Gray Continuity.................................... Jenni Tosi, Synopsis: A mini-series set amid the world Computer Video System.

Camera operator................................... SoniaLeber Prod, accountant.................Candice Dubois Chris O’Connell o f high fashion. A story of romance, glamour, Focus puller........................................... SteveMacDonald 1st asst directors................. John Powditch, POKERFACE Casting...........................Maizels and Assoc. murder and intrigue.

Clapper/loader...............

Valek Sadovchikoff Bob Donaldson Camera operators.................David Connell, Camera assistant............. Steve MacDonald Prod, company........................................ABC 2nd asst director..................................... BrettPoppowell Mark Hayward (Unit A) DANCING DAZE Asst grips..........................Michael de Florio, Dist. company.........................................ABC 3rd asst director.........................................IanKenny John Haddy, Veronica Maughan Director..............................................RichardSarell Prod, company.......................................ABC Continuity...................................... JenniTosi Ron Hagen (Unit B) Electricians............................

Rory Timoney, Scriptwriters...............................................BillGarner, C asting.................................................. M & L Casting Dist. company........................................ABC Camera assistants.......................Greg Ryan, Peter O'Brien Peter Corris Casting consultants.................................. LeeLarner, Producer.................................Jan Chapman David Stevens (Unit A) Boom operator.......................................Phillip Healy Sound recordist......................................... BillDoyle Jo Larner Scriptwriters.......................... Michael Cove, Ian Thorburn, Asst art directors...................................DarrylTilson, Camera operator................................... DavidConnell John Misto, Script edito r..................................Bill Garner Peter Van Santen (Unit B) Lucy Maclaren Focus puller............................................ GregRyanAFTS trainee........................Rosemary Cass Debra Oswald, Prod, designer....................................... FrankEarley Costume designer..................................JaneHowat Clapper/loader.......................................BrucePhillips Mark Stiles Film editors................................................BillMurphy, Key g rip ..................................................... IanBennalfack Make-up.................................................. VickiFriedman Rui De Sousa Key g rip ...................................................... IanBenallack Based on the original idea Grip (Unit B).................................Jack Lester Make-up assistant.................................. Sally Rosenhain Exec, producer.......................................KeithWilkes Asst grip................................. Stuart Crombie b y ........................................Michael Cove, Gaffers...................................Stewart Sorby, Wardrobe.....................................Adele Flere Gaffer.....................................................StuartSorbey Chrissie Koltai Prod, manager............................Geoff Cooke Jack Wight (Unit B) Sound editor...................................... MichaelBladen Unit manager..........................................Anne Bartlett Art director......................................... Virginia Bieneman M usic..................................... Martin Armiger Electrician............................... Peter Moloney Editing assistant....................................... RayBoseley Prod, secretary.....................Tracy Robinson Art dept secretary.................................. MariaPannozzo Choreography........................Chrissie Koltai Boom operators........................................JoeSpinelli, Still photography..............................

VladimirKromas 1st asst director......................................

Peter Murphy Length......................................... 6 x 50 mins Costume designer.................... Jane Hyland Steve James Runner................................................. DianneMcGregor Wardrobe supervisor.............Margot Lindsay Cast: Meryl Tankard (Phoebe Green), Patsy 2nd asst director....................................... JoeWalters Asst art directors....................................PeterKendall, Catering.................................

Jane Lawless, Producer’s assistant....................... ChristineLipari Stephen (Kate Green), Laurence Clifford Standby ward.

David O’Grady, Kim Laufer (Joe Wyatt), Norman Kaye (Stephen Isaacs), Casting................................................... GregApps assistant...........................................Jeanie Cameron Robert Leo Laboratory..........Victorian Film Laboratories Extras casting........................Marion Pearce Paul Chubb (Oliver), Dennis Grosvenor (Col Props buyer............................................ColinRobertson Costume designer.....................Jane Hyland Length................................................

96 mins Lighting cameraman..............

Ian Warburton Blyton), Jane Clifton (Lee Harper), Robin Set construction manager.........Ray Pattison Make-up.................................................FionaCampbell Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Moase (Melissa Carter), Melissa Docker Camera operator.................... Ivan Johnston Asst construction manager..Danny Corcoran Hairdresser.................................Daryl Porter Shooting stock....................................

Kodak Camera assistant..................................Simon Evans (Anita), Alan Wilson (Paul Roper).

Asst accountant.................................... DebraColeWardrobe mistress............... Margot Lindsay Cast: Tina Bursill (Billie), Steve Jacobs Synopsis: The Green sisters leave the pig G rips............................... Tony Woolveridge, Asst editors............................ Peter Burgess, Military dresser.....................Phil Chambers (Richard), Jane Clifton (Lee), Pamela Rabe Phil Oyston Rebecca Grubelich farm in Wagga determined to follow in their Props buyer.................... Keith Handscombe (Margaret), Esben Storm (Paul). mother’s footsteps and go dancing in the Electricians..............................................MickSandy, Military dresser...................... Phil Chambers Props construction.................................PeterO’Brien Synopsis: An independent woman of 35, Andrew Holmes city. They meet up with Joe Wyatt and form Costumiers..................................MaryGazzo Standby props........................................BarryKennedy, Billie decides to have a baby on her own.

Generator operator.............................. D’arcyEvans their own troupe.

Asst wardrobe..........................KathyTurnbull John Whitfield-Moore, The lives she damages on the way because Asst recordists............................

Gary Lund, Storyboard artist....................... Sue Maybury Brian Lange of her determination, are the elements in this Ian Cregan Still photography.....................................SuzyWoods DOUBLE SCULLS Special effects...................Conrad Rothman sensual, bitter-sweet romance.

Production office runner......Cameron Mellor Armorer....................................Mike Warwick Prod, company....................PBL Productions Wardrobe design.................................. DavidWalley Unit publicist..............................Marian Page Set construction...................... Bruce Michell Pty Ltd Wardrobe............................................ NormaLondregan, SPY IN THE FAMILY C atering...............................Beeb Fleetwood Asst editor...............................Peter Burgess Producer............................................ RichardBrennan Rhonda Shallcross Prod, company..................Spy In The Family Mobile bus driver....................................KevinBryant Editing assistant................... Annette Binger Director...................................................... IanGilmour Props buyer........................................... BrentMacDonald Productions Archival research....................................... JillBuckler Mixer......................................David Harrison Scriptwriter.............................................

Chris Peacock Staging...................................................

JohnMcCulloch, Producer.................................Bryce Menzies Mixed a t.................................................. Atlab Stunts co-ordinator.....................Bill Stacey Based on the original idea Glenn Dunham Director....................................... Claire Jager Laboratory...............................................Atlab Still photography..................... Greg Noakes b y........................................................ ChrisPeacock Special effects............................ Rod Clack, Scriptwriters.............................. Claire Jager, Lab. liaison.............................................PeterWillard Title designer.....................David Lancashire Photography..........................................Vince Monton Terry Barrow Tina Meyer Length.................................. 4 x 120 minutes Quartermaster...................Lt Col. Mike Clark Sound recordist........................................Tim Lloyd Publicity................................Georgina Howe Photography.............................. Jaems Grant Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Army liaison................. Major Tony Webster Editor.................................Marc van Buuren Studios.................................................... ABC Sound recordist......................................... PatRske Shooting stock......................................Kodak Horse master............................ Gerald Egan Prod, designer............................. Ross Major Length.........................................3 x 5 0 mins Editor......................................................CraigKirschner Cast: Tracy Mann (Esse Rogers), Andrew Unit nurse............ Patsy Buchan-Hearnshaw Composer..............................................ChrisNeal Cast: Bruno Lawrence (Crawley), Jo Prod, manager....................................... CraigKirschner Clarke (Tony Lawrence).

Publicity......................Suzie Howie Publicity Kennedy (Roxy), Nigel Bradshaw (Campion), Exec, producer...........................................IanBradley 1st asst director..........................Susan Weis Synopsis: A love story and family saga set Story consultant.............. Patsy Adam Smith Tim Robertson (Huck), Richard Moss (Miles), Assoc, producer................................

Michael Midlam Continuity..............................................

FionaCochrane against the turbulence and optimism of Catering.................................. Frank Manley Paul Vane-Mason (Snow), Melita Juristic Prod, manager........................................Julie Monton Clapper/loader........................... Sonia Leber fifteen of the most significant years in Aus­ Laboratory............................................... VFL (Lou), Maud Clark (Steph).

Unit manager...............................................Di Nicholas Camera assistant.......................

Sonia Leber tralia’s history — 1965-1980.

Budget..................................... $8,196 million Prod, secretary......................................PerryStapleton Synopsis: A tale of unemployment, decep­ Gaffer...................................................... MarkGilfedder Length....................................... 5 x 120 mins Prod, accountant.......Moneypenny Services, tion and revenge. An undercover agent from Art director....................... Christine Johnson Gauge.................................................. 16 mm Val Williams the dirty tricks department of an Australian Asst art director..........................Jane Howat THE TRAILBLAZER Shooting stock............. Kodak Eastmancolor Accounts assistant ....Moneypenny Services, security service gets the sack. He plots his Costume designer..................... Jane Howat Cast: Paul Hogan (Pat Cleary), Tony Bonner Robina Osborne comeback with the unwitting assistance of a Prod, company................... PBL Productions Make-up..................................................VickyFiiedman (Harold Armstrong), Andrew Clarke (Martin pair of young would-be terrorists.

1st asst director....................................StuartFreeman Dist. company.....................PBL Productions Runner......................................Peter Jordan Barrington), Patrick Ward (Tom McArthur), 2nd asst director.............................Ian Kenny Creative development Length..........................................................55mins Shane Briant (Kaiser Schmidt), Megan 3rd asst director.........................................IanFreeman producer................................... Joan Long Gauge...................................................16 mm ROBBERY W illiams (Sister Mabel Baker), Noel Continuity..............................................JennyQuigley Scriptwriter............................ Peter V eldham Cast: Dinah Shearing, Edward Hepple, Trevarthen (Field Marshal Haig), Rhys McCasting............................................... Forcast Prod, company............... Indian Pacific Rims Carolyne Howat.

Exec, in charge of Connochie (Lloyd George), Christopher Extras casting.............................. Sue Parker for Network Ten Synopsis: A contemporary drama. production.......................... Stanley Walsh Cummins (Roly Collins), Bill Kerr (Lt Gen. Sir Focus puller................................. Derry Field Producer............................ Michael Thornhill Length........................................... 100 mins John Monash), Ilona Rodgers (Lady Barring­ Clapper/loader.................................... FelicitySurtees Director.............................. Michael Thornhill Gauge...................................................35 mm Key g rip .............................Merv McLaughlin Scriptwriter.................................... Brian Dale Synopsis: Harry Radford steals one thou­ ton), Jim Holt (Dingo Gordon), Jonathan Please help us keep this survey Asst grip.....................................................PatNash Photography................................. Peter Levy sand head of cattle and pioneers the over­ Sweet (Bill “ the Pom” Harris), Jon Blake accurate. Phone Debi Enker on (Flanagan), Peter Finlay (“ Bluey” ), Alec Electrician......................................... StephenCarter Sound recordist......................Kevin Kearney land stock route from southern Queensland (03) 329 5983 with any errors or Gaffer..................................................... PeterO’Brien Editor...................................... Denise Hunter to Adelaide in the 1880s and becomes an Wilson (“ Pudden” Parsons), Mark Hembrow (Dick Baker), David Lynch (Max Eamshaw).

Best b o y ................................................AlleynMearns Prod, co-ordinator....................... Jane Griffin Australian folk hero. omissions.

POST-PRODUCTION

CINEMA PAPERS September — 55

May-June 1985 1. An indecent Obsession

Total: $111,881

Total: $24,650

Total: $73,343

2. Robbery Under Arms Total: $33,992

Total: $9,660

10,000

1 '2 '3 '4 5 ' 6 ' 7 ' 8 ' 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

ADELAIDE

BRISBANE

M ELBO URNE

PERTH

3. World Safari II

SYDNEY

Total: $23,821

Total: $23,821

ADELAIDE

BRISBANE

M ELBO URNE

1 2 '3 '4 V e V V g

PERTH

1'2 3 V 5 V 7 V 9

SYDNEY

Week 1: 28 April-4 May Week 2: 5-11 May Week 3: 12-18 May Week 4: 19-25 May Week 5: 26 May-1 June Week 6: 2-8 June Week 7: 9-15 June Week 8: 16-22 June Week 9: 23-29 June

Australia’s Top Three Grossers for May June 1985 Beverly Hills Cop $4,651,740

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment

ADELAIDE

BRISBANE

M ELBO URNE

With Australian box office in general very much up and down over the past two months, the careers of the latest Australianmade features have been equally patchy.

At least, however, there has been more than one film to talk about, as was the case in our last issue.

March-April’s lone Aussie film, Robbery Under Arms, is still on the books in MayJune, continuing its reasonably successful runs in Adelaide — its home territory — and Perth. It also had a brief canter up north in Brisbane, where it netted a fairly dismal $9,660 — not a great deal more than the weekly totals for that old OE war horse, World Safari II, which hit Queensland a couple of weeks later.

Clear leader among the local movies, however, was An Indecent Obsession, which overcame — or, more properly, ignored — a batch of hostile reviews to do well over a hundred grand’s worth of business in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Its release was deftly timed to coincide with the much-hyped publication of Ms McCullough’s latest international buck-buster, A Creed for the Third Mil­ lenium, which was likewise met with a barrage of critical rubbishings and a rush to buy.

56 — September CINEMA PAPERS

PERTH

SYDNEY

Not that there has been a stampede to the box office by patrons wishing to see the film version of Ms McCullough’s Pacific psychiatric sqga. But the opening weeks’ business was fair in Adelaide, good in Mel­ bourne, and particularly impressive in Sydney. As producers have been able to note in the past, Colleenies can be a force to reckon with at the box office.

The only real pattern to emerge from this year’s box offices so far is the different cinematic preferences of the different state capitals. In Sydney, they were quite kind to The Coolangatta Gold and clearly warmed to An Indecent Obsession, while Adelaide remained loyal to Robbery Under Arms, and Perth went its own way, flocking off to see World Safari II and being even kinder than Adelaide to

Robbery.

But, while the figures for An Indecent Obsession — or, for that matter, World Safari II, the January-February Australian leader — look OK on their own, they pale a little when set against the figures for the major American hits of the same period.

Obsession’s May-June total of $111,881 in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, for instance, can hardly measure up to Beverly Hills Cop’s nationwide figure of $913,070

for the first week in May, which was its fourth week out.

The Eddie Murphy vehicle, which opened in the second week in April, also managed to keep ahead of its main rival,

Police Academy 2: Their First Assign­ ment, on a nationwide basis for all but one of the weeks in question. Its figures held strong throughout the period, only begin­ ning to taper slowly off towards the end of June.

The other cop picture had three very strong weeks at the start of its escapade — from 5 to 25 May — then dropped down to a national figure of $450,980 for its fourth week and, by week 8, was down below the $200,000 mark, with a total of $188,720.

Fortunately for national pride, the third highest-grossing foreign film had a distinct Australian flavour: Peter Weir’s Witness, which opened with a fair $167,830, but spent the rest of May and June well over the $200,000 mark. Week 4 was its best, with $252,900 nationwide, but week 7 was still only a few bucks below that figure, with $250,040. " Apart from those three, box-office business in May-June seems to have been dominated by four healthy survivors from the previous months: The Neverending

Story, which Australia has taken to its heart, and which has been spinning its web since Christmas; Amadeus, whose worldwide success has been echoed downunder; and two flagships of the current ‘British revival’, A Passage to India and The Killing Fields, both of which continue to do well.

Other movies that have had strong openings — $50,000 or more in Melbourne and Sydney — are Starman, with a first week of $141,140; the Ewok caper, Caravan of Courage, with $77,720; Cannon’s Exterminator 2, with $75,530; The Falcon and the Snowman, which had a somewhat art-oriented release, but opened with $67,490; the Tom Selleck movie Runaway, with $56,970; and Ladyhawke ($53,380) and The Company of Wolves ($51,960). Neither of the last two, it is interesting to note, did anything like the business they did in the States and, in the case of the latter at least, in Britain.

Looking ahead to July and August, there can be no doubt which film will dominate the Australian figures for those months: Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, which opened on 8 August. On the import front, the biggies look like being Desperately Seeking Susan and, above all, Rambo:

First Blood Part II.

F ilm A u stra lia So many people came out of Film Australia — that makes it sound like a prison! — but it nurtured so many careers. I was not conscious of the length of time I was there, because of the wide variety of work; and Film Australia seemed to be the only place that had the budget to make a good film that was a non-commercial prop­ osition. I did an enormous am ount of work with people like Carl Schultz, Ken Cameron, Ken Hannam , Don Crombie, Arch Nicholson . . . it was a wonderful training ground. And there was a tribe of guys who were all very good, devoted cameramen — Mike Bourneham , Kerry Brown, Andy Fraser and Ross King: if they had been in the commercial world outside, doing features or commercials, they would have been successful.

D o cu m en ta ries I just recently did some documentary stuff which is the first time for a hell of a while. I found that it was like I had had my wings clipped for three or four years, and then grown feathers again.

It was with Phil Collins, and it’s a documentary on his tour of Australia and Japan. To have a camera on my shoulder again and not to have to light anything because of high-speed stocks and super-speed lenses, and just follow this man and his band and fans around all over the country — dark, light, shade, inside, outside, upside down, anywhere . . . It was just pheno­ menal. You record it, capture it and become part of it, but technically there is no style in it: there is something happening in front of you that is only going to happen once and you have to capture it.

I don’t know that the documentaries I’ve done have been an influence on the way I’ve photographed the land­ scape as much as it has been a lack of doing it any other way. I didn’t have the experience of being brought up doing commercials where all the tricks are pulled out. A lot of the camera people doing features are used to those techniques for making every moment in a commercial a special one. In a documentary, you don’t do that.

F irst m eetin g s w ith M a d M ax While I was on Hoodwink, I got a call about doing Mad Max 2 . 1 didn’t know anything about the first Mad Max, so I went and saw it. I thought it was reasonable, so I met George [Miller] and Byron [Kennedy] at an office in the city. I thought, “ Wow! These guys look pretty good!” George had a little bow-tie on, and Byron was all dressed up. So I said, “ Yes, I ’ll do it” .

With Mad Max 2, George was very specific with his shots, because he’d learned on Mad Max what cuts and what doesn’t. I remember suggesting a wonderful shot to George of a car flying through the air: it would have looked great. But George said, “ It won’t cut” . I said, “ W hat do you mean? It’s a great shot: it’ll cut.” And I remember him describing to me the left of the screen and the right of the screen, and how this shot was to be a second long, and the shot before was

half-a-second long and, in the action, your eyes were on the left-hand side of the screen. By the time people had reacted to the change of shot and got their eyes across to the other side of the screen, the shot would be over. No matter how good the shot was, it was never going to work.

George’s cuts are really quick, so every shot had to have good dynamics and good perspective. If you flatten stuff out in a chase picture, it slows it down. That means wide-angle work — in fairly close, with wide lenses mounted on the vehicles or on tracking vehicles to get visual pace and speed.

On Mad Max 2, George very much controlled the placement of the cameras, even in multi-camera set-ups.

We would move a camera a dozen times to get it right. We’d put it in one place, line up the vehicles, then move it a bit to the left, a bit to the right, up a bit, down a bit, back a bit, in a b i t . . . and maybe finish up back where we started. But it’s that attention to detail that makes the film what it is.

S h o o tin g Thunderdome in th e d esert In Beyond Thunderdome, the desert landscapes are very stark. They were shot outside Coober Pedy — very awe­ inspiring country. We were shooting there in temperatures of 40 and 50 degrees Celsius. It was difficult enough to look after the equipment in that heat: the temperature in the camera van was 52 degrees! Difficult for us, but even more difficult for the performers — Tina in her chainmail, for example.

We also shot at Kurnell, which is a beautiful area if shot correctly. On one of our first days shooting there, a howling wind storm came up. We could barely stand up and the canteen was completely washed out with sand.

We only got half-a-dozen shots during the period, but they are in the film and they look fantastic.

Another phenomenon that appears in the film was a dust storm at Coober Pedy. It was three or four miles high and 30 miles wide. We saw it coming when we were shooting aerials with the helicopter of the little aeroplane we had for the picture. To get them safely back to base, .we sent them off, and Richard Merryman took the camera and travelled back with Terry Lee, who is the best chopper pilot for filming. W hat they got was absolutely fantastic: the aeroplane was a tiny cross against this gigantic red dust storm rolling across the plain.

L ig h tin g Thunderdome Bartertown was a big job with power into all the buildings, including Tina’s penthouse, which was 50 feet in the air. It was about two-thirds scale, and the interior was built in the Cattle Pavilion at the Sydney Showgrounds.

The design was beautiful — a five­ sided thing — and I fell into a bit of a trap, because I’d ordered eight arcs to surround the penthouse. It was all surrounded with gauze, and I put scrims outside of that and lit them with arcs. Even with the eight lights, I was shooting almost wide-open on high­ speed stock inside. It was a beautiful soft light, and I kept the colour very cool in there.

It was also great having so many faces to light. Tina is a beautiful lady with this very earthy quality, and Mel works under any light: you can put him under a fluoro and he looks a million dollars.

The Crack in the Earth had a special look, because of that soft toplight that left a lot of dark shadows underneath the faces. There was the underground where the pigs were, which I wanted to keep low-key and sinister. It was lit with some very direct overhead narrow spots mounted thirty feet in the air, plus some practicáis, and that was it, just touching up some of the close-ups.

Ironically, one of the biggest lighting set-ups was on the model stuff of devastated Sydney at the end of the picture. Again we had eight arcs and six of the big maxi-brutes lighting up the painted background, because we were shooting at 40 to 64 frames and stopping right down to f . 16 or f.22 to make it look realistic.

We did a travelling sun, which I’m not sure has made it into the final cut.

But the model buildings were about

In 1960, when Australian television was four years old, Dean Semler was seventeen and just starting work as a props boy at the Channel 9 studios in Adelaide. 25 years later, he qualifies as a member of the Television Pioneers, a group of TV industry people with that length of service. He is also one of our top directors of photography. Since his first feature film, Let the Balloon Go (1975), made when he was at Film Australia, his big-screen work has included Hoodwink, Mad Max 2, Kitty and the Bagman, Undercover, Razorback, The Coca-Cola Kid and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Fred Harden spoke with him in Sydney on the eve of the premiere of Thunderdome.

■ F f m f f f F F é : if x

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Filmmaking with a bang: the refinery goes up in Mad Max 2 — not the sort o f shot at which you get a second go. :

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fifteen to twenty feet deep and about five or six feet high. We started a track from one end, and directly across from us was an arc facing into the lens. It was gelled down to look very gold. We filled the place up with smoke and, as we started to track to simulate flying, I moved the arc across as well, which gives that fantastic perspective like when you’re travelling in a car and the sun moves with you. It gave it enormous depth.

Stunts You have to be very bold in photo­ graphing a picture like Mad Max. When stunt people are getting them­ selves psyched up and they’re absol­ utely ready, it’s like a piece of fruit that will drop if it’s not picked at the right time. Or, if it’s picked early, it’s not ready. If you have to change the aperture on all four cameras, you are going to blow the shot. It changes the moment and possibly makes it more dangerous, so you can’t worry about opening up half a stop on one camera or a third of a stop on another: you have to go with it.

On the Mad Max films, we had what we call a ‘Ned Kelly’ — a little, hard-front Arriflex camera built into a quarter-inch steelplate housing, and we put this camera down close to impact in a stunt. It took a fair bit of setting: you had to rest it on sandbags, secure it and lock it off, because the lid had to come off if you wanted to adjust the aperture or the focus or the speed. It was normally with a fairly wide lens, and in close.

In Mad Max 2, where the tanker is driving down the hill and the car was set stationary in the middle of the road with nobody in it, the tanker drove down at maybe 40 or 50 m .p.h. to break up the car, which had been

“ Mel works under any light: you can put him under a fluoro and he looks a million dollars” specially cut apart by the special effects guy so it would fall into a million pieces. We had a Ned Kelly set about 20 yards down the road, looking at the impact, which was a fantastic shot.

Unfortunately, the chassis stayed intact and, when it was hit by the truck, it came in an absolute straight line at the Ned Kelly! In the rushes, you can see it coming straight towards the lens and then smashing. The Ned Kelly was in a round form in those days, resting in a car tyre. When it was hit, it went in the air like a football, and rolled with the camera in it. The battery lead was severed, so the film stopped. It rolled down the hill into the bush, and the guys ran down and got it. The shot was saved right up to the point of impact. In fact, Bill Gooley at Colorfilm was watching rushes and he said, “ Oh, more cars driving, more stunts . . . ” Then the stunt came up and he ducked behind his seat, it was so real. It’s easy to see why you don’t have operators on those shots.

Byron used to say that, in a stunt, you can cut anything together that has been shot at any time of day and in any weather — raining, rainbows, what­ ever . . . He was absolutely right,

58 — September CINEMA PAPERS

because in Mad Max 2 we shot in back­ light, front-light, side-light, with no continuity of lighting. In a chase sequence where you have developed so much energy and excitement, if there’s a shot th at’s a second-and-a-half long with a grey sky behind it, you’ll never ring up the cinema and have it closed.

Cars and things In Razorback, most of the stuff of Judy Morris in the car wasn’t on location, but was shot in Mort Bay against black drapes. There is even a shot where I cringe, because I can see a wrinkle in the curtains behind the car.

It was on rockers, there were wind machines and dust, and there was a lot of movement of the camera — very aggressive. I ’d learned from Mad Max 2 that there is an art to simulated travel, and I ’m getting close to it. It means never being timid about how much you move the camera. On Max, I would be wobbling the camera on the fluid head and George would come up and kick the tripod and whack the side of the camera. In rushes, it would add enormous energy to the scene. There were some of those shots that they even added more shudder to optically at the lab.

There was some stuff we shot hanging on to the front of the tanker in Max. The grip had built a gimble for the camera, and I was trying to hold my eye to this floating Arri. In the end, I closed the eye piece and just aimed it.

I was strapped on tightly, but I said to George, “ I ’m not sure if you’ve got anything, but there may be an exciting moment” . Sure enough, the move­ ment on the rushes was so violent: you might only have had ten frames that were registered, but you wouldn’t get it any other way.

coverage out at rehearsals with the artists. And they all fit into the sets once they’re there.

T he lo c a tio n s on th a t were beautiful, and the sets were fantastic. I worked with an assistant cameraman and a focus puller called Stephen Dobson, who was ready — absolutely ready — to go and shoot stuff himself: he was a very keen, very talented young focus puller. He had some stockings that he used to pull out and

“ When stunt people are psyched up and absolutely ready, it’s like a piece of fruit that will drop if it’s not picked at the right time” do stills and play around with. I did some tests on them and it finished up we shot the whole picture with them.

They were called ‘the CD 7’ — the Christian Dior 7. It would have been more appropriate if they had been Berlei stockings, but the effect was beautiful and they worked superbly through the whole picture.

I also tried not to work at great aper­ tures, like f.8, f. 11, f. 16, f.22 and stuff like that. Even on the exterior loca­ tions, we had the bright old hot Aus­ tralian sun, so we were shooting at f.2.8 on Anamorphic, in daylight, which was beautiful. It gave us a long separation between foreground and background and, with the stockings, the backgrounds went like pastel p a in tin g s, which was a lovely approach. The light was very soft.

Sm oke

Russell Mulcahy and

Undercover was a pretty smoky picture, considering there was no real motivation for the smoke to be around. I like using smoke because it is a multi-layered filter, different to a fog or diffusion filter. Smoke gives you many dimensions of the image.

After Undercover, I said I wasn’t going to use smoke on my next picture.

But that was Razorback, and there’s more smoke on that than you’ve ever seen! So, after Razorback, I resolved not to use smoke or backlight, and try for wind or sound or something different. Then Thunderdome ends up with heaps of smoke in it!

In Thunderdome, we had a special travelling smoke machine on wheels that was designed by the guy who taught me news filming 25 years ago: Brian Bosisto, who now designs cranes and tracking vehicles.

He designed this thing with two Holden engines on the back of this little truck, with two fans mounted on them. You could swivel them around with smokers connected to them or feed dust into them — whatever you like. He filled a valley in South Aus­ tralia for the filming of Robbery Under Arms and it took half-an-hour for it to clear! He’s a brilliant engineer and one of Australia’s true characters.

Razorback

Undercover I honestly don’t remember talking to David Stevens about a style on Under­ cover. But David was very specific about his shots: he works all of his

I remember that McElroys were talking about Razorback when we were doing Return to Eden. I got a call from Hal, saying “ Are you inter­ ested?” So I met this young guy, Russell, and saw his clips and show­ reel. He’d just seen some stuff I’d done, and we hit it off great guns from the word go. He is incredibly inventive — a little bit bold, of course. He taught me that a low-angle shot is not necessarily six inches above the ground: half-an-inch above the ground is really much better. There is an enor­ mous difference. So you dig holes: you put a camera in a hole and it works.

If the thing looked good, you made it look better until it looked fantastic, and then Russell was happy. The classic example is when we were on a location survey at a cave at Whitecliffs, because the two baddies in the film lived in a cave. There were some fantastic caves, which would have been ideal for them. I said, “ Well, they’re perfect” . And he said, “ No: I want to build it!” It seemed an incredible waste of money, but they built this damn cave and, if you’ve seen Razorback, it was a brilliant piece of set design. Had they lived in a conven­ tional cave, which I think any other director might have let them live in, it would have worked perfectly. But Russell had a cave built that was 100 feet long and 60 feet high, with tunnels. It was lit with arcs on cherrypickers outside, punching light through these holes like daylight

pouring into the caves. It worked very well. It was just going an extra step out of convention, and Russell did that all the time.

I was going to do this Highlander thing with him. It’s a beautiful story set in two periods — the 1600s in the highlands of Scotland and contem­ porary M anhattan. We negotiated and did deals with producers and agents and people over there. It was a big job — six months in Britain, with fairly big pre-production. So, we packed up home and my daughter was taken out of school and we arranged for corres­ pondence lessons for that length of time.

But poor dummy me hadn’t signed a contract! We were in the middle of America somewhere, and I got a call saying, “ You can’t bring your gaffer over because there is a union problem” . That was very disappoint­ ing, because Johnny M orton and I had worked closely together for five or six years.

Still, I was asked to go over and do a survey anyway, in the meantime hoping we might be able to get it. But while I was there, there were two or three union meetings in London and, on each count, I was knocked back. At the same time, another guy, Miroslav O n d ricek , th e C zech o slo v ak ian cameraman who shot Amadeus, was trying to get in to do Hugh H udson’s next picture, Revolution. He didn’t get in, either. The two of us went home with our tails between our legs.

Foreigners working here and Australians working there With Highlander, the English people said, “ We try to work in Australia and can’t ” . So, I mean, what do you do?

They’re protecting theirs and we’re protecting ours. I think it’s a pity it can’t be shared a bit — that we can’t let a certain amount of people in, like writers or cameramen or special effects technicians — people that we could learn from.

We had an American special effects guy, Mike Wood, here for Thunder­ dome, whom I got fairly close to. Just some of the tiny things he does every

“ On Max, I would be wobbling the camera on the fluid head and George would come up and kick the tripod and whack the side of the camera. In rushes, it would add enormous energy to the scene” week over there that we haven’t been exposed to . . . time-saving, money­ saving: very productive stuff. H e’d come up with materials that we hadn’t used that are readily available here, but they’re not being used for that specific purpose in film.

He did things like Poltergeist, which he got an Academy nomination for, and Firestarter, and the American stuff on Indiana Jones. People like that you should let in. And it would be nice to see an American cameraman

or an English cameraman work over here. It would be nice for the young guys — assistants, grips and everybody else — to experience that. The problem is, how many, and who decides?

I find a lot of the restrictions very negative. I just like to get on with it and get it done. I’d like to shoot the European system, where you start at 11 o’clock in the morning and have a really nice lunch and a glass of wine, and then you shoot through to eight o’clock at night. Poor Russell on Razorback would be sitting around waiting for the sun to come up or something to happen and, just as you were ready, someone would come out and call “ Tea break!” and you’d miss out on the shot anyway: every­ body would rush off to the table to get the bacon rolls. I can remember turning around and seeing Russell standing there thinking, “ What the hell is going on, you know, when we’re trying to make a picture?” He operates on a rock-clip system, where you shoot 30 hours straight and you get every­ thing done. It’s high energy, and everyone loves it.

The Americans work twelve hours straight. I’ve just done a picture in Singapore for Columbia Television called Passion Flower, with Bruce Boxleitner, and directed by Joe Sar­ gent, who’s got a track record a mile long. It was thirteen one-hour episodes and a budget of something like $40 million — enormous! We shot for five weeks in Singapore, and pulled out four days early; but they were six-day weeks with twelve-hour days, plus travel and rushes — the first ones I’d done. They were very draining, par­ ticularly in the Singapore heat.

When we first got over there, there was a very definite feeling from the Americans that they were the film­

Dean Semler (left) on set with Joseph Sargent and (inset) getting his AFI A ward on location from wife Anne and George Miller.

makers and we were something unknown. They’ve just rung back say­ ing they want to do another one in Tahiti, but we’re all booked up.

I think our top Australian crews are more relaxed. I did a shoot in England recently — a commercial for American television — and I wasn’t quite sure what I had to say to whom, because you were always stepping on some­ body’s toes. Whereas over here you can say, “ Listen, sport, I need that over here” , and they’ll say, “ Oh, go bite your bum: that’s his job!” . But people sort of chip in here and help each other out. If you ask a grip to move a light a little for you, he will.

But if I had a light moved in England by any other person but the person who was supposed to have moved it, I would have been in more strife than a virgin at a butchers’ picnic!

Future plans I’ve just bought the rights to a book that I’m going to turn into a feature.

I’m writing a script at the moment, and I want to direct and shoot it myself. To me, it’s the most important thing that’s happened in my career, and it’s happened at exactly the right time. I’d come back from what I thought was going to be a wonderful opportunity to shoot a picture overseas, which turned out to be a fairly bitter experience, and it hurt.

When I got back, there was a letter on my doorstep from my mother with a little clipping. My mother lives on the river Murray in South Australia. She

sent me a clipping saying “ Possum to be made into a film” . My ears pricked up and I read a simple little story in the lobal paper saying that a local police­ man had written a book about an old bush hermit in Renmark, the town where I was born. His book had sold thousands of copies and, as a result, he’d had offers from people to make a film of it. I thought I’d better give this guy a ring, because I remembered him from when I was a kid. He’s now a man in his late sixties, and I rang up the police station and the post office to get his number. I said, “ Max Jones?

It’s Dean Semler here. I used to live in 19th Street, just opposite the railway station, and I remember you.” And he said, “ Ah, yeah?” And I said, “ I’m in the film business now and I’ve made a

“ Russell taught me that a low-angle shot is not necessarily six inches above the ground: half-aninch above the ground is really much better. So you dig holes’’ few films, and I’ve heard you’ve had a few offers for filming the Possum story” . He said, “ Yeah, yeah: there’s about half-a-dozen. I really don’t know what to do.”

Next thing, Anne and I went over there, spent a day or two with Max on the river and bought the rights to his book to write the film. It’s a beautiful story and I’m writing it at the moment. The little time I get between

shooting, I put pen to paper — Sundays, normally. I put in ten to twelve hours on a Sunday; I’m a third of the way through the draft, and it’s looking pretty good at the moment, although I’ve never written anything before. I was going to get a writer in, but it’s a bit too personal: I’m too close to it, because I know all the people in his book; I know the area, and I know the story of this old hermit. So I’ve got to do it. I’m writing in pictures — in cuts: I can’t write it any other way.

I’m doing Carl Schultz’s next picture, a thing called The Trailblazer, in late September, for PBL. It’s a terrific script. I came home on Satur­ day night, having shot all week, and on Saturday nights you get home and normally drop. I thought, “ I’ll have a quick read of this, because I have to read it over the weekend” . I picked it up, and I’d read it before dinner. I fell about in the chair! It’s as funny as hell.

So, that’s going to be nice. And then, next year, I’m doing George Ogilvie’s picture — a thing called The Bee-Eater — in January or February.

We’re looking at using SuperTechniscope for The Trailblazer — that’s the format they shot Greystoke in. There will be a picture shot out here using that very soon, I’m sure. There are about a dozen features in the States that are being shot that way, which is the first time that there has been any real alternative to Panavision. A picture can be shot with spherical lenses, and the full-frame gate image is cropped to a 2.35:1 ratio and blown up to an anamorphic squeezed print and projected anamorphic. There are some advantages and some disadvantages.

The Panavision gear is very good, but this is something new which it would be interesting for me to try. + CINEMA PAPERS September — 59

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M el’s way MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME If, as the theme song tells us, “ we don’t need another hero” , it is probably because co-writers Terry Hayes and George Miller have gradually moulded their protagonist into a universal representation of heroism.

Through what can now be seen as the 'Mad Max Trilogy’, the title character (Mel Gibson) has evolved to incorporate bits and pieces from a host of literary, historical and cinematic sources.

A quintessential loner, he carries his private moral code and turbulent past as his armour, battling through adversity with the same stoicism that characterized his ancestors, be they gladiators, gunslingers, adventurers, samurai, medieval knights, defenders of underdogs or dispensers of vigilante justice.

In Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, the old attributes — courage, a sense of justice, a wry humour and an instinct for survival — remain. But new dimensions are added: Max is no longer quite so mad.

His paternal role, bringing with it a com­ passion that died with his family in the original film, is revived; added to it is an un­ abashed representation of Max as the biblical hero of the eighties, striding through trial and salvation, acceptance and exile, loyalty and deception, worship and humiliation.

The film begins with a brief réintroduction of the character, then moves to Bartertown, a cavernous mecca for hawkers, which recalls the moneylenders whom Christ found conducting business in the temple.

Following several high-spirited adventures in this bizarre bazaar, Max is driven into the desert, where he languishes until rescued

by Savannah Nix (Helen Buday) and her tribe of children.

The Max character then begins to take on a dash of Moses guiding the lost tribe to the Promised Land, a hint of the long-awaited saviour and a pinch of the reluctant prophet. To complete the analogy, Max literally offers himself as a sacrifice to ensure the freedom of the children during the customary climactic chase at the end of the film.

And, if the biblical analogy seems appro­ priate for the hero, it is equally relevant to the role played by history and the signifi­ cance that the film lends to storytelling. In the post-holocaust wasteland, an oral history — an unwritten bible — recited by the children with the sort of reverence tradi­ tionally reserved for church and Sunday school, becomes the thread that distin­ guishes primitive barbarity from primitive civilisation.

The children worship the remembered remnants of a lost culture, recite stories of heroes and saviours, and see these tales as a guiding light to a brighter future. By contrast, the inhabitants of Bartertown, led by a superbly regal feudal founder, Aunty Entity (Tina Turner), have no time for history or stories, and are openly contemptuous of them.

The kids are characterized by optimism, a strong sense of community, compassion and faith. Bartertown is dominated by an elite who have few dreams beyond immediate personal gain, and no memories beyond chop-licking recollections of dogeat-dog victories on The Day After.

While Max, Savannah and Aunty are linked by their determination to survive and achieve their personal goals, only Savannah, the custodian of history, can be a part of the future, by virtue of her under­ standing of the importance of the past.

Max, like Moses, is destined not to enter the Promised Land.

Like all myths, though, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome is laced with humour; and, within the film’s sophisticated Saturday-matinee style of action, there are a number of pointed parodies that are highly entertaining.

The movie is littered with references to popular film and television. There may be biblical echoes in the first glimpse of Bartertown, but it is also comparable to the bar scene in Star Wars, in which Luke (Mark Hamill) first clapped eyes on the assortment of weird and wonderful types from worlds that were alien to him, but of which he would soon be a part.

There are tongue-in-cheek references to Indiana Jones and his “ I don’t believe this” brand of heroism, when Max duplicates the trademark Indiana gag, blasting his way into Bartertown. And, while the opening scene recalls the aeroplane attack in North

by Northwest, a scratch beneath the surface reveals elements of films as diverse as Lord of the Flies, The Searchers and

Lawrence of Arabia.

The Thunderdome itself resembles a playful exaggeration of the wrestling that has recently re-emerged on primetime tele­ vision, though this arena would make Jack Little balk. And the wheel of fortune that

Bringing home a big Max: Helen Buday as Savannah Nix and Mark Kounas as Gekko in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. spins Max off into the gulag is a very thinly disguised game show send-up, complete with two scantily-clad presenters, aptly named Tweedledum and Tweedledummer.

The culture of Bartertown is a monument to a civilisation that has reduced everything to the level of a quickly digestible slogan, in the guise of ‘helping build a better tomorrow’.

The abundance of references to popular culture, biblical and mythic stories, and Max’s new-found compassion and humour, though, do combine to make him an enduring and appealing hero. And, despite the mythic structure, what characterizes the film — and what makes it so entertaining — is an affection for the quirks of popular culture, a reverence for the skills and scope of adventure filmmaking, and an intelligent awareness of the elements that have made legends endure.

DebiEnker Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome: Directed

by George Miller and George Ogilvie. Pro­ ducer: George Miller. Co-producers: Doug Mitchell and Terry Hayes. Associate pro­ ducers: Steve Amezdroz and Marcus D’arcy.

Screenplay: Terry Hayes and George Miller.

Director of photography: Dean Semler. Music: Maurice Jarre. Editor: Richard Francis-Bruce.

Visual design consultant: Ed Verreaux. Pro­ duction design: Graham Walker. Costumes:

Norma Moriceau. Sound supervisor: Roger Savage. Stunt co-ordinator: Grant Page. Cast: Mel Gibson (Mad Max), Tina Turner (Aunty Entity), Helen Buday (Savannah Nix), Frank Thring (The Collector), Angelo Rossitto. (The Master), Paul Larsson (The Blaster), Angry Anderson (Ironbar), Robert Grubb (Pigkiller), Bruce Spence (Jedediah), George Spartels (Blackfinger), Edwin Hodgeman (Dr Deal-, good), Rod Zuanlc (Scrooloose), Mark Spain (Mr Spyfish). Production company: Kennedy Miller. Distributor: Roadshow. 70 and 35mm.

106 minutes. Australia. 1985.

Sex and violence BROKEN MIRRORS Audiences should beware of concluding that the films of Marleen Gorris are con­ cerned solely with differences of gender. To do so would be to do them an injustice: it would be to refuse to engage in the ques­ tions she raises.

In A Question of Silence (De Stilte Rond Christine M, 1982) she posed the theoretical question of what if women were to commit the same senseless acts of aggression against men as men do against women. Through the story of three women, she analysed the treatment of women in general by a variety of institutions: prisons, psychiatry, political economy and the law.

CINEMA PAPERS September — 61

Film Reviews In doing so, she also looked at the feminist issues of language, voice and power.

Broken Mirrors (Gebroken Spiegels), on the other hand, is a more explicit statement about the violence of men against women, and the questions posed in it are of a more directly political and socio­ logical kind, begging the ones of who these characters are and what sort of society it is that produces them.

In both her films, Gorris has used the thriller format, and she is clearly well aware of the genre’s potential as a story-telling device: the obvious advantage is that it immediately asks whodunnit and why, thereby implicitly raising questions about the psychology and motivations of the characters.

Broken Mirrors consists of two seemingly disconnected stories. The first is a stylized one about a faceless man who kidnaps women and gains pleasure from slowly torturing them. The other is a more natural story of two women who work in a brothel, which is known — rather cynically — as ‘The Happy House’.

On closer examination, however, these two elements are not as disconnected as they initially appear. In fact, they can be seen as the converse of each other, both representing fiction and reality. If we believe that the brothel setting represents reality by virtue of its being an immediate and identifi­ able context, then it is possible to read the second story as a fiction, because it is removed to a stylized theatrical distance.

If, however, prostitution is seen as the (metaphorical) fiction for the way people treat each other, then it is conversely poss­ ible to perceive the anonymous male as representing the recognizable but unidenti­ fiable threat of potential violence experi­ enced by women.

All women have known the fear of potential violence. Though thrillers and other narratives which play on the insecurities of women have turned it into a stereotyped

Centre-frame women: Diane (Lineke Rijxman) looks up to a Happy House client in Marleen Gorris’s Broken Mirrors.

62 — September CINEMA PAPERS

situation and a vehicle for entertainment, every woman will recall times when she has felt physically or psychologically abused, imprisoned or defeated by father, brother, friend, lover or male relation. For, outside the cinema, the reality is that violence is often closer to hand than the unknown bogey-man lurking around the laneways.

Gorris astutely characterizes the faceless man as a well-to-do business executive, serving to remind us that violence is not restricted to any one class, and that both the aggressors and the receivers of violence come from all strata of society.

Violence is pernicious, and is equally ruthless when thinly veiled by the politeness of the middle classes — a point well directed at the art-house audiences who are likely to see Broken Mirrors in Australia, exposing the ease with which people can hide their personal responsi­ bilities for such viciousness.

Like A Question of Silence, Broken Mirrors is a slick film. Throughout it, we are presented with ideas that are cinematically confident and assured, and the wellexecuted components of script, direction, acting, cinematography and music all work together to produce a good-looking piece of cinema.

But, unlike A Question of Silence, Broken Mirrors is undermined by its bleakness, leaving many women feeling pursued and attacked by information they already know, while many men may feel pushed away without having anywhere to go.

'

'

While the film may — with due allowance for dramatic exaggeration — represent the realistic scope of violence in our society, if it fails to engage men in questioning this aspect of their social behaviour or in under­ standing what women have been saying now for a considerable period of time, then its success is hard to gauge. A Question of Silence did not present answers, but it did offer friendship, support and collabora­ tion as a more viable place from which to begin. In that respect, Broken Mirrors offers nothing.

We have now seen two films by Marleen

Gorris, one dealing with abstract theoretical questions about relationships between women and men, the other more directly with the violence of men against women.

Unless it is just that I want a happy ending, however, it looks like we .shall have to wait for a third before we see any integration of the themes, and an equal dialogue occurring between men and women.

Sally Semmens

Broken Mirrors (Gebroken Spiegels): Directed and written by Marleen Gorris. Pro­ ducer: Matthijs van Heijningen. Director of photography: Frans Bromet. Editor: Hans van Dongen. Art direction: Harry Ammerlaan.

Music: Lodewijk De Boer. Sound: Danniel Danniel. Cast: Lineke Rijxman (Diane), Henri­ etta ToI (Dora), Edda Barends (Bea), Coby Stunnenberg (Ellen), Carla Hardy (Irma), Marijke Veugelers (Francine), Arline Renfurm (Tessa), Anke Van’t Hoff (Linda). Production company: Sigma Films. Distributor: Ronin.

35mm. 112 minutes. Netherlands. 1984.

(Dutch language, English subtitles.)

Where no culture flies MORRIS W EST’S THE NAKED COUNTRY In Suspects, a metafictional exercise by film critic-cum novelist David Thompson, the author slyly shuffles some well-loved movie characters and deals a few new relation­ ships off the bottom of the deck.

Joel Cairo and Sidney Gutman, for example, end up as bridge-playing bores in some regional spa and, beyond Casa­ blanca, the ‘beautiful friendship’ between Rick Blaine and Louis Renault blossoms into a full-scale love affair. Richard Gere’s Julian in American Gigolo becomes the

Flask-master: Ivar Kants, opposite, as the drunken policeman, Neil Adams, in Morris West's The Naked Country. product of a late-blooming relationship between Chinatown’s Noah Cross (John Huston) and Body Heat’s Matty (Kathleen Turner). Or is it Jake Gittes and Miss Wonderly . . .?

Any number can play. Suggestions, then, on a postcard, for the progenitors of John Stanton and his gently loitering wife, Rebecca Gilling; of Ivar Kants’s cynical rural copper with a bottle; and of heavy­ breasted Neela Dey and sturdy Tommy Lewis in Tim Burstall’s Morris West’s The

Naked Country.

Stanton’s station owner is easy: with a build like the North Face of the Eiger and a jaw straight off Mount Rushmore, he is clearly the elder brother of Anthony Steel in Where No Vultures Fly (1951). While Tony did the decent thing in Africa, Jack punches cattle and keeps the fuzzy-wuzzies in their place down under. And surely Kants is the remittance-man grandson of Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr, the lovers of King Solomon’s Mines (1950). We always knew it would end in tears.

As for Ms Dey (aka Mrs Burstall), a Eurasian co-opted into playing an Austra­ lian aboriginal, she carries the blood line of Laya Raki’s Maori princess in The Seekers (1954), whose bare breasts, rising dripping from some Elstree tank, reduced Jack Hawkins to porridge back in 1954. And Rebecca Gilling, fresh from her triumph as an alligator’s entree in Return to Eden, here embodies another archetype: The Planter’s Wife, no better than she should be, going down to a charming cad in the great tradition of Bette Davis and Joan Collins.

As the first product of Morris West’s scheme to cash in on his backlist with film, stage and TV adaptations, The Naked Country is a canny choice: a middle-of-theroad action story with soundly established audience appeal.

To the critic, however, it is bound to appear a curious museum piece. In every respect, this is a film of the fifties (a pre­ liminary title even establishes the setting as Northern Australia in 1955). West’s novel, adapted here (I would guess) fairly faithfully

by Burstall and producer Ross Dimsey, dealt in the common currency of the time — the world of cafard and ennui that lay behind all that colonial enterprise in Malaya, India, the islands, Australia . . .

Sketched from servants’ gossip by Somerset Maugham, it was a world he left to be filled in with painting-by-numbers sedulousness by Nevil Shute and F.J. Thwaites. West, a late starter, carried on the tradition in novels like Kundu —- about which, no doubt, he would rather not be reminded.

The Naked Country is cut from the same tropical-weight nonsense. White bwanas and their frustrated wives patronize the local riff-raff and the natives, who appear periodically to mutter 'boola-boola’ in the background and engage in whiteman-speak-with-forked-tongue dialogue on the subject of sacred sites and ancient prohibitions, to offend against which is death. Inevitably, their restlessness turns to violence, and the game’s afoot.

Enraged by having his beloved married off to a moth-eaten elder, Tommy Lewis spears first Stanton’s prize Brahman bull, then his mate, then Stanton himself.

Unfazed by a spear through his leg and assorted injuries, Stanton hobbles back towards his home, pausing periodically to garotte or drown his pursuers, who are themselves tracked by those hired guns of the inland, the kadaitcha men.

Tongues, I suspect, firmly in cheek, Burstall, Dimsey, cameraman David Eggby and composer Bruce Smeaton have served up this ripe romance with estimable profes­ sionalism and style. Brought in at $2.75 million and reportedly sold for more than that to an international jobber, it is the kind of economical film that gives some hope for the local industry.

Almost alone among recent Australian

Film Reviews product, The Naked Country appears to have been made for an audience rather than for the producers’ friends and allies. It is not The Roots of Heaven or Hatari!, but for the moment it will do quite well.

John Baxter

Morris West’s The Naked Country: Directed

by Tim Burstall. Producer: Ross Dimsey.

Executive producers: Mark Josem, Robert Ward, Bill Marshall. Screenplay: Ross Dimsey and Tim Burstall, from the novel by Morris West. Director of photography: David Eggby.

Art director: Philip Warner. Editor: Tony Patter­ son. Music: Bruce Smeaton. Sound: Max Bowring. Cast: John Stanton (Lance Dillon), Rebecca Gilllng (Mary Dillon), Ivar Kants (Sergeant Neil Adams), Tommy Lewis (Mundara), John Jarratt (Mick Conrad), Simon Chilvers (Inspector Poole), Neela Dey (Menyan). Production company: Naked Country Productions, in association with the Queensland Film Corporation. Distributor: Filmways. 35mm. 92 minutes. Australia. 1985.

Countries o f the mind INSIGNIFICANCE “ The past,” a ponderous voice-over in­ formed us at the start of Joseph Losey’s The Go-Between (1971), “ is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” A nice thought, but one that the film, with its rumblings of social change and general atmosphere of overheated nostalgia, did little to substantiate: everyone seemed to do things pretty much as before.

In Nicolas Roeg’s films, on the other hand, they do indeed do things differently.

And, in them, a parallel proposition has been demonstrated over and over: that the past — and, for that matter, the present, the

future and dimensions in between — are countries of the mind.

Every one of Roeg’s films, from Perform­ ance (1970) to his all but unreleased masterpiece, Eureka (1983), have been exercises in cinematic solipsism — films whose real ‘meaning’ is contained, not in some outer world with historical, geo­ graphical or interplanetary co-ordinates, but within the film itself, within a discrete system of rhyming images and emotional syntax. Like a computer’s memory, Roeg’s films are made up of systems that are huge and complex, but finite.

The psychedelic heads of the late sixties, who turned Performance into a cult hit, saw part of this. But they didn’t see it all.

The attraction of Roeg’s films is hard to explain, but it is not psychedelic, or at any rate not in the shallowly vogueish sense recently plundered again by Prince. Nor is it intellectual: try as they may — and they have certainly tried — critics have been un­ able to pin Roeg down in intellectual terms.

Unlike, say, Peter Greenaway, Roeg doesn’t play mind games: he structures his films according to a visual and emotional pattern, but instinctively, like a poet.

In Insignificance, for virtually the first time since Performance, Roeg has come up with a film that works beautifully on two levels: in this case, as a strange and very funny tale about some odd goings-on in a New York hotel room during a hot summer night in 1953; and as an intriguing, labyrinthine picture of the way that memory shapes personality, and personality shapes memory — not the ‘thing remembered', as Marguerite Duras has said, but ‘me remembering .

Insignificance is a symphony of ‘me rememberings', orchestrated by a master, shot in sharp and glowing colours by Peter Hannan, and lingering in the memory like something glimpsed in brilliant light from a train window or across a courtyard — a kind of psychic Rear Window, perhaps, but with the rare ability to let a visual memory from one sequence chime with the image currently on the screen.

As everyone must know by now, the film briefly links together the lives of The Actress (read Marilyn Monroe), played by Theresa Russell; The Professor (read Albert Einstein), played by Michael Emil; The Ballplayer (read Joe DiMaggio), played by Gary Busey; and The Senator (read Joe McCarthy), played by Tony Curtis. The plot, such as it is, has The Senator trying to pressure The Professor into naming names at a HUAC hearing, The Ballplayer trying to rescue his hopeless marriage to The Actress, and The Actress, frazzled after shooting the famous wind-up-the-skirt scene from The Seven-Year Itch, explain­ ing relativity to The Professor.

It is, in fact, not much of a plot; and the screenplay, by Terry Johnson, sticks pretty closely to his own original stage play.

But, oh, what Roeg does with it. In the first place, the apparent trivia of the plot dis­ guise some very basic human feelings — loss, betrayal, guilt, powerlust — each of which is imbued with multiple resonances

by Roeg’s emotional kaleidoscope of images and the constant shifts in point of view and tone, from sweet to bitter, from subjective to objective, from things remem­ bered — Hiroshima, Nazi Germany, The Actress’s first, humiliating auditions — to memories reshaped.

Time stands still: The Professor's watch remains set, Dali-like, at 8.15, the time the bomb exploded over Hiroshima and the time The Senator will come to collect him to testify. But time is also fluid — a question of relativity, in fact, liable to spring leaks and engulf the unsuspecting. The film as a whole, like real memory, is hard-edged and beautiful — as glittering, compulsive and threatening as a neon sign.

Insignificance, the play, was a jeu d ’esprit. Insignificance, the film, is a surrealist masterpiece — not the dime-

Trains o f thought: Michael Emil as The Professor and Theresa Russell as The Actress in Insignificance.

CINEMA PAPERS September — 63

Film Reviews store, cigarette-ad surrealism of the seventies, but a true surrealism, in which the ordinary becomes threatening, the hideous has a compulsive beauty, and the artwork’s pace and development are deter­ mined by the rhythms of the mind.

Beware, though, the temptation to slot the characters into the Mickey Mouse jellymoulds of cultural memory. The Actress is not Saint Marilyn of the Silver Screen, the ultimate victim-as-heroine of Hollywood, the dumb broad with hidden depths, the brassy beauty whose peroxide surface con­ cealed a true beauty beneath it, and so on and so forth — the sentimentalized com­ posite figure of Arthur Miller’s After the Fall, in fact.

The Actress in Insignificance isn’t that at all: she is both simpler and more complex.

In a beautifully measured performance by Theresa Russell — neither Monroe mimicry nor separate entity but, like the rest of the film, hovering somewhere in between — she is a real rather than a manufactured icon. She is numbingly self-aware; but self­ awareness is no protection against the burdens of her body and the ‘uses' to which it is put.

The same could be said of the rest of the cast: Michael Emil’s playful genius, Tony Curtis’s seedy, sweating politician, and above all Gary Busey’s lumbering, violent and vulnerable giant — a walking wardrobe with feelings, ludicrously proud of the fact that he is the star of thirteen series of bubblegum cards, as against The Pro­ fessor’s one appearance in Juicy Fruit’s Great Scientific Achievements.

Like the film, the performances shift in tone. But, as in the best solipsisms, it all comes together in the end. The Actress leaves. The Professor sits on the bed and sees/remembers/imagines a long, slowmotion, 8.15 explosion. In a moment of beauty and horror, recalling but surpassing the one in Zabriskie Point (1970), the hotel room explodes, burns, disintegrates. Then, like a scene from an early surrealist film, it reassembles. The A ctress’s arm is glimpsed at the edge of the frame. “ Byeeel” , she calls. It is a moment of grace and loss, beauty and bitter despair — the end of a great film, a work that is at once sad and beautiful, funny, intriguing and complete.

Nick Roddick

Insignificance: Directed by Nicolas Roeg.

Producer: Jeremy Thomas. Executive pro­ ducer: Alexander Stuart. Associate producer: Joyce Herlihy. Screenplay: Terry Johnson, from his own play of the same name. Director of photography: Peter Hannan. Editor: Tony Lawson. Production designer: David Brock­ hurst. Costumes: Shuna Harwood. Music: Stanley Myers. Sound: Paul Le Mare. Cast: Gary Busey (The Ballplayer), Tony Curtis (The Senator), Michael Emil (The Professor), Theresa Russell (The Actress), Will Sampson (The Elevator Attendant). Production com­ pany: Zenith, in association with the Recorded Picture Company. Distributor: Starscreen.

35mm. 108 minutes. U.K. 1985.

M*U*S*H AN INDECENT OBSESSION Committed one may be to the notion that there is no necessary correlation between the quality of a film and that of the novel from which it is adapted. Good films have often been made from minor or second-rate novels — probably more often, in fact, than from major ones.

An Indecent Obsession, though, must give one pause. Directed by Lex Marinos, it plumbs new nadirs, offering persuasive evidence of the intransigence of trash. The situations, the characters and the dialogue of this $2-million farrago are instinct with the unmistakable sensibility of the original author, Colleen McCullough.

64 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Scriptwriter have steeped ness that the Like Tim and

Denise Morgan seems to herself in the peculiar awful­ author’s name conjures up. the television version of The Thorn Birds before it, An Indecent Obsession resists transmutation.

Sister Honour Langtry (Wendy Hughes, out of her mind, surely, to be involved in this thing) runs, with remarkable incompetence, the psychiatric ward of a military hospital on a Pacific island in World War II. All the inmates, in their variously bizarre ways, dote on ‘Sis’, as they affectionately call her.

She, in turn, never stops pouring tea for them or shining lights through their mosquito nets the moment they seem to be asleep. Considering how trying they are when they’re awake, one wouldn’t think she’d risk disturbing them.

The inmates — just an ordinary cross­ section of cranks — include a cowardly officer-type, Neil (Jonathon Hyde), who comes from The Same Background as Sis, something which he believes gives him the edge over mad-eyed Luce (Richard Moir), a former actor of lowly social origins and sexual ambiguities. Then there is a religious nut and mother’s boy called Ben (Mark Little); Nugget (Tony Sheldon), a hypo­ chondriac who is forever reading medical works in search of new symptoms; and Matt (Bruno Lawrence), who may or may not be blind.

Tensions, as the reader will readily imagine, run high, and Sis gets no support from ‘Colonel Chinstrap’ (Bill Hunter) or Matron (Julia Blake). In fact, they, not un­ reasonably, get very tired of her.

Into this seething microcosm of lunatic fancies and unrequited passions comes handsome young Michael Wilson (Gary Sweet), who is apparently normal. What, then, is he doing in Ward X? Well, it transpires — ' v i a a feverish dream sequence — that the RSM whom he’d tried to kill had made some very indecent suggestions to him. The same thing happens again when Luce does something provocative to him under the showers.

This time, though, Mike finds refuge in Sister Langtry’s bed. And, while they’re making some love, something very nasty is happening to Luce. You can just imagine how Sis blames herself for this next day.

An Indecent Obsession is the sort of film where to outline the main events is virtu­ ally an act of criticism. But plenty of enjoy­ able — even remarkable — films (to name two seen recently on television, Jacques

Tourneur’s Experiment Perilous and Otto Preminger’s Angel Face) have taken pre­ posterous plots and manipulated them so as to foreground striking dramatic patterns.

Here, however, Lex Marinos simply lets Ms McCullough’s bunch of cardboard loonies gather round a table or on a verandah until someone drives someone else into a frenzy. Not that it is really any worse than TV’s The Thorn Birds or Tim the movie (who that saw it will ever forget the moment when the psychiatrist recom­ mended to the heroine that she marry the retarded Tim as the best way of helping him?). All of which leads me to believe that McCullough, like blood, will out.

An Indecent Obsession would not be worth belabouring if it weren’t for the waste it involves at a time when the Australian film industry appears to be faltering. It is not just the money (though that matters too): it is the spectacle of usually competent actors demeaning themselves in such hysterical twaddle. Richard Moir curls his lip (above which sprouts a cad’s moustache), Gary Sweet ripples his chest muscles, Wendy Hughes again bares her left breast, and Bill Hunter and Julia Blake fume and fret.

Hughes and Hunter have given some of the best performances in Australian films.

Are they so desperate for work, or have they so little perception of a script’s possi­ bilities, that they could let themselves be party to this? One can only hope they got a large share of the $2 million — enough, at least, to enable them to turn down the next similar offer.

Brian McFarlane

An Indecent Obsession. Directed by Lex Marinos. Producer: Ian Bradley. Executive producers: Michael Edgley and John Daniell.

Associate producer: Maura Fay. Screenplay: Denise Morgan, based on the novel by Colleen McCullough. Director of photography: Ernest Clark. Production designer: Michael Ralph. Editor: Philip Howe. Music: Dave Skinner. Cast: Wendy Hughes (Honour Langtry), Gary Sweet (Michael Wilson), Richard Moir (Luce Daggett), Jonathon Hyde (Neil Parkinson), Bruno Lawrence (Matt Sawyer), Mark Little (Benedict Maynard), Tony Sheldon (Nuggett Jones), Bill Hunter (Colonel Chinstrap), Julia Blake (Matron), Caroline Gillmer (Sally). Production company: PBL Productions for Hoyts/Michael Edgley Inti.

Distributor: Hoyts. 35mm. Running time: 100 minutes. Australia. 1985.

American dream A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET "Horror movies take people where their minds go only during sleep states or altered states. They deal with images and situations that mirror the anxieties which shoot through us all or all of our culture. In that sense, they’re very important movies.’’

Wes Craven As its commercial success in America would suggest, Wes Craven’s most recent horror film works pretty effectively as a simple bogey-man story. The teenagers of Elm Street share a nightmare about a m o n s te r w ho, b e a rin g a d is tin c t resemblance to a disinterred corpse and armed with a glove of ‘fingerknives’, pursues them into the darkened corners of their middle-class world. Before long, the nightmare turns lethal, and it is revealed that the bogey-man can kill his victims within the bizarre world of their sleep.

A doctor pontificates on the mystery of dreams — “ we still don’t know what the hell they are or where they come from’’ — and parents in the street refuse to acknowledge the monstrous presence in their midst.

Young Nancy Thompson (Heather Langen­ kamp) is thus forced to tackle the trauma alone.

What is most interesting about A Night­ mare on Elm Street, however, is what it has to offer beyond its 'scare the hell out of ’em’ and ‘nobody’ll believe me’ surfaces.

For a start, there is the way the film plays with the forms of horror — its neat trans­ formation of the nightmare story into a con­ sideration of the genre as a whole. From the opening sequence, we are systematically refused any ‘safe’ position in relation to the events on the screen. The film’s real world and its dream world are impossible to separate: as we begin to feel secure in the knowledge that the characters are awake, we suddenly discover ourselves in the middle of another nightmare.

The film’s trick ending takes us even further along this road. Cleverly exploiting what has become a convention in recent horror films — the idea that the monster defies destruction — it irrevocably under­ mines our grasp on what we have been watching. The final sequence becomes a

Film Reviews

Something wicked their way comes: opposite, Wendy Hughes as Sister Langtry, surrounded by wartime loonies in An In­ decent Obsession; above, Heather Langen­ kamp as Nancy Thompson, stalked by a dead maniac in A Nightmare on Elm Street. joke — at our expense — about how we have been watching.

What, then, is the film’s real world? Is it all just a dream? The film, of course, allows no answers to such questions. Instead, it demonstrates that it need not be bound by such an ordered sense of things.

It can do anything it likes to us — until we turn our backs on it, that is. Then, like the monster in the dreams of the Balinese, which the film tells us about, it loses its power. The process by which the charac­ ters on the screen are confronted by their terror becomes a mirror for what is happen­ ing between the film and us.

Of course, if we do attempt to turn our backs, the film warns, we end up like the parents on Elm Street. The bogey-man — a child molester whom they had executed years before — is their creation, the guilty secret which they had repressed and which has now returned to haunt their homes. The sins of the parents are upon the children.

The evil that men (and women) do lives after them.

There is a significant irony in the way Nancy’s mother (Ronee Blakley) attempts to deal with the demon of her guilt. Her alcoholism and the disruption of her family suggest a serious disturbance even before we know its source — a history which is best forgotten. Her subsequent attempts to

keep the monster at bay by turning her home into a fortress of bars against the out­ side world doesn’t keep it out: it locks it in.

The state of the family and of the small town has long been a measure of the state of the nation in American cinema. A family free of stress characterizes a nation at peace with itself; a family in disorder suggests wider tensions, doubts and fears.

Craven’s family is clearly in disorder, and his America is a place hounded by its past — by the history that has set the course of the present. The nightmare on Elm Street is the nightmare of America.

In such a context, the film’s ending is one of total pessimism, as the past completely devours the present. Not only the guilty parent but also the innocent child meet their end as the nightmare refuses to go away.

Craven’s film does not offer any detailed social analysis. Like the plays to which it refers, Hamlet and Julius Caesar (both of which also pivot on the propriety of an execution and the reality of a ghost that returns to haunt the living), it is about social morality; and, like much of the horror genre, it works as a cultural barometer, a way of exposing raw nerves — of remind­ ing the culture that those nerves are there.

Tom Ryan

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Directed and written by Wes Craven. Producer: Robert Shaye. Co-producer: Sara Risher. Executive producers: Stanley Dudelson, Joseph Wolf.

Associate producer: John Burrows. Director of photography: Jacques Haitkin. Production design: Greg Fonesca. Editor: Rick Shaine.

Sound: James La Rue. Special effects design:

Jim Doyle (Theatrical Engines). Special make up effects: David Miller. Music: Charles Bern­ stein. Cast: John Saxon (Lieutenant Thomp­ son), Ronee Blakley (Marge Thompson), Heather Langenkamp (Nancy Thompson), Amanda Wyss (Tina Grey), Nick Corri (Rod Lane), Johnny Depp (Glen Lantz), Charles Fleischer (Dr King), Joseph Whipp (Sergeant Parker), Lin Shaye (The teacher), Robert Englund (Fred Krueger). Production company: Robert Shaye/An Elm Street Venture. Distri­ butor: Seven Keys. 35mm. 91 minutes. USA. 1984.

Herstory and hype DON’T CALL ME GIRLIE On one level at least, there can be no doubt that Don’t Call Me Girlie is a worthy film: it calls attention to the work of women in the Australian film industry from about 1911 to 1940 — or, in the terms the film sets for itself, from Lottie Lyell to Shirley Ann Richards. And who would deny that that was a good thing? Tne contributions of women to Australian films during this period were many, varied and valuable.

As revelation, it is practically impossible to fault Don’t Call Me Girlie. Simply by showing the activities of women behind the screen — even though, perforce, most of them are actresses rather than other film workers — an important step is taken towards remedying the confusion that

Pistol-packin ’ filmmaker: Marie Lorraine (real name, Isobel McDonagh) in the McDonagh sisters’ The Cheaters (1929). exists between the image that people take as signifying ‘woman’ in films, and the real work involved in producing that image.

This therapeutic mission is extended by the interviews included in the film, where women speak of what they did and what was done to them. Much useful information about 'the cinema machine’ is imparted here: Don’t Call Me Girlie demythologizes the cinema as well as history, which is all to the good.

By now, however, I am running out of nice things to say. The film shows lots of clips, many, many of which are not iden­ tified, and lots of stills, even more of which are not identified (for instance, I didn't see or hear any mention that the glorious photo used to promote the film was of Shirley Ann Richards, very much ‘out of character’).

The film also mucks about with the con­ tinuity of The Sentimental Bloke.

More of the past is glossed over — most of what the Chauvels did, for example — than seems justifiable in a film as padded as this one. Minor quibbles, which would not be worth mentioning if it weren’t that their high-handed selectivity was also mani­ fested in the peculiar way in which Don’t Call Me Girlie argues its case (or cases).

Any documentary is, of course, first of all an argument. It claims to tell ‘the truth’, and its warrant for that claim is the correspon­ dence of the truth it tells to ‘what really happened’. If a documentary suppresses information that might question its claims, it

CINEMA PAPERS September — 65

Film Reviews is being dishonest. By these criteria, there are no two ways about it: Don’t Cal! Me Girlie tells lies.

It does so about Lottie Lyell’s contribution to Raymond Longford’s ‘greatness’ when It emphasizes his ‘decline’ after her death, but omits to mention that she was too ill to be present during the shooting of On Our Selection, which is usually reckoned among Longford’s ‘greatest’ films. I, too, believe that Lyell may have been the real talent in the Longford-Lyell partnership, but the evidence is just not strong enough to warrant more than an assertion of belief.

The film is equally misleading when it reproduces without question Cinesound publicist Nancy Gurr's account of the re­ titling of Come Up Smiling (aka Ants in His Pants). Pike and Cooper’s account reverses what she says, claiming that the movie stiffed as Come Up Smiling and prospered as Ants in His Pants. Perhaps Gurr’s story is 'what really happened’, but no evidence is offered except her own words.

It is also dishonest to omit the narrative reason for the new title — the very ants put Into the pants — and let Gurr’s statement stand that only a vaudeville number warranted the change. Again, who would deny that the change is vulgar, even typically male? But the film is making a point about male management stupidity that the evidence may not actually support.

The film also ‘lies’ both more boldly and more subtly In the tacit comparison it draws between Charlotte Francis and Helen Twelvetrees. The publicity for Don’t Call Me Girlie stresses Charlotte Francis’s notorious flash of skin in a pre-release version of The Silence of Dean Maitland.

Even in 1934, it would have been hard to credit that Cinesound expected to show that bit of film publicly. The film, however, makes no mention of this exploitative ploy.

Instead, it represents Charlotte Francis as an artiste, an actress of talent and tragedy who, after her one and only appearance in an Australian film, returned to Britain where, eventually, she died of despair.

The context in which Hollywood’s Helen Twelvetrees is represented, on the other hand, is that of public relations. Her story shows the crow ds Cinesound had drummed up to greet her, and tells how annoyed Ken Hall was to discover that she was married with a child (he seems to think someone put something over on him).

There is a hint that she was difficult on the set. And the short clip from her one Australian film, Thoroughbred, is over­ whelmed by the footage culled from Francis’s scenes in Dean Maitland.

Suppressing Francis’s involvement with publicity while stressing that of Twelvetrees clearly serves to underline the ‘artistry’ of one and the ‘falsity’ of the other (a woman who may have lied about her motherhood in order to make money out of Australia), and also veers dangerously close to the pathetic myth of the highculture worthiness and generosity of the Mother Country, as against the low-culture deceit and greed of the Stepmother across the Pacific.

With apparent straightforwardness, Don’t Call Me Girlie never openly chal­ lenges what those who appear in it have to say. Yet one is never in any doubt that Ken Hall, as the embodiment of ‘the studio’, was an exploiter, and that Gurr, Richards, Aileen Britton, Jean Hatton and the rest were the exploited.

That is, those interviewed are not ‘allowed to speak for themselves’, but are positioned within a rhetorical system, a system of argument, that might equally have been disposed so as to call into question their claims. Keeping faith with one’s subjects does not warrant what is done here.

There is one last serious omission: those who were not young and/or beautiful when these films were made. ‘Character actresses’ such as Margaret Reid, Beatrice Esmond, Nellie Ferguson and Rita Pauncefort deserve notice as much or more than the luscious lovelies that are exhibited for our delectation. Here, Don’t Call Me Girlie

66 — September CINEMA PAPERS

seems to be collaborating in a mythologiza­ tion of youth and beauty almost as repellent as the mythologizing of masculine achieve­ ment it ostensibly sets out to undermine.

Bill Routt

Don’t Call Me Girlie: Directed by Stewart Young and Andrée Wright. Producer: Hilary Furlong. Research and screenplay: Andrée Wright. Directors of photography: Erika Addis and Geoffrey Burton. Editor: Stewart Young.

Sound: Pat Fiske and Leo Sullivan. Narration: Penne Hackforth-Jones. Production company: Double L Films. Distributor: Ronin Films.

16mm. Running time: 68 minutes. Australia.

1985. '

Chère Louise FULL MOON IN PARIS On nights of the full moon, as a charming and gregarious Laszlo Szabo explains near the end of Eric Rohmer’s Full Moon in

Paris (Les nuits de la pleine lune), people are apt to go a little crazy: they become restless and disturbed; minor emotional catastrophes take place.

With wry fondness, we have observed the game-playing of Louise (Pascale Ogier), as she flirts with interpersonal disaster, playing games with others’ feelings as well as her own, dividing and constraining the various men in her life in order to conquer them. And, during that climactic night of the full moon, with a drippy disco tune playing on the soundtrack, we have seen her little game go irrevocably out of kilte r. . .

So, what kind of fiction is this: a whim­ sical, bitter-sweet, ‘that’s-the-way-life-goes’ bourgeois tale — only a ‘comedy’ and a ‘proverb’, as Rohmer’s series title would lead us to expect?

Only a very gentle note of criticism registers in Rohmer’s drawing of a charac­ ter like Louise’s friend, Octave (Fabrice Luchini), for instance. No doubt he is a little silly, self-absorbed, pretentious, insensitive; but he is so charming and funny that little else seems to matter.

Or does it? For, beneath the thick layer of behavioural charm (which may well be a sophisticated ruse) lie a whole host of con­ trary ambiences and suggestions. Are these characters not, in fact, empty and stupid, utterly insensitive to the depths of human feeling?

Is the film ’s attitude towards the emotional cul-de-sac it portrays not one of savage irony, or even of profound despair?

For what some viewers (such as myself) take away from it is not an ooh-la-la whimsy, but a lacerating melancholy, a numbing intuition of a cold emptiness.

Introduction to the couple Louise-Rémi (Tchéky Karyo): he on the balcony, absorbed in body-building exercises, she inside on the phone, arranging a secret rendezvous with Octave.

From the start, disconnection, egocentricity and alienation of affection. What Rohmer lets us observe of these characters — Rémi proclaiming himself a ‘happy idiot’ and bashing himself to the point of bruising; Louise’s repressed, narcissistic dancing at one party after another — might lead us to consider them as people who scarcely know themselves, let alone each other.

They are a literally unthinkable couple: we can’t imagine how they ever got together, nor what they could possibly do in bed.

These details rebound within, firstly, the hollowness of their endless proclamations (especially Louise’s “ We’re so close to being happy’’); and secondly, the hollow­ ness of their entire bourgeois milieu: the cold, blue-white ‘new suburb’ where Rémi lives; the parties where ‘best friends’ —

Trapped in transit: Louise (Pascale Ogier) hides from Remi in a cafe toilet in Full Moon in Paris.

Louise and Camille (Virginie Thévenet) — exchange nary a glance.

It is a milieu where appearances are all, and from which emotions have long since fled — except perhaps for displays of impetuous, childish weeping, to which Louise is highly prone. And what has Louise learned at the end of her disastrous game? We leave her arranging another rendezvous with Octave, and retracing the same steps out of the apartment that she has always taken.

Full Moon in Paris’s opening proverb is “ he who has two women loses his soul; he who has two houses loses his mind” . All of the components of the fiction are contained there and all of its themes hinted at, speci­ fically those of hopeful control achieved through the division of persons and property, and the inevitable dissolution of that control into a state of generalized personal catastrophe.

Louise’s great mistake, Rohmer seems to imply, is her misapprehension that life can be controlled and directed. Worse still, she plays on her illusory mastery, proclaiming to all and sundry that she needs her pied-áterre separate from Réml in order to experi­ ence loneliness, as though loneliness were a brand of liqueur.

Octave warns her that her game is dangerous, and that loneliness is not much fun. And, as if to demonstrate this truth to her, the fiction then methodically turns every one of her illusions against her, shut­ ting her into a trap of her own making.

The utter pitifulness of both Louise and the film is contained in the fact that what Louise wants is, in the abstract, admirable and progressive: freedom, independence, multiple relations with a wider range of people. But her ways of achieving these wants are never anything but selfish, con­ fused and insensitive. Her consciousness never extends beyond the narrowest creed of hedonistic bourgeois individualism.

So, in a sense, she deserves everything she gets. Yet Rohmer manages to make us feel a little sad and sorry for her, the dumb but real loser in a game which also con­ structs places for its illusory winners (Rémi with a new girlfriend, but still probably a happy idiot) and lonely spectators (Octave, ever playful, but also ever denied).

It remains to be said that Full Moon in Paris is brilliantly and perfectly constructed like a juicy piece of gossip. Remarkable, too, is the rigorous minimalism of Rohmer’s style, resulting in a film in which the slightest stylistic deviation from the standard, front­ on static shot — a tiny dolly in, for instance — produces an effect of extraordinary emphasis and intensity.

But perhaps most beguiling and con­ founding of all is the way Rohmer spins a web of hide-and-seek references to any­ thing remotely resembling an ‘author’s statement’ — anything we could grasp as a sign of how Rohmer wishes us to interpret the proceedings. Every statement which seems to pinpoint the film’s own moral, sexual or ethical stance — Octave’s musings on the ‘eternal feminine', say, or Szabo’s tale of the full moon — is elsewhere unfailingly contradicted, qualified or parodied.

All we have to accompany us through Full Moon in Paris is Louise’s great line, as she interrupts her own tale of woe — a line which liberates us in relation to the film as much as it challenges us to understand it: “ I could tell the story differently . . . ” Adrian Martin

Full Moon in Paris (Les nuits de la pleine lune): Directed and written by Eric Rohmer.

Producer: Margaret Ménégoz. Director of photography: Renato Berta. Editor: Cécile Decugis. Art director: Pascale Ogier. Music: Elli, Jacno. Sound: Georges Prat. Cast: Pascale Ogier (Louise), Tchéky Karyo (Rémi), Fabrice Luchini (Octave), Virginie Thévenet (Camille), Christian Vadim (Bastien), Laszlo Szabo (Painter at cafe). Production company: Les Films du Losange/Les Films Ariane. Distri­ butor: Sharmili. 35mm. 101 minutes. France.

1984. (French language, English subtitles.)

¿MELBOURNE FILM ¿MAKERS l A O E RESOURCE I7 0 D BOOK Stiper

LATEST EDITION N O W AVAILABLE, FULL OF RECENT FACTS, FIGURES AND ADDRESSES. WHERE TO G O A ND HOW MUCH IT COSTS. LAB PRICES, EQUIPMENT HIRE, VIDEO EDITING S FACILITIES, ETC. AVAILABLE FROM VFL, READINGS IN CARLTON, SPACE AGE, OR SEND $4 (PLUS $1 POSTAGE) TO 785 RATHDOWNEST, NTH CARLTON 3 054, FOR YOUR O W N RUSH COPY.

6th Sydney Super 8 Film Festival

Julie Walters, the irrepressible star of ‘Educating Rita’ in a new motion picture.

For every woman who wants to get away from it all... and every man who’s c u r io u s to go with her.

Wednesday Nov.13 to Sunday Nov 17 1985 Chauvel Cinema * Paddington Sydney and Thursday Nov.21 to Sunday Nov 24 1985 Glasshouse Cinema. R.M.I.T Melbourne.

Send Films t o :

(COW. CONTRIBUTIONS WANTED!

The Super 8 Film Group P .0 Box 424 Kings Cross N.S.W 2011

With: T itle , Synopsis,££eed Length in Minutes & Meters, Scm d/Siloit,R eturn Address.

Of ERLDftY M3VMER 1st 1985. AffTTJnTT.Y NO FILMS AXEFIED AFUR HUS DWE. .EURIHER ENQUIRIES

Buie G2 332 4674.

'

COM M ENCES OCTOBER 10 M ELBOURNE & SYDN EY

'SHE'LL BE W EARING PINK PYJAMAS' b y EVA HA RDY JULIE WALTERS A N T H O N Y HIGGINS JANE EVERS JANET HENFREY PAULA JACOBS PENELOPE NICE MAUREEN O'BRIEN ALYSON SPIRO JANE W O O D • PAULINE YATES D ire cto r o f P h o to g ra p h y CLIVE TICKNER E dito r RICHARD KEY P ro d u ctio n D esigner COLIN POCOCK Music JOHN DU PREZ Associate P roducer DAVID McFARLANE Producers TARA PREM & A D R IA N HUGHES D ire cto r JOHN GOLDSCHMIDT

With The Assistance of the Australian Film Ocnmissicn.

Telecast Live September 14,1985 on

NETWORK TEN C0004/AP22

Film Reviews

Short Reviews: An A-Z

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time: a comedy that had proved its appeal over 50 years through several adaptations, this time in the hands of the writers of Trading Places, who could again extract humour from the premise of maniacal geriatric millionaires manipulating young, less affluent lives.

And the producers of 48 HRS could again promote a popular salt-and-pepper duo, this time employing the recently cele­ brated John Candy and the under-used assets of Richard Pryor. Capping off the exhumation of Brewster’s Millions was director Walter Hill, who has shown himself to be capable of commercially viable products and whose knack for comic timing glimmered in 48 HRS. But the result of this apparently winning combination is a tired, protracted and vacuous saga, dealing with the attempts of a “ relief pitcher in the minor leagues of life” who has to spend $30 million in 30 days in order to inherit $300 million.

The timing and inspiration that create memorable comedy and the perception that can draw Meaningful Social Com­ mentary from politics, materialism and deception are totally absent.

The performances are leaden and sub­ dued: a sanitized Pryor perpetually appears constrained and uncomfortable; the effer­ vescence that Candy displayed in Splash is submerged, and Lonette McKee's function, as sophisticated social conscience, is reduced to whinging wet rag.

Though it may have offered all the ingredients for a frothy souffle, flavoured with a dash of good ol’ fashioned common sense, the result is a soggy pudding.

All of Me inches a little closer towards lo g ic a l c o n s is te n c y an d th e m a tic coherence than the previous Steve Martin/Carl Reiner collaborations. Yet it is still too in love with the devices of the throwaway gag, the side remark and a general air of self parody ever really to be involving or touching. At the same time, it is still not brave enough to throw away naturalistic constraints altogether.

One ends up just following the logical twists and turns of the film’s premises — that of a rich, dead woman (Lily Tomlin) inhabiting the body of a reluctant lawyer (Martin), resulting initially in a great schizo­ phrenic tug-of-war and eventually in co­ operation and co-ordination.

That the film settles merely for a level of playfulness is a pity, because it has the potential to be a nice, warm film. The thematic set-up is certainly there: the woman discovering the potential of life through the experiences of another’s body; the man coming to modify his behaviour and lifestyle in a positive way. It almost comes off, but the humour is always a touch too cruel — grotesque, weird and spectacular merely for the sake of being so.

Martin, an undoubtedly wild and inventive performer, has yet to find his tone in film, or to find the right kind of fictional mode to accommodate his hard edges and strange, free-associational flights of comic logic. Maybe someone should introduce him to Jacques Rivette.

Dabi Enker

Adrian Martin

Point taken: Steve Martin gives himself the finger in A ll o f Me. Long the exclusive prerogative of Disney’s ‘True Life Adventures’, dog movies have been making a comeback. In Cujo and White Dog, the canines were metaphors for hidden fears and repressed racism. In Antarctica, they are just dogs. And they are the centre of the story, which turns out to be a good thing.

A Japanese expedition to the South Pole is forced to leave its sled dogs behind. The animals, which are left chained up, manage to escape and survive the polar winter through courage and ingenuity. By the time the explorers can return, however, only two are left.

Complete with a Vangelis score and stun­ ning photography of the frozen wastes (shot, it rather disappointingly transpires, in Northern Canada), Antarctica is a dog movie of considerable merit, with epic tracking shots of the four-legged heroes racing across the snow, or aerial views of them picking their way across the ice floes.

When it gets round to the people, how­ ever, Antarctica freezes over. Dubbed into what someone must have thought was a guttural equivalent of Japanese speech patterns and laden with an American voice­ over, the film endorses some very dubious sentiments. “ I beat you hard,” grunts one of the dog lovers to his charge, “ because I want you to be strong.”

The dogs for some reason put up with all this, and appear pleased to see their human masters again at the end. Left to their own devices, though, they make Antarctica a memorable one-off: visually exciting, warm and distinctly unusual.

Nick Roddick

Back to the Future is another time-tunnel film which, with ample effects and a reason­ able share of good humour, puts its teenage hero into a nuclear-powered DeLorean and transports him back to 1955.

Cast thus into the past, young Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) becomes something of an Oedipal alien, as he stumbles into the be­ bop culture and finds himself the object of his future mother’s desires.

To save himself from obliteration, he has to set things right, restore order to his family and find his way home. Executive co­ producer Steven Spielberg describes it as

68 — September CINEMA PAPERS

“ the greatest Leave it to Beaver episode ever produced” .

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, it gets some nice comedy out of Marty’s superior knowledge of the times. The sequence at the high school dance where he anticipates a full-blown Chuck Berry performance with his ‘Johnny B. Goode’ routine is hilarious stuff.

Dealing with the surfaces of the times (the fashion, the music, the language, the look of the place), the film aspires to innocence.

Observes screenwriter Bob Gale, “ we wanted to write a time-travel story where you didn’t have to know anything about history to enjoy it” . Change between 1955 and 1985 is just something that happens — a background for a fairy-tale.

However, the change that takes place in the social status of the McFly family as a result of Marty’s adventure — a class change — is far from innocent. And the fairy-tale's moral (that ‘our parents’ were not much different from the ‘way we are’) serves as a reassurance that the status quo is as solid as ever.

Tom Ryan

The source material for the tortuous fiasco of Best Defence is a novel by Robert Grossbach, Easy and Hard Way Out, a comic satire about munitions manufac­ turers, optioned at one stage by Robert Altman.

The film’s script, concocted by Willard Huyck (who also directs) and Gloria Katz, juggles two narratives. Eddie Murphy, in an extended cameo cynically billed as ‘strategic guest actor’, plays a jivey Army lieutenant who is testing a supertank in Kuwait. He is assisted in this task by two comic Arabs who make the Savak assassins in John Landis’s Into the Night look subtle.

The other section involves Dudley Moore reprising his one-note role as a lovable but lecherous bumbler suffering from fear of im­ potence and libidinous envy. Employed as an engineer in a down-at-heel company located in a former bowling alley, Moore is involved in a project to design a guided missile system for the supertank.

Thanks to a convenient plot twist, he is

lauded as an engineering genius, after a plan for the gyro is mysteriously slipped into his briefcase.

If all this sounds an unlikely comic premise, so be it. The humour is consist­ ently unfunny, the gags poorly timed, and no attempt is made to tone down the lead players' urge to mug to the camera.

This dispiriting mess seems to have been given a belated release only because of the success of Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, which was made after Best Defence. For the record, the Katz-Huyck team was also responsible for the script of American Graffiti, Indiana Jones, and a spiritual cousin to this sad enterprise, Lucky Lady.

Paul Harris

Though he has long since outgrown them, d ire cto r Terry G illia m ’s ten-second animated links in the Python programmes have left their mark on his films. Indeed, since Jabberwocky (1977), what they have arguably done is fill in all that background detail that lay behind the great squelching feet and slack-jawed monoliths of the Python montages.

In Brazil, the background — a collabora­ tion between Gilliam and production designer Norman Garwood — is breath­ taking. The seedy, steamy metropolis in which the hero lives, the organic viscera of the heating system in his flat, the restaurant with its illuminated Show-and-Tell menus and periodic bomb outrages, the huge cooling-tower torture chamber of the final scene — all are awesomely well done.

But, with one’s breath so repeatedly taken away, a degree of critical asthma begins to set in. And Gilliam’s basic plot — the story of one Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), his struggle to avoid promotion, and his frenzied pursuit of his mystical dreamgirl (Kim Greist) — tends to move in fits and starts through the overbearing designs. in fact, there is so much that is gorgeous and intriguing, so many fine performances (notably Robert De Niro, unrecognizable as Harry Tuttle, heating engineer extra­ ordinaire, and Bob Hoskins, who comes to a very nasty end), that one ends up yearning for a little less detail and a little more focus. As a film, Brazil is like the sweet trolley — intriguing to pick at, but all but impossible to consume in its entirety.

Nick Roddick

Meticulously designed, each shot of André Techiné’s The Bronte Sisters (Les soeurs Bronte) delicately balances light and composition, creating the impression of a carefully constructed portrait. The result is that, while character interaction often seems laboured and contrived, the environ­ ment remains potent and haunting.

The characters are continually framed by darkness — a reference to the sombre times that the film takes great pains to delineate. And, as it sketches in the environ­ ment in which the three sisters and their illfated brother lived, it creates a suitably bleak account of the class and gender dis­ crimination that shaped their views of the world from the relative isolation of their lives at Howarth.

In its concern for milieu, however, the film relegates the characters — and all but the superficialities of their interaction — to the back-burner. Emily (Isabelle Adjani) is por­ trayed as a female Heathcliff — a beautiful, brooding recluse who roams the moors in a state of dishevelment, looking alternately tormented and menacing.

Anne (Isabelle Huppert) is gentle, patient but unexceptional; and poor Charlotte (Marie-France Pisier) vaguely resembles Jane Eyre: prim, strong, ambitious and destined to triumph over the tragedies of life.

The film repeatedly suggests that searing passions may lie simmering beneath the demure facades but, beyond repeated shots of the women gazing out of windows, does little to convince one of their existence.

DebiEnker

Wayne Wang’s first film, Chan is Missing, shows once again that you don’t need a big production house or a massive budget to make a great film. Set in San Francisco's Chinatown, it follows two ChineseAmericans (Marc Hayashi and Wood May) as they try to find their friend Chan, who has disappeared with the $4,000 with which they intended to settle a taxi-lease contract.

Their efforts to find clues and extract information puts them in touch with a number of interesting and colourful charac­ ters in San Francisco offices, apartments, an old people’s club, or just out on the

Film Reviews street. Leads appear, but are generally accompanied by even more puzzles. Is Chan’s disappearance linked with the political rifts between San Francisco’s main­ land Chinese and the nationalist Chinese?

Is he tied in with the shooting of an old man? Whose is the gun in the taxi? What do Chan’s wife and daughter know?

A wry voice-over from the older of the two sleuths (Wood May) keeps the audience up on the latest developments with some witty but deliberately understated lines. “ It’s easy to see how one can get paranoid” , for instance, follows a quick montage of overthe-shoulder looks, following footsteps and cars glanced in the taxi’s rear-view mirror.

At the end of this beautifully shot blackand-white film, the money turns up again.

Not Chan, though. But then, the voice-over muses, this is a Chinese mystery, so maybe it would have been better to look at Chinese clues in a Chinese way.

Ernie Althofi

The seventh feature by Ron Howard, Cocoon’s fairy-tale dimension is initially withheld by the everyday qualities of its surfaces. It is only when the people who move in next door to the Sunny Shores Retirement Community are revealed as extra-terrestrials that the tone shifts a little.

As the star-like creatures doff their human form and float around like descendants of Tinker Bell, the more adventurous elderly find that the rewards for trespassing in the neighbours’ pool outweigh the risks. The aliens, who turn out to be friendly and wise, have transformed its waters into a well­ spring of youth.

The early jokes about ageing bodies suddenly take on a new dimension, as the old men and women find that the flesh is once more willing. A sense of loss is trans­ formed into a sense of discovery, though it is one that is not without its darker side.

Howard’s film is a clever comedy of manners, playing with cultural expectations

about the behaviour of the old, the young and the alien, and celebrating the life force that lies within the cocoon of the body.

Its climax may unnecessarily introduce a chase and a collection of special effects, but it also affectingly proposes a metaphor of death as a benign passing with the aliens as the emissaries of the immortal.

Though its charm occasionally seems rather forced, Cocoon is, nevertheless, an engaging, sentimental, escapist fantasy.

Tom Ryan

What Rocky did for boxing and The Karate Kid did for prepubescent martial arts devotees, Crazy for You (aka Vision Quest) is now doing for adolescent wrestlers.

Like his body-building brethren, Louden Swain (Matthew Modine) is determined to achieve glory in the sporting arena. To defeat the reigning champion from a rival school, he undertakes a punishing physical regimen, diets obsessively and seems to jog everywhere.

In the climactic gladiatorial tussle, our determined David takes on the grunting Goliath and wins, to the rousing cheers of his peers.

Directed by Harold Becker, the film has considerable charm. Modine invests a character who could have seemed either too gung-ho or too coy with spirit and sensitivity.

One does, however, begin to wonder about this particular breed of masculine heroes. Committed to their bodies with a fervour that would make Jenny Craig squirm, they seem to achieve self­ confidence, status and maturity through competitive, aggressive sports. And, as they succeed in making their marks through the imposition of a pseudo­ militaristic discipline, one wonders if the films are suggesting that exercise really does make a man out of you.

Debi Enker

Dance With a Stranger is a story the British cinema needed: the story of Ruth Ellis (Miranda Richardson), the last woman to hang in Britain. But, for all its qualities, it ends up as yet another opportunity missed.

This is what is could have been: a film about the mainstream of British life, not aristocrats or expats or Alf Garnetts; a film about an issue, at a time when the British Tory party is hell-bent on the re-introduction of hanging; a film about class, since Ellis’s love affair with the man she murdered, David Blakeley (Rupert Everett), was doomed by class difference far more than by the fact she was a ‘hostess’.

But this is what it is: a competently told, adequately acted, superbly shot love story.

Richardson and Everett simply do not meet across the yawning chasm of fifties class difference: class is mentioned but is not instinct in the film. And, for all the loving art direction, the film does not have that crucial feeling of cultural emptiness that leaps out from the fifties newsreels that are a part of the programme everywhere Dance With a Stranger is shown.

Nor are Richardson and Everett fifties figures. She ‘acts’ well but, like her eye­ brows and her peroxide hair, it is a surface thing. And Everett reveals himself once again as a monotonous impersonator, with­ out conviction or depth.

Worst of all, despite director Mike Newell’s fussy camera movements, there Is no real sense of the amour fou that destroyed the couple. And that makes the script’s muddled morality — that Ellis was right to kill Blakeley because he was such a prick — disastrously suspect.

Nick Roddick

Desperately Seeking Susan is, among other things, a tribute to the New York of Fran Leibowitz and Saul Steinberg: a film about a magical city where discards, rem­ nants and refuse combine with wit, personal crises and good, old-fashioned chutzpah. It is also a backhanded feminist film that spoofs the Hollywood comedy and thriller genres.

Setting and art direction infuse the characters with trenchant insights, and Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) and Susan (Madonna) become the two sides of every self-respecting ‘yuppy’ woman in the eighties.

The film is full of humour and street-wise observations, and is impressive in its atten­ tion to detail in the dialogue and mise-enscène. Small things linger in the memory: the hairdresser’s hands thrusting Roberta’s head down; the taxi driver who doesn’t become a victim; the girlfriend’s hopeless attempt to imitate Susan’s style; the smartarse but philistine sister-in-law; and the silly bath-tub ads dubbed into Spanish.

The weakness of the film, though, is that its narrative structure occasionally verges on the too fantastical, stretching credulity a little. But director Susan Seidelman knows her craft, and the pacing is too well-timed to allow any major retreat from this elegant, witty film.

Helen Greenwood

Dreamscape is great schlock, of which there is not nearly enough around these days. In the old days, of course, they didn’t need Dreamscape's special effects budgets, nor its cast of second-string stars (Dennis Quaid, Max Von Sydow, Christo­ pher Plummer, Kate Capshaw, Eddie Albert), nor a cinematographer of the quality of Brian Tufano: they did it for peanuts, because it was the idea that counted.

In Dreamscape, the idea is a humdinger — orx depending on how you feel about such things, pretty silly. Alex Gardner (Quaid) is hired by the head of a psychic research unit (Von Sydow) to go ‘into’ the patients’ dreams and sort out the monsters he finds there.

Ear piece: Rosanne Arquette gets the mess­ age in no uncertain terms in Desperately Seeking Susan.

The monsters gradually get nastier — and, in horror movies, they don’t come much nastier than the snake creature that rampages through the dreams of young Buddy — until Alex ends up pursuing a fellow ‘dreamlinker’ who is intent on twisting the dreams of the President of the United States, no less, with global results that will be unthinkable.

Joseph Ruben, graduate of a group of cheerleader movies and a former American International alumnus, does an excellent job on the dreams, and keeps the rest of the film ticking over nicely, too.

Expensive though it may be by compari­ son with the old B features, Dreamscape is still a lot cheaper — and a lot better — than such distended exercises in fantasy as Krull or the dreadful Brainstorm.

Nick Roddick

Future Cop belongs with all those movies ' that continuously warn us of a future ravaged by nuclear war. More mundanely, it also resembles The Terminator, without being as effective or having as engrossing a plot.

The story concerns a trooper with the un­ likely name of Jack Death (Tim Thomerson), who is sent into the past — i.e. the eighties — from the 23rd century to terminate those who are trying to destroy the elders of the future via their 20thcentury ancestors.

A latter-day Humphrey Bogart, Death believes in dispensing his own form of justice, and refuses to submit to the laws of others. He is accompanied on his mission by a contemporary Valley Girl, Leena (Helen Hunt).

Although the two main actors do a fair job with their characters, the special effects and the other production values in producer/director Charles Band’s low-budget thriller leave a lot to be desired. A shot of the 23rd-century city submerged in polluted water is particularly inane and un­ convincing.

Future Cop was originally released in the US as Trancers — a title with a distant echo of The Terminator, from which the story is obviously borrowed. Any change which discourages comparison is bound to be in Future Cop’s favour: The Terminator is by far the superior film.

Linda Malcolm

Another piece of cinematic offal from Holly­ wood’s most shameless rip-off artist (see preceding review), the Charles Bandproduced Ghoulies is Gremlins without the fun, the actors, the script or any of the verve.

In the hoary old tradition of a thousand pulp movies, young Jonathan (Peter Liapis) inherits a weird old house, finds a dusty old book, and sets about conjuring up the devil.

As he gets better at it, his eyes begin to glow with an errant yellow light, and the house begins to fill up with disgusting, slimy little creatures that look more like doodles with a felt-tipped pen than real monsters.

Jonathan also hypnotizes his girlfriend, Rebecca (Lisa Pelikan), into compliance, and finally unleashes his long-dead father (Michael Des Barres), a wild-eyed Satanist with the distinctly un-astral name of Malcolm. Fortunately, faithful old family retainer Wolfgang (Jack Nance) is lurking upstairs to do battle with the demon dad, and all is restored to normal: Jonathan’s dead friends are brought back to life (even the ones who’ve been eaten), and off they all set for the city — while, unseen by them, some slimy little pointed heads peer over the back s e a t. . .

Ghoulies has almost nothing to recom­ mend it beyond its mercifully brief running time of 84 minutes. The plot is hackneyed, the script leaves the performers mouthing off cliches with all the enthusiasm of a Telecom 'wrong number’ recording, and the music track sounds like it was picked up on an open mike from the porno flick being made in the studio next door.

Nick Roddick

CINEMA PAPERS September — 69

Film Reviews

There is a recurrent joke near the start of The Gift (Le Cadeau) in which the hero’s son, a rather self-satisfied young man, keeps rushing to answer the phone because he thinks it will be a call from a new girlfriend, a beautiful girl from Mada­ gascar.

Apparently beautiful, that is, because we never get to see her. What we do see, repeatedly, is the lad’s former girlfriend, a supermarket check-out clerk with a passion for Harlequin romances.

The non-appearance of the girl from Madagascar is somewhat symptomatic of the whole film, which obstinately eschews any hint of the new and the exotic, and settles for the familiar territory of Gallic sex comedy. The story — about a businessman (Pierre Mondy), whose colleagues buy him a high-class call girl (Clio Goldsmith) as a retire m en t present — ab o u n d s in innuendos about erections, with people popping in and out of cupboards, middleaged bank managers cast all unsuspecting into harems full of frustrated Middle Eastern lovelies, etc., etc.

This is territory which director Michel Lang has been plodding through for years.

And, to be fair, he does so again here with a fair amount of flair. As farce goes, some of the Venice hotel scenes are neatly paced and funny.

On the debit side, though, is the parade of stereotypes which make up the support­ ing cast, and the leap of faith required to see Claudia Cardinale as the dowdy house­ wife as which she is cast.

The Gift is conventional, competent and coy — no worse thematically than the teen movies now flooding out of America, and infinitely better made.

Nick Roddick

Despite some obvious comments about the nasty super-power games and the hero’s refusal to play with either side, Gulag takes an unabashed swing from the right at the Soviet system of incarceration.

Directed by Roger Young, who cut his teeth on American television and made his feature-film debut with Lassiter, Gulag is the story of a high-profile American Olympic hero-turned-broadcaster who is neatly framed on espionage charges by the KGB. His ‘confession’ and subsequent depor­ tation are intended, according to his interro­ gator, to serve as a warning to other western journalists flooding into Moscow for the Spartaka Games.

David Keith, who played the luckless cadet in An Officer and a Gentleman, is suitably red, white and blue as the victim who can’t quite believe this is happening to him (“ But I’m an American . . .” ), then determines to escape when it does.

Malcolm McDowell is suitably contrary as a convicted, long-serving English spy who has reconciled himself to his fate until the young American’s infectious enthusiasm for freedom overtakes him.

And David Suchet, who plays a marvel­ lous KGB man in The Falcon and the Snow­ man, turns in another fine performance as an imprisoned Jewish dissident who befriends Keith during one of the film’s most effective sequences: the prison train’s long journey to the gulag archipelago.

The film finds its feet in the train and in the depiction of life in the camp, even if the brutality of the guards sounds echoes of the stereotypes created in the unabashed propaganda films of World War II. And the film itself might have been better served by a little less of the heavy-handedness that would make it an ideal supporting feature for Red Dawn.

Peter Krien

Edgar Reitz’s sixteen-hour study of one tiny German village over three generations looks at first glance like a classic piece of mis-matching: the skittish mare of the art film beaten bow-legged by the sturdy stallion of soap opera.

And, in truth, beneath the lapidary camerawork that makes up Heimat, and

70 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and in Silkwood were right: Cher can act. The second is that the theme of Beauty and the Beast continues to fascinate people well beyond childhood.

In Mask, director Peter Bogdanovich manages to skirt the edge of mawkish senti­ ment, despite some fairly conventional film­ making, and allows Cher to shine as the maternal and sensual tough, Rusty Dennis, who manages to give her son Rocky (Eric Stoltz) all he needs. But she cannot change the world for him.

The film does not, however, avoid the cliches altogether. The bikies are less than credible in their kindness and lovable silli­ ness; and Sam Elliott as Rocky’s flame, Gar, is all gruff and muscle but a dis­ appointingly thin character. In terms of the narrative, they manage to create an effec­ tive foil to the conditioned reflexes of the outside world and also make Rusty less of a saint. That she has such a strong support group precludes her from some of the traumas of a single mother.

In the end, it is hard to decide whether the film is about the strength needed to sur­ vive, the cruelty of people to those who are different, the obsession of people with the superficial, or . . . what? One is left feeling sympathetic and moved by the depth of maternal love but somewhat detached. It is a film that, despite the dedication of Cher’s acting, does not take its audience to task.

Bogdanovich has a deft hand, but pulls most of his punches.

Helen Greenwood

the veering changes from colour to mono­ chrome to various tints of beige and magenta, there lies a simple enough tale of countryfolk, reacting with rural phlegm to the traditional parade of imposed disasters — war, slump, boom and war — which suc­ ceed one another like courses in a dinner that lasts for decades.

Vladimir Sokoloff, playing an improbable Mexican in The Magnificent Seven, articu­ lated the message best of all: “ Only the farmers win: they always will.”

But what messages are there for us in this slowly unrolling pageant of tilling, toiling, breeding and ambition? Could this be the future for Australian film? Almost a decade ago, Gideon Bachmann intriguingly sug­ gested that Australian light and the Austra­ lian landscape might impose a “ non-filmic quality” . “ Nothing in Australia can be short­ ened or abstracted,” Bachmann went on, “ and isn’t the cinema the craft that con­ denses, cuts corners, relies on essence, shortens and speeds our perceptions?”

In the local success of Reitz’s observa­ tional exercise could lie pointers to a more viable local film form than the 100-minute dramatized feature, an imported plant that has not always prospered here. The first filmmaker to lavish sixteen hours on Gundagai or Grabben Gullen may have a hit on his hands.

John Baxter

The MacGuffin here is a cache of emeralds owned by the former Shah of Iran. And, in the best Hitchcock tradition, the hero is an ordinary guy in the wrong place at the right time, and the heroine is a cool blonde. But, in spite of the similarities, Into the Night is less a comedy-thriller than a quirky and unduly protracted tour of Los Angeles.

Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum) is an insomniac who decides to gamble the night away in Las Vegas, rather than toss and turn beside his unfaithful wife. But, before he can park his car at the airport, he encounters Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer), a femme nearly-fatale, who leads him into a nightmare. Deception, intrigue, murder and fast cars abound as the pair is pursued by an assortment of goons of various nationalities.

As the films swings between slapstick comedy and grisly violence, it takes in a veritable museum of Californian curiosities: reclusive millionaires, Elvis clones, suave crime lords, starlets, smarmy producers and affluent exiles. In the process, it deliberately recalls many of the cinematic cliches about the city, either directly, or by using filmmakers — Paul Mazursky, Roger

Present imperfect: Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta in Perfect.

Vadim, Paul Bartel, David Cronenberg and many others — in cameo roles.

The ambivalence that director John Landis displayed towards Chicago in The Blues Brothers, he here transfers to Los Angeles. But, in spite of its playful evocation of the texture of the city, the film lacks cohesion, hovering uneasily between slapstick and violence, thriller and parody.

Like many of Landis’s eight films, it has moments of inspiration, but they don’t shine long or bright enough to provide the substance for a feature.

Debi Enker

Lifeforce is so stunningly bad that it should not, on any account, be missed. The ludicrous trappings of its $22-million budget hanging from it like wattles, it struts proudly into the ranks of the top ten turkeys of all time.

An errant space shuttle picks up an inter­ galactic parasite in the form of a beautiful naked girl (Mathilda May) who, gradually spreading her plague in geometric progres­ sion, reduces the population of Britain to a bunch of marauding loonies. All, that is, apart from Steve Railsback, as the shuttle’s captain, who shares some form of tele­ pathic link with her, and Peter Firth, as a British SAS man, who, I would imagine, was too wooden even for her tastes.

It is hard to believe that filmmakers as talented as cinematographer Alan Hume, of Bond movie fame, director Tobe Hooper, who made Poltergeist, or writer Dan O’Bannon, responsible for Dark Star and Alien, could really have been party to this farrago.

But everything about Lifeforce is so uniformly bad that it is not possible to dis­ cern traces of its having been mauled during post-production. Apart from the odd crumbling body, even the special-effects look pretty end-of-the-pier.

Connoisseurs of the genre should plan to arrive twenty minutes before the end of the previous session, so as to get a chance to see the film’s real highlight — badly madeup extras in torn clothing falling about on a studio set supposed to be the City of London — twice.

Nick Roddick \ . .

'V

Mask confirms two things: The first is that all those who thought they saw an actress emerging in Come Back to the Five and

Though somewhat more restrained about pushing back the boundaries of bad taste, Moving Violations is essentially a descendant of the National Lampoon style of comedy.

Brimming with Animal Flouse angst and humiliation humour, it enables a motley band of jesters to launch a prolonged assault on the invariably obnoxious rep­ resentatives of the status quo.

Since the comic possibilities of police academies, army barracks, bucks’ nights, schools, colleges and holiday resorts have already been tapped, the makers of Moving Violations have set their spree in a traffic school, where an assortment of offenders have been sent for a refresher course.

The customary assortment of weird and wonderful types includes a rotund hypo­ chondriac, a feisty octogenarian, a closet punk and a psychopath. In an unexpected variant on the usual stereotypes, the hero (both insolent and endearing) is a florist, while his cute but dumb-looking love interest is a scientist at NASA. Following the mandatory car chase, orgy of property destruction and sexual jokes at the expense of the bad guys, the good guys extract their revenge on the system and our hero — the chief anarchist — goes on to bigger and better things.

Though it pioneers no new and exciting variations on this comic formula, Moving Violations does manage to maintain a surprising momentum — something of a relief after its predecessors’ spasmodic bursts of madness bound together by banalities.

Debi Enker

Perfect, based on a real Rolling Stone cover story about sexy goings-on in the health spas of Los Angeles (and with Rolling Stone editor/publisher Jann Wenner playing himself), has hot-shot reporter Adam Lawrence (John Travolta) digging for dirt on the Coast, and coming up with an aerobics teacher called Jessie Wilson (Jamie Lee Curtis) who has a strong resistance to muck-raking journalists, but less resistance to Mr Travolta.

The result is about as imperfect a piece of moviemaking as is possible with that kind of budget and that kind of cast. Adam does a tacky story and Jessie walks out on him. So Adam rewrites the story in praise of the cult of fitness. Rolling Stone, however, puts out a muck-raking story after all.

Meanwhile Adam, who has been dicker-

Film Reviews ing about with another, serious story, refuses to hand over the tapes of an inter­ view with a businessman (who turns out to be honest). Adam goes to jail and becomes a hero. Jessie is waiting outside the g a te s. ..

None of which alters the fact that Adam did indeed write a crummy put-down story about the spa, or that he is indeed just the kind of muck-raking journalist that Jessie really objects to. But let it pass.

Let it all pass, in fact. The film, directed by James Bridges, previously responsible for such decent pieces of work as 9/30/55 (about the day James Dean died), The China Syndrome and Urban Cowboy, never pulls the pieces together into any­ thing vaguely resembling a whole, and in the process wastes Travolta, Curtis and the excellent Marilu Henner.

Nick Roddick

F rig h te n in g re p o rts o f rig h t-w in g 'Rambomania' from America might lead one to expect Rambo: First Blood Part II to constitute the worst and most reactionary spectacle of gung-ho imperialist militarism that has come down the tube in quite a while.

But what overwhelms even the politics of Rambo is quite simply the fact of how atrocious and inept it is as a film. Slow, unexciting, often ludicrous, Rambo hardly passes muster as a decent actionadventure film, and thus lacks the potency to set off the mythic cultural and political resonances that so many of us rightly fear at the present time.

At the centre of the film is a big nothing: Sylvester Stallone. Rambo’s motivations and emotions from moment to moment are largely a mystery, due to the combined blundering efforts of director, writers and star.

Rambo is just there: thick, heavy and ugly. Is the film going for the Big Mythic Hero effect? If so, it doesn’t work.

Buster Keaton once artfully created for himself the persona of ‘Stoneface’. His facial impassivity went hand-in-hand with real character depths and boundless performance skills.

One now wants to award Stallone, for his contribution to the American cinema, the artless title he so richly deserves: Meathead.

Adrian Martin

Although Red Sonja sounds like the code name for a secret mission that could turn the tide of a world war, she is, in fact, a one woman feudal army, who roams the countryside on horseback, avenging evil and decapitating arrogant men.

The “ fierce warrior with flaming red hair” is contemptuous of men — not surprising, given that she was pack-raped by a platoon of them — and, in general, does not need to worry about them, as her fairy god­ mother has since made her the fastest sword in town.

Her disdain is, however, severely tested during a quest to find a talisman that can destroy the worid in thirteen days. Then she comes into contact with Lord Kalidor (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who proves that she does need some masculine assistance, if only to hold up crumbling castles and fend off maritime monsters.

The best thing that can be said for this mawkish adventure tale is that, at moments, it shows some awareness of its own flimsi­ ness. At worst, though, it is a hamfisted attempt to cash in on the box office appeal of the muscle man by teaming him with a Barbareila-style heroine, in the hope of adding some zest to a half-heartedly repeated tale of medieval plunder and pillage. It does not succeed.

The heroine (Brigitte Nielsen) simply reinforces the platitude that every woman needs a man — even a beautiful and fear­ less warrior on a mission from God. We can only nod sagely as her Grand Master some­ what ambiguously prophesies that “ life is not all sword play, Red Sonja” .

Debi Enker

A former nuclear scientist maniacally drives his 1964 Chevy Malibu into the heart of Los Angeles ‘trash’ culture, finding only security spies, flying saucer aficionados, acid casualties, speed freaks, SWAT hit-squads, punks, TV evangelists and born-again hippies.

Meanwhile, two car repossession men, irresistibly played by Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez, are after a $20,000 reward for the recapture of the Chevy. Only later will they discover an alien in the boot of the Malibu — a convenient little creature with a habit of zapping motorcycle cops.

Alex Cox, a recent graduate of the UCLA film school, claims full responsibility for Repo Man, an inspirational debut feature with a fearless lunacy well balanced by the director’s exacting control over his crazed and absurdist screenplay. The result is a tour-de-force — a bizarre black comedy that teeters on, but never falls off, the edge of its own satiric anarchism.

Cox is ably supported by Robby Muller’s gritty camera work, and a home-grown punk soundtrack from the likes of Iggy Pop, Jonathon Richman, The Circle Jerks and Black Flag. Best of all, this impressively cal­ culated cult movie refuses to lapse into the hipper-than-thou pretensions of some recent examples of low-budget American cinema.

Rod Bishop

Without being any kind of a Marxist tract, Alan Bridges’s The Shooting Party, based on Isabel Colegate’s subtle, elegant novel, offers a critical look at Britain’s pre1914 aristocracy in the discreetly competi­ tive atmosphere of a country house weekend.

The aim of the men is directed at shoot­ ing as much of the specially prepared birdlife as possible, with unseemly rivalry developing between Lord Hartlip (Edward Fox), the ‘best shot in England', and Lionel Stephens (Rupert Frazer), who is making rather courtly play for the wife of another titled guest.

Hartlip, his tally trailing that of Stephens, fires wildly at a woodcock when the day’s

Class mates: Cheryl Campbell as Lady Hartlip and Dorothy Tut in as Lady Nettleby in The Shooting Party.

shooting is officially finished, and kills Tom Harker (Gordon Jackson), local poacher and beater. The film ends with the sound of sporting shots blending into the guns of the following August.

Bridges, working from Julian Bond’s immaculate screenplay, gives full meta­ phoric weight to this tale of senseless slaughter. Without patronizing the lower orders and without mindless malice towards the upper, he suggests both value in order and the complacency and decadence which are eroding its pillars.

Dominating a superb cast — Fox, Robert Hardy, Cheryl Campbell and Dorothy Tutin are notably fine — is James Mason as the benignly reflective host, Lord Nettleby, capping a remarkable career with a per­ formance of effortless humanity, rendered through an actor’s technique that too rarely found material to match its subtlety and precision. It is good to record a great actor’s going out on a great role.

Brian McFarlane

As lead actor Michael York has com­ mented, “ this is not an easy film, and one which does not reveal its joys right away” .

In Success is the Best Revenge, York plays Alexander Rodak, a Polish emigre trying to get a show off the ground in London.

The character’s obvious parallel with director Jerzy Skolimowski is further reinforced by the casting of Skolimowski’s wife and two sons in their respective family roles, and the effect is to create a film which is highly personal as well as political.

The personal story concerns a Polish artist’s struggle with the authorities in a foreign country. This produces a zany conflict of cultural values, heightened by Rodak’s resounding ability to get in his own way.

His own son, too, manages to seduce those around him with equal success, though their separate paths are established from the start. Soccer becomes the main vehicle through which they project their inner struggles, and one of the film’s high­ lights is a soccer match between England and Poland.

In effect, expatriate Poles are faced with two choices: to fight for their country wherever they are, or to return to Poland and play on the home ground.

Rodak’s is an away game, but scenes of angry extras on a film set are reminiscent of the Solidarity protests. And we are taken on a voyeuristic excursion with busloads of journalists and camera crews.

Here, Poland’s plight, seen from an out­ sider’s point of view, takes on a sense of the absurd. And, as a result, the film becomes a scathing observation of how the world looks on at international events.

Franco di Chiera

With its obvious nods to such disparate pre­ decessors in the field of teenage angst as

Rebel Without a Cause, Saturday Night Fever and The Warriors, Tuff Turf none the less carves out its own loony status.

New World’s in-house director Fritz (Children of the Corn) Kiersch has attempted a vigorous re-working of these familiar genre pieces, albeit in the frenetic style of a low-rent video clip.

Morgan Hiller (James Spader) is the Con­ necticut kid who moves out west with his family following the collapse of his dad’s real estate business (Matt Clark is thank­ lessly cast in the Jim Backus part).

Before the problem kid experiences the obligatory first day at his new high school, he manages to run foul of the local Chicano gang, and makes unambiguous overtures to the leader’s chick, Frankie (Kim Richards).

By reel three, Frankie and Morgan are gatecrashing snooty Beverly Hills country clubs, and tough Frankie finds herself warming to the notion of a liaison with this James Dean-like neanderthal.

Despite the obvious script banalities, Kiersch maintains a high energy level by employing the standard accoutrements of the rock dip: strobe lighting, flashy editing, and production numbers against op-art backgrounds.

Twenty years ago, Belgian-born cinema­ tographer Willy Kurant was working with Godard (Masculin-Feminin), Orson Welles (The Immortal Story) and Alain Robbe­ Grillet (Trans-Europ Express). He is now gainfully applying his skills in the lowbudget exploitation field, and the results are pleasing.

Paul Harris

Turk 182 is a disappointing film because it could have been dramatic and provocative.

Instead, its potential is frittered away in foolishness and farce.

Set in New York, it stars Timothy Hutton as the adoring younger brother of a fireman (Robert Urich) badly injured during the rescue of a child. His disability pension is denied, we are asked to believe, simply because he had been off duty and drinking when he responded heroically and instinc­ tively to an emergency.

The younger brother, getting nowhere doing things by the book, demonstrates un­ suspected skills, amazing timing, technical wizardry and an uncanny ability to foil the security measures of New York’s finest, and manages again and again to leave politic­ ally embarrassing graffiti addressed to the mayor in the most public of places.

Always signing off as ‘Turk 182’, the mystery man develops a cult following and ‘captures the imagination' of his fellow New Yorkers with stunts patently impossible, at least the way they’re carried out here.

Robert Culp brings his familiar method — when in doubt, overact — to the role of the mayor. And Darren McGavin is close behind in the ham stakes as a cagey detec­ tive who promises much, but adds little to the plot.

As for Hutton, Turk 182 is not a memor­ able milestone in a youthful career boasting strong performances in such films as Daniel, Ordinary People, Taps and The

Falcon and the Snowman.

And Bob Clark, the expatriate Canadian director who parlayed the Porky’s series into a fortune and also made a charming little film called A Christmas Story, directs Turk loosely and with little fire.

Peter Krien

CINEMA PAPERS September — 71

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The business of film RKO — THE BIGGEST LITTLE MAJOR OF THEM ALL by Betty Lasky (Prentice Hall, 1984, $27.95. ISBN 0 13 781451 8) Until very recently, histories of Hollywood have been written from the position, figura­ tive or actual, of a seat in the stalls. One ‘History of American Film’ after another has treated the dream factory as a matter of celluloid — as the sum total of its product — rather than by looking closely at the intricate industrial processes that led to the creation of that product.

Those who have looked ‘behind the screen’ have, by and large, contented themselves with the safe turf of biography rather than the quagmire of business. In the aftermath of centuries of literary criticism and history, it is easier to see Louis B. Mayer as MGM, Harry Cohn as Columbia or James Cagney as Warner Bros.

Even such meticulous film historians as Kevin Brownlow, in both The Parade’s Gone By and his recent Thames Television series, Hollywood, have done little more than assemble a collection of superior anecdotes, relying on the artists to locate their own work. And the artists have, time and again, taken the opportunity to whinge about the business side of it ail, as artists always have and probably always will.

The result of all this is that the great enigma of Hollywood — how a collection of hustlers out to make a buck managed to produce some of the greatest art of the 20th century — has rarely been explored. All the more reason, then, to welcome Betty Lasky’s RKO — The Biggest Little Major of Them All, which is a straight business history of the only Hollywood major which came into being as a result of a business deal, and went out of business as the result of another.

Unlike MGM, Warners, Fox, Universal, Paramount or Columbia, RKO was not founded by some emergent mogul, nor did it ever become a dynasty. It grew out of a series of complex mergers in the late twenties, which were basically designed to exploit RCA’s sound patents. Through the thirties, it was the fief of a series of changing business interests, before finally falling prey to Howard Hughes in 1948.

Hughes destroyed it. He tinkered and prevaricated, promoted Jane Russell’s chest, wheeled, dealt and hunted Reds, but made precious few films. In 1955, he sold out to General Teleradio, a subsidiary of the massive General Tire and Rubber com­ pany. Within three years, RKO was gone.

Ms Lasky documents all the deals in meticulous detail, presumably from access to company records, but also by means of extensive research in the financial and trade press. She gives a convincing portrait of RKO's first head, old Joe Kennedy, father of the presidential clan, and is sensi­ tive to the aims and aspirations of succeed­ ing presidents.

The information all seems to be there, in fact, though it is occasionally difficult to see the company for the figures in the financial report. And style is not Ms Lasky’s strong point, as witness these sentences from the beginning of Chapter Ten: "The economic

prognosticators who had preached salva­ tion through the stock market had seen their sermon boomerang. Salvation lay only in the bread line and the apple cart — a tough act even for a singing Jolson to follow.”

The real problem, though, is Ms Lasky’s reluctance to step back from the wealth of material and contextualize the business developments and leadership changes, either in terms of Hollywood, or in terms of the films that RKO made.

Indeed, where previous histories have ignored the business, Ms Lasky rather tends to ignore the films: in her book, they become items of policy rather than movies.

Now, it may just be possible to discuss Detroit without reflecting on the role of the automobile in American society. But to talk about the business structure of a Hollywood studio without devoting at any rate some space to analysing the sort of films that resulted from this structure is to overlook a vital part of the business. Indeed, the history of RKO, more than that of any other studio, is proof that film cannot be run like any other business.

Ms Lasky’s treatment of Orson Welles is a case in point. He figures in the photo­ graphs, and his meteoric rise is duly docu­ mented. But, when it comes to conflicts with the studio — something which could easily have been used to examine how film the business and film the art form combined — Ms Lasky slips away into generalities.

There are those of us who have long had reservations about some of Welles’s work, and about The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) in particular. But to skate over the issue with a reference, albeit in a form of indirect speech, to an “ arty evil” is scarcely adequate.

The ape man cometh: King Kong (1933) was RKO's first major hit.

There are other, minor flaws in the book.

The desire to bring the businessmen to life can hardly justify the suggestion that David Sarnoff, a Russian Jew, and Joe Kennedy, a Boston Catholic, "shared similar back­ grounds” . And over-hasty use of a refer­ ence-card system probably accounts for our being told that the art director Max Ree “ had been brought to the coast by Max Reinhardt to design his magical production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Hollywood Bowl in 1925” ; Reinhardt’s Hollywood Bowl Dream was, in fact, a decade later, in 1935.

One similarly wonders why the book stops so abruptly, in July 1955, with Hughes’s departure. RKO continued in sporadic production for another couple of years, producing such memorable films as

Run of the Arrow, While the City Sleeps, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and The Naked and the Dead.

More significantly, in the context of Holly­ wood history, was the December 1955 sale — which falls outside the scope of the present book — of the RKO film library to television. It was the first crack in what had previously been a concerted front against the usurping medium, and it proved a real turning point for Hollywood.

RKO — The Biggest Little Major of Them All is, in the final analysis, an enormously useful book for the information it provides, and a somewhat disappointing one for the limitations it has set itself. The disappoint­ ment is made all the greater by the fact that, as a former film writer and the daughter of one of Hollywood’s real pioneers, Jesse L. Lasky — who most definitely did succeed in holding the art and the industry of film­ making in an effective, if tenuous, embrace — would seem to have been well equipped to hold it all together.

Nick Roddick

Britannia reels A NIGHT AT THE PICTURES: TEN DECADES OF BRITISH FILM by G ilbert Adair and Nick Roddick (Columbus Books, in association with The British Film Year. London, 1985. ISBN 0 86287 188 3)

LEARNING TO DREAM: THE NEW BRITISH CINEMA by Jam es Park (Faber and Faber Ltd., 1984.

ISBN 0 571 13401 7)

BRITISH CINEMA NOW edited by Martyn Auty and Nick Roddick (British Film Institute, 1985. ISBN 0 85170 131 0) Running like a threnody through these slim volumes is a complex of laments one seems to have been hearing for decades: the impossibility of survival for the British cinema on returns from the domestic market; the baleful transatlantic influence; cinema attendances falling before the onslaught of television, cable and video; the idea that there has always been something pervasively wrong about British cinema. In British Cinema Now, Geoffrey Nowell­ Smith asks: “ Do we really need a British cinema?” As a long-time devotee of this threatened species, I hope the answer proves to be Yes; but, on the evidence of these books, the answer is somewhat equivocal.

Those devoted to British cinema have been so in the face of daunting problems. It has always been too literary, too closely tied to traditions of British theatrical acting and too respectably middle-class to command the kind of mass following for its product that is necessary both to its financial survival and to a spirit of robust inventive­ ness. The films that have been most praised (often deservedly, like Brief Encounter, Henry V and The Third Man) have mostly fitted snugly into the prevailing culture; those — such as Michael Powell’s — which have not, have often been critically mauled.

Industrially, as Julian Petley points out in British Cinema Now, there has never been a strong studio system or, in its absence, the sort of star system that made Hollywood famous. True, there have been brief and limited exceptions — music hall stars such as Grade Fields and George Formby, who enjoyed great film popularity in the thirties; the Gainsborough stable (Lockwood, Mason, Granger) in the mid-forties; Guinness as an Ealing character star in the fifties. But there has been nothing to approach, in Petley’s term, “ the full panoply of the old star system” which enjoyed a “ symbiotic relationship with the studio regime” .

It’s almost as though the British cinema might have found all of this a bit vulgar.

And, certainly, such stars as it produced now seem tied to particular classes in ways that American stars, from Gable to Streep, do not. Insofar as studios ever flourished in Britain (e.g., Rank’s Pinewood, Korda’s Denham), they were chiefly used by independent producers, rather than serving to create popular brand names that

CINEMA PAPERS September — 73

Book Reviews

might have made competition for MGM or Warner Bros.

The bogey of America seems, by all three accounts, to have haunted, and still to haunt, British film production. Gilbert Adair writes of the “ inferiority complex [which] informs the way a fair proportion of British films have been conceived and perceived over the years” . America seems, as it were, to have set the pace.

Not that this has been due to British tech­ nical incapacity: it is widely agreed that British facilities are of the highest quality and have, indeed, attracted the making of several American blockbusters (Star Wars, Superman) for that reason.

But the very existence of a hugely popular English-speaking American film industry, marketed with very un-British flair, has meant, in Nick Roddick’s words (British Cinema Now), “ that, to put it bluntly, we do not seem in any real sense to need a film industry in Britain, however much we think we might like one.”

In spite of the gloom about British cinema that is reflected in several ways in these three books — the failure of Government policy to assist the growth of a national cinema, for instance — there is, as several writers stress, a huge audience for moving images. This audience may no longer prefer to view these images in cinemas, but

74 — September CINEMA PAPERS

Aloof, enigmatic and somewhat distant: the face o f British cinema? Anne Louise Lam­ bert in The Draughtsman's Contract, the art-movie success o f 1982. the cinema’s competitors — television and video — may be seen as interdependent with it. Archie Tait, in British Cinema Now, states boldly that he “ has a single, simple thesis: that the traditional film distribution and exhibition business in Britain, and the new electronic media of broadcast and cable television and home video, are essen­ tially interdependent, and that neither can profitably exist without the other.”

Tait argues persuasively, but his argu­ ment has little to do with a specifically British cinema. The rivals may depend on and gobble up feature films, but the massive television and video audiences are surely no more likely to be turned on by British films on little screens than to turn out to see them on big ones.

Well, then: is there really a new lease of life in British cinema in the eighties? On Oscar night, 23 March 1982, Colin Welland threatened the audience as he accepted his screenplay award for Chariots of Fire, that: “ The British are coming!” When Gandhi swept the Oscar field the following year, perhaps Americans began to believe Welland’s words. Since then, what else?

Reading Roddick’s ‘The British Revival’ in A Night at the Pictures suggests more going on than one might have suspected, but his account still doesn’t give much sense of coherence or permanence in the industry; of, in fact, there being an identifiably British cinema.

On the positive side, there have been some successes for alternative cinema (notably The Draughtsman’s Contract); the emergence of directors from varied sources (e.g. television commercials, pop promos, the National Film School, all this helpfully summarized by Park’s chapter ‘Routes’); some interesting films about con­ temporary Britain (the splenetic The Ploughman’s Lunch, the importance of which, in tandem with Chariots of Fire, is sharply analyzed by Sheila Johnston in British Cinema Now)\ and Channel 4 ’s “ repayment of the debt owed to cinema — thirty years of cheap, high-ratings program­ ming” (Auty) by funding movies which, in eight cases, received theatrical release as well as being aired in the ‘Film on Four’ series. .

The three books discussed here exhibit overlapping concerns of the kind referred to above and are all obviously timed to coincide with British Film Year. This latter is working hard to promote interest in British cinema (cf. its contributions to the New York

Museum of Modern Art’s year-long retro­ spective of British films). But whether it will help restore a real vitality to British film pro­ duction is another question. These books indicate the range of problems confronting the latter enterprise: essentially financial ones in setting up productions, but also linked to restrictive exhibition practices and inadequate cinema accommodation, as well as to the more amorphous problems of a real lack of interest in British indigenous cinema and a lack of serious film culture.

Steve Jenkins (British Cinema Now), in relation to the latter, arraigns the major newspaper reviewers as simply working for the industry rather than maintaining and promoting a dialectic about film.

Of these books, only British Cinema Now can be seen as an important contribution to such a culture. Its range of interests (“ we have approached the thing as both an art form and an industry” , write the editors) is reflected in a series of well-argued essays on matters like the cinema/television axis, independent production, and the state of criticism (a well-timed jab at Sight and Sound). Geoffrey Nowell-Smith’s con­ cluding essay is a model of balanced assessment and prognosis. While allowing that Britain's “ is historically an extremely rich and critically under-rated cinema” , he is also aware that it is not, and never has been, central to whatever film culture exists in Britain.

James Park’s Learning to Dream, drably produced by Faber, has a journalistic read­ ability, but too often slips into dogmatic, un­ substantiated generalization. Tied to the notion of the director as “ the linchpin of the production process” , Park believes that many of the new ones (e.g. the National Film School graduates) have “ an under­ standing of the techniques of filmmaking and a perception of the capabilities of the medium far beyond television’s grasp of such things” .

Park berates television’s feeding of the “ anti-intellectual currents in British culture” , elsewhere claiming that the feature film­ maker can “ produce films of an intellectual and emotional complexity that work made for the small screen cannot match” . There is, however, no clear account of why such differences should exist, and one too often stumbles over pensées such as: “ If tele­ vision tends towards the prosaic, cinema aspires towards a poetic indeterminacy” ( = ?). Much of the book derives from inter­ views with new directors (Richard Eyre, Michael Radford, etc) whose views, inevitably partial, are given the weight of received wisdom.

Still, it is greatly superior to A Night at the Pictures, which has an aggressive Fore­ word from David Puttnam (down with high­ brow critics, up with commercial success), a predictable bit of puff from Richard Atten­ borough as Introduction, two long pieces from Gilbert Adair on ‘The British Tradition’ and Nick Roddick on ‘The British Revival’ and a year-by-year list of major events in British cinema, from 1896 to 1985, set in a context of snippets of social and political history (the rise of the mini-skirt and the death of kings). The whole enterprise, wellillustrated (sometimes in colour) has a slapped-together air about it.

Adair’s survey of 70-odd years of British cinema in as many pages cannot achieve any depth of insight, given the approach adopted. All the famous names are there, occasionally with acute comments about them, but there is no discernible critical approach, no attitude to what film history might be. The piece is shapeless, some­ times vulgar (as in his sexual analogy for the decline of the British cinema), and ideologically bland.

Roddick’s piece on the revival has the advantage of dealing with a shorter period, and gives a lively sense of the work in the new British cinema. However, the book as a whole (sprinkled with errors: e.g. Philip Leacock named director of Educating Rita, instead of Lewis Gilbert) reads more like a brochure to encourage investors than a serious study of anything to do with a national cinema.

Brian McFarlane

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