Cinema Papers March 1986

publication no VBP 212

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, , >/-■> I f f e t - O ’r :

Australia’s

record-breaking stunt

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EDITORIAL

3

FRONT LINES: A round-up of the local films and people partici­ pating in the American Film Market, a background to the controversy about the Sydney Fillmmakers' Co-Op, and a report from the Film and Flistory Confer­ ence. Plus festival reports from London, Hyderabad, Havana and the Film Nouveau season; our regular columns from around the world; and profiles on writer/ director Jackie McKimmie, actor Colin Friels and actor/director Jack Thompson.........................................4

CAPTAIN OF THE CLOUDS: One of Australia’s most enduring actors, John Hargreaves, dis­ cusses his career in theatre, film and television with Gail McCrea.............38

A N Y O N E GAN BE A STUNTMAN ONCE: On loca­ tion in Sydney to execute a record-breaking stunt for DeadEnd Drive-In, Guy Norris talks to Nick Roddick about the stunt­ man as scientist and the highs of jumping......................................

17

MAN OF PLENTY: Back in Australia after six years and three features in the US, w riter/ producer/director Fred Schepisi speaks to David Stratton about collaboration with David Hare, the magic of Meryl and the ones that got away.......................................... 22

O’ROURKE’S DRIFT: with his new documentary, Half Life, Dennis O’Rourke seems poised to explode two myths - the cir­ cumstances of nuclear testing in the Pacific and the notion that independent documentaries should be confined to the arthouse circuit. He talks to Nick Roddick about his early films, Half Life and his work m ethods.............30

AHORSE FORALLCOURSES: With a track record that indicates a penchant for pace, Brian Trenchard-Smith has become one of Australia’s most success­ ful and sought-after directors. He talks to Brian Jones about his career..................................................... 26

PRODUCTION: A comprehen­ sive round-up of what’s in pro­ duction in Australia, with special reports on Kangaroo and Tracy, plus our new Barometer, record­ ing feature film and televi­ sion production in Australia in 1985 ..................................................... 42 WHERE THERE’S SMOKE THERE’S BRIAN: Fred Harden talks to Brian Bosisto, an innova­ tor whose cranes, camera cars, wind and smoke machines have taken the film industry by s to rm ...........65

CHANGES: Producer Jill Robb, director Robyn Nevin and ac­ tress Judy Morris talk to Debi Enker about The More Things Change..., a contemporary drama aimed at a neglected slice of the market....................

FILM REVIEWS: Full-length re­ views of Alamo Bay, The Color Purple, Half Life, Jenny Kissed Me, Letter to Brezhnev, Marie, The More Things Change..., Out of Africa, Plenty, Sky Pirates, Wrong World and Year of the Dragon. Plus shorter reviews of all the recent releases ......... 79

BOOK REVIEWS: Bernardo Bertolucci by Robert Phillip Kolker; Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe by An­ thony Summers; The Australian Film Book, 1930-Today by Simon B rand..................................................... 86 CINEMA PAPERS March — 1

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Editor: Nick Roddick. Assistant editor: Debi Enker. Office and advertising manager: Patricia Amad. Art director: Debra Symons. Editorial assistant/ subscriptions: Linda Malcolm. Proof­ reading: Arthur Salton.

Typesetting by B-P Typesetting Pty. Ltd. Colour separations by Colourscan Pte Ltd. Negative-making and printing by York Press! Ltd. Distribution by Network Distribution Company, 54 Park Street, - Sydney 2000 (Australia).

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Editorial consultants: Fred Harden, Brian McFarlane, Tom Ryan.

Signed articles represent the views of their author, 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 pub­ lishers can accept liability for any loss or damage which may arise. This magazine ma^not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission of the copyright owner. Cinema Papers is pub. lished every two months by MTV Publish­ ing Limited, 644 Victoria Street, North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 3051.

Telephone: (03) 329 5983. Telex: AA30625 Reference ME 230. © Copyright MTV Publishing Limited, No 56, March 1986. ’ Recommended price only.

Cover design by Ernie Althoff. Main photograph: Dead-End Drive-In (photo: Robbie Gribble). Inset,' Meryl Streep in Plenty.

Cinema Papers is published with financial assistance from the AUSTRALIAN FILM COMMISSION and FILM VICTORIA

Film Victoria

For no better reason than that this is the first issue of 1986 (the ‘January’ issue was actually published, as these things tend to be, before Christmas), here are a few anniversaries. It is 85 years and five months since the first film to be made in Australia, Soldiers of the Cross, was shown by the Salvos at the Melbourne Town Hall. It is just under 20 years since Michael Powell’s They’re a Weird Mob, which was more Australian than most ‘Australian’ films of the sixties, had its Sydney premiere. It is just under fifteen years since Wake in Fright was shown at Cannes, and almost exactly seventeen since the Melbourne premiere of Tim Burstall’s Two Thousand Weeks, the first film of what David Stratton would later call ‘the last new wave’. Finally, at time of writing, it is just over 24 hours since an Australian director, Peter Weir, was nominated for Best Director in Hollywood.

On another tack, it is sixteen and a half years since the first broadsheet issue of C inem a P apers came out of Carlton, and a little over twelve since the magazine began regular publication in October 1969.

Honesty forces me to record that it is also three years since C inem a Papers was forced to suspend publication, and just under two since it started up again. It is also thirteen months, almost to the day, since I took over the editorship.

This, as regular readers will have noticed (and as first-time readers may be interested to know), is the first issue to appear in the new, reduced format, breaking with twelve years of tradition and probably offending one or two people. We’ve done it for a number of reasons — people couldn’t fit the old format on their bookshelves, newsagents didn’t like handling it. But the main one was so we could, at last, afford to print on decent paper.

There are a few other breaks with tradition, too. The magazine has been extensively redesigned, the features I have introduced since I took over — the news from around the world, the regular location reports, the policy of reviewing every film, however bad, that opens in Australia — have been revamped and tightened up, and a few extra ones have been added, notably the Production Barometer on pages 62-63, which will become a regular, twice-yearly feature.

Early 1986 may seem an odd time to be blowing trumpets, though. 1985 was, by almost universal consensus, a bad year for the Australian cinema. Leaving aside the third Mad Max, which did not make the earth move as much as expected, the only local film to do proportionally decent business at the Australian box office was Bliss, and that had to be four-walled by its producers. Certainly, none of the big movies did more than skate across the surface of the Great Australian Public — not the SAFC’s expensive Robbery Under Arms (which is out this month as a miniseries); not The Empty Beach (Bryan Brown may be a star in Hollywood, but he doesn’t seem to pull ’em in back home); and certainly not Burke & Wills, on which so many hopes (not to mention careers) were pinned. One or two unkind people have said that, in 1985, Cinem a Papers backed nothing but losers with our cover pictures. It wasn’t hard.

A mid-year audience survey, commissioned by the Australian Film Commission, revealed that Australian audiences no longer went out of their way — or went out at all — to see an Australian movie, and that few of them (less than 5%) could name any Australian film made the previous year. I doubt things would be much better if the survey were done again this April. But April 1987 might give a better result. We’re only into the second month of 1986 as I write this, but already two of the best Australian films for quite some time — The More Things Change . . . and Half Life — are on the verge of release. It is too soon to say how they will do. But they get a lot of coverage in this issue, and we are proud to be associated with them.

All of which hints at something of a dilemma for Australian filmmaking. The days of automatic support for the sound of strine are long since gone, taking with them the quirky, low-budget films on which the renaissance was built, and we are still a long way off the brave New World of films that aim for — and squarely hit — their limited commercial targets. This is almost certainly a dilemma the industry is going to have to sort out for itself, because there is every sign that the government no longer believes in the notion of a tax-aided cultural and economic flagship. And the seductive options of television may not prove to be a salvation either. The simple economics of the matter are that, in order to make a miniseries that enough Australians will want to watch for the commercial channels to go on putting up the money, you have to spend around twice as much as the channels can afford (or are prepared) to pay. Which means overseas sales, overseas stars (and, quite possibly, overseas stories). All of which mean, in turn, setting your sights on something other than Australian life and culture.

C inem a Papers supports the Australian film industry, and it supports Australian film culture: we wouldn’t exist without either, nor should either exist without the other. But they are, increasingly, not the same thing. That doesn’t mean we have to choose, however. It is an article of faith at 644 Victoria Street that films are an industrial art form, that filmmakers, like anybody else, have to make a living, and that commercial success is not some kind of cop-out. The film named most often in the AFC survey was The Man From Snowy River. The fact that over 10% of the respondents thought it was made last year indicates as much the film’s hold on their memories as it does their haphazard grasp of chronology.

For what it’s worth, I thought Snowy River was terrific. But, even if we knew how to, we can’t ju s t make Snowy Rivers. As the experience of country after country has shown, a film industry built entirely on the notion of horses for courses — films aimed at specific audiences — fails every time. Out of that film industry, a film culture has to grow, because that culture will feed back into the industry and replenish it, as the European new wave fed into the American industry, and the American industry’s B movies fed into the European new wave.

The collapse of the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op, whether from natural or unnatural causes, seems to signal the end of an era. But something has to grow in its place. So, in addition to supporting the industry (which we will do in issues like this one, partly aimed at the American Film Market in Los Angeles, where two dozen Australian films are on sale), it is the job — the duty — of C inem a P apers to agitate for that something, to support the sort of films that will last. And part of that agitation is going to be to say to the government bodies that subsidize us, as they subsidize other areas of the industry, that it is their duty, too, to encourage that kind of filmmaking, not just on the fringes, but at the very centre of the industry. Increasingly, it seems, this needs to be said. Lest we forget.

Nick Roddick CINEMA PAPERS March — 3

Buoyant Australian presence at the Los Angeles market 20-plus Australian films for the AFM’s “banner year” With the disappointing results of last year fading away, the Australian film industry looks as though it will be approaching the American Film Market in Los Angeles (20-28 Fe­ bruary) in a fairly buoyant mood. It should be an important market: this year’s AFM will, according to Ameri­ can Film Marketing Association director Tim Kittelson, be a "banner year”, with around 150 features cur­ rently slotted in for screenings in nineteen West Los Angeles theatres.

The market itself is located at the Beverly Hilton hotel.

There will, at time of going to press, be upwards of 20 Australian films on offer, represented by a series of local and international sales agencies. And there can be little doubt that the AFM has, by now, almost totally replaced Berlin as Au­ stralia’s second biggest interna­ tional market outlet, after Cannes and somewhat ahead of MIFED (Milan in November).

P roviding access to the allimportant American independent film and ancillary circuit and to a large number of overseas markets, the 1986 AFM should help Austra­ lian producers improve somewhat on last year, when New Zealand drew level on the American sales market. Although Variety lists eleven Australian films and only four Kiwi ones as being released in the U.S. in 1985, the Australian total was swol­ len by Satori’s 7 Love Australian Films’ festival in New York in Fe­ bruary, which included brief show­ ings of seven previously unreleased titles, some of them nearly ten years old. Without that boost, Australia and New Zealand would have tied at four films each.

Looked at from this side of the Pacific, probably the major change for this year’s AFM - and one which will have considerable significance for overseas sales of Australian pic­ tures in general - comes as a result of the announcement by New South Wales Film Corporation Chairman, Paul Riomfalvy, on 16 January, that theNSWFC's West Coast represent­ ative, the Australian Films Office, would henceforth be known as Au­ stralian Films International Inc. Headed by the energetic Bob Lewis, the renamed organization will act as a worldwide sales arm for all inte­ rested Australian producers, notjust those connected with the NSWFC. The announcement itself, which was turned into something of a damp squib by its coincidence with a journalists’ strike in Sydney, was made in the presence of Australian Film Commission Chief Executive, Kim Williams, clearly on hand to indi­ cate that NSW was not attempting to muscle in on the AFC’s marketing territory. In fact, as Williams pointed out, the AFC has, since 1984, been backing out of direct involvement in the marketing of product, and now sees its role as providing “research, information, advice and interna­ tional and domestic liaison”.

4 — March CINEMA PAPERS

What the change does cast into some doubt, though, is the con­ tinued existence of the AFC’s Los Angeles office, headed by North American representative Richard Guardian.

With Lewis as all but officially ac­ credited American marketing repre­ sentative, the space left for Guardian hardly seems worthy of his talents, and there are rumours he may be on the lookout for another position.

Of the new Australian films on show at the AFM, the two biggest (in terms of budget) are the Hoyts Edgley B u rk e & W ills , and the YarramanlUAA production, T he Right-Hand Man, which will be looked after in Los Angeles by UAA’s Californian affiliate, UAA Films Incorporated, headed by Floyd Rappaport. Hoyts general manager, Jonathon Chissick, will be accompanying Burke & Wills, which performed disappointingly in Au­ stralia, but which is generally rec­ koned to have a better chance overseas. According to one of the film’s two stars, Nigel Havers, who plays Wills, it has been extremely well received at private screenings in the UK. The reason? Unlike Au­ stralians, who were brought up on the tale of the two luckless explorers, overseas audiences don't know what’s going to happen at the end!

T h e R ig h t-H a n d M a n , on which we carried a location report in our Christmas issue, is one of the most eagerly-awaited of the 1986 films. A feature debut for Di Drew, with a strong cast headed by Rupert Everett and Hugo Weaving, it is a period drama that deals with the decidedly modern issue of sexual surrogacy.

The New South Wales Film Corpo­ ration’s crop includes Dead-End Drive-In, our cover story, of which a promo reel will be on show; The More Things C hange...featured on pages 35-37 of this issue; Short C hanged, the Ross Matthews/ George Ogilvie film about a young Aboriginal shearer fighting to be united with his part-Aboriginal son; and Going Sane, a comedy about "a man’s obsession with the passing of tim e ”, d ire c te d by M ichael Robertson, and s ta rrin g John Wafers and Judy Morris. Lewis and NSW marketing chief, Danny Col­ lins, will also be hoping to drum up advance interest in T h e B eeEater, another George Ogilvie film, now shooting on the New South Wales coast.

The Ross Dimsey/Tim Burstall production of Kangaroo (see loca­ tion report on page 42) is another major contender for world sales, given the presence of Judy Davis in the cast and the name of D. H. Lawr­ ence on the credits. It will be repre­ se n te d by F ilm w a y s ’ London affiliate, World Film Alliance (Peter Collins), who will also be looking after Devil in th e Flesh, a version of Raymond Radiguet’s novel relo-' cated to World War II Australia,

Australian movies to the world: the New South Wales Film Corporation’s Danny Collins (left) and Australian Films International’s Boh Lewis. which is the feature debut of former Cinema Papers editor, Scott Mur­ ray.

Melbourne-based producer Tom Broadbridge, of Nilsen Premiere, will be representing a couple of films: Jenny Kissed Me, which he produced and Brian TrenchardSmith directed (see the interview with Trenchard-Smith on page 26); and I Own the Racecourse, the Barron Films feature about a gullible teenage boy conned into believing he has bought the Harold Park race­ course in Sydney.

Cori Films International, headed by the omnipresent Marie Hoy, will be looking after this year’s Yoram Gross crop (there is a possibility that Gross himself will be attending the AFM), which include the completed animation films, Dot and K eeto and Dot and th e K oala, and promo reels of the two films which, as part of Gross’s regular annual two-picture turnaround, are cur­ rently in production: Dot and the Bunyip and Dot and the Whale.

Cori is also representing M alcolm (discussed by Colin Friels in the int­ erview on page 14, where he also

talks about his lead role In Kanga­ roo,), the David Parker/Nadia Tass film about an ingenuous tramways employee who builds his own tram.

J. C. Williamson, who have a new Los Angeles general manager in the shape of David Armstrong, will be handling a couple of smaller films: Barbara Boyd-Anderson’s T h e S till Point, about a deaf girl expe­ riencing the traumas of adolesc­ ence; and Bill Bennett’s A S tre e t to Die, which won Chris Haywood the Best Actor prize at last Sep­ tember’s AFI Awards for his playing of a victim of Agent Orange. And producer Don Catchlove will be tak­

Hugo Weaving in The Right-Hand Man.

Judy Davis and Colin Wriels Kangaroo.

in

ing his colourful Shakespeare adap­ tation, T w e lfth Night.

Other Australian product on offer atthe AFM includes the economical soft-core movie, Leonora, which is being handled by Showcase Video; the fantasy film, Frog Dreaming,’ the third Trenchard-Srhiih movie in the market, starring E .T .’s Henry Thomas; Fair Gam e and, possibly, A ustralian Dream, a profile of whose writer/drredtor, JackiMcKirm mie, appears on page 14.

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Both sides share same objective in Co-Op dispute.

Arguments and resolutions follow Christmas Eve liquidation.

On the afternoon of 31 January, Mandy King of the Sydney Film­ makers’ Co-Op Action Group rang the liquidators of the Sydney Film­ makers’ Co-Operative to find out which of several bidders had suc­ ceeded in acquiring the 400-odd in­ dependent films distributed through the Co-Op. The liquidators, says King, de­ clined to advise the name of the new distributor, suggesting that such an announcement was up to that party.

It was another symbolic and singu­ larly useless action among many that have accompanied the debate: throughout January, the Filmmakers’ Co-Op and the Australian Film Com­ mission have yelled at each other in print across the breakfast tables of a million homes in terms just as empty.

From what has appeared in the press, the public must assume that there are two sides to the conflict. But careful reading of the stated objec­ tives of these two sides would reveal that they share the same aspirations asfarasindependentfilmmakersare concerned.

The arguments about why the CoOp has got itself into financial difficul­ ties are more or less irrelevant.

The first indication of public trouble came with the protest at the AFC’s headquarters in North Sydney on 9 January. There is continuing argu­ ment about just why this happened, since it is acknowledged that the CoOp’s directors were forced to place the organization in the hands of a provisional liquidator in December.

When the AFC failed to bail them out with an emergency grant, in the now accepted manner of other arts orga­ nizations, the Co-Op was sud­ denly faced with the prospect of clos­ ing down for real.

On 10 January trading ceased.

That was the day after the staff went to the AFC offices in a bitter mood.

Over the next two weeks, statements and letters, public meetings and the formation of the Action Group gained general press coverage.

But the first shot in the paper war was fired by AFC Chief Executive Kim Williams at 11 am on Friday, 10 January. His statement began: “A number of damaging, mischievous and inaccurate media reports have been circulated in recent days in rela­ tion to the insolvency of the Sydney Filmmakers' Co-Operative.”

Williams went on to “summarize the current position”, saying the AFC had approved a grant of $221,500 in the 85/86 financial year, and that all monies due to the Co-Operative up until 31 December 1985 had been paid.

He also stated that, back in July, the AFC had advised the Co-Op that itwould not provide anyfurtheremec-^ gency funding - having by then pro­ vided extra cashflow assistance of over $52,000 - and pointing out that it was at an Extraordinary General Meeting of members on 18 De­ cember that the Co-Op voted to go into receivership.

The AFC met with the liquidator on

9 January and agreed to provide funds to cover one month’s rental and wages for several staff in order to allow an orderly wind-down, Wil­ liams said. He went on to say that when Sue Kaufman, the administra­ tive co-ordinator, arrived for a meet­ ing on 9 January, requested by the AFC, “she was accompanied by several interested members and staff of the Co-Operative, who staged a minor demonstration”.

On Monday, 13 January, the CoOp issued its re jo in d e r Media Release, claiming that the AFC was kept fully aware of its financial situa­ tion and that some AFC recommen­ dations, like an earlier move to shopfront premises, had in fact ac­ celerated their problems. In the 17 January edition of The National Times, a full-page advertisement appeared, headed ‘Crisis for Inde­ pendent Film’.

Most importantly, the ad promoted a public meeting on Sunday 19 January at Paddington Town Hall.

The Action Group was formed at this meeting, and it passed several reso­ lutions, including resolution Number 4, which “urges the Federal Govern­ ment to increase the level of funding to the AFC, and urges the AFC to increase its allocation to the inde­ pendent film and video sector”.

The thrust of these resolutions could well be summed up by none other than Kim Williams, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald on 21 January, when he stated three objec­ tives the AFC believed must be achieved: “1. The maximum expo­ sure of independent film and video product to Australian audiences. 2.

The achievement of the maximum possible financial return to indepen­ dent producers. 3. The provision of an effective voice for the indepen­ dent film community.”

The Action Group used a larger number of resolutions, but effectively said much the same thing. And, in another letter to the Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, Joy Toma of the Action Group agreed that Williams’outline of the future objectives were “quite compatible with the ob­ jectives of the Co- Operative”.

By 24 January, events had taken a step forward: in the time-honoured tradition of bureaucracies the world over, a working party was set up to look into the state of subsidized film distribution. A telex announced that the Action Group would be “closely monitoring the deliberations of this working party, to ensure that it sup­ ports the ongoing national distribu­ tion and exhibition of these films in the spirit of the old Co-Op”.

The spirit is obviously willing, but The flesh has been weak: everyone it seems, is keen to see the continua­ tion of efficient distribution of inde­ pendent films. The films are, by consensus, a vital artistic and sociol o g i c a l r e s o u r c e . S o me h o w, however, renting them out has been financially unprofitable. The bill, in all senses, has now arrived.

Andrew L. Urban

Gone w est History and Film conference turns into a m ellow get-together By the end of the first day of the Third History and Film Conference, held from 2-6 December in Perth, almost no one was wearing an identity badge. This was because almost no one needed an intro­ duction to anyone else. It was enough for almost everyone to see almost everyone else again, to hear what they had to say, to deliver papers and to chat between sessions.

An uneventful conference, then.

No jejeune polemics to stir the blood, no raging confrontations, with academ ics head-to-head, no inspiring intellectual breakthroughs, not even any delectable scandal.

By the same token, there was not much to complain about, either.

Most of the papers were interesting (to other academics, at any rate), the ambience was great (the University of Western Australia does have the most beautiful campus in the country), Steve’s had Guinness on tap, the Conference dinner was held at the Yacht Club, and the wine tour was generously primed.

Am I saying that the film-academic establishment has grown fat and lazy? I don’t really think so. It’s just that opinions are not so passionately held as once they were. Many of the certainties of just a few years ago now seem questionable, and academics (like the rest of us) are casting about for other approaches, are willing to listen, and are waiting for something worth listening to.

The most exciting things worth listening to in Perth came, not from an academic paper, but from a short film — Ross Gibson’s Camera Natura. This is not an easy movie to describe. It is about how the Austra­ lian landscape has been imaged over the years, and it is an object lesson in history-on-film, which uses movies from the past as part of its data.

What sets it apart from many other efforts in the same genre is its suspicion that there is no single explanation for events, no ‘true history’ — in this case, no 'true Aus­ tralian landscape’. The result is a densely-packed, ‘avant-garde’ , talky, didactic and imperfect work — definitely a must-see item.

The original idea for these Confer­ ences was to get historians and film academics together, presuming that the meeting could have some effect on those respective worlds. That aim was not fully realized this year, because Australian historians stayed away in droves. It seems that estab­ lished cultural areas — like history — don't like the idea that there may be something to learn from upstart phenomena, like the movies..

Thus, the visiting history types were fish doubly out of water, and the experience can't have been much fun — particularly not for Charles Geshekter of California State, whose film, The Parching Winds of Somalia, provoked the nastiest attacks of the week. Here, a lack of film background meant that Geshekter had almost no idea of what he wanted on the screen —

and what he got from his crew was simply a series of travelogue cliches, neatly nullifying what sophistication there was in the ideas behind the film. The film people were not tolerant, but Geshekter, interviewed afterwards, claimed to have been stimulated rather than wounded by their vehemence.

The conference had a theme: the thirties. You can see how the new German Nazi films might be squeezed into that theme, but it is harder to figure out how Camera Natura and The Parching Winds of Somalia fitted. Nobody came in period costume (more’s the pity) and, as it turned out, very little was done with the thirties idea.

Take the sessions dealing in detail with certain films. These were all Hollywood thirties product, which the p a p e r-g iv e rs a p p a re n tly' reckoned were a bit strange. But, although the strangeness was remarked on, it was mostly not ex­ plained, or it was explained in some off-hand way — that the early thirties pre-dated the ‘classic’ period in Hollywood was one of the ideas advanced.

One of these papers was given by Adrian Martin, a name that should be familiar to readers of Cinema Papers. Martin can usually be counted on for provocative attacks on film theory, academics and other worthy targets; but, this time, he seemed to be demythologizing him­ self in a long, obsessive analysis of Peter Ibbetson that contained not one word of vituperation. At the end of the session, you could have cut the disappointment with a knife.

More fun than Martin was Barbara Creed’s inversion of some famous (unspoken) movie words, "Me Jane, you Tarzan’’, in which the La Trobe film academic set out to demon­ strate, with high good humour and erudition, that Jane was more of a partner to the ape-man than a sub­ ordinate.

On the other hand, Kristen (The Classic Hollywood Cinema) Thomp­ son’s analysis of The Black Cat did. not match up either to the film or to what she has done in print. It seemed designed to smooth out the peculiarities of this decidedly peculiar horror flick which, to this observer, was the wrong tack to take.

Another chunk of the programme was devoted to John Grierson, the ‘father’ of the documentary. In these sessions, it was open season on dad. Canadian Peter Morris (Queen’s University) got off the first round with an elegant, sophistical argument designed to prove that Grierson was not a true lefty, as is usually presumed, but a closet fascist (well, a neo-conservative sympathizer, at least).

Mick Eaton, who makes docu­ mentaries himself, publicly admitted his Oedipal relation to Grierson, and, showed a fine Humphrey Jennings film, Spare Time, made under the old man’s (disapproving) gaze. At this point your reporter left, thus missing a last-minute try for re- ►

CINEMA PAPERS March — 5

habitation by Davy (Yaketty Yak) Jones— which, he told me later, was an abject failure.

There was more, of course. Lots of sessions I did not attend, a couple more papers I liked, and even one session I chaired. The paper most praised was delivered by John Hartley, and dealt with where the television set is located in Western Australian homes (it is reprinted in The Moving Image: The History of Film and Television in Western Aus­ tralia, 1896 to 1985, to be reviewed in the next issue of Cinema Papers).

But, in the end, it was all mellow.

Terribly mellow.

Bill Routt

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■ Vicki Molloy has been appointed as the new executive director of the Australian Film Institute. Molloy joins the AFI after six years at the Aus­ tralian Film Commission, which she joined as manager of the Women’s Film Fund.

For the past two years, Molloy has been the director of the Creative Development Branch, responsible for programmes of assistance to new and innovative filmmakers, cultural activities, funding to film and video organisations, festivals, special events and publications.

A graduate of Swinburne, who has spent time working at the ABC, the BBC and on numerous short films, Molloy takes up her new position on 17 March.

■ The Australian Film Commission, in association with the ABC, has announced the awarding of the 1986 National Documentary Fellow­ ships to David Bradbury (Frontline, Nicaragua No Pasaran) and John Hughes (Traps). 64 candidates applied for the Fellowships,, valued at $125,000.

The AFC also announced that Pat Fiske would be the recipient of a study fellowship.

Recent AFC appointments have seen Geoffrey Atherden take up a position as a part-time Script Office consultant for three months, com­ mencing in mid-January. And, in the Melbourne office, Claire Dobbin has been selected as the new senior project officer for the Creative Development Fund.

FESTIVALS: the annual St Kilda Film Festival will be held in Mel­ bourne from 17-20 April at the National Theatre. Presented by the St Kilda City Council, the festival aims to showcase Australian shorts, documentaries and features that might not be picked up for a wide commercial release.

Nigel Buesst has been appointed part-time director of the festival and co-ordinator Lee Holmes has confirmed that the prizes of $300, $200 and $100 will again be awarded by a panel of judges.

Filmmakers interested in submit­ ting works, for consideration can send them to Holmes on V2 " VHS tape or 16mm film.

Planning is also well under way for the Melbourne- and Sydney Film Festivals, both to be held in June.

The Melbourne Festival recently appointed a new director, Santina Musumeci, who takes up the position after eleven years at

6 — March CINEMA PAPERS

Michael Edgley International as an administrator and publicist.

The Melbourne Festival will run from 19-29 June at the Forum Cinema Complex (which proved to be a popular venue in 1985), the State Film Centre and the Glass­ house Cinema. At the time of going to press, negotiations were under way for a programme of new wave Super-8 shorts from New York, and confirmation was pending on Lizzie Borden’s Working Girls.

The Sydney Festival will run from 6-20 June at the State and Dendy theatres. Although it is too early to confirm many films or guests for either festival, British filmmaker Ken McMullen will be attending Sydney and presenting his film, Zina. Two recent films by Jean-Luc Godard — Je vous salue, Marie (Hail, Mary) and Detective — have also been confirmed and there are hopes that the French director will attend.

■ Scripts for the Australian Child­ ren's Television Foundation’s follow­ up to the Winners series have been developed and the ACTF is once again assembling a diverse group of writers, producers and directors for the project. The nine-part series of hour-long fantasy programmes has been announced, a prospectus should be issued in May, and the ACTF hopes to go into production towards the end of the year.

The Journey Writers: Ken Cameron and Jane Oehr. Director: Ken Cameron. Producer: Richard Mason.

The Secret Life of Trees Writer: Paul Cox. Director: Paul Cox. Pro­ ducer: Tony Llewellyn-Jones.

Sky High Writer: Michael Cove.

Director: TBA. Producer: Sue Milliken.

The Clip Writer: Mac Gudgeon.

Director: Bob Weis. Producer: Margot McDonald.

Mr Edmund Writer: Steve J. Spears.

Director: TBA. Producer: Anthony Buckley.

Christopher’s Faerie Writer: Steve J. Spears. Director: Esben Storm.

Producer: Sandra Levy.

Second Childhood Writer: Morris Gleitzman. Director: Mario Andreacchio. Producer: South Australian Film Corporation.

Scared of Heights Writer: Roger Simpson. Director: TBA. Producer: Jill Robb.

Montsalvat Horrors Writer: Roger Simpson. Director: TBA. Producer: Crawford Productions (under negotiation).

■ Three deputy members have recently been appointed to the board of Film Victoria. Actress Sigrid Thornton, producer Jane Ballantyne and broadcasting consultant Dion Weston took up their two-year positions from 20 December. The new members join three other parttime members Graeme Hodges, Roger Le Mesurier and Ian Crawford. The members of the board are John Harrison (Chair­ man), Gavin Anderson, Annette Blonski, Sarah Guest, Jenifer Hooks, Natalie Miller, Erwin Rado, Jill Robb, Brian Robinson, Charles Tingwell and Bob Weis.

■ Good news and not-so-good news on the international front. In the list of Top Foreign Rentals on video for 1985 published in Variety in early January, Careful, He Might Hear

You ranged among the top ten, with Pauline a la Plage, Entre Nous, Local Hero, Diva and Carmen.

On the other side of the Pacific, however, in a list of the most popular foreign features screened in Tokyo in 1985, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome finished a dis­ appointing eighteenth. In a market that has been a stronghold for the Mad Max films, it is surprising to see the title coming in behind Police Academy 2, 2010, Lifeforce and The Karate Kid. ■ Following the negotiation of inter­ national distribution deals for Bliss — with New World Pictures in the US and the Recorded Picture Company in the UK — international rights to Rebel have also recently been secured.

Vestron Pictures have acquired the US and Canadian theatrical and home video rights to the film for a reported $US1.5-2 million. Vestron plan to release Rebel before the summer, as the first film in a new package of half a dozen titles to be screened over the next twelve months.

■ Tribe, a feature to be directed

by Denny Lawrence, will have a one-week workshop with Lawrence and the actors in March, to enable alterations to be made to the script.

Production is scheduled for Sep-

Contributors Naoko Abe and Georgina Pope head the Tokyo-based sales agency, production and distribution company, Goanna Films.

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

Rod Bishop teaches film at the Phillip Institute of Technology.

Pat H. Broeske writes regularly about film for the Los Angeles Times and is Hollywood correspondent for the Washington Post and other publications.

Raffaeie Caputo is a freelance writer on film.

Rolando Caputo is a freelance writer on film.

Lorenzo Codelli is a freelance journalist based in Trieste, a contri­ butor to Postif and Italian corre­ spondent for the International Film Guide.

Mary Colbert is a freelance writer on film.

Ray Comiskey is film critic for The Irish Times.

Christine Cremen is a freelance writer on film.

Patricia King Hanson is editor of the American Film Catalogue and a contributor to the Los Angeles Times, American Film and Stills.

Fred Harden is a film and television producer and has a regular column on technical information in The Video Age. Paul Harris is co-host of Film Buff’s Forecast on 3RRR and a regular contributor to The Age. Sheila Johnston is a London based writer and film critic for LAM ■magazine.

Brian Jones is an independent pro­ ducer, director, scriptwriter and journalist.

tember. The film will be produced by Peter Imaru and the script has been written by Barry Klemm. It is about a family gathering over a weekend for a funeral in a small country town.

■ The Australian Film and Tele­ vision School’s Melbourne office has introduced a small pilot scheme called the Tryout Program aimed at assisting makers of film, television and radio programmes in exploring their craft.

According to Victorian manager, Jenny Sabine, the scheme aims to encourage people to test new ideas in a working situation without the high costs normally involved.

Facilities available include rehearsal space, actors, equipment and access to technical advice.

■ Despite reservations about the Australian Film Commission’s Co­ production scheme (see Cinema Papers No. 55), producer Brian Rosen was the successful applicant in the first batch of contenders His $ 2 .4 -m illio n , fo u r-h o u r miniseries, Not For Glory, Not For Gold is a co-production with Canada’s Telefilm and may begin shooting in May. Underwritten prior to the 19 September modifications to 10BA, the miniseries is co-produced and written by David Williamson and chronicles the quest for the fourminute mile.

■¥• Paul Kalina teaches mèdia studies f i l i and photography at St. Joseph.|||Sb College and is a freelance writer on %

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Peter Krien is film critic. for the. 7 Sunday Press.

Geoff Mayer is a lecturer in fjm llS studies at the Phillip Institute of Techfe^ B nology.

Gail McCrea is a postgraduate m student at La Trobe University.

Brian McFarlane is a lecturer in English at the Chisholm Institute and author of Words and Images.

Belinda Meares is a New Zealand- m born freelance writer working out p f 'i f i ' Paris.

Tony Mitchell teaches film a fld lÉ B theatre at the University of NewtìÉ; South Wales.

Mike Nicolaidi is a freelance writer and contributor to Variety.

Dieter Osswald is a journalist à r id jf p contributor to Filmecho.

Dasha Ross is a reporter for theClose-Up series on SBS TV. Bill and Diane Routt are a couple of Melbourne academics.

Tom Ryan lectures in media studies at Swinburne, contributes to The Video Age and reviews films for th e |® 7 3LO Sunday show.

Jim Schembri is a journalist at The f Age. Mark Spratt is a freelance writer on | film. . f David Stratton is host of Movie of f the Week on SBS TV and reviews " films for Variety.

R. J. Thompson is a freelance writer on'film.. . ^1| ; Andrew Urban is Australian corre- f Spondent for Screen International "M and a regular contributor to the arts yf| pages of The Australian Michael Visontay is a journalist rat Tg&\ the Sydney Morning Herald. |

THERE ARE NO GREMLINS DOW N UNDER Unless of course you’re talking about the quality release prints produced by Colorfilm Laboratories of Australia for the Warner Bros movie, “Gremlins.”

We were sent the negative and produced a quantity of prints w hose quality m atched the finest in the world.

We have also produced prints of films for U.I.P., Fox, Columbia, Disney and Thom EMI. Colorfilm’s rates are very competitive too.

So contact Murray Forrest now and get the Gremlins out of your system.

Colorfilm 35 Missenden Road, Camperdown, NSW. 2050. Telex: 24545, Telephone: 516 1066.

Videolab Pty Ltd.

2 Clarendon Street, Artarmon2064 Telephone (02) 439 5922

Filmlab Engineering Pty. Ltd.

201-203 Port Hacking Road, Miranda 2228 Telephone (02) 522 4144 Telex No. AA70434

Colorfilm (New Zealand) Pty. Ltd.

27 Nugent Street, Auckland 1.

Telephone (09) 77 5483 Telex No. NZ60481

Cinevex Film Laboratories Pty. Ltd.

15-17 Gordon Street, Elstemwick 3185 Telephone (03) 5286188 Telex No. AA38366

MNCROSE/CLF 9976

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by Pat H. Broeske

Last stop before the shelf: San Diego try-outs for two problem pictures Moviegoers in and around San Diego, California — a seaside resort community with plenty of palm trees; a famous zoo and an aquarium — will decide the eventual fate of Where Are the Children? Based on a bestselling suspense novel by Mary Higgins Clark, the Columbia Pictures release will have four weeks of test screenings (beginning 24 January) to determine what kind of release — if any — will follow.

Problems with the film, which deals with a possible child murderer who may also, it is implied, be a

child molester, could stem from the fact that Coca-Cola, which owns Columbia, doesn’t want to be associated with such unsavoury subject matter. That, at any rate, is the claim of some of those involved with the production, including director Bruce Malmuth, who did Nighthawks, and who had to re-edit his present film, delivering what he calls “ a slightly compromised version of my original” .

It seems that his original version had too many allusions to child abuse by the Frederic Forrest character, who taunts Jill Clayburgh and her children. So Columbia did its version — “ which wasn’t the film we set out to do: it was diluted of all its impact,” says Malmuth. He then did the tamer version (the one that will be test screened).

Gone is a bathtub sequence in which a little girl bathes while Forrest, seated, plays with a rubber duck. The scene ends with a strong implication that Forrest gets in with her, after first holding out the duck and saying: “ You’re going to like Oscar.” Also removed is a scene in which Forrest administers sleeping potions to the children with a hypo­ dermic — “ tastefully done,’ ’ according to Malmuth.

The director is still hoping for a national release: “ What a filmmaker lives for,” he says, “ is to see his or

8 — March CINEMA PAPERS

her film find an audience.” By the looks of it, Big Trouble, also from Columbia, won't be doing that. The film re-unites the In-Laws team: Peter Falk, Alan Arkin and producers Michael Lobell and Andrew Bergman.

This time, Arkin plays a mildmannered insurance salesman who turns to a life of crime with the help of a swindler (Falk), so as to be able to send his three kids to Yale.

Directed by John Cassavetes in the summer of 1984, Big Trouble was to be released in the spring of

Jill Clayburgh as the frantic mother in Where are the Children?, which has still to clear the hurdle o f San Diego.

1985. Then it was the summer.

When the film finally failed to show up on the fall schedule, the studio spokesman remained reassuring: “ It’s going to be released: it’s just that we’re not sure when. But probably before the end of the year.”

But, aside from a disastrous test screening, marked by numerous walk-outs, in — you’ve guessed it — San Diego, Big Trouble never made it to the big screen in 1985.

According to Columbia marketing vice-president Bob Dingilian, it has since vanished from the studio’s roster. “ All the elements seemed so right,” said Dingilian diplomatically. “ But . . . well, comedy can be such a delicate matter. . . ” Hopefully, all the elements will be right — that is, releasable — in the major productions now before the cameras. Miami Vice’s Michael Mann is directing Red Dragon at Dino De Laurentiis’s North Carolina studios. William Peterson stars as a famed forensic pathologist called in by the FBI to track down a serial killer who murders entire families beneath the full moon’s light, and who calls himself ‘the Red Dragon’.

Mann is also producing Band of

the Hand, now shooting for Tri-Star in Miami. Directed by Paul Michael G la se r, who h e lm e d some invigorating episodes of TV’s Starsky and Hutch (in which he also starred), and has since done a couple of Miami Vices, the film is about a group of hard-core juvenile delinquents who are put through a life-or-death survival course in the Everglades, before being dis­ patched onto the mean, drug-ridden streets of Miami.

Now filming in San Francisco, Big Trouble in Little China reunites director John Carpenter and star Kurt Russell, previously teamed in Elvis, Escape from New York and The Thing. Fox tabs it “ a mystical action-adventure-comedy-kung fumonster-ghost story” , about the imaginary world beneath Chinatown that is inhabited by ghosts. W.D. Richter scripted.

Meanwhile, out in Spicewood, Texas, Willie Nelson is being directed by William Witliff (co-writer and producer of Country, and of Fred Schepisi’s Barbarosa) in RedHeaded Stranger. Nelson co­ produces — appropriately, since the film is based on his 1975 concept album about fictional preacher-man Julian Shay, who moved to Montana with his family in the eighteenseventies. The tale of love, loss, revenge and salvation co-stars Morgan Fairchild and Katharine R o s s . T h e film is b e in g independently financed, largely through Nelson and his chums.

Closer to Hollywood, writers keep coming — and coming — aboard Jumpin’ Jack Flash, the Fox film starring Whoopi Goldberg, which is currently shooting in LA. Looking through the names — ten to date — who’ve been through the project, one local scribe has called the film “ the greatest boon to writers since the residual” . Among them: Charles Shyer and Nancy Myers (the originals), David Franzoni, Diane Hammond, M.J. Milworth, Richard Price and Steven De Souza. Penny Marshall is directing (she took over from Howard Zieff, who left in November because of “ creative differences” ). The story is about a secretary (Goldberg), who gets caught up in International intrigue.

The seasonal story at the box office is about the near neck-to-neck battle between the prestigious endof-year entries, Sydney Pollack’s Out of A fric a and Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple, both reviewed in this issue. Pollack’s film claimed grosses, as of the first weekend in January, of more than $26 million. Spielberg’s film, which is on fewer screens, had ticket sales of $13.9 million.

Several Christmas stockingstuffers have also had a dandy season, notably Spies Like Us, which grossed $43.7 million, and Jewel of the Nile, with $39.7 million. And there appears to be no stopping the Italian stallion: grosses for Rocky IV, as of the same date, were a bell-ringing $101.5 million.^

France

by Belinda Meares Uproar as private TV falls to the Italians, while Cannon moves in almost unnoticed.

Readers may have heard that France is at last taking the plunge and going in for private television.

Committed to liberalizing the air waves since its election in 1981, the socialist government has, in doing so, stirred up a hornet’s nest of political and technical problems.

An optim istic report, com ­ m is s io n e d e a rly last year, p ro p o s e d tw o n a tio n w id e independent channels and 40 local ones, to be transmitted uncoded, and to be financed solely by advertising and sponsorship. This long-awaited announcement sent the French and European audio­ visual communities into a flurry ofactivity. Prototype programme grids were designed, and financial backers solicited. The race was on to get the new channels on the air by Christmas, a comfortable few months before the 17 March legis­ lative elections (which the socialists are likely to lose).

Prime candidates for the two national channels were Europe 1, a partially state-owned radio ^station, and CTL (Compagnie de Television Luxembourgeoise), a peripheral TV station which is received in north­ eastern France. As the autumn advanced, however, it became obvious that the dual-channel scheme was impractical.

The frequency distribution envis­ aged by TDF (Telediffusion de France) 17,000,000 and 19,000,000 households for the respective channels — was obviously too

One man is now clearly emerging as Germany’s most successful film producer: Bernd Eichinger of Neue Constantin. He was producer of the box-office hit, Christiane F. — wir K in der vom B ahn h of Zoo (Christiane F) and Das Boot (The Boat), both released In 1981, not to mention the most expensive German film ever, The Neverending Story (1984).

Eichinger’s latest project, a co­ production with France and Italy, also has an enormous price tag: 46 million marks ($27 million) has been earmarked for the filming of Umberto Eco’s bestseller, The Name of the Rose. And there are stars in abundance: Sean Connery is playing the lead role of Brother William, with F. Murray Abraham as his adversary.

Filming, under the direction of Jean-Jacques Annaud, has been under way since November in the monasteries at Eberbach and Maulbronn. Exteriors were filmed in Italy in January, and the world premiere is scheduled for October 1986.

Eichinger’s erstwhile collaborator, Wolfgang Petersen, was on hand for the massive media spectacle of the December premiere of his Enemy

mMKMKWRm m m qm sm m T V baron or media bogeyman?

Silvio Berlusconi, grabbing the French T V franchises.

limited to attract the advertising funds necessary to finance a private channel, and the competition began to fall away. Europe 1 pulled out, and CTL, still tenacious, was coldshouldered by President Mitterand, who had reason to believe an out­ sider was about to appear on the horizon.

The rumour was confirmed towards the end of October, sending shudders through the French cinema fraternity. Silvio Berlusconi, king of spaghetti television and the so-called ‘assassin’ of the Italian cinema, was girding his loins to cross the Alps like his forebear, Hannibal.

Associated with two of the wealthiest men in France, Jerome Seydoux (whose company controls the airline, UTA) and Christophe Riboud (younger member of the Schlumberger-Riboud dynasty), Berlusconi swept the pool: the concession for France’s fifth tele­ vision channel was his, as well as a channel on France’s future television satellite, TDF1, which he leased in the same week as British media magnate Robert Maxwell.

An immediate outcry against the decision condemned the govern­ ment for its “ gross favouritism” . The film fraternity was up in arms about the lenient 'cahier de charges' (programme conditions), which allow an inordinate number of foreign programmes and the inter­ ruption of films by commercials.

The prominent opposition leader, Jacques Chirac, is also out to suppress the decision if he comes to power in March.

Germany

He will do this either by imposing prohibitive revised conditions on the “ so cia lists’ channel’ ’ , or by privatizing one or more of the public c h a n n e ls to c re a te d ire c t competition. CTL, for its part, has lodged an appeal with the Conseil d’Etat against the arbitrary manner in which the concession was granted.

Mitterand himself has wisely agreed to review the controversial ‘cahier de charges’. As for the alleged villain of the piece, Silvio Berlusconi has just completed a public relations visit to Paris, during which he gallantly promised to respect the high (?) standards of French television.

With all these upheavals in the television world, developments on the French cinema scene have attracted less of the limelight than usual. The arrival in France of Cannon Films, for instance, has passed almost unnoticed. Headed

by Jean-Luc Defait, Cannon’s French subsidiary will have an initial capital of SUS65 million, some of which will go towards the production of Godard’s grandiose King Lear, starring, it is hoped, Woody Allen and Lee Marvin (the latter replacing the originally touted Marlon Brando).

Parafrance, the ailing fourth French cinema circu it (after Gaumont, UGC and Pathe), has been taken over by British real estate agents Michael and Anthony Stevens. Minister of Culture Jack Lang’s efforts on behalf of the production/distribution business could not save the company, after a 100-million-franc loan had already been extended to Gaumont.

The SOFICAs (in ve stm e n t companies for cinema and audio­ visual production — see my column in the January issue) are looking

good, however. Ten have been set up so far, promising to release about 400 million francs for 1986 production.

Cinema attendances, on the other hand, are still depressed — about 12% down on this time last year, and 5% lower over the whole of 1985. Especially disturbing news for French producers is the fact that 3.3% of 1985’s releases scooped 32% of the audiences. It comes as welcome but slim comfort that the year’s top-grossing film was a local production, Coline Serreau’s Trois hommes et un couffin, which has outdistanced Rambo and is still going strong.

Foreign successes have been predictable, including Year of the Dragon, Silverado and The Goonies. On the art-house circuit, mention must be made of an engaging Russian comedy by Nikita Mikhalkov, released here as La Parentèle (Family Relations); an excellent Quebec film, Le bon débarras, and Wim Wenders’s Tokyo-Ga. Tim Burstall’s The Naked Country — known here as Le châtim ent de la pierre magique (The Curse of the Magic Stone) has come and gone without a ripple.

Production distractions: Marco Ferreri is to direct Christophe Lambert in his next film, while Sandrine Bonnaire will next appear in a film by Jacques Doillon, with Michel Piccoli for a partner.

Robert Enrico is shooting Zone rouge, a social drama starring Sabine Azim a and R ichard Anconina, who plays a boxer (a startlingly original ideal). But the most interesting prospect on the horizon is Passage du sauvage, by Danish director Henning Carlsen.

The film, depicting the life of Paul Gauguin, will star Donald Suther­ land, Francis Yanne and Fanny Bastien, and will be shot in Copen­ hagen and Tahiti. *

Britain

by Sheila Johnston Bond (the real one) to the rescue on the British movie scene Following my last column’s cliffhanger conclusions as to the fate of Goldcrest (still too soon to tell, though Revolution has opened in the US to uniformly bad reviews), British Film Year now proudly presents: the Travails of TESE, a further instalment in the thrill-packed adventure that is the British film industry.

TESE (Thorn EMI Screen Enter­ tainment) is one of the country’s — indeed, the world's — largest film companies, with assets including 106 cinemas (the ABC chain), a library of 2,000 films, a studio (Elstree), together with Thorn financing, production and distribu­ tion operations.

The company has been on the skids for some years now, in the wake of a series of box-office disasters, headed by John Schlesinger’s multi-million megaflop, Honky Tonk Freeway. Chief executive Gary Dartnall had managed to turn the tide, since his arrival three years ago, from a £10-million loss in 1982 to a modest £12-million profit last year.

But earnings have still not been enough to satisfy investors. The acquisitions department put up a feeble performance last year, with purchases like Wild Geese II and The Holcroft Covenant. And the in-house production record has been disappointing, too, with one winner — A Passage to India — and three box-office drongos: Morons from Outer Space, Rest­ less Natives and Comfort and Joy. Verity Lambert’s contract as head ►

by Dieter Osswald

Eichinger continues his big-budget run; Petersen in excelsis.

Mine. With The Boat and The Neverending Story to his credit, Petersen is already Germany’s most successful director. With Enemy Mine, he has directed the first wholly Hollywood production to be made at Munich’s Bavaria Studios. To mark the occasion, 20th Century-Fox’s Jean-Louis Rubin and vice president Joel Coler flew in for the premiere.

In the meantime, another German director was making his mark abroad: Stefan Paul and his film, Sera possible el sur, about the South American singer, Mercedes Sosa, were invited to the Rio de Janeiro and Havana festivals, and received a personal greeting from from Fidel Castro at the latter.

While Otto — der Film, a staple of this column, has gone on, with over eight million admissions, to become not only the most success­ ful film of 1985, but also the most successful German film ever, the same kinds of superlatives have been garnered by the book, Ganz

unten, by Gunter Wall raff, a piece of investigative reporting about immigrant labour. A film of the same name will be seen for the first time at the Berlin Film Festival.

As Germany awaits its first Boris Becker film — which, to be fair, is still nowhere to be seen — a film about another sporting legend has started shooting: Clash — Begegnung der Giganten, about world champion boxer Max Schmeling.

Another famous native son is at the centre of Wurlitzer, Oder die Erfindung der Gegenwart, which is about Rudolf Wurlitzer, inventor of the eponymous music machine — and about the Bavarian village of the same name.

T hanks to the b o x -o ffic e phenomena of Otto, Rambo and Back to the Future, film business was no worse in Germany than last year. But the smaller distributors and the smaller cinemas have had to struggle to survive, and a few mergers have resulted: Neue

Constantin with Tobis in February; then the Filmverlag and Futura (see my January column); and, finally, in November, Atlas and Prokino. There will almost certainly be more names to add to the list.

Box-office leaders are the three films mentioned above: Otto — der Film, closely followed by Back to the Future and Rambo. In fourth place comes the German action

Connery, Eichinger (centre) and Annaud announcing The Name of

the Rose.

thriller, Schimanski — der Film, with Goetz George (which, like Otto, is a TV spin-off). Alan Parker’s Birdy has beaten a slow start to become a hit. But Cocoon, Legend, Roland Emmerich’s Joey and the first three AIDS movies have all flopped.

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of production was not renewed earlier this year. Instead, TESE set up a project fund, with a kitty of £175 million ($367 million), at the disposal of a select pool of independent producers. Since Dartnall has assembled an impressive roster of talent, some observers welcomed the deal as signalling a new flexi­ bility; others saw it as signalling a long-term plan for TESE to get out of film production.

Then, last October, Thorn EMI an­ nounced its intention to “ rationalize its business portfolio” . This meant putting the entertainment division up for grabs, in order to concentrate on its multifarious other interests: defence contracts, lighting, TV rentals, music and microchips. Over 30 bidders joined the rush, including the ubiquitous Rupert Murdoch and fellow Aussie Robert Holmes a Court., But the two front-runners, the Rank Organization and the omni­ vorous Cannon Group, each of which already owns substantial cinema circuits in Britain, were greeted with a storm of protest from the film industry. Faced with the un­ welcome attentions of the Mono­ polies Commission Golan and Globus withdrew.

The field looked clear for a Rank takeover, with Dartnall’s hopes of a management buy-out apparently dashed by his failure to top Rank’s £105 million ($220 million) bid — until, at the eleventh hour, a knight in shining armour arrived from down under in the form of Australian tycoon Alan Bond.

Bond, who put up a £10 million ($21 million) deposit only days after Dartnall had finally declared defeat, already owns a $2-billion corpora-

tion, with interests in radio and TV. He said he was interested in TESE’s film and video library to feed these outlets, and also hopes for a tie-up between Australian productions and Britain’s ABC cinema chain.

But one of Dartnall’s first moves after the buy-out was to sell off a cinema. Some say that, with Cannon and Rank upping the ante, Dartnall had paid an excessive price — £110 million ($231 million) — for TESE, and may well be forced to sell off further assets to repay his loans.

Meanwhile, however, the British production boom continues, with no signs yet of the prophesied crisis in film investment. Dance with a Stranger is a hard act to follow, but director Mike Newell is having a try with The Good Father, a black comedy starring Anthony Hopkins.

More comedy of the post-holo­ caust kind mushrooms in the shape of Whoops, Apocalypse!, blown up from the TV show, and When the Wind Blows, an animated feature based on Raymond Briggs’s book about two nice pensioners trying cluelessly to cope with the fall-out, armed only with the British govern­ ment manual, Protect and Survive.

Produced by Morris West’s Sydney-based Melaleuka, and funded by investments from Austra­ lian banks and insurance com­ panies, The Second Victory is a romantic drama set in England and Austria in 1945. Scripted by West from his own novel, it boasts an in te rn a tio n a l cast (A n th o n y Andrews, Helmut Griem, Max von Sydow and Renee Soutendijk) and an unlikely producer-director, Gerald Thomas, father of the Carry On comedies.

One of the most intriguing of this

autumn’s crop could be The Whistle Blower, a conspiracy thriller set in the British government spy centre at Cheltenham, which has recently been the location for several controversial real-life scenarios. Based on a novel by John Hale and directed by Simon Langton (late of TV’s Le Carre adaptation, Smiley’s People), it stars the indefatigable Michael Caine and Nigel Havers, as his son who works at the centre and is killed under mysterious circumstances.

Box-office receipts are still buoyant, with new records set in London’s West End at the beginning of November. Prizzi’s Honor and The Emerald Forest continue to make it a great year for Rank, in the wake of such other hits as Crimes of Passion and Desperately Seeking Susan. Three low-tomedium-budget British films, Letter to Brezhnev, Supergrass and My Beautiful Laundrette, scored suc­ cesses, and Plenty took plenty, too.

Of the Christmas releases, Santa Claus, The Movie got slammed by reviewers across the board, but the Salkinds’ latest caped crusader, blanket-released for the Yuletide trade, has been sleighing them in the aisles up and down the country.

Italy

perfectly displays her diminutive timidity, guided by the superlative Marcello Mastroianni as the anarchic Fred.

The issues raised by the film obvi­ ously concern the limitations that should be imposed, by a muchawaited law, on the current uncon­ trolled state of television. But the film is not simply about the private net­ works: Fellini makes no distinction between them and RAI: the arro­ gance remains the same on both sides. And the political parties now in government are still procrastina­ ting over their decision, thanks to any number of behind-the-scenes deals. They have even left their beloved RAI without a managing board.

On the movie front, Cinecittà blooms again, thanks to international co-productions like Momo, a German-ltalian effort adapted from Michael Ende’s fantasy novel, directed by Johannes Schaaf and starring John Huston as the Time­ keeper. There is also Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose (see Dieter Osswald’s German column on page 9), produced at the Italian end by Franco Cristaldi, together with Neue Constantin of Munich and Les Films Ariane of Paris. For it, Fellini’s art director, Dante Ferretti, has built a giant octagonal abbey near the Tiberina road.

Elsewhere, two long-awaited pro-

jects are finally starting. Francesco Rosi is looking for locations in various South American countries for his adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, with a budget of $US10 million raised by several European producers. And Paolo and Vittorio Taviani are scouting locations in the United States for their as yet untitled film (from a story by Tonino Guerra) about two Italian church restorers working in Hollywood in 1915 build­ ing film palaces. Meanwhile, a sudden illness has prevented Franco Zeffirelli from completing his Otello in time for Cannes.

Still eligible for competition are Marco Bellochio’s erotic remake of Le diable au corps, II diavolo in corpo, Nanni Moretti’s La messa e finita (see my last column) and Carlo Lizzani’s ambitious L’isola, a large-scale biography of communist leader Giorgio Amendola, con­ ceived in two parallel versions (one for cinema, one for TV), and starring newcomer Massimo Ghini.

The Christmas season did not bring much cheer to local movies, with Rambo, Goonies and Back to the Future easily annihilating our customary run of feeble comedies.

Perhaps it is time the panic-stricken industry reacted more intelligently to the problems: rather than call for state protection, it might consider deflating a few star salaries and risk some more controversial topics.

by Lorenzo Codelli Fellini’s latest tilts at windm ills o f television As has often happened with other Fellini films, Ginger e Fred has been seen and openly discussed by, it seems, almost everyone, even if it has still not opened commer­ cially. Abandoning the doomsday tone of E la nave va (And the Ship Sails On), the director this time goes for broad comedy, telling the story of the reunion of two once-popular dancing partners called Ginger and Fred, during a stormy TV show peopled by other star lookalikes, from Marcel Proust to Bette Davis and the inevitable Marilyn Monroe.

But exposing the networks’ vulgar taste and absurd programming (with echoes of Paddy Chayefsky's Net­ work) is just one of the aims of Ginger e Fred. Fellini also manages to find several more serious things to say via the paradoxical hotch-potch of gargantuan commercials and live speeches by political and religious leaders. The deafening chaos that surrounds them does not stop Ginger and Fred from reviving their old steps for a magic moment — even if it is interrupted by a pro­ tracted blackout! Giulietta Masina

10 — March CINEMA PAPERS

Jafpan

by Naoko Abe and Georgina Pope More foreign films, less cinemas and a mixed crop o f New Year movies During the past twelve months, Japan has seen a 10% increase in its cinemagoers. The increase took place mainly in the first few months of the year, with blockbuster New Year titles like Ghostbusters (which took $US20 million), followed by Gremlins (US$16 million). This year’s answer to the above, Back to the Future, Goonies and Cocoon, are doing similar business.

The Kadokawa production house has been knocked from its top posi­ tion by Fuji Television, one of the largest national networks. Fuji’s biggest production success story last year was Biruma no tategoto (The Burmese Harp), Kon Ichi­ kawa’s remake, shot with exactly the same script as his 1956 version. The film has grossed $US15 million.

TESE’s Gary Dartnall.

Unfazed by poor box-office reaction in the US and Britain to his Kiwi comedy, Came a Hot Friday (which proved a boomer on the home market last August), producer Larry Parr has a full kit of product for his second appearance at the American Film Market.

Foreign sales of four features from Parr’s Mirage Films will be handled by the New York-based Challenge Film Corporation, of which Parr is president and New York entertain­ ment industry investor, Henry Fownes, chairman.

Fownes was executive producer on the action movie, Shaker Run, shot entirely in New. Zealand and starring Cliff Robertson, Leif Garrett and Lisa Harrow. It proved a big seller for Parr at Cannes last year, and begins an eleven-print release throughout New Zealand on 24 January.

The AFM will see the first market screenings of the Mirage youth film, Bridge to Nowhere, directed by Ian Mune, and pre-sale activity on Queen City Rocker, which com­ pleted lensing on Auckland city loca­ tions in early December. Rocker is directed by Bruce Morrison (Con­ stance, Shaker Run).

Mirage's marketing director, Paul Davis, who will be with Parr, Fownes and (from London) Bill Gavin in Los Angeles, says the team will be “ mopping up” Shaker Run sales, and continuing to plug Friday.

Davis praises the profile achieved for the latter film by its British distri­ butor, Miracle Films, in December, and reports that the great majority of reviews were “ outstandingly good” . “ But no box was achieved,” laments Davis, “ which is the same story for all other New Zealand feature films released to date in Britain. So, no breakthrough.” .

Upbeat newsjor the industry here is that director Geoff Murphy appears to have resisted attempts

The increasing success of foreign films at the box office last year is also worth mentioning. During 1984, only six foreign titles grossed over $US5 million, by comparison with six local ones. In 1985, ten foreign films ex­ ceeded that mark, and twelve Japanese ones.

One hundred cinemas closed their doors up and down the country during the year, leaving a national total of 2,000, compared with over 8,000 operating during the fifties.

The closures, however, were pre­ dominantly in the rural areas, with the larger cities seeing an increase in fancy cinema complexes and small independent houses.

The biggest event during 1985 was the first Tokyo International Film 'Festival, with attendances during the week-long event hitting the 150,000 mark. And an Australian Cinema Week, held in September, financed by the Australian Pavilion at the Tsukuba Expo, and organized by T okyo-based G oanna Films, attracted capacity houses; it resulted in a major distributor, Shochiku-Fuji, purchasing Peter Weir’s ten-year-old Picnic at Hanging Rock The release is scheduled for July.

Local product playing ■ around Tokyo is currently a mixed batch,

attempting to cater to as many potential cinemagoers as possible during the peak New Year season.

Yari no Gonza (Gonza the Beautiful), directed by Mashiro Shinoda, who gave us Shinju tenno amijima (Double Suicide) sixteen years ago, is definitely one of the best. Once again, Shinoda bases his story on the work of famed playwright Chikamatsu. This time, the film is set in Osaka in 1717, during the Genroku Era, when the culture of the common people was flourishing, but the lives of the privil­ eged samurai were ruled by a num­ ber of taboos, including the strict condemnation of illicit love affairs.

The film’s two main characters, Osai, the wife of an official tea cere­ mony administrator, and Gonza, a handsome young student of the ceremony, are mistakenly accused of having an affair. Left with the choice of flight or 'magataki-uchi', a custom whereby the husband kills both his wife and her supposed lover, they settle for the latter. But Osai figures that, now she has nothing to lose, she'll make the most of Gonza’s company.

From two relatively new directors — Juzo Itami, who last year gave us Ososhiki (The Funeral: see

Cinema Papers No. 53) and Yoshimitsu Morita of Family Game fame — come two rather disappointing new efforts, both with comparatively swollen budgets and well-known a c to r s . I t a m i ’ s T a m p o p o (Dandelion) opened in eight Tokyo cinemas to very mixed notices.

Morita’s Sorekara (And then . . .), based on a book by award-winning novelist Soseki Natsume and set in the Meiji Era, when the west was beginning to take a firm hold on the life of the east, is a romance that falls rather fiat, and is well short of the expectations it had generated, despite an excellent performance by Miwako Fujiya.

Director Toru Kawashima, who recently had successes with Ryuji and Chinpila (Street Gang), has a new picture out on a major release pattern. A cutsie-pie teenybopper

Alone again: Quiet Earth stars Alison Routledge and Bruno Law­ rence in the Larry Parr/Ian M une production, Bridge to Nowhere.

NOW Zealand

by Mike Nicolaidi

Parr comes on strong at the American Film Market; Murphy returns, announces production plans

by Hollywood to lure him away. After many months working on a project for Fox, with the tentative title of Hunter, Murphy is back. He recently received development finance from the New Zealand Film Commission for a new feature, with Angel of Death as its working title.

And, with Maori woman director Merata Mita (Patu!), Murphy has set up Tikanga Productions, with the duo proposing two features: the aforementioned Angel of Death and (another working title) Mauri, which Mita will direct.

In keeping with earlier films by both directors, the projects deal with the evolution of New Zealand, and

the conflict between its colonial origins and the struggle to rise above them. Mauri is set in the sixties, and will be ‘‘intensely Maori” in conception and perspective.

Angel, set in the eighteen-eighties, while predominantly Maori in con­ tent, will be more pakeha (Euro­ pean) in perspective. Dealing with a story of land-grabbing, it will show how justice in legal terms can become injustice in human terms.

If the first Tikanga production goes in front of the cameras later this year, it will deepen the proven com­ mitment of many of New Zealand’s best filmmakers to indigenous (but no less entertaining) themes. On 20

January, Pacific Films, in association with the NZFC, started shooting Ngati on east-coast North Island locations.

Set in the late forties, it tells of the friendship between two Maori boys and three families, two of them Maori, one pakeha, in a rural com­ munity. The personal discoveries made by the central characters, will show the strength of the traditional lifestyles reinforced by the threaten­ ing social events of the time.

Ngati is the fourth in a line of new features that have begun shooting since last October. Queen City Rocker and two films produced by Don Reynolds’s Auckland-based Cinepro make up the total: Monica, directed by Richard Riddiford; and Dangerous Orphans, directed by John Laing.

Other films scheduled to roll during 1986 include a multi-million dollar New Zealand-Canadian co­ production based on the sinking of the Greenpeace ship, ‘Rainbow Warrior’, in Auckland harbour. The partners, Phillips Whitehouse Pro­ ductions and Filmline International of Montreal, are confident that onlocation shooting will begin in Auck­ land in April or May. Vincent (Vigil) Ward expects to start work on his new feature, work­ ing title The Navigator, on South Island mountain locations in mid­ year. March-April is the possible start date for another Reynolds production, Illustrious Energy, directed by Leon Narbey.

by Leon Narbey.

The animated feature film, Footrot Flats, based on the Murray Bell cartoon strip, is due for completion and release at Christmas. A cool $NZ5 million-worth of investment

A M eiji Era romance: Miwako Fujiya and Yusaku M atsua in

Sorekara (And then . . .)■ meets and, for some inexplicable reason, is pursued by big, bad yakuza gangsters. An absurd plot, dreadful performances and Kawashima’s confusion between reality and fantasy make this grim viewing.

The bag of foreign product is equally mixed and, as with the local fare, it is just a matter of time before the usual post-New Year splatter and bash is with us again. Richard Attenborough’s A Chorus Line is doing very good business, as is Dance with a Stranger. And two Australian directors have overseasmade product opening in January: Bruce Beresford, with King David, and Graeme Clifford’s long-awaited Frances. *

was snapped up in ten days, when the producers sought financial input from the public last year.

Christmas and New Year summer holiday box-office winners this side of the Tasman have been Rocky IV, A View to a Kill, The Goonies, Cocoon and the Australian-made real-life adventure, World Safari II. National Lampoon’s European Vacation also had a strong impact, but Santa Claus, The Movie fell off sharply after opening well. Shaker Run and Murphy’s The Quiet Earth, which has a big (for New Zealand) sixteen-print release in mid-February, are expected to pick up the slick pace set for locally-made features by Came a Hot Friday.

The most significant event in broadcasting pre-Christmas (apart from the long-running Royal Com­ mission, snd the third television channel warrant hearings) was the appointment of ‘foreigners’ to two of the in d u stry’s most powerful positions.

Nigel Dick, 57, an Australian broadcasting executive who, until 1984, was executive chairman of Southern Cross Communications in Victoria, succeeds Ian Cross as chief executive of the Broadcasting Cor­ poration of New Zealand. As director-general of Television New Z e a la n d , E nglishm an Julian Mounter, 41, replaces Allan Martin.

Mounter has a wide background in television in Britain, and most recently headed a new satelliteoperated three-channel European television service run by Thorn EMI. Meanwhile, TVNZ has announced a strong package of drama produc­ tion for the new year, which includes a miniseries based on the crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901 into Mt Erebus in Antarctica in 1979. Also to be made is a series entitled Fire Raiser, to be produced by Welling­ ton actress and producer Ginette McDonald.

Jf

CINEMA PAPERS March — 11

The 1985 London Film Festival was an enormous popular success, smashing all previous box-office records for the event and, not incidentally, fuelling a row within the British Film Institute over who will run next year’s festival. Until 1983, the event was directed by Ken Wlaschin, who was head of programming at the National Film Theatre, where the festival is centred.

His successor is Sheila Whitaker, formerly of the Tyneside Film Theatre, who was told she would be In charge of LFF programming for 1985. Meanwhile, Derek Malcolm, film critic of The Guardian, was brought in to programme the 1984 festival, and did so to such good effect that he was invited to do it again in 1985.

His broad-ranging approach, mixing the esoteric and the commercial, Third World cinema with production from east and west, and the policy of extending to other London venues, away from the South Bank, produced immediate results. Attendances have doubled, and the LFF’s prestige has grown considerably in his two years in charge.

With Whitaker being given a further promise that she would take over the festival in 1986, the BFI board was in a q u a n d a ry .

Audiences during the year at the NFT had slipped below the 51% break-even point, and the building of the new Museum of the Moving Image nearby was taking up time and staff resources. Should she be

Squabbles at the top, but a bum on (almost) every seat London Film Festival’s policy of a wide choice proves successful again After much behind-the-scenes tension, the Chairman of the BFI, Sir Richard Attenborough, arranged a compromise which looks more like a tr u c e : M a lc o lm has b e e n reappointed festival director, and Whitaker has been given the title of ‘Executive Director’. Malcolm has also been given private assurances (without which he would not have agreed to continue) that she will not interfere in programming.

The festival itself provided more orthodox excitement on the screen, opening with Kurosawa’s epic, Ran, and closing with Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon. In between came such American-produced b lo c k b u s te rs as S p ie lb e rg ’ s Goonies and Back to the Future, directed by Richard Donner and Robert Zemeckis respectively, and the adaptation of David Hare’s stage play, Plenty, directed by Fred

Fireworks and films in Andra Pradesh Filmotsav, the alternating, non-com­ petitive twin of the New Delhi Inter­ national Film Festival (see Cinema Papers, No 51), took Hyderabad as its 1986 location. It was an approp­ riate choice, since the capital of Andra Pradesh is the most prolific regional producer of films (170 features last year) and the city with the largest number of cinemas in the country.

The festival literally took off with a bang at a glittering inaugural ceremony on 10 January, featuring local dances and a spectacular display of fireworks in the newlyconstructed open-air auditorium.

The only dampener on the evening was the choice of opening film, a small-scale Canadian produc­ tion called 90 Days, selected because that’s how long it took to build the auditorium complex.

Of the six sections on the pro­ gramme, the Main International Section, though a highlight for local delegates and the public because of its glut of foreign films, offered a wide but lustreless repertoire. A numerical domination of films from the UK and the US was evident, though Australia’s entry, My First Wife, generated considerable interest, accentuated by the presence of Paul Cox, one of the few foreign feature directors to attend.

The In d ia n P a n o ra m a , a showcase of the 21 best Indian films of the previous year, is always a key

12 — March CINEMA PAPERS

event for foreign delegates. For the local industry, too, since selection means wide exposure, the oppor­ tunity to get invited to foreign festivals, distribution, and free sub­ titling provided by the National Film Development Corporation.

It opened with a Telugu film from Andra Pradesh, Mayuri, the true story of a dancer who overcomes family objections and a physical handicap to pursue her chosen career. Though the year generally produced a mediocre crop, a few films stood out, varying widely in subject and genre, but with certain

Schepisi.

In the large selection of American productions, there were some fine surprises on the independent side.

Among them was Volker Schlondorff's translation of the superb Broadway production of Death of a Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman, Kate Reid, John Malkovich, Stephen Lang and Charles Durning. In terms of turning theatre into film, it was neither as imaginative as Altman’s Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmie Dean, Jimmie Dean, nor as stodgy as a filmed play, but the acting was magnificent.

Another surprise was Henry Jaglom’s Always, a comedy based on the break-up of his own marriage, with the director and his former wife, Patrice Townsend, taking the main roles as a couple who arrange a special divorce dinner. Wise, witty, sad and funny, it is Jaglom’s best film yet.

Elsewhere, four Australian movies featured in the programme. Ray Lawrence’s Bliss looked better for the re-editing and shortening it got since it was shown in Cannes, and was the pick of the down-under presentation, which also included Stephen Wallace’s decorative, over­ wrought The Boy Who Had Every­ thing, Bob Ellis’s undoubtedly funny but rough-edged Unfinished Business, and Dennis O’Rourke’s Half Life.

There was even more variety in the New Zealand selection, though, starting with Bruce Morrison’s Shaker Run (with a too-seldomseen Cliff Robertson back in

business), Geoff Murphy’s The Quiet Earth, Barry Barclay’s absorbing documentary on world plant resources, The Neglected Miracle, and John Reid’s study of Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry, Leave All Fair.

The sizeable British collection ranged over film and television, with most interest focussing on Defence of the Realm, an exceptionally good political thriller. Directed by David Drury and beautifully shot by Roger Deakins, it seems certain to thrust Irish actor Gabriel Byrne into the big time. He and the always reliable Denholm Elliott are marvel­ lously effective as a pair of cynical journalists on a major Fleet Street daily, who become involved with a Profumo-like scandal.

And Peter Greenaway, who made The Draughtsman’s Contract, came up with another audiencepuzzler in A Zed and Two Noughts, in which he had some serious fun with Darwinism and evolution in the setting of a modern zoo.

All that is just the surface, however: the festival contained over 160 films, and aimed at both general and specialized audiences. The festival director, Derek Malcolm, conceded that the event might have been too large by, perhaps, a dozen films, but few would argue with its success. Thus, provided the Atten­ borough truce holds up, the next festival should be programmed along very much the same lines as this one.

Ray Comiskey

In the glow of attention accorded the above sections, the Documedia programme suffered from some neglect. This was a pity, since the organizers — the Film Societies of India — had gone to a lot of trouble to assemble a very interesting pro­ gramme.

The Third World Women’s Pro­ gramme, introduced for the first time this year, had no trouble attracting media interest and controversy, par­ ticularly regarding the choice of films. Aimed at continuing the dialogue established at the Nairobi W om en’s C onference, which marked the end of the Decade of Women, its focus was on the role of film for the'women of Asia, Africa, Latin America and other emerging countries, where women’s struggles

Filmotsav includes foreign showcase, Indian panorama and w om en’s programme recurring themes: Chatterjee’s Chopper, about unemployment and political exploitation; Nihalani’s Aghaat, about trade unionism; and political manipulation of the media, in Accident and New Delhi Times.

Exploration of relationships, especially those outside the traditionally prescribed patterns, forms the thematic context for several other fine films: Benegal’s Trikal, set amidst the political upheavals in Portuguese Goa, Aravindan’s Chidambaram and Aparna Sen’s Parama, which recently opened to much con­ troversy in Calcutta.

for identity are greater, especially as regards breaking down stereotypes and changing traditions.

There was also a Film Market, seminars on Film and Technology, and a great deal more. The hospitality in Hyderabad was very impressive: a city that is, by Indian standards, quite drab turned on an amazing display of welcome, the organization was generally efficient, and the lack of affectation of the Indian filmmakers striking. Although Filmotsav ’86 may not rate high in the hierarchy of world festivals, it is certainly a worthwhile event.

Mary Colbert

F ro m to p : J u lie tte B in o c h e , Lambert Wilson and Christophe Lambert

The opening of the Seventh Festival of Latin American Cinema in Havana erupted with a shower of multi­ coloured fireworks, while conga lines of musicians and dancers throbbed through the crowds gathered on the rolling lawns of the gloriously faded Nacional Hotel.

Fifteen days later, Fidel Castro brought down the final curtain on the festival with a rousing discourse that exhalted the establishment of a new Latin American cinema in the face of US cultural dominance. The role of video was given particular promin­ ence when Castro announced that, in future, the festival would be called the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, Television and Video.

The intervening two weeks, from 2-16 December, saw over 400 films and videos screened in simultane­ ous sessions in eight cinemas scattered through the city. Over 1000 participants from 40 countries took part in the festival, twice as many as last year and extended — at Castro’s insistence — to double the length of time, thereby sharpen­ ing Cuba’s profile as the rising centre of Latin American culture.

Sealing the festival with the Holly­ wood imprimatur were a gaggle of celluloid heroes: Robert de Niro, Christopher Walken, Treat Williams, Harry Belafonte and Jack Lemmon, presenting his 1982 feature, Missing.

Speaking to the press at a meet­ ing with young Cuban artists, de Niro confirmed his interest in starring in a Cuban Film Institute production, For the second successive year, the 'Film nouveau’ festival was held in five Australian cities during Novem­ ber and December, at a time usually dominated by the summer block­ buster and the general Christmas wind-down. Drawing large audi­ ences, it offered, according to the programme, "a selection of high quality features from the best that contemporary French cinema has to offer” . A non-competitive event, it is also aimed at finding local distri­ butors for its films.

The widespread disappointment felt at the films screened this year is probably a reflection both of the cur­ rent state of French cinema and of the conflict of interests inherent in the festival’s own purpose. Last year, France p roduced 160 features. And, plainly stated, the twelve films screened presented a clearer picture of a certain middle-ofthe-road filmgoing audience than they did of a prodigious film culture.

The range was broad, but most of the films, though technically com­ petent, were bland and ordinary exercises in filmmaking.

The festival opened with Rouge baiser, directed by Vera Belmont.

What started off as a potentially worthwhile story (the daughter of poor Jewish emigrants growing up in the fifties under the influence of communism, American movies and the poet Apollinaire) evaporated into a fluffy, Dynasty-like love story |S a role Tor which the lead actress, supposedly a fifteen-year-old, began to; look naturally suited, and in which several semi-nude scenes smacked of exploitation.

Stars rush in Castro — and Hollywood — give a major boost to the Havana Festival’s profile and word has it that noted Cuban director Tomas Gutierrez Alea has discussed a production of The Tempest with him. So, while the Reagan administration continues the blockade of Cuba, the boys from Tinsel Town are building the cultural bridges.

While the Hollywood stars were a prize catch, none of the prominent fe a tu re s w ere m aking th e ir premieres. The joint winners of the Grand Coral First Prize for Fiction have both been acclaimed at recent European festivals. They were the sumptuous Frida: Naturaleza Vita directed by the Mexican, Paul Leduc, and the mysterious Tangos — L’Exil De Gardel (Tangos — Gardel’s Exile) by Argentinian Fernando Solanas.

More impressive was the pre­ dominance of over 200 film and video documentaries covering a gamut of issues pressuring Latin America and the Caribbean. Mostly stark and brutal In their messages, they covered the foreign debt crisis, the repression in Chile, and new democratic openings in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

The dominant thread through several documentaries was libera­ tion theology. Silvio Da-Rin pre­ sented a powerful 80-minute film called Igreja De Libertacao

(Church of Liberation), examining the way in which the Catholic church has been one of the rare spaces in which opposition movements have found shelter during the 20 years of military dictatorship in Brazil. As the country reverts to democracy, the church must redefine its role in Brazilian society amid pressures from the community and con­ demnation from the Vatican.

P a rtic u la rly p o ig n a n t was Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo, made by two women from the United States calling themselves Cine Chicano (Susann Munoz and Lourdes Porfillo). Beautifully crafted, the film built a quiet sense of outrage as mother after mother detailed the impotent rage they suffered at having their children ‘disappeared’

The real face of French cinema Film nouveau steers firm ly down the middle o f the road Lambert Wilson, supposedly French cinema’s latest heart-throb, was seen both in this and in Rendez-vous, for which Andre Techiné won the award for Best Director at Cannes last year. The film’s real prize, though, should belong to lead actress Juliette Binoche in the role of Nina, a young girl who is both lauded and tor­ mented by three men who mark her path to independence and a career in the theatre.

Though it was pervaded by a haunting atmosphere, the film’s handling of its narrative material was less assured, ranging from the inept — in the case of the dead actor, Quentin (Wilson), who literally haunts Nina — to the unconvincing (the appearance of Scrutzler [Jean-Louis Trintignant] more than half-way through the film). It was as if we were expected to believe more than the filmmaker was actually willing to show or tell.

Jacques Doillon’s La tentation d’isabelle,, produced by Marin Karmitz, was something of a trial.

Taking place mainly in claustro­ phobic hotel rooms and bedrooms, it was a film about a wickedly impassioned man who, at times, seemed willing to destroy his wife, her ex­

lover and present girlfriend, so as to test her love for him. Acted with fistclenching hysteria, stylish and theatrical, it was reminiscent of early Fassbinder. It was also very wordy, for which the subtitles were in­ adequate. But, if for no other reason, it was worth seeing through for the editing and jump cuts in the final scenes.

The other Karmitz-produced film was No Man’s Land. Written and directed by Alain Tanner, it was the official Swiss entry at the 1985 Venice festival, and its title refers to the physical and psychological situa­ tion of four smugglers on the French border, each of whom dreams of being somewhere else.

That much the film made clear early; for the rest, it plodded to its in­ e vita b le co n clu sio n . Though immediately watchable — Bernard Zitzerman’s photography is superb — the film should have been more than it was. Tanner’s ability physic­ ally to describe human behaviour and interaction and to delineate complex political and ethical per­ spectives, though present in his choice of subject matter, was sadly missingi from its execution. Finally, the Image and metaphor of the title was too slight to bear, and, perhaps

under the former junta in Argentina.

Another highlight of the festival was the week of Cuban film screen­ ings and the film market, MECLA. Cuba turns out up to ten features a year and dozens of documentaries and shorts. A slick and funny 7 5 -m in u te a n im a tio n c a lle d V a m p i r o s en La H a b a n a (Vampires in Havana) attracted a lot of foreign buyers’ interest. The Cubans claimed to have secured up to $US200,000 in sales and numer­ ous international co-production deals. While insiders claimed that market business was in the $US1-million range — with brisk trading on stands representing Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Britain and Africa — it is predicted that MECLA will become the Latin American market.

Dasha Ross

The church looks to the future: Leonardo B o ff in Silvio D a-R in’s

Igreja da libertacao (Church of Liberation).

the most lasting and poignant image was that of Jean (Jean-Philippe Ecoffey), the young, cow-herd, scurrying away on his bicycle.

In a similar vein — a film of which one expected more — was Chabrol’s Poulet au vinaigre. A predictable policier, it was neverthe­ less made enjoyable by its quirklsh and satiric humour, and by Jean Poiret’s playing of the cop. The ‘poulet’ of the film’s title is both a chicken dish and slang for police­ man.

For the rest, the films ranged from the noteworthy to the awful.

L’amour en douce (Edouard Molinaro) and Q uilom bo (Carlos Diegues) — which, in any case, was from Brazil — were not seen, so cannot be reviewed.

Danièle Dubroux’s Les amants terribles looked every frame a lastminute substitute, though the very act of screening a film as cheap and Inept as this in a festival was audacious. Tristesse et beauté (Joy Fleury), based on a novel by Kawabata, will probably disappear into oblivion. And I would personally wish a similar fate on Escalier C, from Cousin, Cousines JeanCharles Tacchella: a thoroughly nasty and offensive film.

Finally, there was Paroles et musique (Elie Chouraqui), in which the talents of Catherine Deneuve were entirely wasted in an innocu­ ous story about a middle-aged woman’s relationship with a rock singer whose music would bring a tear to the eye of even the most hardened Lionel Ritchie fan.

Paul Kalina

CINEMA PAPERS March — 13

Leap year Colin Friels, actor

Dream maker Jackie McKimmie, writer and director Jackie McKimmie was in exuberant form: she had got her first feature, Australian Dream, in the can — or rather, had just watched its “ birth and delivery” at a screening of the final mix.

It may be her first feature, but Mc­ Kimmie is no stranger to writing drama. She wrote plays in her early days at Sydney University, and later specialized in drama at the West Australian Institute of Technology.

She was already interested in film, but “ just missed the boat” : the course was introduced during her final year of study there.

But the encounter was inevitable; and, when she began teaching, she found opportunities to experiment on Super-8 with her students.

Enthusiasm ran high: at the alter­ native school in Queensland where she taught, she and her charges even held dances to raise funds for their activities.

Her real screen debut came in 1982, however, when a play she had written was converted into a telemovie, Madness for Two, and shown on SBS. From that experi­ ence, McKimmie learned a valuable lesson: in future, she would exert more creative control.

In Stations, starring Noni Hazlehurst, which won the Greater Union Award for Best Short Film in 1983, she did just that: she wrote, pro­ duced and directed. Set in the fifties, the film is based on a short story she had written about a girl whose romantic illusions are dispelled, if not shattered, when she gets pregnant. “ It was easy to turn into a script,” recalls McKimmie. “ It only took three days. Really, it more or less wrote itself, because I stayed very close to the original.” She admits that the film was a turning point.

And, through it, she was introduced to Hazlehurst (who also stars In Aus­ tralian Dream), with whom she struck up an immediate rapport.

14 — March CINEMA PAPERS

Stations picked up several over­ seas awards (Best Short Film at Tyneside; equal first in Florence); locally, it received the rare privilege (for a short) of a commercial release, backing up Careful, He Might Hear You. Buoyed up by the success, McKimmie aspired to write a longer piece. Australian Dream was first submitted as a 50-minute drama to the Australian Film Commission’s Creative Development Fund, then later extended to feature length with some valuable assistance from script assessors Ron Blair and James Ricketson (who appears in the film as an Orangeperson).

She began the script in March 1983 and took it through seven drafts, to be completed in August 1985, just prior to shooting. The $600,000 budget was provided under 10BA by the Queensland Film Corporation, with an AFC distribu­ tion guarantee and a Channel Seven presale. “ There are advantages to living in Queensland,” quips McKimmie. “ And I have learned to work on the phone a lot! “ The film is actually a bit of a family affair,” she continues. “ I wrote the script, co-produced it with Sue Wild, did all the casting, and directed. I needed to control the vision: talk about the auteur theory!”

She laughs. “ The title evolved from a song written by my husband, Chris, who wrote many of the lyrics and per­ formed them with his band, The Lam ingtons (now no longer together). He’s an art teacher, so he also doubled as art director, produc­ tion designer and clapper-loader.

No wonder we could manage on the budget.. .!

“Australian Dream integrates the reality and fantasy of suburban life in middle-class Brisbane,” ex­ plains McKimmie. “ Noni plays Dorothy Stubbs, the unfulfilled but highly imaginative wife of Geoffrey (Graeme Blundell), who is Butcher of the Year. He is a man of consider­ able political aspirations, just as she is a woman of considerable romantic inclinations. She takes up a writing course, meets Todd (John Jarratt) at

a party — he’s actually an oppor­ tunistic con-man — and, from a very slender seed, builds a web of romantic and erotic fantasy around their relationship. The film is very much about realizing one’s fan­ tasies, with the characters’ expecta­ tions reversed. It particularly focuses on what can happen to a woman in this situation. “ Much of the comedy is created by the fantasies, especially Dorothy’s erotic and romantic illu­ sions, which reach a point bordering on delusion. These were wonderful to create and shoot. We really had great fun with them, because they allowed us to be creatively excessive — sort of Mills and Boonish. Noni and I really indulged. “ The part was written with her in mind from the second draft on and, along the way, included numerous exchanges with her. She really lends tremendous energy to a movie.

Graeme’s terrific in this role as well.

And DOP Andrew Lesnie’s experi­ ence with experimental films could enhance it, too.”

But weren’t there any problems, working on her first feature? “ Prob­ ably the main challenge was the time factor: directing the four-week shoot and bringing it in on time. My only regret is that we didn’t have another week. It was a matter of thinking on your feet all the time. Apart from the leads, for instance, there was no rehearsal time for the other actors.

Two weeks of the shoot were nights, and we were working fourteen to six­ teen hours. We shot fast — on a ratio of about 10:1 — and sometimes we were getting seven minutes a day, which is remarkable. Yet we didn’t compromise on quality. We’d go with it till we got it right. But it was absolutely draining.”

McKimmie smiles evasively when asked about future projects. “ Yes, there are several on the boil; but nothing definite yet.” And what about similarities between Austra­ lian Dream and Emoh Ruo, with which paraltels have been drawn? “ These are superficial,” she says. “ It really is quite a different type of film. You’ll see!”

Mary Colbert

If an actor’s enthusiasm for a script and enjoyment of a shoot is an accurate measure of the quality of the finished product, Colin Friels’s two recent films should be ear­ marked as winners. Although he has been appearing on screen since a 1981 debut in Hoodwink, Friels asserts that only the work on Mal­ colm and Kangaroo have shown him that making movies can be fun. “ I’ve made huge errors,” he says. “ It’s not because I didn’t care: it’s just that I didn’t have the ability at the time, or I didn’t understand what was actually required.”

For admirers of his performances in Monkey Grip (1982) and the spirited Buddies (1984), and for those who discerned that he, alone, may have emerged from the mire of Coolangatta Gold (1984) with some dignity intact, his critical self­ appraisal seems unduly modest. But Friels sets himself exacting personal

standards and respects the rigours and responsibilities that his craft demands. Believing that acting requires commitment, sustained concentration and a passion for the present project, he talks with animation about the comedy Malcolm and appears totally im­ mersed in the pleasures of making Kangaroo (which is, at the time, in its final days of shooting in Mel­ bourne).

The adaptation of D.H. Law­ rence’s Australia-based novel by Evan Jones has, according to Friels, produced a fine screenplay. “ It’s very wordy, but there’s nothing flabby about it. What interests me about drama — what interests any­ one, I guess — is the interaction of the characters. And, in Kangaroo, the characters are fantastic. It’s great for an actor, because there is so much for everyone to get their teeth into.” Friels’s admiration for the script is apparent when he dis­ cusses the difficulty of adapting the 425-page novel, written in a sixweek burst when Lawrence visited Australia in the early twenties. “ For Lawrence, a novel was an adven­ ture of the unconscious. He wrote like spurts of lightning and there is nothing ordered about it. His mind was like a sponge.”

Among the other actors enjoying what appears to have been an extremely amiable shoot is Friels’s wife, Judy Davis, who is playing Somers’s wifeT Harriet. The couple have worked'together in the theatre and, though they had not actively

sought a film to do together, Kanga­ roo provided the perfect oppor­ tunity. "It’s been great, working together,’’ Friels enthuses.

Given his previous screen roles — as the less-than-magnificent but highly charismatic obsession in Monkey Grip, the rumbustious miner in Buddies and the aspiring Iron Man in Cooiangatta Gold — Friels has established a persona that has its foundations in physical, athletic, even macho characteristics.

Javo, Mike and Adam are doers not thinkers, characters who exude a restlessness and volatility that has been the foundation of Friels’s con­ siderable screen presence. By con­ trast, Somers is described in the novel as “ a queer little man’’ and could be seen as a significant depar­ ture from the established mould for the actor.

It is a variation that is consolidated by the title role in Malcolm. "Mal­ colm is not remotely physical." says Friels. "Fle’s somewhat retarded — a very simple guy who hasn’t grown up. Fie works for the tramways, builds his own tram and gets the sack. So he takes in two boarders — played by John Flargreaves and Lindy Davies — who are small-time crims. Individually, they are quite useless, but they work well as a team.”

Though the two films differ con­ siderably in period, style and sub­ ject, Friels regards both as valuable, and is equally admiring of the two directors — Nadia Tass, making her debut with Malcolm and veteran Tim Burstall. "There’s no This is my film, you’ll do it my way'. They share."

Friels began his formal training at NIDA and, following graduation in 1976, spent three years with the State Theatre Company of South Australia. In 1979, he moved to Sydney and worked with the Nimrod and the Sydney Theatre Company.

And he is returning to the stage early in 1986, to co-star with Lauren Bacall in Sweet Bird of Youth.

"Film is totally different to theatre," he explains. "You work in bursts. You do close-ups, you do wide-shots, you do it arse-about. In theatre, you work up gradually over five or six weeks — or whatever the rehearsal period is — and you work through a performance. It’s a totally different rhythm. You don’t act any differently. It’s still your job to take an audience through a story, but the process is completely different."

Friels repeatedly stresses that act­ ing is a job, and one that requires a measure of perspective. "People put shit on me for doing Cooian­ gatta Gold and that’s fine: they’re allowed to. But I’m no monk: I'm an actor and I’ve got to work. I don’t feel ashamed of anything I’ve done.

Sometimes it hasn’t been satis­ factory; but I haven't stopped work­ ing since I left NIDA because, poss­ ibly, the more you work, the better you get. You develop your taste, but you need to keep your work in per­ spective. I mean, the world will keep going if I don’t do Kangaroo or Sweet Bird of Youth. But, if you are going to do something, you’ve got to see some value in it. There’s no point in doing a film or a play that you’re not passionate about. It should stir your blood.”

DebiEnker

Jack from Dick to Joe Jack Thompson, actor and director Jack Thompson and the Aussie film boom go almost hand in hand. That distinctive stride, that fierce gaze and the surprising gentleness which is often just beneath the surface have become a kind of Australian emblem. So, too, has the man. Born in 1940, Thompson first hit the big time in the 1971-72 TV season, with Spyforce. But 1972 was also the year of the Cleo centrefold, and his private life was rarely just that.

Though he had been in movies for a couple of years by the time of Spyforce (as, for instance, that memor­ ably unpleasant inhabitant of the Yabba, Dick, in Wake in Fright in 1971), it was Petersen (1974), Sunday Too Far Away (1975) and Caddie (1976) that established Thompson as a star — and pretty much on a world scale, too, since all three films did well overseas. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

"crazy bugger" aspect, as he puts it — that has attracted him to the parts. “ Those are the sorts of roles I find fascinating — difficult, but fascina­ ting, in the same way I found the character of Stan Graham in Bad Blood fascinating. They are all reallife human beings, and real-life human beings do have these contra­ dictory qualities in them. Burke’s craziness, for instance, is the sort that Sir Edmund Hillary must have had — Cortez and Columbus, too, and perhaps Cook: any of those people who willingly put themselves into outer space at a time when no one knew anything about it. The parallel I make with Burke is: What if those men who went to the other side of the moon came back and discovered the shuttle wasn’t there?"

The approach to Hicksley in Mr Lawrence — Thompson plays him

(1978), Breaker Morant (1980) and The Man from Snowy River (1982) consolidated the position.

As his face has become better known, however, the other bits of his anatomy have been less on show, and the public profile has become more a matter of reputation: Thomp­ son has achieved that difficult transi­ tion from star to actor, and the eighties have seen him go truly inter­ national. There have been Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983), in which he plays the manic army officer, Hicksley; and Paul Verhoeven's Flesh and Blood (1985), in which he is the equally strange Sir John Hawkwood, an actual sixteenth-century soldier of fortune who, in the film, retires from the battlefield to cultivate his veges and look after a brain­ damaged woman who has been a victim of one of his campaigns.

Put these two roles together with his other high-profile outing of late — as Robert O’Hara Burke in Burke & Wills — and you have a trio of manic individuals with whom it is initially hard to associate the affable, disgustingly tanned persona of the actor himself. Nevertheless, it has been that manic quality — the

as a mixture of hero and buffoon, ram-rod stiff in baggy shorts and dilapidated tennis shoes — was very much the actor’s decision. Oshima, renowned for setting up the camera and letting things happen, would only comment: "Thompson san decided to play it like that."

"I think the script demanded it," says Thompson. "What the man did, what he said, how he behaved, seemed to me, in my experience of human beings and my experience of the army" (in which he spent six years) "to be only explicable in that way. He's a man on the edge, and he’s holding on to his human dignity as hard as he damn well can. Those are the characters that are interest­ ing to play. They’re not one-dimen­ sional: people are not simply crazy."

But it is the dignity that has re­ curred most often, particularly dig­ nity in the context of failure. "I think that is something we share with other new-world and frontier societies. There’s bound to be a lot of failure, but the real quality that’s admired is the ability, under the most awful circumstances, to maintain human dignity — not to write off as failures all those who set out and don't come back. Because, if you

do, the entire society collapses.”

Interviewed in Cinema Papers No. 54, director Graeme Clifford said he had never considered anyone else but Thompson for the role of Burke, presumably because of his ability to portray just those qualities. What Clifford didn’t say was how he got him. "It was the year before last," says Thompson, "and I’d just been in Los Angeles to talk to William Friedkin about doing a film that never happened. I was in the lounge at LA airport, and Graeme came up to me and said, ‘You don’t know me, but I know you’re Jack Thompson, and I’m Graeme Clifford’. I’d seen Frances, and I thought it was just, you know, one Australian filmmaker saying hello to another. Then he said, ‘Actually, I’m going to Australia very largely to see you: I have a script for you’. I read the script on the plane and said almost immedi­ ately I wanted to do it.

"Graeme made the making of the film an absolute delight: I have never enjoyed making a film more. It was just celebratory: every member of the crew seemed aware that we were involved in something more than just a movie. It became a very personal experience.”

Thompson doesn’t feel the same way about Flesh and Blood. “ I found that probably the worst filmmaking experience of my life,” he says. “ It was a polyglot crew, the weather was awful, and there isn’t one scene in the film where anybody is having fun! In Burke & Wills, for all the story of the trail across the desert, there is also Burke’s delicious love affair, and the sense of fun at Coopers Creek when they play cricket. Right up to the last minute, at least they think they’re going to do it, whereas Verhoeven’s film is relentlessly morbid.”

Thompson’s next project is far from morbid. It is a $2.5-million mini­ series, Joe Wilson, for Filmat and Channel Seven, which will mark his debut as a director. What took him so long? "What a nice way to put it!

I’ve been very busy as an actor.

And, in a sense, I think it’s easier to get your first job as a director if you've come out of the Film and Television School. People in the business are inclined to think that every actor wants to direct, and every actor, when he’s been around for a while, thinks he can! But I’ve always wanted to. I directed some stage before I came into films, so I leapt at the offer when Ray Beattie asked me.” Is he apprehensive?

"I'm apprehensive about how well I can do it,” he says, “ not whether or not I can.”

Pre-production started on Joe Wilson — which will star Matthew Fargher (King in Burke & Wills) and Kim Krejus, with a script by Keith Dewhurst — in mid-January, and shooting is scheduled to start in and around Mudgee and Gulgong (where Henry Lawson set his original stories) in March. "It’s a twelve-week shoot,” says Thomp­ son, "then there’s all the post-pro­ duction, so I’m tied up from now until July-August. I’m beginning to discover how demanding and totally pre-occupying directing is . . . and just how much less money you get paid than as an actor!” + Nick Roddick

CINEMA PAPERS March — 15

THE STUNT AGENCY 1986 C U R R E N T P R O JE C T S

6 FEATURE FILMS ■ 3 MINI-SERIES •2 TELEM OVIES •3 NATIONAL COMMERCIALS • 1985 C R E D IT S

5 FEATURE FILMS •6 MINI-SERIES ■ 9 TELEM OVIES • 3 TELESERIES •20 NATIONAL COMMERCIALS •

CONTACT: JULIA PETERS TELEPHONE: (02) 331-5990 ADDRESS: 1ST FLOOR, 307 BOURKE ST., DARLINGHURST, N.S.W. 2011 AUSTRALIA

‘‘Anybodycan do a stunt once....

This is the story of a stunt; It was done at dusk in a Sydney suburb last Octo­ ber. At around $75,000,- it cost more than any single stunt so far executedin Australia, it set a world record för a jump by a truck (162 feet)., and it ended welk That last bit is importante This is not one of those stories about a charis­ matic daredevil who, halfway down page two, hits a brick wall and ends.up' spending the rest of his life in*a wheel­ chair. Indeed, the fact that this story does end well makes its about more than just this stunt: it is about the coming-of-age of' the Australian stunt industry, which is by now the equal of any in the world, not just in trucks jumping, but in firegels and, thanks to' this same stunt, in car stunt safety harnesses. Gone are the days of per­ suading drunken boons to fall off a horse, a building or a train for ten IIP bucks and case of Four X. In the mid-eighties; stunts are an integral part of the movie business. They have tneir own science and their own dedicated professionals; One of them, 25-yearold Guy Norris, did the stunt in this story. Norris is very successful: you can tell that by the BMW he drives (not k new BMW,/it is true, but a BMW all the sdme). He also works a lot — his credits include Mad Max 2 (in which hé doubled for Mel Gibson), BMX Bandits, Bliss and War Story — and, watching the stunt in this story, you can see why .

The stunt was for„Dead:End DriveIn, it was planned with a slide-rule, working drawings and speed tests, and almost everything in it was custombuilt. It is the climax of the picture, in which the hero, played by Ned Lander, crashes out to freedom from a drive-in converted into a prison compound, where he, along with a group of other unemployed, youths, has spent most of the film. Lander Cbmandeers a police truck and, thanks to a low-loader which the authorities have been using to unload cars, leaps over the box office, through the neon sign that says ‘Star Drive-In’, lands outside the com­ pound and heads for the hills. This, in é§!ënçe, is exactly ‘what Guy Norris llöesY too. But he doesn’t head for the « ¡ ¡ || at the end: the specially built, fp||iaUy‘ reinforced Ford truck has indtwo, like a toy someone has d'wîflt^a ^ipade, and bits of it are across the tarmac from the box! to vrhere it has finally come to 111|||

V

vM \i

was recorded with tbtfr one in the’¿ruck, running at es per second (four times the : to.; give, a Slow-niotion/ Vdriver’s-eye-view; "one* one, running runnii at 36 framed per second, which pans with thé ■the ramp: one on i GINEMA PAPERS /Warc/7 — 77

the neon sign, running at 120 f.p.s., to capture the moment when the sign shatters in exaggerated slow motion; and a ‘Ned Kelly’ — a camera in a pro­ tective steel casing, which is a must on most stunts — close to where the truck is expected to land. In rushes next day, it looks terrific. Even the shots of Lander pretending to drive the truck are nail-biting stuff.

Originally, though, the break-out at the end of the film was to have been rather less dramatic. “ Ned was just going to burst through the gates,” says Norris. “ It was Larry Eastwood, the production designer, who actually came up with the idea of him bursting out over the top. He’d built this incred­ ible box office and this fabulous sign, and they were just sitting there. We dis­ cussed the jump one morning and he said, ‘Is it possible?’ I said, ‘Give me a week and I’ll tell you’.”

The first thing Norris did was ring the States and talk to two American stuntman friends, Kerry Rossal and Mickey Gilberts, who is second-unit director on The Fall Guy. “ W hat’s the go?” he asked. “ What do you suggest?” Gilberts phoned him back with some suggestions for the ramp he’d need, and the one they finally built was to Gilberts’s precise design. “ It’s a sine curve,” explains Norris, “ which gives you the maximum amount of speed with the shortest distance of ramp, and without any chance of bottoming out. With an

ordinary ramp, you’d lose a lot of the impact as you hit the bottom, and you’d dig in: you’d slow right down, it would kick you down, your front suspension would try to bounce off, and you’d probably be off the ramp before you got to the top of it. The reason why people haven’t done these jumps in the past is that you’d need a ramp about 20 feet high and 50-100 feet long. You’d drive up it, then start to fall. Mickey had done jumps off earth mounds, and he worked it out from that.

“ If you look at the rushes, you’ll notice the truck squeezes up and, as soon as you go off the ramp, the wheels pop out. It actually brings it off the ramp and makes it jump!” “ The advantage with the sine curve is that you can get so much speed on such a short ramp. This one is only 25 feet long and seven feet high and, by putting the curve on it, you can hit it really fast, and it’s actually forcing you onto the ramp all the way. If you look at the rushes, you notice the truck squeezes up and, as soon as you go off the ramp, the wheels pop out. It actually brings it off the ramp and makes it jum p!”

Tests had told Norris what sort of

speed he could get the truck up to m the fairly limited space available, which was complicated by the fact that he had to follow the curve of the drivein’s outer fence. By the end of the tests, Norris had worked out that he would hit the bottom of the ramp at between 55 and 60 mph. The ramp itself gave him three or four inches tolerance on either side of the truck’s front wheels.

But that wasn’t really a problem: he had to be in exactly the right place any­ way so, although more ramp might have been nice to see, it wouldn’t have affected the stunt one way or the other. “ The main thing,” says Norris, “ was getting through the sign in the right place. I said: ‘My left wheel will go through the ‘S’ of ‘Star’, and my right wheel will be above the ‘n’ of ‘Drive-in’.” The photographs show he hit it exactly. “ It’s just like a hypo­ tenuse triangle: you take your angles up higher and work it out on the sliderule until you get it. The advantage of the sine curve is that you know exactly where you’re going to start flying.”

The ramp itself was constructed out of six-millimetre, machine-stretched gridding, which gave the maximum traction at the base. Wood or sheet metal would have been no good, because the stunt was done at dusk (in the film, it’s supposed to be dawn), and the early-evening dew would have made it slippery. In actual fact, though, Norris reckons he hit the ramp at something over 60 mph. The result

was that, although his calculation of where he would hit the sign was spot on, he continued on upwards after he had hit it, going both higher and further than he anticipated. “ How it was worked out was: to go 130 feet, you hit it at 55 mph, and your apex would be between fifteen and seven­ teen feet. Mine was, like, 25 feet, and the distance ended up being 162 feet, which was pretty good.”

So good, in fact, that once he came down (and came down off the high), Norris immediately put a call through to Kerry Rossal. “ It was 3.30 in the morning there,” he says, “ and he was all” — Norris makes grumbling, sleeping noises. “ I said, ‘G ’day, g’day, I’ve just done the jum p!’ And he says, ‘What did you do?’ I said ‘162 feet’ and he said: ‘You bastard!’ ” The first time during the whole stunt that Norris had the chance to think was as he started up the ramp. Prior to that, all his attention had been taken up with hitting it at the right speed. “ That all went superquick,” he remembers. “ But, as soon as I hit the ramp, it was just as slow as that” — he makes a floating movement with his hands. “ I remember all the bits of the sign going really vividly, and I remem­ ber seeing sky and more sky. The thing the other guys said is: ‘Whenever you do the big one, remember the view!’ I remember looking over and seeing the lighting tower, and it was, like, ‘Wow!’ — actually, it was more like ‘Fuck!’ —

and then I was going down and I saw the ground coming up.”

This, in fact, was the dangerous bit of the stunt. Anybody can jump off a building: it’s the landing that’s diffi­ cult. In this case, the success of the stunt relied on two things: the angle of the ramp, and what happened to Norris when he landed. The truck itself had been specially modified, with a 500 lb weight to prevent it skewing in mid­ air, because of the greater weight on the driver’s side. And it was specially reinforced. “ The engine and trans­ mission moved back a foot as I landed,

“ You’re an egg between two rubber bands, suspended in the car: it’s like having two great big hands around you” but they couldn’t go any further, because I had my own little cocoon inside, and they were pushed under­ neath. It was very much like a racingcar pod: the whole car could have come totally apart, and I’d still have been self-contained.If I hadn’t had that, I would have had the engine on my lap.”

But the real problem was to protect Norris from the impact. “ The main injury you have with a jump is spinal compression,” he says. “ They lost a couple of guys in the early days, and a lot of people got badly hurt. So, they

Do you believe a truck can fly ? The various stages o f N orris’s Dead-End Drive-In stunt, cap­ tured by m otor racing photographer Bill Forsythe.

worked out this really ingenious system of having a vest and a bunjie cord.

You’re an egg between two rubber bands, suspended in the car: it’s like having two great big hands around you. But a suspension harness is a really uncomfortable thing. “ The biggest jump they’d ever done in The Fall Guy was around 150 feet, but the stuntman fractured three ribs and wasn’t very well at the end of it.

And the biggest jump anyone’s ever done was 186 feet, in the Dukes of Hazard Charger: a guy went over a train. But he was just wiped out. You get a lot of rib and internal damage with jumps. A friend of mine who does a lot of the jumps on Knight Rider always seems to bang up his kidneys.

He’s got an electric blanket, pre-cut, which he puts round himself. He’s got a 100-foot extension cord, which he plugs in and walks round the house with for about a week, until he’s better.”

Norris, who is reckoned to be one of Australia’s most innovative stuntmen (he has developed his own fire gel — illustrated on the title page of this article — which enables him to work open-faced for a startling amount of time), reckoned there had to be a better way. His solution to the problem was to suspend the whole seat, fitting it >

CINEMA PAPERS March — 19

with a set of shock absorbers and, using a motor bike lever ratio of between 9 and 13:1, pivoted the seat itself, so that the impact could be absorbed at the optimum angle. “ The best thing for me about the whole jum p,” he says, “ apart from it working so well visually, was the fact that the seat worked.” The next day, he had a slightly stiff neck, and that was all. “ As I started coming down, I braced myself and was squeezing down in the seat: I actually bent the steering wheel! And then, bang, my head came

A nother record: Norris doing the ‘Cannonball’ stunt — riding a m otor bike into a car and cannonballing o f f — in Mad Max 2. Norris flew 62 feet.

up and I hit the roof. I kept waiting for more, but that was it. All I could hear was the churning of the camera: it sounded like a mincer, because it was going at 96 f.p.s. I thought: I’d better turn it off; but the control had broken when the film snapped as I landed.

Then I was back to normal again: all the guys were running up, and I was trying to get out really quickly because it was so good.”

Watching Norris do the stunt from the roof of a near-by building, it the stunt. “ I’m pretty hard on myself, seemed as if it broke down into three and everything I’ve done is in competi­ stages: the roar of the truck accelera­ tion with myself. But, this time, I have ting towards the ramp, culminating in to be honest and say, ‘I don’t think it a hideous clang as the front end hit the could have gone much better’. Now we ribbing; then silence (neon exploding is know we can jump a three-ton vehicle a very small sound compared with that sort of distance, walk away and what had gone before — a sort of get those sorts of shots. So, I can say ‘Pouff!’, like a flash bulb bursting); next time: ‘Let’s do it differently. Next and finally, a massive rending sound, time, we can jump over something as the truck came down and started to else.’ ” Whatever he does jump over next disintegrate. Then there was another five seconds, until the stunt team time, Norris will certainly plan it just reached the truck and helped Norris as carefully and for just as long — not out. Against everybody’s expectations, just to prevent himself from getting he didn’t sit down or lean on some­ banged up and having to walk around body’s shoulder: he jumped in the air, in an electric blanket, but because he, like most modern stuntmen, needs the waved his arms about and shouted.

All of which reinforces his point, profession to be respected for what it really: what he had done had been is. “ The main thing now,” he says, “ is worked out in advance, and had gone to get people to see that we aren’t almost exactly according to plan. The yahoos. In the old days it used to be, only problem was that, coming down like: ‘We’ll do it and, whatever 20 feet further on than anticipated, the happens, happens’. Now, for a shot truck had missed the Ned Kelly. Not that’s taken $100,000, it’s got to be surprisingly, Norris was happy about exact. People say, ‘Oh, you’re crazy!’

20 — March CINEMA PAPERS

A stuntm an prepares: Norris works on the truck.

Well, there’s obviously a degree of that somewhere, or we wouldn’t do it. But, mainly, it’s all worked out first. The whole trick is picking up your cheque, having a good time spending it, and being able to do it again the next day.

Anybody can do a stunt once.”

Nick Roddick ■¥■

PBL

PRODUCTIONS

& Bookie ^Bgdy Robbeiy You can’t keep a

‘Good Man Down’

PBL Productions Pty Limited 2nd Floor, 435 Kent Street, Sydney 2000 Telephone: (02) 264 9222 Telex: AA75785 PBL PRO (SYDNEY) Fax: (02)264 5852

David Evans Enterprises Inc. d- Hal Roach Studios Inc., 1600, N. Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles 90046 USA Telephone: (213) 850 0525 Telex: 887855 EVANSENT Fax:(213)850 5189

David Stratton catches up with Fred Schepisi, back in Australia with

his much-praised new film, Plenty.

Schepisi behind the camera during the shooting o f The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.

Fred Schepisi has been away for six years.

The last time I interviewed him was in mid-1979; still depressed at the commercial failure of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith the previous year, he had signed with 20th Century-Fox to direct, in America, his own original screenplay, Bittersweet Love.

Soon after our meeting, he sold his Melbourne house and left for Los Angeles with his family. I met up with him a few times during the intervening years. I had dinner at his home one evening, soon after Bittersweet Love (about a twice-married man having an affair with a young woman) had finally fallen through, mainly because of the alarming changes of direction at the top of the studio. We had dinner at a Beverly Hills restaurant soon after Iceman opened. And there’d been the odd meeting in between. But now, with his most success­ ful film, Plenty, receiving good notices in Britain and the US and about to open in Australia, Schepisi was back at the Melbourne office of Film House, working on a TV commercial for an insurance company.

“ I stood there with Freddie Fields, then head of MGM, underlining the funny bits in the script to show him it was a comedy!”

Way out west: Schepisi with Willie Nelson during a break in the shooting o f Barbarosa.

Theatre on film : Schepisi on the Iceman set with Lindsay Crouse and (on the table) John Lone.

Left, Schepisi on the Plenty set with Tracey Ullman and M eryl Streep.

Top left, Schepisi during the shooting o f The

Devil’s Playground.

He’s made three features in those six years, and there have been more than twice that many projects that have fallen through for a variety of reasons. There was Partners, a tap-dancing movie for Lorimar, and The Mandolin Man, scripted by Herman Raucher (Summer of ’42), to have been' set in Sydney and to have starred Olivia Newton-John. There was Double Standards, also known as The Other Man, a screenplay by Judith Ross which, Schepisi says, “ would have had an impact on this age like The Moon is Blue had in the fifties” . Even with three big names committed to the project (Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Ann-Margret), the film, a sophisticated sex comedy, was rejected by the majors as “ too old” , and still didn’t get off the ground when re-cast with William Hurt and Karen Allen. “ I had them,” Schepisi says, barely concealing his frustration, “ but they still wouldn’t make the bloody thing. I stood there with Freddie Fields, then head of MGM, underlining the funny bits in the script with a yellow pencil to show him it was a comedy! I’m serious!

He couldn’t see how funny it might have been.”

There was also Meet Me at the Melba, an original screenplay by Schepisi set in Atlanta in the thirties, about a repressed man and a free-spirited woman. “ Too soft,” said the people at Warners. “ I don’t think they even read the bloody thing,”

►

CINEMA PAPERS March — 23

Man of .

Plenty says Schepisi. Misconceptions was another original screenplay; it was a comedy about journalists, a kind of modern TracyHepburn subject. There was a comedy about Robin Hood, to be made for Mel Brooks’s company. There was a subject about the media people who get politicians elected, which was to have starred Jacqueline Bisset and Roy Scheider; but this one was vetoed by Bisset (who had director approval and claimed there were no vibes between her and Schepisi).

“ In Plenty, wis said is greatly affected by w here it’s being said. The ‘where’ is sometimes a comment, sometimes a counterpoint, but always an essential character in its own right” The only one of these films that eventually did get made, but not by Schepisi, was Raggedy Man. Written by William D.Witliff, this was a story about a young wife who leaves her husband when she Sees him cheating her with another woman, and tries living alone in a small Texas town; the year is 1940. Wittliff had seen Jimmie Blacksmith and, soon after Bittersweet Love fell through, approached Schepisi to work with him on the project.

Sally Field had been cast in the lead, but she had director approval, too, and it took an agonizingly long time for her to approve Schepisi. Eventually, she bowed out, and Sissy Spacek entered the picture, also with director approval. By this time, Schepisi had worked for months with Witliff, re­ shaping the screenplay. In the end, however, the studio, Universal, bowed to Spacek’s wishes: her husband, Jack Fisk, an art director with no previous directorial experience, took over the film. Schepisi’s revisions were rejected.

Ironically, though, it was this major dis­ appointment which eventually led to Schepisi’s first American film, Barbarosa (1982), also scripted by Witliff (who coproduced). This western saga, about the friendship of a Texas farmboy and a famous outlaw, had been offered to various studios, including Universal. It eventually ended up at ITC, Lew Grade’s American production company, with distribution through Associated Film Distributors, a company set up to handle ITC and EMI releases in the US. The leads were already cast. “ They interviewed me, I interviewed them,” says Schepisi. He’d seen Gary Busey in The Buddy Holly Story, and was very excited about him. “ I’d heard he was difficult, but I didn’t know he’d be quite as difficult as he turned out to be.” But there 24 — March CINEMA PAPERS

was instant rapport with Willie Nelson.

Schepisi worked (uncredited) on the script, and shot the film “ with a great crew” on locations in Texas. That ‘great crew’ included Australian Ian Baker, who’d shot both Schepisi’s earlier features. Union problems were avoided because of the Texas location, and Schepisi was relieved to be working with his old friend and collaborator. Baker would later shoot both Iceman and Plenty and, says Schepisi, is unequalled for balancing the quality of his work with the demands of the budget.

Sneak previews of Barbarosa revealed a few problems, exacerbated by the fact that being the distributor, AFD (“ Another Friggin’ Disaster” , says Schepisi) was collapsing at the time. Eventually, distribution of the film passed to Universal (where it had already been rejected at script stage) and, despite positive reviews, it was virtually dumped. One of the elements in the film Schepisi looks back on with most pride was his own casting of veteran actor Gilbert Roland as Don Braulio. “ He was fantastic: 72 years old, and a consum m ate professional.”

Despite the commercial failure of Barbarosa, Schepisi was offered other scripts. “ In Hollywood, if you make an interesting film, whether it works or not, they appreciate what you’ve done. If you set out to make a commercial film and it fails, then they jump all over you.” One of the scripts was Iceman, written by Chip Proser and John Drimmer, and picked up by producer-director Norman Jewison, a Canadian with many commercial successes behind him, from In the Heat of the Night to Fiddler on the Roof.

The intriguing story deals with the discovery of a prehistoric man frozen in the Arctic ice, then thawed out into the 20th century, and one of Schepisi’s first problems was to discover what kind of film Jewison (who’d originally planned to direct it himself) wanted to produce. Overall, there was agreement between the two men, though they did clash over the final cut.

Chief problem, though, was to cast an actor for the central role. A FrenchTunisian boxer was considered, then a karate champ, then a French-Canadian from way up north in the Arctic. Finally, Schepisi settled on John Lone, whose training and experience had been remarkably varied (the Peking opera, method acting in New York). He was too slight for the part; but, after special training, he added weight and muscle, and his extraordinary grace and agility made him a memorable figure."

Critics were generally; kind to Iceman (though some compared it unfavourably to Ken Russell’s Altered States), but its release, in mid-1984, through Universal, was not very successful, and it has, so far, not played in Britain. Almost immediately, however, Schepisi was offered the opportunity to direct his next film, an adaptation of the very successful David Hare play, Plenty. The eircum-

“ Meryl is clearly the premier actress of her generation on film ” stances are unusually interesting. Hare himself had directed the original London and Broadway productions, which starred Kate Nelligan, and was actively preparing to direct his own first feature, Wetherby.

But neither he nor his producer, Edward R.;: Pressman, wanted a British director to make the film. “ They wanted someone not restricted by the very inhibitions the story was examining,” says Schepisi. The first idea was to have an American, then Hare suggested an Australian (“ They’re sort of like Americans” ), and several were considered. A screening for Hare of The Devil’s Playground led to a meeting, and Schepisi, who had seen the Broadway production of the play and much admired it, got the job (the final choice, he says, was between him and George Roy Hill).

Kate Nelligan was seriously considered for the leading role of Susan Traherne, through whose eyes we see a Britain declining from the end of World War II until the Suez Crisis. The trouble, says Schepisi, was the budget: Hare and Pressman wanted to open out the play, to give it greater scope and scale. “ There was great scale which was only hinted at on stage; but it pervades the atmosphere.

What is being said is greatly affected by where it’s being said. The ‘where’ is some­ times a comment, sometimes a counter­ point, but always an essential character in its own right. If we did it with Kate, we’d have been limited to a $6-7 million budget, i f the budget could have been raised. Even with Meryl Streep, it was still terribly difficult to get the money. Also, Kate’s particular approach to the character could have been tempered and changed, but Meryl brings different qualities to the part.

She’s clearly the premier actress of her generation on film, while Kate is becoming the premier actress of her generation on: stage.”

As usual, Schepisi collaborated (without credit) on Hare’s screenplay. “ I shocked David by insisting he put more and more dialogue back in the film. He kept saying, ‘Are you mad? Every director in the world wants to take the dialogue out!’ But I said, ‘Believe me, it’ll work this way because, short of re-writing it totally to express it all visually, we should concentrate on the language’. It’s a beautiful language piece.

But it doesn’t seem talky if you give it the kind of scale we did.” Nor was he worried, finally, at the casting of an American actress in such a very English role. It certainly helped that Streep had earlier been accepted in an English raLe in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. During the scripting, Tracey Ullman’s role of Alice was enlarged

A woman not under the influence: Meryl Streep in Plenty with (left to right) Nicholas Frankau, Charles Dance and John Gielgud.

(“ she was smaller and spottier in the play” ), as was that of the husband, played

by Charles Dance.

Ullman is known in America as a pop star, in Britain as a regular on TV variety shows; Sting, who plays Mick, is also still better known as a singer than an actor. Put them together with the 81-year-old John Gielgud, and you have some interesting interreactions. “ Gielgud, was quite extra­ ordinary/’ says Schepisi. “ He gets angry with himself when he gets tired and can’t remember lines, but he didn’t hold us up.”

Schepisi was amused when one US critic wrote that, although the film was “ exactly the same as the play” and “ nothing major had been changed” , yet “ somehow it all seems new” . In fact, about a third of the material in the film is new, and the play has also been restructured. “ The whole play was out of chronology,” says Schepisi. “ It was a set of ideas in random time place­ ments, so yotr accepted the time-jumps backwards and forwards. In the film, we always went forward, though sometimes with long time-jumps, until the very end, when we go back to the beginning again.”

The fact that Hare had completed shooting Wetherby before Plenty started ‘‘gave him a better understanding of what I needed,” says Schepisi. “ It made him much more helpful as a writer. He never interfered with the direction; we had an extraordinary collaboration — very happy indeed. We had excellent communication, and we talked out our differences.

Sometimes he changed my ideas, sometimes I changed his.”

changed his life. He has a new, American wife, and a young family. He has survived and even prospered in a very tough world.

He’s as cynical as ever, but maybe a shade less naive. I wrote once that his films were about people trapped in a situation from which it’s hard to escape. That was true of his Australian films, and turns out to have been true of his three American films too: Barbarosa, trapped in a pointless family feud; the Iceman, trapped in a strange and hostile world; Susan Traherne, trapped in a stifling postwar Britain that offers little of the ‘plenty’ she craves. But one feels that Fred Schepisi himself has broken free of his traps: he seems to be looking to the future with cheerful confidence. ★

The films of Fred Schepisi C a m e r a C o r n e r (1964-66) Series of

shorts.

Breaking the Language Barrier

Sam Neil as Lazar, with whom a wartime encounter dominates Susan’s postwar life.

(1965) Short.

The Shape of Quality (1965) Short.

People Make Papers (1965) Docu­ mentary.

And One Was Gold (1965) Docu­ mentary.

U p a n d O v e r D o w n U n d e r (1966)

Documentary.

Switch On (1967) Documentary.

The Plus

F a c to r

(1970)

Docu­

mentary.

Tom orrow ’s Canberra (1972) Documentary.

Libido (Episode ‘The Priest’ 1973)

“ David and I had excellent communication, and we talked out our differences.

Sometimes he changed my ideas, sometimes I changed his” Schepisi has always been a bit cynical of critics, and Plenty hasn’t changed that.

Molly Haskell, in her review, listed all the things she liked about the film, and then said the only thing she really disliked was the blunt, overly physical direction. “ But almost everything she listed as liking came about because of my input,” says Schepisi.

He’s also amused when a reviewer, like Pam Cook in the Monthly Film Bulletin, reviews the film without even mentioning the director. “ It’s a compliment in a way.”

And next? He plans to film a “ wonderful” Steve Tesich script for Fox about rich but emotionally under-privileged kids in Boston, and would also like to make another film in Australia. He might produce in Australia too, but his plans aren’t fully formed as yet.

His six years away have certainly

Production company: Producers and Directors Guild of Australia/Producers: Christopher Muir and John B. M u rr a y /S e r i p (w rite r : T h o m as Keneally/Cast: Robyn Nevin, Arthur Dignam, Vivean Gray.

The

D e v il’s

Playground

(1976)

Production company: The Feature F ilm H o u se / P ro d u c e r : F red Schepisi/Script writer: Schepisi/Cast: Arthur Dignam, Nick Tate, Simon Burke/107 minutes.

The war is over: Streep as Susan Traherne, finding none o f the plenty she craves in postwar Britain.

The Chant of Jimmie Black­ smith (1978) Production company: The Film House/Producer: Fred Schepisi/Scriptwriter: Schepisi, from the novel by Thomas Keneally/Cast: Tommy Lewis, Freddy Reynolds, Ray Barrett/124 minutes.

B a r b a ro s a (1981, USA) Production company: ITC/Producer: Paul N. Lazarus III/Scriptwrifer: William Witliff/Cast: Willie Nelson, Gary Busey, Gilbert Roland/90 minutes.

Iceman (1984, USA) Production company: A Norman Jewison-Patrick P alm er P r o d u c tio n /P ro d u c e rs : N orm an Jew iso n and P a tric k Palmer/Scriptwriters: Chip Proser and John Drimmer/Cast: Timothy Hutton, Lindsay Crouse, John Lone/tOl minutes.

P len ty (1985, USA) Production com­ pany: Edward R. Pressman Produc­ tions for RKO/Producers: Edward R. Pressman and Joseph Papp/Scriptwriter: David H are/Cast: Meryl Streep, Sam Neill, Charles Dance/124 minutes.

Sting as M ick and Tracey Ullman as Alice: in the play, Ullman ’s part was “smaller and spottier”, says Schepisi.

CINEMA PAPERS March — 25

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Trenchard-Smith on the set o f Dead-End Drive-In.

He is a devout coward who has always wanted to be Errol Flynn. He has been set on fire eight times, knocked down by a car three times, gone through a windscreen once, has climbed down the lift-shaft of the Greater Union Building and (scared shit­ less) has climbed the Sydney Heads without a rope. Though he is considered a ‘hired gun’ both here and in Hollywood — the Red Adair of the Australian film industry — he still believes it is a privilege just to be making films.

Privilege or no, his films are certainly prolific: since 1972, he has made ten theatrical features and seven telemovies. He is probably the only director in the world to be represented at February’s American Film Market in Los Angeles by no less than three films, all completed in the past year: Frog Dreaming, Jenny Kissed Me and Dead-End Drive-In. The other remarkable thing about the director (in the context of Australian cinema) is that his films nearly always make money. But, at 39, after working for more than 20 years in films, Brian Trenchard-Smith believes he is only just beginning to get into his stride. “ There is,” he says, “ something you always get in a Trenchard-Smith movie: pace, a strong visual sense, and what the movie is actually about told to you very persuasively. Whatever I do, I’ll still be applying a sense of pace: trying to find where the joke is, and trying to make the film look a lot bigger than it cost.” In the

Action, horror, exploitation, tearjerkers, kids’ pictures, training films — not yet 40, Brian Trenchard-Smith has made them all. Brian Jones talks to Australia’s most prolific filmmaker — and one of our most commercially successful. industry, he indeed has a reputation for cost-consciousness — something which he himself puts down to a sense of responsi­ bility to a film’s investors. It must also, however, have something to do with his long and extremely varied career Although his ancestors are Australian, Trenchard-Smith was brought up in Eng­ land, and made his first film while at school there. “ I was a leading light in the school Arts Society,” he says. “ And, somehow, I was given the job of making a film, on 8mm, about a year in the life of the school.

When I left, I put the film under my arm and showed it around until at last someone said: ‘We’ve got a job for you’.” That someone was the Central Electricity Generating Board, and they wanted a film about pylons. From there, TrenchardSmith became a cameraman with a French news company in London, then moved to Australia. “ Ten days after arriving,” he says, “ I

got a job with Channel Ten. I happened to walk in at the right time. They said: ‘Can you do news?’ I said: ‘Is the Pope catholic?’ and started straight away.

Eventually, I got into cutting station promos, and that led into doing trailers for features.” He did something like 80 of those and, in the meantime, worked up the nerve to ask the channel to give him a pro­ ject to produce and direct. For them, he did several films, including For Valor and The Stuntman — his first real encounter with a profession that was to come to fascinate him, as well as to play an important role in his films.

Leaving TV, Trenchard-Smith was writer, producer, director and even actor in his early films — highly successful, highly commercial pictures like The Kung Fu Killers (1974), The Love Epidemic (1975), The Man from Hong Kong (also 1975) and Deathcheaters (1976). There was also a fire safety film for Film Australia, Hospitals Don’t Burn Down (1977) — the title is, of course, ironic — to which he applied his usual principles. The result was a highly effective safety film that also, unusually, recouped its costs out of commercial sales overseas.

In 1978, Trenchard-Smith went to the US, where he spent some time at the Disney studios. “ They gave me an office on the corner of Mickey Avenue and Dopey Drive, and I was instructed to write in the morn­ ing, then go and look at a few shots of The ► CINEMA PAPERS March — 27

Black Hole, so I could see their operating procedures on a big special-effects picture.

I’d hand my pages in at the end of the day, and they’d be returned to me in the morn­ ing with pencilled comments from the story editor.” In the States, he encountered a wider range of filmmaking experiences than what he had had as a filmmaker in Aus­ tralia, “ sweating blood and tears to get a film financed every eighteen months, then having to make it in a hurry” .

Back in Australia, he worked with pro­ ducer Tom Broadbridge on one of his most commercially successful films, BMX Bandits (1983), and became interested in a project Broadbridge was unsuccessfully trying to get up. It was Jenny Kissed Me, which he describes as “ a tearjerker for men” . “ I identified with the human tragedy,” he says: “ a father could come home one day and find his partner and the girl who had called him daddy for the past six years suddenly gone. “ One important element in the film is commitment to family and children, as opposed to individual selfishness and the fear of the loss of freedom. I was trying to show that the narcissism of the seventies can put a family into a private hell. The seventies had a trade-it-in, throw-it-away attitude towards relationships: if they don’t work out, move on. Well, there’s a price to pay for moving on when children are in­ volved: you can irrevocably damage their lives. And I’m suggesting that, in Australia, where there has been a 40% failure rate in marriages, there has been a fairly flippant

“ The seventies had a trade-it-in, throw-it-away attitude towards relationships: if they didn’t work, move on” attitude that hasn’t really been thought through.”

The original screenplay for Jenny was by Judith Colquhoun, but there was difficulty in getting it funded. “ I wanted to give the story more style,” says Trenchard-Smith, “ make the characters more sophisticated and the feeling more upmarket, more accessible to a wider audience. Judith, whom I greatly respect as a writer, was not prepared to make the changes, so I got Warwick Hind to do it to my specifications, then I cut about six pages, rewrote a couple of scenes in a very minor way, wrote two new scenes of my own, and made the neces­ sary adjustments during shooting, when an actor was uncomfortable with this or that line.”

The result, in other words, is very much a Brian Trenchard-Smith film. But the other two of his current crop have had rather less than ideal preparation periods for him — less than a day in the case of Frog Dreaming. “ Everett De Roche, the writer, 28 — March CINEMA PAPERS

Trenchard-Smith at work on Jenny Kissed Me — something o f a new departure fo r him. He calls it a “male tearjerker”.

and Barbi Taylor, the producer, tracked me down to a Japanese restaurant, where I was eating after finishing an episode of Five Mile Creek for television. They gave me a script and said, ‘Can you start tomorrow?’

“Frog Dreaming is about a ten-year-old kid who suspects there’s something at the bottom of a nearby pond. Everybody is afraid of it, including the local Aborigines.

It’s a charming mystery adventure, rather than a knock-down, drag-out action picture like BMX Bandits. Also, I was interested in working with Henry Thomas, of E.T. fame. As well as being a very intelli­ gent kid, he had the experience of four features behind him, so I treated him as an equal partner, not, like, ‘I’m 39 and you’re fourteen’. I asked him how he’d react in each situation, because I don’t think through the mind of a fourteen-year-old.

You can’t treat kids like robots and just tell them what to do: it’s far better to create a situation in their minds so they’re not acting it, they’re being it. That applies to all actors, of course, but kids can operate on that level more easily than adults. Aiid it’s rather fun watching it happen.”

Trenchard-Smith also worked with a child — Tamsin West, who plays Jenny — on the other feature, and ascribes his new interest in kids’ movies to having some of his own. “ Children are the future of the planet,” he says, “ and, unless we look after the future of the planet, we’re doomed. Even as filmmakers, we have to take a responsibility for that. I don’t want to do films that propagate an unwholesome point of view or do people damage.” For the record, he sees the violence and splatter of Turkey Shoot (1982) in terms of grotesque hilarity. “ It’s over the top, a spoof. When one of the villains accidentally chops his henchman in half with a bull­ dozer while trying to kill someone else with it, he just clutches his head and says, ‘Oh, shit!’. There is a huge roar of laughter from the audience.”

Dead-End Drive-In is a little over the top, too: based on a short story by Peter Carey called ‘Crabs’ (which is the central character’s name), it is a piece of future shock about a world rife with youth un­ employment, in which the drive-ins have been turned into benevolent concentration camps. “ It’s a situation that is within the bounds of possibility,” says TrenchardSmith: “ not as extreme as the Mad Max 2, post-holocaust situation — sort of Mad Max 1/2 to 3/4. To contain the unwanted elements of society, some bright spark says, ‘We won’t go with the guard dogs and the barbed wire and the machine guns: let’s be clever, let’s make it benevolent, let’s give the little bastards what they really want.

You know: give ’em sex, drugs, rock ’n roll, junk food, dusk-to-dawn movies, rock clips on the video machines in the cafeteria;

then they’ll be happy, and they’ll do it all inside the fence. They won’t do it in the streets or steal our video machines.’ “ The Drive-In is, of course, an allegory for the junk values of the eighties, which our hero sees as a prison. The last 20 minutes of the film — the escape — is the desperate, blazing climax, but the whole film has a feeling of high style, of height­ ened or enhanced reality — a little bit over the top, but retaining a reality that the public will accept. This feeling of high style I try to bring to a greater or lesser degree to all my films. I generally achieve it by using a very mobile camera and a number of low wide-angles, and I always cut fairly fast and tight. In the last couple of films, I’ve structured my style to have the camera movement of cinema and the coverage of television. “ I don’t think a cinema audience objects to extreme close-ups, within reason. But, for a TV or video audience, after seven seconds, the brain will be saying: ‘I want to see that closer’. Unless you’re in a darkened theatre with a big screen and stereo, some of the subtleties will be lost: put it on tele­ vision, and it often looks like two bean­ poles on either side of the screen. I don’t see this as a compromise, rather a conscious decision to please the maximum audience.”

Given its ambitions, Dead-End Drive-In is a modestly budgeted film; and Trenchard-Smith has strong views on budgets: “ Our budgets are climbing far too high. I would like to see a situation where there was more overlap of job responsi-

“ Children are the future of the planet and, unless we look after the future of the planet, w e’re doomed” bility and people were a little more hungry, like in the old days. I fear that, if people don’t take a good, hard look at this problem, it is going to put our long-term survival as a film industry at risk. “ I’d love to do a big-budget picture, though. And I don’t see why films of that kind can’t be made in Australia. Razorback had a distinctly Australian flavour, yet it was another Giant Animal picture, intended to appeal to lovers of Giant Animal pictures all over the world. Why can’t we make a Giant Comedy picture? I think we could easily do a Mad, Mad World or a Blues Brothers. No reason why we couldn’t put David Argue and Wilbur Wilde together in a car, and let them wreck Melbourne: audiences would respond to it all over the world. “ As for me, I’d like to keep on making films for ever. I’d love to be, at the age of 98, lining up the last shot of the movie, on my 70 mm camera, then keel over just after I’d said ‘Cut!’. What a way to go!”

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Rewriting geography: tvwf official US military maps from March 195^ The one^ab'pve shows tlfe relative positions of Bikini and Rongelap (together with4|e patif of a straiy Japanese fishing boat). The one tne right-hand pageshows wher^ the Navy’s ships were when the be mb off, and the expected fall-gut area. According to the map, the USS ‘Gypsy’ was ideally placed to evacuate Rongelap if, as the Americans claimed, the wind direction had shifted at the last minute carrying the fall-out cloud in the direction of the atoll. But Rongela|] its e lf® s been conveniently omitted from the map.

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For most filmmakers, surviving in Aus­ tralia has meant learning to play a certain kind of game. If it wasn’t such a loaded word, ‘compromise’ would be a good name for the game: one person’s aspirations have had to be made fit another’s perception of 30 — March CINEMA PAPERS

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Nick Roddick talks to Dennis O’Rourke about Half Life, his widely-acclaimed study of how the US military used the inhabitants of a tiny Pacific atoll as nuclear guinea pigs.

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f commercial realities, ambitions have had to be brought into line with resources. But, for those filmmakers who are willing — or have learned — to play the game, Australia remains a pretty good place in which to make films. Thanks to a tax system which, for all its recent dilutions, still compares favourably with anything anywhere else in the world, there are filmmaking oppor­ tunities out of (most) proportion to what the ‘market’ — not to mention the popula­ tion — could be expected to bear. Provided you make a certain kind of film. And provided you play the game.

In this respect — in others, too — Dennis O’Rourke is something of an anomaly.

Unlike most Australian directors, he is

better known abroad than he is in Aus­ tralia: his films have been seen and won prizes at a whole slew of European and American festivals, and they have been commissioned by and broadcast (albeit sometimes in adapted versions which O’Rourke loathes) on the BBC and other overseas television stations. What is more, O’Rourke has made a living out of directing documentaries, has not ‘played the game’, and has produced some of the most distinctive film work to come out of Australia in the past decade. Finally, in a genre dominated by an almost puritanical belief in theory, O’Rourke has made aggressively untheoretical Jfflms about the South Pacific and its inhabitants — films

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Guest worker: Dennis O ’Rourke in the Marshalls with Rongelap magistrate, John Anjain.

which show an overwhelming commitment to the lives and problems of the people they are about, yet bear the unmistakable stamp of their maker’s personality.

O’Rourke’s films, like O’Rourke him­ self, are not easy to categorize. But, while integrity is a dangerous word in the field of documentary — it has been used too often to justify distortions of reality which are true to the ‘spirit’ of a subject, or flights of self-serving fancy which are supposed to have therintegrity of art’—it applies well to O’Rourke’s work, which has integrity in the sense of wholeness as well as that of

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honesty. Indeed, his films are a rare mixture of the two things: they treat their subjects with affection and respect, but not reverence; and they do not shy away from the resources of cinema. Fellow documentarist and frequent colleague Gary Kildea has called O’Rourke’s films ‘essays’. The word is a little misleading, implying the free-flowing editorializing of, say, Chris Marker’s Sans soleil (Sunless). But ‘essays’ is, finally, a good word for what O’Rourke does: with a camera and a Nagra rather than a pen, he discourses on a subject, using the images and sounds of that subject to tell its story.

O’Rourke’s subjects have, to date, always been the natives of the Pacific basin

and their rearguard action against the colonizers — economic, religious, military — who have moved in on their homelands, ‘paradise’ with one or (in the case of it with the other. A LshMtv&fch appears in at least two of his films has a transistor radio in the fore­ ground^ broadcasting commercials for Imported delignW, with a circle of island huts oria Micrdnesian beach in the backT gmim cuTL e s h o t is almost a cipher to ’ ©LFrourke’s work: he certainly placed the transistor in the shot, but he didn’t put it on ^theJsIprd.in the first place; and his visual U<^nljj<^fiDn is designed to create a small irony which, however, testifies to a larger tragedy.

In Yumi Yet (1976) and Ileksen (1978), O’Rourke chronicled the process whereby Papua New Guinea got its independence. In Yap . . . How Did They Know We’d Like TV? (1980), he looked at a bizarre scheme, part comic-opera, part tragedy, which introduced television onto the tiny Micronesian island of Yap by means of tapes flown in once a month from Southern Cali­ fornia; they turned out to be simple, off-air recordings of a San Fernando valley TV station, still complete with the commercials for junk food and J.C. Penney. In The Sharkcallers of Kontu (1982), O’Rourke’s most ambitious film before Half Life, he examined the ancient ritual of sharkcalling — basically, going out in a boat and luring the sharks (thought to contain the spirits of dead ancestors) into a fishing noose with a combination of magic, cunning and coconut shells banged together — and looked at how white newcomers were grad­ ually destroying it.

In . . Couldn’t Be Fairer” — the title is a quote from Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen — O’Rourke moved ‘onshore’ to the northern part of his native Queensland, to look at Aboriginal land rights. The film (made in ► CINEMA PAPERS March — 31

( F B fflQ E M fS

d 1984) is his least successful, perhaps because it is dominated by a voice-over from Mick Miller, a land rights spokesman, who (inevitably) uses the kind of confronta­ tional rhetoric O’Rourke himself has managed to avoid. But . . Couldn’t Be Fairer” is a far better film than the version of it the BBC (who commissioned it) decided to transmit, arguing that such background scenes as the small-town ‘Brown Eye Contest’ — a beery com­ petition to establish the best anal sphincter in town— were‘‘not very nice” and didn’t really belong in the film. O’Rourke, who didn’t much like the BBC changing the title of the Yap film to South Seas and Soft Soap, is now having similar problems with Half Life. “ The issue,” he says, “ is rights of authorship, to which television tends to take a rather cavalier approach, especially if you’re a long way away.”

O’Rourke knows about television, since he started out at the ABC in 1970. After a couple of false starts in the sunny north (one of which was university), he arrived in Sydney looking for work, and ended up as an assistant gardener at the ABC’s Gore Hill studios. “ All those gum trees you see there in the front yard, I planted,” he says.

From the gum trees, he moved up — slightly — to the job of assistant camera­ man. “ I always knew I was going to make films,” he says, “ but not everyone else shared my certainty. The ABC was quite happy to let me stay there for ever in that so-called ‘technical’ role. It was almost like you were supposed to put on a grey dust jacket when you arrived for work.

According to the hierarchical system, if you came out of the camera department, you weren’t directorial material: for that, you were supposed to come out of management or from the journalistic side. That’s changing now. But,when I left the place in 1973, I thought: Well, maybe the most important thing I’ve done here is plant those gum trees.”

He had, however, learned about cameras, which is why he went there in the first place; and, after leaving, he went free­ lance as a cameraman. That is how he first got to Papua New Guinea, then still under the tutelage of Australia. It was to prove an ongoing love affair: O’Rourke spent most of the seventies there, learned to speak New Guinea pidgin, and married a New Guinea woman, Roseanne, who is now a regular collaborator on his films.

The love affair with New Guinea has had one problematic side-effect, however: in a genre more beset with pigeon-holing than any other, O’Rourke has come to be labelled an ethnographic documentarist.

Norman Douglas, for instance, in a percep­ tive and enthusiastic account of The Sharkcallers of Kontu for the Pacific History Association, had no doubt: “ The new concern with visual ethnography in the Pacific,” he wrote, “ has produced at least one outstanding talent. The Sharkcallers of Kontu is not only O’Rourke’s most compelling and mature work, but a film of considerable significance in the canon of Melanesian ethnography.”

O’Rourke, who has kept the PHA’s newsletter, “ presumably because I like it,” is not so sure about the categorization. “ Because I went to Papua New Guinea, liked the place, and my films were about brown people, I was supposedly in that school of filmmaking which some people call ethnographic. I don’t term myself an ethnographic filmmaker, but it took me a while to realise that that whole ethno­ 32 — March CINEMA PAPERS

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graphic/verite ethic was a forced one, and a blind alley: there is storytelling, and how you choose to do it should in no way be confined by somebody’s theoretical writings or interpretations. “ I think you’ve got to make the distinc­ tion, in a film, between the moments and the total statement — the construct of the film. You can have moments, and they are accidental. But they’re accidental like you don’t have a car accident unless you hop in a car and drive on the road. The film — the intention to make it — is not accidental.

Yumi Yet is a real ‘first film’ — a mixed bag of all sorts of cinematic tricks and ideas. But, from Ileksen onwards, all my films have basically been journeys of exper­ ience: that is, me seeking to find out some­ thing. You have two protagonists: all the people who represent the subject of the film; and me, the filmmaker. That energy is there in all the films, and the films work,not because they are about people who go out and catch sharks, but because, in the end, they’re cinema, and because of the way in which cinema can affect people.”

The notion of the two protagonists is clearly crucial to O’Rourke’s films (and it may well be why . . Couldn’t Be Fairer” , which has a third protagonist in the shape of Mick Miller, is the least successful). Their power comes, from the sense of a dynamic (as opposed to a one­ way) relationship between the maker and the made. As O’Rourke puts it, “ the nature of the film is: you go and stay in an isolated community. You are a guest.”

His films repeatedly testify to the advan­ tages of that method. In Yumi Yet, two groups of people — the men building the festive huts, and the women sarcastically watching them do it — interact through the camera, commenting on each other; in Sharkcallers, one of the fishermen berates the camera about not talking while the

Box o f tricks: a fam ily watches T V in a scene fro m Yap: How Did They Know We’d Like TV?.

magic is taking place (“ Like any other form of fishing,” remembers O’Rourke, “ you don’t always catch a fish, no matter how good the magic is. Mostly, it was my fault, I was told” ); in Yap, the US consular rep­ resentative talks through the rationale for his support of the television-implant scheme with extraordinary honesty: O’Rourke has clearly gained his confidence and, more importantly, does not betray it.

Before Half Life, though, which owes a good part of its power to the relationship between O’Rourke and the inhabitants of Rongelap Atoll, the clearest illustration of the dynamic at work comes near the end of The Sharkcallers of Kontu, where the fishermen have taken one (apparently knowing) step further towards the destruc­ tion of the custom. Bundling up the shark fins and taking them into the nearest small

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town, they sell them to Ah Chow, pro­ prietor of the local Chinese store, who pays them in cash but warns them they will not get the “ world market price” unless they can supply him with fins by the ton. The men accept the price, because they need

Villain o f the peace? A E C Chairman Lewis Strauss at a White House press conference in March 1954. The Rongelapese, said Strauss, had been “accidentally” exposed to the fall-out.

cash in the new, ‘mixed’ economy of New Ireland. And their first stop on the way home is a local bar. “ Drink takes away our inhibitions caused by traditional customs,” they tell O’Rourke/the camera. “ It’s the drink which gives us hope.” Without a real relationship between filmmaker and subject, such ‘confidences’ would be unlikely to occur. They are, in the strictest sense, ‘provoked’: the sharkcallers wouldn’t have explained all that if the camera hadn’t been there. But they are no more provoked than the statements people make to one another in conversation; and their positioning within the film makes them more than mere asides.

O’Rourke is proud of his role in bringing the information out. “ If I didn’t,” he says, “ I’d consider myself to have failed. And, with people who are more doctrinaire in documentary filmmaking, it’s almost as if the measure of their success is the degree to which they’ve failed. The more they fail in doing what cinema can do — synthesize this wonderful emotion, this indescribable, dream-like energy — the happier they are.

Some people object to it, but the best way I have to describe how I make films is this: I don’t make the films, the films make me. I put myself in a circumstance, in a situation; then, as each new thing unfolds, I pursue it.”

The pursuit of Half Life began some six years ago, when O’Rourke went to Micro­ nesia for TV station WGBH, Boston, to make the Yap film. On that visit, he met some of the people he would work with on Half Life. Then, in 1983, while working for Film Australia (an experience about which he has plenty to say, but prefers not to be quoted on), he was stranded on Rongelap Atoll for a couple of weeks when the only plane serving the island developed engine trouble. “ We were sitting around, talking to people,” he says, “ and the story, most of which I’d heard before, started to come out and coalesce. So, one day, I got up in the morning and thought: We’re here; we might as well make a film.” That was when the first interview with Midja Anjain (which appears late in the film and which, O’Rourke quietly points out, is at stylistic variance with the rest, in that it uses a zoom) was done. “ I filmed all week, until the plane came back. Then -Lprocessed the rushes on Bankcard, and set about raising the money. At that stage, it was still to be a

one-hour film, along the lines of the others.

But I ended up making a film about some­ thing much wider than the Marshall Islands: I worked out from there, into the heartland of America, into the Pentagon, the AEC and the wider issues the film encompasses.”

The wider issues encompassed by Half Life (as Mark Spratt points out in his review on page 74) are those of the deliber­ ate use of the Marshallese as guinea pigs for the effects of nuclear fall-out. By implica­ tion, the issues extend to include the whole of the ‘first’ and ‘second’ world’s policy towards the Pacific, a region made up of small pockets of people who are unlikely to put up much organized resistance to nuclear tests on or near their homes, and whose larger islands are now proving to be the ideal location for today’s fly-in-sunbathe-and-fly-out holidays (which will be the subject of O’Rourke’s next, as yet untitled, film).

The gradual realization of the degree of forethought that went into the supposedly accidental irradiation of Rongelap and Utirik is something that came as O’Rourke made Half Life. And, in an area where an understandable hysteria often prevails, his caution — almost his reluctance — about accepting the evidence is one of the things that gives the film its persuasive power. “ You have to go back to March 1954,” he says, “ when the Bravo bomb was deto­ nated on Bikini Atoll. These things were happening: the McCarthy hearings were in full swing; late in March, Oppenheimer lost his security clearance, mainly because he was opposed to developing thermonuclear weapons; the French were losing in IndoChina, and everybody still believed in the domino theory. Most crucially, the Russians had detonated their first thermo­ nuclear weapon; and, from sampling they had done, the Americans knew the Russians had made an enormous, quantum leap in their nuclear technology. Today, with the threat of nuclear war hanging over us, everyone works on the principle that we must avoid it. But, in 1954, the feeling was that it was inevitable. The bomb was new, and the fall-out it created a completely unknown element. Bravo was perfect for testing it. The elements they used, the size they made it, the height above the ground — it was designed to suck all that stuff up. “ They had this tiny outpost, Rongelap, which could only be reached by ship after a three-day voyage and was controlled by the military, and the Americans there thought it was likely to stay that way. What they didn’t reckon was that, 30 years on, the debate would be in the United Nations, that these people would be hiring their own hotshot lawyers, and that there’d be people like me out there making films about it!

They thought it was isolated and would stay isolated. It’s only in the last few years that the Marshallese have taken control of their own immigration. In the mid-seventies, for example, a group of Japanese radiation experts arrived in the Marshalls to carry out a study. The Americans wouldn’t let them in: they turned them back at the airport. “ The rumours have always been around.

There were people telling me, before I made the film, that it was all deliberate. I found that rather hard to accept: I was inclined to think, in the early stages, that it was the normal ‘conspiracy theory’ idea. But this is what I think happened. To start with, I can’t imagine that there is a document anywhere from President Eisenhower to Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic

Energy Commission, that says: ‘We need to irradiate these people’. But it’s like arguing a case before a court; and, in the film, I present the evidence. Questions have to be asked. For the previous Bikini tests, the people on this island were evacuated for their own safety. For this one, they were not. So, I don’t say the islanders were deliberately exposed, because that might suggest that I believe there is a document somewhere. What I say is: decisions were made, both before the test and during it, deliberately to allow them to be exposed. “ In the film, you see American service­ men coming ashore from a seaplane with geiger counters. Now, it’s OK for them to do that — to walk around in their protec­ tive gear — because they were only there for 20 minutes. It’s the cumulative dose — the dose per hour — that counts. It’s very much like turning on a microwave oven, putting in a chicken and dialling it up. You don’t want to burn it: you just want to give it the right amount, a semi-lethal dose. “ On the weight of the evidence now, the historical circumstances, the lies about the wind direction, the position of the ships — the ability they had to take the people off, the nature of the studies since, you can

Ellen Boos shows the scar fro m her thyroid tumour operation. A ll but one o f the children who were on Rongelap when Bravo was exploded have undergone the same operation.

come to only one conclusion: they knew what they were doing. That is what the American weatherman says at the end of the film. He’s a patriot, and he doesn’t want to believe it. I don’t want to believe it, either: it gives me no pleasure at all. But I now believe it to be the case.”

Reluctant or not, O’Rourke makes the case convincingly in Half Life. Indeed, it is his reluctance to rush to judgement that makes the finished film so effective. The other thing which makes it work so well is the meticulous attention that has been paid to the filmic means whereby the case has been put over. The information is not simply presented: it is crafted with all the care of a Clarence Darrow, summing up for the defence (or the prosecution), and paying as much attention to the style of his speech as to the content.

Three techniques stand out: O’Rourke’s reliance on static compositions; his sound­ track; and his use of written information.

The soundtrack makes brilliantly ironic use of Hawaiian steel guitar, played by Bob Brozman, a New Yorker living in the Cali­ fornian redwoods, who has the world’s largest collection of Hawaiian 78s. On Hawaii itself, O’Rourke could find no one willing or able to play the music the way he wanted it: slow, insistent, putting the words ‘South Sea paradise’ between inverted commas. Like the music, the sound of the waves lapping on the shore has again been

mixed in over the ‘direct’ sound of the interviews, testifying to O’Rourke’s interest in a precise control of the aural experience. “ You might liken it to the ticking of a clock in a quiet room,” he says. “ The sound of the sea was like the inevitability of a slow death by radiation poisoning, and the inevitability that the film is leading to a conclusion.”

O’Rourke makes similarly careful use of written information, specifically subtitles and roller titles. The subtitles distil the words of the Marshallese, turning them from comments into statements, and they are set slightly further up the screen than normal subtitles, so that they become a part of the image, rather than something scribbled across the bottom. And the roller titles, which contain crucial information about the UN trusteeship agreement and the facts of the Bravo test, are similarly a part of the film, not a way to get in a lot of dense and awkward information. “ They are, in fact, scenes in the film,” says O’Rourke, “just like any other scene. All the connections between a particular choice of word, the timing, the amount of space between when they exit and when the next scene comes on — the juxtaposition of all those elements that you’re always dealing with when you’re making a film, apply equally to the roller titles as they do to any other scene in the film.”

It is the confidently emphatic framing, though, which is the most distinctive thing about Half Life as a film. “ With the filming,” says O’Rourke, “ the technique was to spend quite a bit of time getting the framing right, and then basically put the camera on autopilot. I think it’s only a cameraman who might take those liberties: you spend so much time moving cameras round that you get a very healthy respect for the integrity of the locked-off frame.

Also, I wanted to emphasize the gravity of this simple story. “ Once I had the frame and was satisfied it would give me all the dynamic elements and composition I needed, I would close down the viewfinder, so that light wouldn’t come in at the bottom of the film, and probably not look through it again for the ten and a half minutes the magazine would run. I’d turn on the cameras and we’d talk — we’d have a conversation. Even though the film running through there is expensive — you’ve got to process it, work through it, sync it up — I would never turn the camera off, even when something was translated to me. You need only so many wonderful moments to make the whole thing, and if you get one wonderful moment lasting no more than a minute in a roll of ten, who cares?”

It is this concern with ‘the whole thing’ — with the story to be told, and the way of telling it — that characterizes all of Dennis O’Rourke’s work, though Half Life demonstrates it most impressively. It is, of course, not a style of filmmaking entirely free of compromise: there is more evidence that might have been gathered for the film, if time and budget had allowed. Nor, for all its commitment, is O’Rourke’s filmmaking a transparent, selfless image of the issue at hand. O’Rourke is not obtrusively and physically present, like Martin Scorsese was in The Last Waltz. But the films are certainly his: there is an ego at work.

Without it, the films would be passionless and powerless. But one thing they definitely do not do is ‘play the game’ — the game, or any game. * CINEMA PAPERS March — 33

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The More Things Change is trying to lure back to the cinema a forgotten slice of the audience: adults. Debi Enker spoke to the three people most involved: Jill Robb, Robyn Nevin and Judy Morris.

Although many of those involved would justifiably shudder at the suggestion, The More Things Change . . . is a prime target for the label ‘women’s picture’. Written, produced, directed, designed, costumed and edited by women, its narrative and its concerns — marriage; the growth and deterioration of relationships; parenting; career versus homemaking — are those popularly (and often patronizingly) associ­ ated with ‘women’s interests’.

With its predominance of women in key creative and administrative positions, how­ ever, The More Things Change . . . fires two well-aimed broadsides at some vener­ able targets of mainstream cinema. It show­ cases a healthy crop of female talent in the production area; and it offers a sensitive, incisive and unusually subtle drama in which the male characters take on the supporting roles.

However, the real sign of its significance as a groundbreaker is that none of this seems to matter. While the women involved in the project are clearly proud of the story’s female protagonists, they seem to regard questions about the preponderance of women involved in the film as a little odd. Actress Judy Morris, who plays the film’s central character, Connie, asserts that she didn’t notice anything unusual during the film’s production. “ It didn’t occur to me when we were making it,” she says. “ It was absolutely no different from working on a movie where there have been males in those positions. I certainly didn’t feel ‘We’re striking a blow for women here’.”

Producer Jill Robb, who initiated the project late in 1984, affirms Morris’s view, and is keen to dispel any allegations of posi­ tive discrimination. “ I just pick people because they’re good at what they do or right for the job,” she says. “ It just happened that the people who turned out to be interested and available were women.”

A crucial component of Robb’s blue­ print, however, was director of photo­ graphy Dan Burstall, whose expertise as a cameraman and TV director enabled actress Robyn Nevin to make her debut as a screen director. Though Nevin had directed theatre and had recently signed as an associate director for the Sydney Theatre Company, her reaction to Robb’s request that she direct the film was disbelief. Main­ taining that she had never wanted to direct films and that the technical operations of the process were a somewhat daunting mystery, Nevin found that it was primarily the incredulity of her peers at the STC — “ they just looked at me aghast and said

‘You can’t turn that down!’ ” — that made her reconsider the offer.

Convinced that the film was “ a perform­ ance film and not an action film” , Robb brought together the Nevin-Burstall team with the idea that Nevin would concentrate on the actors and Burstall would take care of the visuals. “ I offered her a cameraman who understood direction,” Robb recalls, “ so that he could help her by saying ‘It’s not going to cut: we need another shot here’.” Burstall became largely responsible for the framing and lighting of shots and Nevin concentrated on performance and pace, gradually gaining confidence and eventually designing some shots, including the film’s final scene.

“ It’s just an illusion of hers that she can handle everything. The women’s movement has fallen pretty poorly on its face in many ways; it hasn’t turned out to be the dream that we all wanted.

Women have ended up doing twice as much work, now they are running the home and the office” Robb’s acumen as a producer is evident in two formative functions: it convinced Nevin to accept, and it financed the project promptly. “ She came up to Sydney and talked at me at length about the necessity of dropping my fears of the technical area,” Nevin recalls with a grin, “ and I had con­ fidence in the project because it was a Jill Robb production. I had been an actor in Careful, He Might Hear You, and 1 knew that I could rely on her honesty and dependability. If she commits herself to something, she’ll see it through. There’s nothing shonky about Jill or anything that she is associated with.”

Built largely on the success of Careful, Robb’s reputation seems to be the product of several assets: a canny business sense, a high level of commitment and involvement in the creative aspect of a film, and an instinct for the right time to take a risk. The history of The More Things Change . . . is an ideal illustration of the producer as the architect of a film, participating from its inception at all levels: cast, crew, cutting, cash and creative input. From the outset, her priorities dictated the size and shape of

the project. Deciding that she wanted a contemporary film with “ a universal theme” , she approached Moya Wood, an old acquaintance whose introduction to the film industry had coincided with her own, both holding down secretarial positions for Chips Rafferty and Lee Robinson more than 20 years ago. “ I was very interested in getting her to write for me,” Robb explains, “ because I’d admired her understanding of character and particularly her method of dialogue writing. I also believed that, through her work as a script editor — she’s one of Aus­ tralia’s best (Love Letters from Teralba Road, Newsfront, Monkey Grip) — she has a very strong sense of structure. One of the greatest complaints about our movies over­ seas is that they are too slow. I knew that Moya’s skills would enable her to move the story along pretty quickly.”

While Wood worked on moving the story along, Robb raised the finance with a prag­ matic eye to the needs of the investment market. “ I’m afraid that we’re in a market­ place where the deal and the way that the finance is structured are more important than the calibre of the script. I was deter­ mined to make a film for around $2 million, and I had a clear understanding of how I could put the finance together before we started drafting the script. As we plotted the story, I considered each aspect in terms of what it would do to my budget.”

The money was raised from around 70 investors, many of whom were satisfied customers from Careful, including the New South Wales Film Corporation, which in­ vested and guaranteed the presale. “ I’m afraid that investors are not angels or patrons of the film business,” remarks Robb. “ They’re people who are interested in hedging tax and getting a return on their hard-earned money.” Robb asserts that waving a wonderful script, a constellation of stars and a hot-shot director at the money market will have minimal effect if pecuniary rewards do not look safe and sound. “ I raised the money without nominating my stars or signing a director,” she says. “ I had an underwriting agreement in place very quickly, then I got the 40% presale quickly because I kept the budget down — 40% of $2 million was not an un­ believable amount and, once it’s under­ written, you’re off.”

With the finance organized, the script written and the key crew members signed, casting assumed prominence. Robb and Nevin agreed on the short list of actors for the three main roles, an accord which indi­ cated to both women that they shared the ► CINEMA PAPERS March —

35

Above, Robyn Nevin and Jill Robb on set.

Below, Longley, Morris and Lewis Fitz-Gerald.

Nevin on set with DOP Dan Burstall (Alex Menglet in the background).

Below, Nevin with Longley and Owen Johnson, who plays Connie and Lexâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son, Nicholas.

same vision for the film. For Robb, it also suggested that possible problems in the future could be minimized: “ I think that if the director and the producer are not making the same film by the time the cameras start to roll,” she says, “ you’re in trouble.” ‘Making the same film’ meant casting Judy Morris as Connie, Barry Otto as her husband,Lex,and newcomer Victoria Longley to complete the triangle as Geraldine. Nevin suggested Longley on the basis of theatre work that they had done together; and Robb agreed because she wanted a fresh face and a happy director.

No other actresses were auditioned.

Judy Morris embraced the central role with enthusiasm. Describing her character as “ independent, strong, but not as inde­ pendent as she would like to be” , she claims that “ any actress would want that part” — an opinion shared by Nevin, who, at one early stage, gave way to her impulses as an actress and considered playing it her­ self. Robb’s response to this suggestion from her rookie director was laughingly described by Nevin as “ No, no, no, no” .

All three women see the film’s aims in essentially the same way: to be a sensitive and realistic account of the gradual deterioration of a relationship that dismays both partners. “ We set out to make a film about contemporary relationships from a woman’s point of view,” Robb explains: “ not a feminist film or a message film, but a film about people and about role reversals, and we set out to do it with a bit of humour and a bit of irony.”

In discussing the examination of Connie and Lex’s failing marriage and the simul­ taneous metamorphosis of Geraldine, all three agree that the script supplied a crucial balance: one that explored the complexity and ambivalence of the characters’ emotions. For Morris, it works because “ it presents everybody’s viewpoints. You see the good and bad sides of all the characters, and it’s a very honest presentation of the way relationships work and break down.”

Like Robb, Morris believes part of the suc­ cess of The More Things Change . . ., and the power behind its considerable emotional clout, is the product of confid­ ence in the truth of the emotions — a confid­ ence that relies on images, nuances, fleeting moments and spatial composition rather than exposition through dialogue. “ It’s lovely to have the chance to trust what’s happening emotionally without always having to enunciate it,” she main­ tains. “ A lot of Australian films tend to be scared of emotional commitment. So often, you see a film that’s beautifully done and everybody has done their jobs well; but it fails to move people.” Interestingly, given the consensus of opinion on the film’s goals and strengths, the actress and the director have different interpretations of the rela­ tionship’s resolution. While Nevin sees the film’s ending as ambiguous, Morris feels sure that it signals the final straw for the couple. The absence of dialogue allows both readings.

Moving the emphasis away from the dialogue and often relying on close-ups — which Nevin jokes is her only claim to a directorial style — prompted Morris to observe that The More Things Change . . . was very much an actor’s piece, and very subtle. “ There was a tremendous challenge in making Connie seem warm and open, not giving her too hard an edge,” she recalls. “ Connie has very high expectations of herself. She tries to be super-efficient, but she disappoints herself and is really

very vulnerable.” Morris believes that, to some extent, all female careerists encounter the dilemmas and frustrations faced by Connie. “ It’s just an illusion of hers that she can handle everything. The women’s movement has fallen pretty poorly on its face in a lot of ways; it hasn’t turned out to be the dream we all wanted. Women have ended up doing twice as much work, now they are running the home and the office.”

The subject of dreams — and particu­ larly failed dreams — is one that introduces the question of Lex, the perpetual dreamer and self-confessed ratbag. According to Nevin, the development and definition of his character provided some headaches. “ Because Connie has given him ten years of her life, he has got to have something going for him. The audience have to understand why she has been with him.” Robb affirms the concern with his character — the need to balance him on the fine line between ratbag, wimp, and endearing lover and hus­ band — and asserts that “ he works well because we worked hard on him. Quite late in the script development, we added the chocolate-eating scene, to give Lex a chance to explain himself. Moya resisted having him express himself in words, because men don’t do that. And she’s right: many of them don’t. But we felt that, although men are much less open about their emotions than women, we needed him to virtually explain himself to Geraldine. The only other way to do it was to have the men chat­ ting in the pub.”

“ The three central parts are all difficult lines to walk. All of them have parts in which they might become unsympathetic.

Robyn worked very hard on keeping the balance of the characters correct” Barry Otto’s performance — part exasperating child, part endearing dreamer and part devoted, if occasionally reckless family man — does credit to the effort that went into fleshing out his role. But, as Judy Morris observes, the three central parts “ are all difficult lines to walk. All of them have parts in which they might become un­ sympathetic. Robyn worked very hard on keeping the balance correct.”

Though ‘actors’ director’ is regarded by Nevin as a somewhat nebulous cliche, she says: “ I do understand actors’ problems, because I’m an actor too. So I know, when I’m asking them to do something, what the problems inherent in that process will be.

When I’m directing actors, I’m likely to ask them to do something that I would do, because I can translate it in my mind. ” For an actor, the relationship with an actor-cum-director has advantages. “ Robyn concentrated basically on per­ formance. That is her forte,” Morris says. “ She brings things to it that are incredibly valuable from an actor’s point of view: a sensitivity to what actors require, thoughts on emotional responses.”

Nevin does, however, find considerable differences between directing film and theatre, even with the advantage of an un­ usually long three-week rehearsal period with the three leads. “ Three weeks is con­ sidered a fair whack of time out of a budget,” she maintains, “ but it’s a good

investment because, finally, you’re going to do less takes. When you are rehearsing a play, you run the whole thing from begin­ ning to end. Everybody involved has the opportunity to see the shape of it in their heads. But, when you’re doing a film, in tiny bits and often out of sequence, the actor has to have a graph of the emotional journey that the character makes and the director has to have a graph of the whole pace. Pace is so important.”

It is with obvious pride that Nevin notes that some of the scenes in the film were the master takes — an indication that the pace worked. Morris attributes much of this pre­ cision to the rehearsal period. “ The nuances were all there in the script. But, to take those moments and make them come alive was quite a long process. For instance, the scene where we have the argument in the kitchen and I blow out the rubber gloves . . . that took a long time to work out. We had to work out exactly where the plate would fall, where the knife would fall, where the gloves would come in. It takes time and effort. This sort of script requires extraordinary sensitivity to the nuances and required rehearsal to work out timing for many scenes, long before we got onto the set.”

The benefit of the rehearsal period was further enhanced by a trouble-free shoot (with the notable exception of Barry Otto breaking a bone in his foot on day two). “ The weather was sublime,” Nevin recalls, “ the location was beautiful and very quiet; we had terrific food and accommodation.

Jill is very good at looking after her people.

She makes sure that they have everything they need, because she knows that, if she’s got a happy crew, there’s a better chance of the film getting shot on time and being a smooth experience.”

Clearly, many of the problems that plague filmmaking — unsuitable casting, last minute rewriting, financial gambits — were ironed out as a result of Robb’s deter­ mination and firm hold on the project from the outset. Flowever, in spite of the justifi­ able pride that the women feel about The | More Things Change . . ., there is one risk that has yet to prove its benefits. The test of the box office is still to come, and The More Things Change . . . is not a film that immediately lays claim to the attention of the hordes currently enjoying the exploits of Rambo and Rocky. And one perhaps surprising decision, given the undoubtedly lucrative nature of this adolescent market, was to angle an early draft of the script away from Geraldine as the central charac­ ter, with Connie and Lex as supporting roles. Instead, Geraldine was developed primarily, according to Nevin, to function as a catalyst for Connie and Lex’s marriage.

Robb regards the slant as a calculated risk. “ I didn’t believe that doing the story entirely from Geraldine’s point of view would guarantee bringing the young audi­ ence in,” she says. “ I also believe th a t, if it was substantially Geraldine’s story, it could have diminished appeal for what I like to call the forgotten slice of the market — the people who are not film buffs, but who are satisfied by Terms of Endearment, Ordinary People or Kramer vs. Kramer.

There is a market out there made up of people who want to go to the movies to be entertained, but also see something that is relevant to their lives.” Almost as a wistful afterthought, and one that betrays the final variable to be tested, she adds: “ We shall see if the market is big enough.” ★ S

With his starring role in the new Australian film, Sky Pirates, John Hargreaves is the latest local actor to take the plunge into actionadventure roles. But how does he feel about acting, movies and the prospect of stardom? Gail McCrea found out.

Early days My first theatre performance was in a play called Motel, which dealt with the dehumanization of the human soul. It was with an extraordinary group called New Theatre, which had directors like George Ogilvie and Jim Sharman. The author chose the motel unit as the most sordid 38 — March CINEMA PAPERS

Hargreaves, Meredith Phillips and (foreground) Bill Hunter in Sky Pirates.

symbol of life, and the third segment of the play was done with eight-foot dolls. There was an actor inside each doll. They were supposed to be a man and a woman, and they arrived at the motel unit — huge, papier-mache things.

There was another doll, the motel keeper, extolling beauty and the function of his motel, which was obviously meant for illicit procreation and nothing else. The man and woman dolls arrive and copulate.

She writes graffiti, then they tear the place and the motel keeper apart; at the end, they lumber out through the audience. The soundtrack increases in volume until it is painful — real shock tactics that were current in the sixties. But it had its effect: people were stunned and shocked by it.

After about six weeks of playing, we were visited one night by detectives. They banned the play in every state except Tas­ mania. So we threw together a satirical send-up of Eric Willis and the NSW government, called Hotel instead of Motel, and without the obscenity. There was this sort of extraordinary groundswell of support for the New Theatre, because it was the only theatre in Sydney that dealt with social problems and so on.

I was tailed by detectives — I was teaching at this stage — and they used to follow me home. Eventually, they were going to prosecute me, because I was the one in the female doll, and I wrote the graffiti. I was having an interview with the New Theatre’s director, and a buzzer sounded on his desk. He said I’d have to go, because the police were on their way up to arrest me. He said: “ If you open that door which looks like a cupboard, you’ll find a false door at the back and a little flight of stairs which leads down to the second-floor fire escape . . .!” I think: This is not happening! This only happens in movies and things!

That night, there was a free performance staged by this society called ‘Friends of America Hurrah’ — people like Drysdale,

., Alan Marshall: all the leading figures in the Australian cultural scene, with the knights and dames first. They were saying, “ We’re putting it on, we know it’s banned, and we’re the ones who want to be arrested!” So we went back for this free performance in the Teachers’ Federation Auditorium in Sussex Street, which holds about 600 people. Something like four or five thousand tried to get in, and the whole

Hoodwink, in which Rex Reed dubbed Har­ greaves “a new Steve M cQ ueen”.

place was riddled with plain clothes detec­ tives. At the end, when we did Motel, they got up out of the audience to arrest us.

But we had the support of the wharfies, and they just shouldered the police into the wall. We dived into a room and ripped our

Zoe Caldwell said: “ Once an actor loses his own method of speech and adopts another language, he loses half his power” costumes off; when the police kicked down the door, they found twelve men standing in their underpants. They didn’t know who’d been in the doll’s costume! Mean­ while, the audience was going berserk.

They streamed onto the stage and tore the set with the graffiti on it, so there would be no evidence. The police became frightened, took refuge in the stage manager’s box and wouldn’t leave. It became a big issue and, from that point on, censorship was relaxed.

Then came Hair, Oh, Calcutta!, The Boys in the Band and things like that. It was like a test case for censorship.

On NIDA I went to NIDA in 1969. It was pre-tele­ vision: Crawfords were doing Homicide, but it was really difficult to get into the profession. Your career as an actor was going to be on stage and, to get into

theatre companies like the MTC or the Old Tote, which were the two main ones, you really had to have gone through NIDA. The late sixties and early seventies saw a great renaissance in the Australian theatre — the birth of it, really. Before that, we did American plays and English plays, and if you were an actor you had to have an English accent. I didn’t want to become English, basically: I didn’t want to lose the Australian accent or the Australian rhythm. Zoe Caldwell said this extra­ ordinary thing. She said: “ Once an actor loses his own method of speech, his own rhythm, and adopts another language” — or I call it another language — “ he loses half his power.” People like Wendy Hughes and I didn’t go to the voice classes at NIDA, which were designed to change our voices into English-speaking people.

I don’t think you can teach acting — it’s something you pick up: you have some sort of natural instinct for it — in much the same way as you can’t teach people to paint. You know: you can sort of teach them the basic skills, but then it’s up to them to develop those skills. I didn’t agree with quite a lot of the philosophy at NIDA, but I found the classes in the body very useful, because I had never trained my body. And what was really good was the fact that you were always doing a production. Every afternoon was devoted to rehearsal and productions, and we did about one a month. It meant that, for two years, you were in a sort of rep system, where you could experiment without having to fall flat on your face in public.

John Meillon In Over There, I had the great good luck to be working with John Meillon, who was Australia’s only experienced film actor, and the only one of his generation who kept his Australianism. I became like a junior version of John Meillon! I mean, for years I spoke like him and everything: I used the same technique of breaking up a sentence to make it seem more like real speech. His phrasing and timing made it sound natural.

You’d think it was a great piece of writing, when it fact it was shit made to look brilliant by an incredibly gifted actor. But it did take me a couple of years to refind my own self, rather than playing an imitation of John Meillon.

Directors When I started in film, I assumed that directors would tell me what to do. But most directors don’t, certainly most Aus­ tralian directors, who have come up from the technical side of things. Their rapport with actors is not good: they don’t know how to get a performance. Some recognize that, like George Miller, when he did The Dismissal. He was used to special effects, and he was very good with visuals, but not with performers. So, he engaged George

Ogilvie, who was Australia’s leading theatre director, to work alongside him.

While Miller did the visuals and the camerawork, Ogilvie did the drama, directed the actors. He eventually did one of the episodes of The Dismissal, and he became fascinated with the technical side of things. Now, he’s a film director: he directed Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

It’s a very rare thing, to have two directors working together, because their egos are usually much larger even than actors’!

Robert Altman once said that 90% of a director’s job is done when he has cast properly. I would love to work with Altman, because he is able to get such great performances. But, in most things you do in Australian film and television, you sort of have to direct yourself. On Double Sculls, Angela Punch McGregor and I did a lot of rewriting. We had a rehearsal every day for a week, where we sat down and said, “ How do we make sense of this scene?” We talked and worked it through, and eventually came up with a version which had the same information that the writer wanted to put across, but in a way that we could play much more easily.

Australians a re passionate, but we don’t know how to talk about it, so we pretend we’re not On Hoodwink, there was an English director called Claude Whatham. The crew hated him, but he was good at directing actors, and the actors liked working with him. Judy Davis and I got on terribly well with him. He loved to discuss what we were going to do. He would send the crew away — tell them to go and have a cup of tea for an hour! — while we worked through the scene and discussed it and worked out exactly what we wanted.

Normally, that doesn’t happen: it’s very much hit and miss, and you tend to direct yourself, which is not really good. I would much prefer to have the security of feeling confident in a director who was also feeling confident — who knew what he wanted, could explain it, and also knew how to talk to actors in order to elicit a performance.

Scripts One of my beefs about Australian scripts is that I don’t think we have many writers who have come to grips with who we really are — who can look at what we are and put it down on paper accurately and honestly.

Patrick White does that: you always get an uncomfortable feeling, reading Patrick White, because he’s so close to the bone.

And David Williamson became a huge suc­ cess, because he could see and record the way we behave.

I was having a chat with Bob Weis the other night, and we were both saying that we have a huge stack of scripts, none of which we want to do, most of which will be made into films or television series or what­ ever, and all of which are awful. There’s such a lack of passion in Australian writing. Australians are passionate, but we don’t know how to talk about it, so we pretend we’re not. We sort of lock it in, and you read and see this in the scripts so often. ► CINEMA PAPERS March — 39

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You can see the thought patterns of the writer, and you think: “ You’re not coming to grips with the central problem. You’re writing around it, and it’s all bullshit!”

A lot of scriptwriters artificially create what they think is drama. You must always go to the reality of the situation. In Truffaut and Godard — all those New Wave films — what was so extraordinary was the detail, the tiny little things. You had directors and writers looking at and observing the way people behaved, and they could reproduce that pattern in all its details.

Scales of Justice, for instance, was a terrific script. That’s why there was such a dreadful uproar over it. The police depart­ ment went berserk, which gave it a lot of publicity and ensured that everybody watched it. They should have just shut up, and the three old ladies from North Balwyn who watch the ABC would have been the only ones to have seen it. The writer had spent a couple of years doing his home­ work. It is very easy to do that sort of part, because most of the work is done for you by the excellent writing. On the other hand, you get the Crawfords school of police acting — or police writing: everybody knows that these knights in shining armour bear no relationship to human beings at all.

I used to really enjoy doing the early Homicides and Matlocks, though: the guest baddie was often a terrific role. I used to feel sorry for the police: they used to have the same lines every week. But the guest baddies were often scintillating roles to play: you could really let your hair down!

You don’t get many good scripts, so you hold out for as long as you can, hoping a good one will come along. But eventually you run out of money and you have to do something. The Dismissal, Careful, He Might Hear You, Scales of Justice and Present Laughter on the stage, all in a period of about two years, was fantastic, though. Normally, it doesn’t happen that way, especially if you want to concentrate on film.

Stardom I don’t have a very strong screen persona, like Bryan Brown or Graeme Blundell or Jack Thompson. They project a very strong image which is always there, underneath the character they play. I tend not to do that: I don’t have a sort of personal style. I prefer to forget about myself and present the character, not use myself. I think it gets in the way.

But a sort of ‘star system’ is emerging here, with people like Judy Davis and Wendy Hughes, Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown. It’s because films made here have been successful overseas. They got a lot of attention from the Village Voice and the New York Times, which impressed the locals!

Rex Reed, who’d seen me at Cannes, dubbed me ‘the new Steve McQueen’.

McQueen had just died, so it was really fairly macabre. Reed wouldn’t have said that if he’d seen some of my other work, which didn’t look anything like that character in Hoodwink.

I’ve never enjoyed the sort of publicity that makes you a household name — you know, the T V Week sort of thing. I’m absolutely bored by reading about actors’ private lives and their opinion on politics and baby seals! I don’t see why actors should have any more authority to speak about social issues than plumbers. I mean, you don’t get a good plumber being asked his opinions on nuclear disarmament.

Anyway, I ’ve never really enjoyed publicity. I ’m a publicist’s nightmare: I run a mile if you want me to open fetes!

Australia on film I’m waiting for Australia to throw up a Fellini — its own Fellini. I think the most honestly accurate and bizarre film about Australia is Wake in Fright, directed by a Canadian who had spent two weeks in the country before he did it. He was able to see, in two weeks in Broken Hill, the whole incredible, bizarre culture. And he recorded it.

Also, my theory is, we don’t have a cameraman who adores women. I mean, Australians are reserved and Anglo-Saxon generally, and the way we treat women in our society is also reflected in our films.

I’ve often seen films with people like Judy Davis and Wendy Hughes, and the camera­ man hasn’t really looked at them. Wendy’s got the most extraordinarily photogenic face. But what the cameraman generally sees is a frame with a composition, not the detail in the composition. Not all are like that. Dean Semler is arguably Australia’s best cinematographer. He’s terrific like that. Don McAlpine, too.

Two film s Beyond Reasonable Doubt, which I did in New Zealand, was about this guy who’d spent nine years in jail for a double murder he didn’t do. Enough people were con­ vinced he was innocent to keep hammering away at it. Then David Yallop stumbled on the story, and he wrote this book exposing the frame-up.

I spent a couple of weeks living with the guy and his family — a very large country family, with brothers and sisters and cousins. So I was able to look like him — walk like him and talk like him. He was very helpful. They all wanted the movie to be made so his name would be cleared, instead of him just being given a pardon.

The authorities tried to circumvent the movie, by releasing him with a pardon but not an acquittal. But the movie was finally made, and the enquiry cleared his name.

They gave him a million dollars, or about that: one hundred thousand for every year he had been in jail.

It’s very hard, talking about reality. But, unless you convince the audience that what is happening is real, then you’ve lost. On Careful, He Might Hear You, I had this suit made for me. When I put it on, it was wrong for the character I was playing. It was the right style, the right cloth, every­ thing, and the guy who had done the ward­ robe won an AFI award, which he really deserved. I felt terrible, because I was intimating he hadn’t done his job properly.

There was nothing he’d done which was wrong: the suit should have been perfect, and I just had to say, “ It’s not, it’s not!” A slight furore erupted, because it had cost them a fortune to make it. I called Jill

Robb, the producer, over, and she said, “ Yeah, it’s wrong. I can’t tell why, but it is”. So, we went round the second-hand shops and got together a collection of clothes that I felt right in. When I finally presented them to Jill, she sail, “ That’s it!” .

Being an actor One of the things I hate about being an actor is that you’re at the mercy of so many variables. It’s impossible to plan your life six months ahead, because of the state of the industry. You hold out and hold out for a script you really like, then it doesn’t happen. Just sometimes, you sign a con­ tract and get paid: I got paid for Breaker Morant, although I wasn’t in it.

You become a bit of an emotional parasite: you tend to u se everything. You look at people and say, “ I must use that somewhere, that’s a fantastic walk!”

After Sky Pirates, I had a terrific project, which fell through. Then there was a film in the Philippines for a London producer, which was supposed to be my first inter­ national film, with Michael York and Toshiro Mifune, and that sort of started to : be postponed. Then, when I was in France, I got a,call from the National Theatre in London. David Hare had written a new play. He was directing it, there was an Aus­ tralian in it and he wanted me to play him.

A couple of weeks before rehearsals were to begin, they rang me and said they were having problems with the Home Office, getting a work permit for me. They couldn’t take the risk of finding out after rehearsals had begun that I wasn’t allowed to be in it. If it had been a film, apparently there wouldn’t have been any problem.

But, because it was the National Theatre, which is the flagship of The Arts in England, everything had to be done by the letter of the law. That’s quite typical in the life of an actor: you have three projects which you think you’re going to do, and they fold, one after the other. Eventually, you have to do the first thing that comes along.

In a sense, you never stop being an actor.

You go berserk in a violent fight with your lover or something, and you’re accused of acting! Also, you become a bit of an emotional parasite: you tend to use every­ thing. You become observant, you tend to look more at people and say, “ I must use that somewhere, that’s a fantastic walk!”

Or somebody says something in a certain way and you think: That’s how I should have played that scene in that movie!

The awful thing is, you tend to become a little too much of an absorber. I find myself in a highly emotional situation, where something terrible has happened to me.

And a part of my brain says, “ Remember that! That’s very good: you could use that!” It’s really chilling. You’re always examining your own emotions and watch­ ing yourself going through something.

That’s one of the traps of the business you’re in: it’s all “ I” , “ I” , “ I” . * CINEMA PAPERS March — 41

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Love, marriage, life and the whole damn thing Kangaroo; a new perspective on Australia

Dismissed by most contemporary critics as one of D.H. Lawrence’s lesser works (though paradoxically hailed recently by Anthony Burgess as one of the greatest), Kangaroo was written in six weeks during the novelist’s visit to Australia in 1922. It is a heady mixture of travel writing (including Lawrence’s observations on Australia and Australiana), philo­ sophy and a story about a native fascist organization run by the sinister figure of ‘Kangaroo’. “ The novel’s a real curiosity,’’ says Ross Dimsey, producer of the $3.3-million feature version, which completed its shoot in Melbourne just before Christmas. “ It’s really two novels, almost in alternation. And it’s the only novel Lawrence never revised. It was sent to his publisher basically straight off the page, and published with spelling and factual errors intact. The first thing we had to do was' separate the alternating chapters, which are the chain of events, from the philosophy — Law­ rence’s thoughts about love, marriage, life and the whole damn thing. That content is mostly carried

by Somers and Harriet — who are effectively Lawrence and his wife, Frieda — and it is the major plot of the film. The political events are seen as an incident.”

They are, though, ‘an incident’ of considerable interest, focused on

42 — March CINEMA PAPERS

the imposing figure of Hugh KeaysByrne, resplendent in digger hat and plume, seated bolt upright in the back of a vintage Arrol-Johnston, as he draws up to review his private army.

Kangaroo’s army is assembling for a swearing-in ceremony prior to a bit of union-bashing at the Sydney Police HQ — in reality, the old Board of Works sewage pumping station on the Geelong side of Melbourne’s Westgate Bridge. The pumping station’s imposing courtyard has featured in a good many movies, in­ cluding Mad Max, where it was the Halls of Justice.

The secret army, with ‘Kangaroo’ badges on its hats, is a far from fanciful creation. “ All the literary critics,” says Kangaroo’s director, Tim Burstall, “ rubbished Lawrence for having invented this whole secret army bullshit because of his Italian experiences with Mussolini. But Kangaroo is based on a man called General Rosenthal, who was a Jewish architect, and a man inter­ ested in bringing Draconian legis­ lation into the New South Wales parliament in order to break the unions and so on. The Secret Army did exist. It was called, of all things, the King and Empire Alliance, and its front was a patriotic organization made up of disaffected diggers.”

The Lawrence and Frieda charac­

ters — Somers and Harriet in the novel and the film — are being played by Colin Friels and Judy Davis (her first Australian film since Heatwave), with John Walton and Julie Nihill as the neighbours who bring them into contact with Kanga­ roo. Yet, for all its star cast and period setting, Kangaroo has been made for a modest budget and with an eight-week shoot. “ I wouldn’t want to spend any more on a picture like this,” says Dimsey. “ At that budget, I think there’s a very real chance we can recoup. But the key is preparation. I traded off a very long preparation time against that relatively short shoot. In a way, we were alm ost o v e r-p re p a re d , because we’d been in pre-produc­ tion for almost three months.”

Tim Burstall has been involved with plans for a film version of the novel since the early seventies, when he began trying to set it up, initially with Gunnar Ruggheimer of the BBC, then with the New South Wales Film Corporation. The real key, says Burstall, is Lawrence’s perspective on this strange land in which he found himself. “ He’s about the only great modern writer who’s bothered to come here and take an interest in the place.”

Part of this perspective has been maintained by the use of an English scriptwriter — who is, Burstall is

Demonic digger: Hugh Keays-Byrne as the sinister Kangaroo. Inset, the Burstalls — director Tim (left) and DOP Dan (looking through eye­ piece) shooting Kangaroo, the movie. quick to point out, a member of the AWG: Evan Jones, who wrote some of Losey’s finest films (including The Damned and King and Country), and also scripted Wake in Fright.

Jones was on hand throughout the rehearsal period. “ Not only could he absorb the work of the rehearsals,” says Dimsey, "b u t also the scheduling input. Because, very often, a screenplay tends to get written in concrete: you know, ‘They meet the train’, or something, whereas in fact the scene is simply there to bridge a day scene and a night scene.”

But the perspective remains. And that, feels Burstall, is what counts. “ A lot of the things Lawrence was on about — mateship and that funny streak of violence underneath it; the amiability, plus that stuff about the ‘withheld self’ — were spot on. I’m damn sure it’s more accurate than anything Australian literature was turning out at the same time. In some ways it’s even anti-Australian, but I think we’ve passed the nationalist phase_Where we couldn’t take that. " *

Vladimir Osherov David Parker

■ r

“ The bathroom is the strongest part,” says Donald Crombie, looking at a quarter-scale model of a Darwin house at Sydney’s Mort Bay studios. “ It’s all that plumbing. You look at the photographs of Darwin after Tracy, and sometimes all that was left was the bathroom.”

Tracy, of course, was the cyclone that levelled huge areas of the North­ ern Territory capital in the small hours of Christmas Day, 1974, killing 64 people, injuring hundreds and leaving thousands homeless. In its aftermath, all but 10,000 of Darwin’s population was temporarily evacu­ ated. Eleven years on (and with some trepidation), two directors, two producers, up to four camera crews .and a cast of over 40 name parts .(headed by Chris Haywood, Tracy Mann, Nicholas Hammond, Linda Cropper, Tony Barry and thirties star Aileen Britton) are recreating the events in PBL’s $4,509,000, sixhour miniseries, due to be shown on the Nine Network later this year.

In the run-up to Christmas 1974, it seems that no one took the approaching disaster seriously. “ There’d been a cyclone through three weeks before,” says Crombie. “ And, on Christmas Eve, people’s minds were elsewhere, so they largely ignored the cyclone warn­ ings.” The wind started going wild around midnight (gusts of 217 kilo­ metres per hour were recorded before the recording equipment failed), wreaking havoc for three hours, then gave way to an eerie, misleading stillness, as the eye of the storm passed right through the town. “ The eye went through around 3.30 in the morning,” says Crombie. “ But the worst part of the storm was after the eye, probably because the wind had been coming from one direction, so the buildings were weakened. Then it came back the other way and whammo!”

The whammo side of Tracy is mainly model work — a painstaking way of making a living in the film business — and the main models are exact recreations of actual Darwin houses, with scale drain­ pipes, fences and furniture.

Assistants have been plaiting grass round miniature palm trees. And, wending his way through it all like a jovial dentist, in gleaming white shirt and trousers, is make-up artist Bob McGarron.

McGarron is clearly in his element, demonstrating such favourites as a model new-born baby with an articu­ lated arm (for the scene — taken from fact — in which a mother-to-bè was blown through a window and gave birth in the street); a prosthetic twelve-year-old’s arm, complete with multiple fracture, torn flesh and jutting bones; and his pièce de resistance: an eye with a two-inch nail jutting out from under the lid, which can be worn like a contact lens. Crombie says he’ll shoot it, but thinks it will probably be too grisly for primetime audiences.

But, for all the crucial — and expensive — special effects, both Crombie and his co-director, Kathy Mueller, insist that the real focus of Tracy is not exploding bathrooms, flying debris and mutilated bodies. “ What I like about it,” says Crombie, “ is that it's a story of how people change as a result of crisis."

“ If there is one thing this film has to do for us,” echoes Mueller, “ it’s represent the spirit of the nation.

Being an American, I find that Aus­ tralian spirit — people not taking themselves too seriously, even in despair — very special and very endearing. It’s something I’d like to see on screen.”

On set — an old Darwin hotel, shaken but not fundamentally stirred by the cyclone — the owner, Connie (Tracy Mann), her two kids, and a

vision). The hotel’s occupants are now in the process of pushing it out.

It is the end of six hours of viewing — a moment of uplift and affirmation — and it is going particularly well.

So, too, is thè co-direction. “ It’s like being an old married couple,” says Mueller. “ We bicker, and we

Below, DOP Andrew Lesnie (left), co-director Kathy Mueller (right) and actor Nicholas Hammond (background).

‘The voice and the whisper’ are key eiements in cyclonebased miniseries

Piano fort: the hotel's occupants take cover as the Torana comes through. journalist going through a mid-life crisis (Chris Haywood), are definitely not taking things too seriously, as they improvize the final scene of the miniseries. Things', in this instance, is a battered Torana, which has been thrown through the wall by the cyclone (in reality, by a fork-lift truck going at full speed towards the outer wall of the set, hitting two chocks, and launching its load onto tele­

have a lot of laughs. It’s also the closest thing to an ideal working relationship that I ever thought could happen in filmmaking.”

Crombie, as usual, is more prag­ matic. “ We call the system The Voice and the Whisper’,” he says. “ The Voice is actually on, doing the directing, and The Whisper can come on and talk to The Voice — never to the actors or the camera crew, though. The only person who’s found it difficult is the con­ tinuity personage over there” — he points towards Ann Walton, set up

beside what is left of the bar. “ She’s got to make sure the bits all stick together."

Holding the visual bits together has likewise been something of a problem for Andrew Lesnie, one of Australia's youngest DOPs, with an impressive list of credits in the past year: Fair Game, Unfinished Busi­ ness, Australian Dream, and now Tracy. Lesnie has to make sure that newsreel footage blends in with his own action scenes, and must hold the style together through a worry­ ing number of different locations. “ The circumstances of this job are that we’re doing an enormous amount of cheating,” says Lesnie. “ There are situations where we will have a second unit doing a wide shot in Darwin, with doubles. We will do closer shots in Sydney” — the Botany Bay area is proving a remarkably suitable stand-in for the far north. “ Then, the moment they walk in the door, we’re on a set.

When it’s stormy, it’s a model. And the close-ups for that would be on a set again. So there’s a lot of different styles that have to be worked together.”

Finding a style has been a key overall consideration with Tracy: the ghost of the disaster movie has never been far away. “ We looked at a number of disaster films,” admits Mueller, “ and they were very depressing: you never loved the people.” For producers Timothy Read and John Edwards, fresh — if that is the word — from The Empty Beach and I Own the Racecourse, the answer was to aim for a highquality melodrama. And melodrama — a worthy film form but something of a dirty word in Australian filmmaking circles — is a notion they enthusiastically embrace. “ The trick that had to be pulled off,” says Read, “ was to make a story which had to be imaginary and fictional, rather than a docudrama, into a melodrama that was con­ vincing and plausible. And we had to do it about a public event of con­ siderable importance to the whole of Australia. We reckon that there’s no one in Australia — except perhaps the very, very young — who hasn’t got either a personal experience, or an experience at one remove, of Tracy. To put something up on the screen that didn’t do that justice, and at the same time didn’t work as television in melodramatic terms, would be to make a terrible mistake. “ It’s not a movie where it’s more important to see the whole of Sydney swallowed up by an earth­ quake, than it is to see the effect that has on the characters. In this case, it’s more important to see the effect on the characters, than it is to see Darwin blown over.”

His point is echoed by his co­ producer, John Edwards. “ You’ve got to carry it for six hours, and you don’t go ‘Ooh-aah!’ for six hours.

We’ve set ourselves on train tracks.

Because, in a shoot like this, where we’re trying to do five minutes a day of screen time, you can’t get off the tracks once you’re on. If our premise holds, it’s going to work extremely well. And I think it will work, because I don’t think anything else would. I think a six-hour dramatized docu­ mentary would have been as boring as bat shit.” jy.

CINEMA PAPERS March — 43

if N D U

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Beached: seasonal slowdown in local production C B S a c c o u n ts f o r a lo t o f th e a c tio n The tacit understanding that Aus­ tralia closes down for a month after Christmas is, to some extent, reflected by the level of production in the film and television industries.

However, the predictably quiet time in January may not have been entirely spent basking on the beaches, as many producers waited rather testily for news from the taxa­ tion department regarding the eligi­ bility of projects submitted in the July-to-September rush to qualify for the 133/30 deductions.

Film industry activity, in particular, was quiet, though Australian of the Year Paul Hogan’s determined pro­ motion of the lucky country seems to have produced a novel hybrid. The Blue Lightning, a $4.5-million tele­ movie that started shooting on 11 January, represents the first venture by a major US network (CBS) into Australia. Its arrival could, appar­ ently, have been attributed at least in part to the fact that Australia has recently moved, on the list of places that Americans would like to holiday in, from an indifferent 48th to top of the pile.

Filming in and around Broken Hill and at Silverton, where parts of two Mad Max films and Razorback 44

_ March CINEMA PAPERS

Robert McFarlane

R

were also shot, has not been delayed by the large number of stunts required by the script — an average of one a day. Production of the telemovie also involves the Seven Network, Roadshow, Coote & Carroll and Ross Matthews, and local cast m em bers Include Rebecca Gilling, John Meillon and Robert Coleby. It is scheduled to screen in the US during the May ratings period.

Elsewhere, Comrades, com­ pleted shooting early in January, after the cast and crew battled through unseasonably sour weather that disrupted schedules. And Bill Bennett's Backlash wrapped at the end of the month.

In spite of the tax-break uncer­ tainty, a number of features rolled in three states in February. On the New South Wales coast, The Bee-Eater, starring John Hargreaves and Tushka Hose, and directed by George Ogilvie, started on 3 February. On 16 February, Enter­ tainment Media’s Just Us, based on a novel by Gabrielle Carey and directed by Gordon Glenn, started shooting. And, a day later, Ukiyo Films' production of Slate, Wyn and Blanche McBride commenced production in Melbourne. On the same day, in Beaudesert, Queens­ land, a seven-week shoot started on Frenchman’s Farm, a $2.4 million feature directed by James Fishburn, whose previous credits include the Mavis Bramston Show.

Early in March, the BurrowesDixon Group are set to roll on Backstage, with Laura Branigan in the lead. Producer Frank Howson plans to go straight from that project to his next film (based on the life of boxer Les Darcy), Something Great.

There was marginally more activity in the television industry, with three productions shooting from November through to February, and PBL’s Tracy starting on 9 Decem­ ber and going until mid-March (see location report on page 43). Craw­ ford Productions’ Whose Baby?, starring Angela Punch-McGregor and Drew Forsyth, completed shoot­ ing just before Christmas, while Alice to Nowhere wrapped at the end of January. The final project in the Crawfords package announced last September, My Brother Tom, is set to roll on 17 March for ten weeks.

The Melbourne-based production, In Between, co-directed by Chris Warner and Mandy Smith, ended its second production block on 25 February, and is scheduled for SBSTV later this year. Samson Produc­ tions’ Five Times Dizzy will also screen on SBS this year, and com­ pleted a nine-week shoot in Sydney on 14 February.

Moving into production in Febru­ ary were Roadshow, Coote & Carroll’s The Challenge, which began a twelve-week shoot on 17 February; PBL’s miniseries,Petrov, which rolled in Melbourne on 3 February; and the six-part mini­ series, The Harp in the South, an adaptation of a Ruth Park novel that started shooting on 24 February. .*■

The Cinema Papers Production Survey A f u ll lis t in g o f th e fe a tu re s , te le m o v ie s , d o c u m e n ta r ie s a n d s h o r ts n o w in p r e p r o d u c tio n , p r o d u c t io n o r p o s t - p r o d u c t io n in A u s tra lia .

FEATURES

P R E-P R O D U C TIO N

G auge........................................................ 35 mm Shooting stock.................................. 9247, 5294 Synopsis: The film is based on the true story of the Pyjama Girl Murder. A girl’s body was found in Sydney in 1934 and kept in a formalin bath at Sydney University, on view to thousands of people, until the murder was solved in 1944.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS — THE AUSTRALIAN STORY

Stand-by props................................ Chris Jam es Co-ordinator........................... /...Krystine Porter Set decorators..............................Peter Kendall, Barry Kennedy PROMISES TO KEEP Set construction.......................... Bruce Michell, Prod, company............... Laughing Kookaburra Campbell Burden, Productions Ron Michell, Producers...........................................Jan Sharp, Murray Wilson, Ross Matthews Mai Punton, Director.......................................... Phillip Noyce Johnny Rodder Scriptwriter......................................... Jan Sharp Sound supervisor........................................

TerryRodman Budget................................. $2.6 million approx.

Still photography.......................................... GregNoakes Synopsis: An exotic romance to be shot on Painter........................................................... AllanSimms locations in Sydney and Bali.

Brannigan’s asst and chauffeur............Ian Jury Runner................................................. Rick Lewis THE ROBOT STORY Publicity.i......................................................Suzie Howie Catering....................................................RichardRoques Prod, company...........................................YoramGross Budget...............................................................$7 million Film Studio Pty Ltd Length............................................................. 120minutes Producer....................................................YoramGross Cast: Laura Brannigan (Jenny Anderson).

Director...................................................... YoramGross Scriptwriter................................................... GregFlynnSynopsis: A contemporary comedy/drama set in Melbourne and New York. It is the story of a Assoc, producer....................................... Sandra Gross female American singing star who has Length................................................ 75 minutes achieved worldwide success in the rock music Gauge........................................................ 35 mm field, but now wants success as a dramatic Synopsis: Set in the future, the film involves a actress. She travels to Australia and struggles group of young people and robots who use to rebuild her career and her life. both primitive and high-tech equipment to survive. taboos of an era in the pursuit of self-know­ ledge and sexual fulfilment.

THE BEE-EATER

SHAME (Working title) Prod, companies......................................... ABC, Prod, company........................ Barron Films Ltd Prod, company......................... Nilsen Premiere Prod, company........................Daedalus II Films International Film Management Ltd Director...........................................

Steve Jodrell Producer........................................................ TomBroadbridge Producer......................................................Hilary Furlong Producers.......................................................RayAlehin, Scriptwriters.................. Beverley Blankenship, Director.......................... Brian Trenchard-Smith Director......................................................GeorgeOgilvie Tom Burstall Michael Brindley Scriptwriter................................................PatrickEdgeworth Scriptwriter..................................................

Hilary Furlong Director........................................................... TimBurstall Exec, producers............................ Paul Barron, Based on the original idea Based on a short story b y ................. Jane Hyde Scriptwriter......................................................TimBurstall UAA by............................................................ PatrickEdgeworth Photography...................................... Jeff Darling Based on the original idea by........Tom Burstall Synopsis: A female lawyer inadvertently dis­ Editor..............................................................AlanLakeSound recordist........................................... PeterBarber Sound recordist..............................................PhilStirling covers the brutal background to an attack on a Producer's assistant......................Amanda Hay Editor.....................................Nicholas Beauman Editors...........................................................TonyKavanagh, young girl in an Australian outback town.

Laboratory............................................Colorfilm Prod, designer.............................................OwenPaterson Lyn Solly Spectacular stunts punctuate this powerful, Composer........................................... Chris Neal Budget............................................................$4.6 million Prod, designer............................Laurie Johnson dramatic contemporary story.

G auge.................................. 35 mm anamorphic Prod, supervisor............................................LynnGailey Exec, producer...................... Antony I. Ginnane Synopsis: A contemporary action-adventure Prod, manager...............................................DaleArthur Prod, manager.......................................... DennisKiely SOMETHING GREAT story set on the South China Sea. Unit manager................................................Hugh Johnston Prod, secretary......................Maureen Charlton Prod, secretary......................... Vicki Popplewell Prod, accountant......................... Judy Murphy Prod, company........................ Boulevard Films Prod, accountants........Moneypenny Services, THE CRICKETER 1st asst director............................Wayne Barry Director.....................................Jonathan Hardy Alan Marco, Scriptwriters.............................. Frank Howson, Prod, company.........................................MonroeStahr2nd asst director.......................... Gary Stevens Michele Day Casting......................................... Jennifer Allen Jonathan Hardy Productions Ltd 1st asst director............................................Chris Webb Lighting cameraman...................

Peter Hendry Exec, producers.........................Frank Howson, Producer.......................................................ChrisKiely 2nd asst director......... Carolynne Cunningham Peter Boyle Director......................................................... BarryPeakCamera operator......................... Roger Lanser 3rd asst director..........................................Henry Osborne Focus puller............................... Paul Pandoulis Prod, accountant............................ Newell Lock Based on the original idea b y........... Barry Peak Continuity.......................................................... Jo Weeks Budget.............................................$5.5 million Clapper/loader.......................................... RobertFoster Exec, producer................................Phillip Dwyer Casting consultants.................... Hilary Linstead Length..............................................120 minutes Prod, manager............................................... RayPondKey grip...............................................Long John & Associates Synopsis: The true story of the trials and Asst grip.........................................................Gary Burdett Prod, accountant........................... Maree Mayall Focus puller...................................Garry Phillips Gaffer..................................................Tim Jones triumphs of Australia’s golden boy of boxing Budget.................................................. $690,000 Clapper/loader...................................Susi Stitt who fell from grace as a result of World War I ’s Electrician....................................

Ken Pettigrew G auge............................................. Super 16 mm Key grip.................................... Brendan Shanley Boom operator.............................................DavidPearson conscription hysteria and was resurrected as a Synopsis: There's a stranger in town whose Asst grip...................................Matthew Tindale Designers.......................................................

Ken Muggleton, hero, when he died in Memphis, lonely, skill with a cricket bat is almost unnatural . . .

Gaffer.................................................. Simon Lee bewildered and reviled at the age of 21.

John Pryce-Jones he’s gotta have a secret.

Boom operator............................ Mark Wasiutak Asst designer................................................... ColRudder Asst art director.............................................. PhilDrake Costume designer...................................QuentinHole TERRA AUSTRALIS DARK AGE Costume designer..........................Anna French Make-up................................................. ChristineEhlert, Prod, company...............................Yoram Gross Asst to costume designer........................... FionaReilly Prod, company....................... F. G. Productions Jiri Pavlin Film Studio Make-up...............................

Johanne Santry (Aust.) Pty Ltd for Props buyers............................................. PaddyMcDonald, Producer.........................................Yoram Gross Hairdresser.......................... Johanne Santry International Film Management Ltd Susan Glavich Director......................................................

Yoram Gross Standby wardrobe..................

Fiona Nichols jj* Dist. company.......................RKO Pictures Inc. Special effects.............................................BrianMcClure Scriptwriters.................................................GregFlynn,Ward, assistan t................... Julie Frankham v through Embassy Home Entertainment Armourer.......................................Peter Leggett Yoram Gross Art department runner...................Grant Lee jr j j T'Director..................................... Arch Nicholson Studios................................ABC Forest Studios Photography............................. Graham Sharpe Props buyer............................Alethea Deane Scriptwriting............................. Tony Morphett, Length.......................Miniseries 6x50 minutes, Director of Standby props............................Colin Gibson I I I Sonia Borg, Feature Film 90 minutes model design....................................... NormanYeendSpecial effects.............................. Ray Fowler §SB w j V Stephen Cross G auge........................................................ 35 mm Consultant zoologist......................Dr M. Archer Set decorator...................................Lea Haig Based on the novel b y .............Grahame Webb Cast: John Stanton (Magwitch), Rob Coleby Length................................................80 minutes Scenic artist............................. Billy Malcolm Exec, producers................... Antony I. Ginnane, (Compeyson), Ron Haddrick (Tankerton), Jill Gauge........................................................ 35 mm Brush hand.......................... Sue Mayberry William Gavin Forster (Miss Havisham), Sigrid Thornton Synopsis: Based on scientific findings, the film Construction m anagers.............. Phil Worth, Laboratory............................................. Colorfilm (Bridget Tankerton). is set in prehistoric Australia.

Wayne Allan Budget................................................$4,808,232 Synopsis: Great Expectations: The Aus­ Asst editor.......................................

Rick Lisle mm Length................................................ 95 minutes tralian Story takes the character Abel Musical director............................Chris Neal £ .'■ # G auge........................................................ 35 mm Magwitch from Charles Dickens’ novel Great Sound editor..................................Tim Jordan w f Shooting stock .......................................Eastman Expectations and builds a story around his life, Editing assistants....................... Rick Lisle, i “ Synopsis: Ahuge rogue crocodile terrorises from the time he was exiled in Australia as a PR O D UCTIO N Antony Gray, J P * | the inhabitants of Darwin. convict, until he made his fortune and returned NickBreslin Blit to England.

Stunts co-ordinator.....................Guy Norris J t r DOT AND THE TREE Still photography............................Jon Lewis BACKSTAGE Prod, company...........................................YoramGross PANDEMONIUM Dialogue coach.............................Gina Pioro , mm.

Prod, company...........

Backstage Films Pty Ltd Film Studio Pty Ltd Prod, company...............K.F.M. Pandemonium Runner..........................................Daryl Grant Producer...................................... Frank Howson Producer.................................................... YoramGross Pty Ltd Unit publicist............................... Annie Page Director................................... Jonathan Hardy Director...................................................... YoramGrossProducer.....................................Robert Francis Kathy Trout '.-M B M Scriptwriters......................................... Jonathan Hardy,Catering.......................................

Scriptwriter................................................... GregFlynnDirector....................................... Haydn Keenan Laboratory.......................................Colorfilm * * » * * * • Frank Howson Animation director....................................... AtholHenry Scriptwriters....................................Peter Gailey, Lab. liaison..........................

Richard Piorkowski Photography................................ Keith Wagstaff Assoc, producer....................................... Sandra Gross Haydn Keenan Budget...............................................$2.4 million Sound recordist.....................John Schiefelbein Length................................................................75minutes Photography............................David Sanderson auge....................................................... 35 mm Editor...............................................................RayDaleyG G auge....................................................... 35 mm Sound and music director........ Cameron Allan stock......................................... Kodak Prod, designer.............................................. JohnCapekShooting Synopsis: Dot and Old Tom, the violin-maker, Editor.................................................. Paul Healy Cast: John Hargreaves (Neil McAdam), Exec, producers.................

Geoffrey Burrowes, find the spread of a big city threatens their Prod, designer........................... Melody Cooper Heather Mitchell (Margot Ryan), Tushka Hose Dennis Wright, lifestyles.

Cast: Amanda Dole,Candy Raymond, Ian (Ellie McAdam), Margo Lee (May Ryan), Willie John Kearney Nimmo, David Argue, Richard Moir, Mercia Fennell (Fred Ryan), Garry McDonald (Dan Assoc, producer.......................................... PeterBoyleBurroughs), Julie Hamilton DOT IN CONCERT Deane-Johns, Henk Johannes, David Bracks, (Enid Burroughs), Prod, supervisor.............................................. BillReganAileen Britton (Gran), Brendon Ashley Grenville.

Lunney Prod, company...........................................YoramGross Prod, co-ordinator................................. Jan Stott Synopsis: A pagan passion play set under and (Seymour) Film Studio Pty Ltd Unit manager.................................................. PhilMcCarthy on the shores of Bondi beach, with bulk Synopsis: A bitter-sweet comedy about love Producer.................................................... YoramGross Asst unit manager.......................... Tom Jannike and sex and growing up in the sixties.

Director.......................................................YoramGrossratbaggery and meaning.

Prod, secretary........................................... KarenMcKenna Scriptwriter....................................................John Palmer Accountant.......Stan Seserko — Managecomp PETER KENNA’S Assoc, producer....................................... Sandra Gross DOT AND THE BUNYIP Prod, assistant............................................. LydiaCover Length............................................................... 75minutes UMBRELLA WOMAN 1st asst director............................................. BobDonaldson Prod, company...........................................YoramGross G auge....................................................... 35 mm 2nd asst director.............................................. IanKenny Prod, company................Laughing Kookaburra Film Studio Pty Ltd Synopsis: Dot and her friends team up for a 3rd asst director........................... Brian Gilmore Productions Dist. company..............................Cori Films Inc. musical special which features a "live” star Location liaison..........................Stuart Menzies Producer....................................................YoramGross Dist. company.......................Atlantic Releasing performer.

Corporation Continuity................................... Christine Lipari Director...................................................... YoramGross Casting............................................................. LizMullinar Producer............................................ Jan Sharp Scriptwriter................................................... GregFlynn 8341: THE PYJAMA GIRL MURDER Camera operator........................................ DavidEggbyDirector of photography............. Graham Sharp Director........................................ Ken Cameron (Working title) Focus puller.................................................DavidStevens Scriptwriter......................................Peter Kenna Director of animation..................Jacques Muller Clapper/loader...............................Leigh Parker Assoc, producer....................................... Sandra Gross Based on the original idea b y........ Peter Kenna Prod, company.......Ulladulla Picture Company Key grip.........................................

Greg Wallace Prod, co-ordinator...........................Meg Rowed Photography................................

David Gribble in association with Gaffer............................................................ColinWilliams Prod, m anager.......................................Jeanette Toms Editor.......... ........................................John Scott Casablanca Film Works Boom operator...............................

Grant Stuart Administration.................................

Joan Brown Prod, designer...........................Sally Campbell Producers...................................... John Rogers, Asst art director...........................................DavidO’Grady Prod, accountants....................Libay de la Cruz, Composer...................................Cameron Allan John Wall Casual extras dresser............................... MaritaMussett Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. Scriptwriters................................................... Sue Tate,Assoc, producer............................. Helen Watts Co-ordinator....................................................PhilChambers Photography..............................Ricky Vergara,Budget............................................. $3.5 million John Rogers Make-up.......................................................FionaCampbell Erik Bierens, Length............................................. 100 minutes Based on the novel by..............Robert Coleman Supervisor..................................................Sandy Cichello Graham Binding Prod, designer........................................... DarrellLass Gauge........................................................ 35 mm Hairdresser................................................. PietraRobbins Animators.................................. Jacques Muller, Cast: Rachel Ward (Marge Hills), Bryan Brown Exec, producer............................Russell Keddie Wardrobe....................................... Jane Hyland Athol Henry, Post-production...................................... WinningPost (Sonny Hills), Sam Neill (Neville Gifford), Stand-by wardrobe...................................MargotLindsay Brenda McKie, Steven Vidler (Sugar).

Laboratory....................................................Atlab Machinist................................................

Fay Day Synopsis: The film tells the story of a woman Wal Louge, Budget............................................ $2.75 million Props m aster................................................Ross Newman Nick Harding, ► who breaks with convention and defies the Length............................................ 120 minutes AVENGERS OF THE CHINA SEAS

CINEMA PAPERS March — 45

Production Survey continued Still photography............................... Suzy Wood Cast: Tracey Tainsh (Jackie Grenville), David FOOTROT FLATS — THE MOVIE Gauge........................................................ 35 mm Reyne (Barry), John Meillon (Sgt Bill Dolan), Cast: Sigrid Thornton (Blanche McBride), Prod, company............ Magpie Productions Ltd Ray Barrett (Harry Benson), Norman Kaye Simon Burke (Wyn), Martin Sacks (Slate).

Producers......................................John Barnett, (Rev Aldershott), Andrew Blackman (Const.

Synopsis: A compelling drama of abduction Pat Cox Mainsbridge), Lynn Schofield (Madame and obsession set along the Murray River in Director............................................. Murray Ball Shevereaux), Tui Bow (Little Old Lady).

Screenplay.................................... Murray Ball, the late sixties. Two brothers, Slate and Wyn, Synopsis: Jackie knew that she had witnessed Tom Scott kill a policeman while robbing the bank of a a murder down on the farm. The others were small country town. A young school teacher, Based on the characters not so sure. But when they opened that Blanche McBride, witnesses the crime and is created by..................................... Murray Ball Pandora’s box, the consequences were horrific kidnapped by the brothers and taken across Animation director.........................Robbert Smit for everyone.

Script editor................................Chris Hampson the state to a hideout.

JUST US Production m anager........... Mark D’Arcy-Irvine Prod, company................ Entertainment Media Production asst............................................. KateRobinson THE STEAM DRIVEN ADVENTURES Pty Ltd Lay-out director.......................................... Steve Lumley OF RIVERBOAT BILL Producer...................................................... PeterBeilby Background artist..................Richard Zaloudek Prod, company........................Phantascope Ltd Director.....................................................GordonGlenn Colour stylist.............................................NarelleDerrick Producer......... .............................. Paul Williams Scriptwriter...................................... Ted Roberts Ink and paint..................................................Jack Petruska Director.......................................... Paul Williams Based on the novel by..............Gabrielle Carey (Animation Aids) Scriptwriter.....................................................CliffGreen Rendering.................................................... VickiJoycePhotography.......................................Ellery Ryan Based on the novel by...................................CliffGreen Cam era...................................................... JennyOscheSound recordist......................................Ian Ryan Photography................................................DianeBullen Editor......................................................... DennisJonesEditor.............................................................JohnDutton Sound recordist........................................... BrianLaurence Exec, producer.............................. Robert Le Tet Sound editor.................................................JohnMcKay Composer.................................................... KevinHocking Prod, co-ordinator.......................Christine Hart Prod, accountants......... Moneypenny Services Animation....................................................... GusMcLaren, Prod, m anager................................ John Jacob (Australia) Paul Williams, Unit manager...................................Tony Leach David Petterson (New Zealand) Maggie Geddes, Prod, secretary............................................KerryStacey Producer’s assistant............................ Rose Lai Steven French Prod, accountant............................... Anne Galt Lay-out artists............................... Deane Taylor, Laboratory..............Victorian Film Laboratories Paul Styble, 1st asst director.......................... Robert Kewley Length................................................75 minutes Jam es Baker, Continuity............................. Joanne McLennan Gauge........................................................16 mm Casting consultants........... Liz Mullinar Casting Leanne Hughes, Shooting stock.............................. Eastmancolor Camera operator...............................Ellery Ryan Jan D’Silva, Cast: Voice overs: Frank Thring, Brian John Martin Focus puller............................. Leigh McKenzie Hannan, Hamish Hughes, Beate Horrison, Key grip........................................Barry Hansen Animators.................................Don Mackinnon, Debby Cumming, Ben Williams, Adam Jon McClenahan, Gaffer............................................Ted Nordsvan Williams.

Alistair Byrt, Electrician....................................John Brennan Synopsis: Animated adventure set on the Gairden Cooke, Art director.............................Geoff Richardson Murray River at the turn of the century.

Chris Hauge, Asst art director.......................................Jill Eden Riverboat Bill and his crew attempt to protect Bob Baxter, Make-up/hair....................Amanda Rowbottom an illegal bunyip from the long arm of the law.

Andrew Szemenyai, Wardrobe............................... Alexandra Tynan Jim Wylie, Ward, assistan t........................Denise Braddon Simon O’Leary, Props buyer/set d resser.....Keith Handscombe 3 F.U.K. FM (106.3 ON YOUR DIAL) Lianne Hughes, Standby props...........................Greg O’Connell Prod, company......................... MS Productions Richard Slapczynski, Runner/office.................................................KrisGintowt Producer........................................ Martin Burke John Burge, Laboratory............................................... Cinevex Directors.....................................................MartinBurke, Henry Neville, Length...............................................................95minutes Steve Evans Jam es Baker, Gauge........................................................16 mm Scriptwriters............................................... MartinBurke, Greg Ingram Shooting stock ...................................... Eastman Steve Evans Assistants.................................Denise Kirkham, Cast: Scott Burgess (Terry), Catherine Music................................................... The Pulse Murray Griffin, McClements (Gabby), Gina Riley (Jenny), Kym Length................................................ 90 minutes Lucinda Clutterbuck, Gyngell (Mouth).

Gauge.............................................Super 16 mm Wally Macarti, Synopsis: A love story based on a book of the Synopsis: Super Rat andFerel (alias Jam es Darek Polkowski, same name by Gabrielle Carey.

DOT AND THE WHALE Maddock and DougHunter) are two popular Astrid Nordheim, FM disc jockeys who find themselves suddenly Prod, company.......................................... YoramGross Barbara Coy, RACING out of work, and in need of money quickly.

Film Studio Pty Ltd Paul Stibal, They implement a series of get-rich-quick Dist. company..............................Cori Films Inc. Prod, company....................................Australian Institute Victor Juy schemes as well as elaborate cons to set up a Producer................................................... YoramGross of Aboriginal Studies In-betweeners........................... Maxim Gunner, pirate radio station.

Director......................................................YoramGross Directors............ David and Judith MacDougall Rick Tinschert, Scriptwriter...................................... John Palmer Director of photography........David Macdougall Barbara Coy, Based on the original idea Sound recordist...................

Judith MacDougall Gaillyn Gadston, b y ........................................................... YoramGross Editor......................................... Chris Cordeaux Paul Baker, Photography............................. Graham Sharpe Music composed and Liz Thomas, P O S T-P R O D U C TIO N Director of animation.;.................. Ray Nowland performed by............................Harry Williams Robert Malherbe, Assoc, producer............................ Sandra Gross and The Country Outcasts Carol Seidl, Prod, co-ordinator.........................................MegRowed Prod, assistant..........................................NormaBriscoe Ken Keys, Prod, manager..............................................VickiJoyce Neg. cutting.............Negative Cutting Services AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 WAYS Melanie Allen, Prod, accountants................... Libay de la Cruz, Mixed a t ...................................................HendonStudios, Maria Haren, Prod, company............................................ PalmBeach Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. Tim Curry Phillip Scarrold, Entertainment Pty Ltd Administration............................................. Joan Brown Laboratory.............................................Colorfilm Chris Evans, Producers....................................................DavidElfick, Photography............................... Ricky Vergara, Lab. liaison..................................................KerryJenkins Kathy O’Rourke, Steve Knapman Erik Bierens, Length...............................................................85 minutes Clare Lyonette, Director.................................. Stephen MacLean Graham Binding Gauge........................................................16 mm Wayne Kelly, Scriptwriters........................ Stephen MacLean, Animators....................................................... WalLouge, Synopsis: Sunny Bancroft, the Aboriginal Darek Polkowski, Paul Leadon Nick Harding, manager of a cattle station in Northern NSW, Sarah Lawson, Photography....................................Louis Irving John Burge, decides to race one of the station’s stockVictor Juy Sound recordist.............................................Paul Brincat Stan Walker, horses at the local picnic races. He and his Animation checkers........................Kim Craste, Editor.......................................Marc Van Buuren Ariel Ferrari, family are drawn more and more into the picnic Liz Lane, Prod, designer.................................Lissa Coote Paul McAdam, race circuit, sometimes winning, sometimes Kim Marden Prod, manager......Catherine Phillips Knapman Andrew Szemenyei, losing.

Publicity...........................................Rea Francis Unit manager......................................... DeborahCooke Bela Szeman, Laboratory............................................ Colorfilm Prod, secretary............................................ PerryStapleton Rowen Smith, SLATE & WYN AND BLANCHE Cast: Voices: John Clarke, Peter Hayden, Prod, accountant......................................RobinaOsborne, Gairden Cook McBRIDE Fiona Samuel, Dorothy McKegg, Billy T. Moneypenny Services In-betweeners............................................... PaulBaker, Jam es.

Prod, company................. Ukiyo Films Australia 1st asst director.....................................Ian Page Steve Becker, Synopsis: An aminated feature. The adven­ Pty Ltd for International 2nd asst director........................................

HenryOsborne Clare Lyonette, tures of Dog and Wal, and the characters of Film Management Limited 3rd asst director........................Elizabeth Lovell Kathie O’Rourke, Footrot Flats.

Dist. company.........Hemdale Film Corporation Continuity..................................................Jackie Sullivan Lu Rou, Producer....................................................... TomBurstall Producer's assistant/ Vicky Robinson, FRENCHMAN’S FARM Director..........................................................

Don McLennan secretary..................................................

Basia Plachecki Maria Haren, Scriptwriter.....................................................DonMcLennan Extras casting........................................ChristineKing Prod, company........... ............. Mavis Bramston Domingo Rivera, Based on the novel by............................Georgia Savage Lighting cameraman....................... Louis Irving Productions Pty Ltd Jan Stephen, Photography................................................DavidConnell Camera operator............................. Louis Irving Producer....................................................Jam es Fishburn Judy Howieson, Sound recordist....................... Andrew Ramage Focus puller...................................... Derry Field Director................................................. Ron Way Murray Griffen, Editor............................................................PeterFriedrich Clapper/loader..............................................SallyEccleston Photography............................... Ron Johanson , Joanna Fryer, Prod, designer............................ Paddy Reardon Key grip.........................................................TerryJacklin Sound recordist..............................Max Bowring Greg Farrugia, Exec, producers....................Antony I. Ginnane, Asst grip.......................... Rourke Crawford-Flett Editor........................................ Pippa Anderson Hanka Bilyk William Fayman 2nd unit photography............... Andrew Lesnie Prod, designer.........................Richard Rooker Layout artists................................Ray Nowland, Front projection photography......... Ken Arlidge Composer.................................

TommyTycho Line producer.......................... Brian D. Burgess Nobuko Yuasa Prod, co-ordinator................Rosslyn Abernethy Gaffer.............................................. RegGarside Exec, producer................................ Col Worner Painting & tracing.....................Robyn Drayton, Unit manager...........................................

Marcus Skipper Best boy.......................................................CraigBryant Assoc, producer.............................. Matt White Mimi Intal, Prod, assistant........................................... Jenny GrayElectrician..............................................Gary Hill Prod, co-ordinator............................ Tina Butler Corallee Munro, Prod, accountant...................................Candice Dubois Boom operator...............................................PaulGleeson Joseph Cabatuan, Prod, manager................................. Penny Wall Account assistant.......... ................... Debra Cole Art dept runner......................................... RowanMcKenzie Paulette Martin, Prod, accountant........... Moneypenny Services 1st asst director........................................... Ross Hamilton Draughtsperson..................................... CarolinePolin 1st asst director........................................ DorianNewstead Annamaria Dimmers 2nd asst director...........................................BrettPopplewell Costume designer................................ Clarrissa Patterson 2nd asst director..............................Gary Wade Backgrounds.................................. Amber Ellis, Continuity.....................................Shirley Ballard Make-up....................................................VioletteFontaine Continuity....................................... Anthea Dean Sheila Christofides, Casting..............................................................Jo Larner Hairdresser.............................................. YvonneSavage Casting............................................... Qld. Artists Barry Dean Lighting cameraman..................................DavidConnell Standby wardrobe.....................................BarbraZussino Focus puller...................................... Brad Shield Special fx Camera operator.........................................David Connell Ward, buyer........................................... Roselea Hood Key grip..............................................Jack Lester painting.......... Christiane Van derCasseyen, Focus puller.................................................GregFtyanWardrobe assistan t............. Philomena Murphy Gaffer............................................... Derek Jones Jeanette Toms Key grip..........................................

David Cassar Props................................................. Sue Hoyle Boom operator...................................

Ian Grant Graphics..............................................Eric David Asst grip....................................................MarcusMcLeod Props buyer.................................................DavidMcKay Costume designer............................... .MaureenKlestov Asst editor......................................Stella Savvas Gaffer........................................................Stewart Sorby Standby props................................................IgorLazareff Make-up............................... Margaret Lingham 2nd asst editor........................... Stephen Hayes Electrician....................................................PeterMolony Special effects........................................... Reece Robinson Hairdresser................................................... AprilHarvey Publicity..............................Helena W akefieldGenny operator............................................. DickTummel Construction manager................................. AlanFleming Ward, assistant...........................Helen Maynes International Media Marketing Pty Ltd Boom operator............................................ ScottRawlings Scenic artist...................................................NedMcCann Props.....................................................Jill Loof Laboratory.............................................Colorfilm Costume designer.................................. Jeannie Cameron Signwriter...............

David Tuckwell Stunts................................................. Phil Brock Length................................................ 75 minutes Make-up....................................................FelicitySchoeffel Carpenters................................................. DanielFlowers, Still photography........................................DavidAdermann G auge........................................................35 mm Best boy.................................................... WarrenGrieffHairdresser.................................................... PaulPattison Roland Gewin, Cast: Character voices: Robyn Moore, Keith Wardrobe.................................................. MargotMcCartney Runner.........................................Marc Valenotti Geoffrey Leo Howe, Scott.

Vehicle co-ordinator................................. RobertMcLeod Peter Longley, Publicity..................................... Rea Francis Co. Synopsis: In a desperate bid to rescue a whale Props buyer/dresser................................HarveyMawson Christopher Norman, Laboratory................................................... Atlab stranded on a beach, Dot and Neptune the Standby props............................................. BrianLaing Budget.........................................................$2.47 million David Scott, dolphin hunt the ocean depths searching for a Special effects..............................................BrianPierce Marcus Smith, Length.............................................................100minutes wise old octopus called The Oracle who knows Set construction.............................................RayPattison G auge................................... 35 mm Panavision David Stenning, how to save whales.

Animators....................................... John Burge, Stan Walker, Andrew Szemenyei, Paul McAdam, Rowen Smith, Bela Szeman In-betweeners................. .................Paul Baker, Steve Becker, Lu Rou, Vicky Robinson, Maria Haren, Domingo Rivera, Jan Stephen, Judy Howleson, Murray Griffin, Joanna Fryer, Greg Farrugia, Hanka Bilyk, Roland Chat, Clare Lyonette, Kathie O’Rourke, Paul Stilbal, Peter McDonald Layout artists.............................Nobuko Yuasa, Brenda McKie, Jacques Muller Painting & tracing..................... Robyn Drayton, Mimi Intal, Coral lee Munro, Joseph Cabatuan, Paulette Martin, Annamaria Dimmers Backgrounds................................... Amber Ellis, Sheila Christofides, Barry Dean Special fx painting.....................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 minutes Gauge........................................................35 mm Character voices: Robyn Moore, Keith Scott.

Synopsis: A circus owner attempts to capture a mysterious Bunyip, but Dot and her bushland friends attempt to foil his plans. Dot soon discovers that the circus is merely a front for an international wildlife smuggling operation.

46 — March CINEMA PAPERS

Photography...................................... Bob Kohler Carpenters................................................AndrewTickner Director/scriptwriter........................................ BillDouglas Helicopter pilot..................................... Terry Lee Sound recordist............................................ John Rowley Standby carpenter................................. MaxwellWorrall Transport manager............Jeremy Hutchinson Based on the original idea by..........Bill Douglas Editor................................................................Ken Sallows Props m aker....................................... Kim Hilder Photography..................................................Gale Tattersall Mechanic......................................................DavidThomas Prod, designer............................... Jon Dowding Asst editor.....................................Vicki Ambrose Sound recordist............................................CliveWinter Best boy......................................................... PaulGantner Composer....................................................Bruce Smeaton Dialogue editor.............................................KarinWhittington Runner.......................................................... KerryJackson Editor..............................................................MickAudsley Exec, producer................................................ BillOswald Editing assistants....................................PhilippaGallagher, Prod, designer......................................... MichaelPickwoad Publicist............................................Suzie Howie Prod, supervisor...................................... DamianBrown Phil Dickson Catering.........................................................John Faithfull Assoc, producer.................................. RedmondMorris Unit/locatlon m anager...................................KrisKozlovic Sound supervisor.......................................RogerSavage Catering a ss t.......................... Steve Warrington Prod, supervisor........................... David Hannay Prod, secretary........................ Carmel Johnson Stunts co-ordinator.............................Bob Hicks Cast: Paul Hogan (Crocodile Mick Dundee), Prod, co-ordinator..................... Vanessa Brown Prod, accountant.................. Pauline Montagna Linda Kozlowski (Sue Charlton), John Melllon Still photography...........................William Yang Prod, m anager........................................ CharlesHannah T.F.C. accounts assistants..........Susan Natoli, Security....................................... Gary Nicholson (Walter Riley), David Gulpilil (Neville Bell), Unit m anager....................... Steve Macaggnan Darren Rodman Maggie Blinco (Ida), Steve Rackman (Donk), Runner.......................................................... MarlaPhillips Prod, accountant.................. Howard Wheatley 1st asst director............................................Ross Hamilton Catering....................................................... KevinVarnes (Australia) Gerry Skilton (Nugget).

2nd asst director............................................Paul Grinder Mixed at................................................Soundflrm Synopsis: Crocodile Mick Dundee is a friendly Prod, assistant........................................... BridgitWilson 3rd asst director........................................ WendyRimon larrikin crocodile hunter from the wilds of Laboratory..............................................Colorfilm 1st asst director....................................RedmondMorris Continuity..................................... Shirley Ballard Australia. He becomes national news after he 2nd asst director......................... Jake Atkinson Lab. liaison...............................................RichardPlorkowski Producer’s assistant................................BelindaToohey has his leg almost ripped off by a giant Budget............................................$2.25 million 3rd asst director...........................Christine King Focus puller...................................... Ian Jones Length................................................ 90 minutes Assistant to director................................. BarneyReiczcrocodile; heroically, he drags himself for a Clapper/loader............................................

AdamKropinsk G auge.................. 1.................................... 35 mm Continuity...................................................PennyEylesweek through croc-infested waters and Key grip.......................................................... NoelMcDona survives to tell the tale. In fact the story gets Shooting stock........................................... Kodak Casting................................................... Forecast(Australia) Asst grip.....................................................Wayne Marshall better every time it’s told. Especially by his Cast: Philip Quast (Wally), Diana Davidson Lighting cameraman.................. Gale Tattersall 2nd unit photography.................. Chris Morgan manager/director/partner Wally Riley.

Camera operator......................... Gale Tattersall (Mavis), Allan Penney (Roly), Kelly Dingwall Gaffer.............................................Lindsay Foote Focus puller................................................... NickMayo (Eddie), Gosia Dobrowoiska (Ophelia), Rob Boom swinger................................. Perry Dwyer Clapper/loader.............................................ChrisWhite Steele (Moffatt), Judith Fisher (Lotte), Jane DEAD-END DRIVE-IN Asst art directors....................................... PaddyReardon Camera assistant............................ Jeremy Gee Markey (Midge), John Howard (Dr Proctor).

Prod, company.............Springvale Productions John Bowling Key grip........................................... Ray Brown Synopsis: Mavis Davis is off around the world Pty Ltd Costume designer..................Aphrodite Kondos Gaffer........................................Brian Bansgrove on a fast motion package trip. When Dad finds Producer..................................

Andrew Williams Make-up.......................................Deryk De Nlese Electrician........................................ Colin Chase out she has been joined by their hated next Co-producer.............................................DamienParerStandby wardrobe/nurse......Noreen Le Mottee Boom operator.........................................GrahamMcKinney door neighbour, Alec Moffatt, long dead Director..........................

Brian Trenchard-Smlth Standby props/buyer............................

Kay Alty Art director..................................................DerekChetwyn passions begin to stir. Dad decides to chase Scriptwriter................................................... PeterSmalley Asst editor.....................................................PeterMcBain Costume designer.................. Bruce Finlayson her around the world — one problem, no Based on the short story by...........Peter Carey Edge numberer........................................... KarenWeldrick Make-up...................................................... ElaineCarew money. So his sons Eddie and Wally assisted Photography................................... Paul Murphy Sound editors...............................................CraigCarter, Hairdresser................................................ CherylWilliams by the beautiful nurse Ophelia Cox, fabricate a Sound recordist..............................Leo Sullivan Frank Upson Wardrobe......................................................Julie Barton convincing world trip — In his own backyard!

Supervising editor.........................................AlanLakeMixer...........................................................GethinCreagh Props buyer......................................... Billy Allen Editor............................................................... LeeSmithStill photography.....................................Jacqule Gardner Standby props...............................................John Daniell BACKLASH Prod, designer.............................................. LarryEastwood Best boy............................................ Jimmy Hunt Art dept a s s t .................................Toby Copping Composer....................................................FrankStrangio Prod, company...........................Mermaid Beach Unit runner...................................... Colin Grubb Carpenters....................................Con Mustard, Prod, co-ordinator..........................

Judith Ditter Productions Pty Ltd Art dept runner.................................. Kerry Laws Ken Sexton Prod, manager..............................Anne Bruning Dist. company................... J.C . Williamson Film Studios................................................Tasmanian Film Set construction...........................Danny Burnett Location/unlt m anager..................Ian Goddard Distributors Pty Ltd Corporation Pty Ltd Stunts co-ordinator................. Peter Armstrong Prod, secretary.....................Annette Patterson Producer...........................................................BillBennett Mixed at................................................ Colorfilm Wrangler....................................... Ray Winslade Prod, accountant...................... Valerie Williams Director............................................................. BillBennett Laboratory.............................................Cinevex Best boy....................................... Paul Gantner Accountant’s assistan t..................Michele Day Scriptwriter........................................................BillBennett Length..................................

100minutes Catering........................................Out To Lunch 1st asst director....................Adrian Pickersgill Based on the original idea by........... Bill Bennett Gauge........................................................ 35 mm Cast: Vanessa Redgrave (Mrs Carlyle), Alex 2nd asst director...........................................

John Titley Photography.................................................TonyWilson Shooting stock...............................Eastmancolor 5247 Norton (Silhouettist, McCallum, Witch, Mad 3rd asst director.............................................LisaHarrison Sound recordist.............................................. LeoSullivan Cast: Patricia Kennedy (Sylvia), Michael Photographer, Captain), Jeremy Flynn (James Continuity.......................................................Sian Fatouros Editor.......................................................... DeniseHunter Duffield (Presley), June Jago (Frances), Serge Brine), Arthur Dignam (Fop), John Hargreaves Casting..............................Maizels & Associates Composer...............................Michael Atkinson Lazareff (Simon), Sean Scully (Bowen), Jon (Convict), Robin Soans (George Loveless), Camera operator........................................ KevanLind Sidney (Joseph), Sally Cahill (Julie), Bettlna Prod, m anager................................. Sue Seeary William Ganimara (Jam es Loveless), Stephen Focus puller....................................John Lomax Unit manager......................... Deborah Samuels Welch (Lady Bracknell), Barry Quin (Jack).

Bateman (Old Stanfield), Phil Davies (Young Clapper/loader..............................................John PlattSynopsis: A drama of relationships under Location m anager...................................... DianaFerryStanfield), Keith Allen (Jam es Hammett), Sir Key grip.......................................................... NoelMcDonald Production accountant.......G & S Management pressure. Based on the play ‘A Pair of Claws’.

Michael Hordern (Mr Pitt).

Asst grips.................................................. WayneMarshall, Camera assistan t........................................DerryFieldSynopsis: Comrades tells the story of the John Tate Props buyer.................................................... Lisa EveisTolpuddle Martyrs, a group of six Dorset farm DOT AND KEETO 2nd unit photography..............................AndrewLesnie Asst editor.................................................... DanyCooper workers who, in the early 1830s, formed one of Prod, company.............................. Yoram Gross Gaffer...........................................................

Colin Chase Neg. matching.......... Chris Rowell Productions the world’s first trade unions and,in doing so, Film Studio Electrician..................................................... BrettKeeping Pty Ltd were convicted of sedition and transported to Producer........................................Yoram Gross Boom operator............................. Mark Van Kool Mixer.......................................... Brett Robinson the penal colony of New South Wales. Their Director..........................................Yoram Gross Art director.....................................................

Nick McCallum Still photography....................... Harold Ashfield plight became a cause celebre which finally led Scriptwriter......................................John Palmer Asst art director..............................................RobRobinson Mixed at........................................Sound on Film to them being pardoned, largely as a result of Photography.............................

Graham Sharpe Costume designer................................. AnthonyJones Laboratory.................................

Atlab the work of Mr Pitt.

Director of animation.................... Ray Nowland Costume designer’s a s s t .........Shauna Flenady Lab. liaison......................................... David Cole Photographers........................ Jan Carruthers, Make-up....................................................... LloydJam es Length................................................ 94 minutes CROCODILE DUNDEE Ricky Vergara Make-up a sst........................................... AnnetteAdams Cast: David Argue (Trevor), Gia Carides Assoc, producer........................... Sandra Gross Producer........................................ John Cornell Hairdresser...............................................PatriciaNewton (Nikki), Lydia Miller (Kath), Brian Syron (Lyle).

Prod, co-ordinator...........................Meg Rowed Director...........................................Peter Faiman Standby wardrobe a ss t............. Devina Maxwell Synopsis: Backlash is a story about a Prod, manager.................................Vicki Joyce P rops.............................................................. RayFowler Photography.................................. Russell Boyd policeman and a policewoman escorting an Administration.................................KylieWhipp Sound recordist.............................Gary Wilkins Standby props............................ George Zammit Aboriginal woman charged with murder from Prod, accountant.................... Libay de la Cruz, Editor..............................................David Stlven Special effects co-ordinator...........Chris Murray Sydney to Bourke.

Peat Marwick, Mitchell & Co. Prod, designer........................................ GrahamWalker Special effects choreography.....Alan Maxwell, Animators......................................Ray Nowland, Peter Evans Line producer.....................................Jane Scott CACTUS Andrew Szemenyei, Assoc, producer.......................................WayneYoung Armourer................................................... RobertColeby Prod, company................................... Dofine Ltd Ariel Ferrari, Carpenter.................................................AndrewGardiner Prod, co-ordinator........................................Julie Foster Producers................................ Jane Ballantyne, Nicholas Harding, Prod, manager............................. Peter Sjoquist Construction m anager.................. John Parker Paul Cox Rowen Avon, Unit manager................................ Phil Patterson Asst editors..................................... Sue Blainey, Director...........................................................PaulCox Prod, secretary....................... Amanda Bennett Paul McAdam, Noeleen Westcombe Screenplay..................................................... PaulCox, Prod, accountants.......................Pieta Hurcum, Stan Walker, Projectionist.......................................Harry Clark Norman Kaye, John Berge, Anne Phillips Stunts co-ordinator............................ Guy Norris Bob Ellis Wal Louge Stunts..................................................Phil Brock, 1st asst director...........................Mark Turnbull Based on the original idea b y ..............Paul Cox In-betweeners.................................. Paul Baker, Arch Roberts, 2nd asst director............................Craig Bolles Photography.................................................. YuriSokol3rd asst director.......................................... PeterVoeten Jenny Barber, Peter West, Sound recordist...........................Ken Hammond Mark Benvenuti, Dee Jones, Continuity................................................ DaphneParis Editor...................................................Tim Lewis Rodney Brunsdon, Rocky McDonald, Casting.............................Full Cast Consultants Prod, designer.................................... Asher Bilu Hanka Bilyk, Don Vaughn, Camera operator......................................... PeterMenzies Assoc, producer..............Tony Llewellyn Jones Barbara Coy, Danny Baldwyn, Focus puller................................................. GeoffWharton Prod, manager.........................................MilankaComfort Greg Farrugia, Glen Ruehland, Clapper/loader.........................................ConradSlack Unit manager...............................................ErwinRado2nd unit camera a s s t .................................. DavidPedley Murray Griffin, Glen Boswell Prod, secretary............................................. TarniJam es Max Gunner, Key grip.......................................................... RayBrown Safety officer..................................... Bob Hicks Prod accountant..................Santhana K. Naidu Debbie Horne, Asst grips..................................... Tony Larkins, Still photography...................................... RobbieGribble 1st asst director.......................................VirginiaRouse Joseph Cabatuan, Stuart Green, Vehicle coordinator................................... BarryBransen Continuity.............................Joanne McLennan Domingo Rivera, Ian Bird Head mechanic.................................Harry Ward Camera operator............ Gaetano N. Martinetti Wayne Kelly, Genny operator............................Jason Rogers Mechanic’s assistant....................... Peter Gibbs Focus puller......................................ChristopherCain Gaffer.......................................Brian Bansgrove Sarah Lawson, Best boy............................................. Chris Fleet Camera assistan t.....................Brendan Lavelle Julie Peters, Runner.......................................................... MarkAbicht Electrician.....................................................ColinChase Key grip.................................... Paul Ammitzboll John Robertson, Boom operator............................................. MarkWasiutak Publicity.......Lyn Quayle Publicity & Promotion Asst grip.......................................................... KenConnor Vicky Robinson, Art dept co-ordinator................................PhilllpaBanks Catering....................Action Catering and MMK Boom operator.....................Graham McKinney Jan Stephen, N urse.......................................................BarbaraMather Art department runner........... John Paul Lucini Art director..............................................Lint Bilu Bela Szeman Costume designer................. Norma Marlceau Security...................................................... DannyBorburg Make-up......................................... Pietra Robins Painting & tracing......................Robyn Drayton, Film school attachment...........................MichaelSergl Make-up ................................... Elizabeth Fardon Wardrobe..............................................AphroditeKondos Mimi Intal, Hairdresser............................. Elizabeth Fardon Post-production Asst editor...................................................AdrianBradyStandby wardrobe........................... Suzie Pullen Corallee Munro, facilities................ Film Production Services Still photography......................................VirginiaRouse Joseph Cabatuan Laboratory............................................ Colorfilm Ward, assistant................................... Mel Dykes Art dept runner.............................................. TirlelMoraProps m aster..................................Martin O’Neil Backgrounds....................................Amber Ellis Lab. liaison.......................... Richard Piorkowski Catering...................................Cecil B. de Meals Graphics........................................... Eric David Model m akers...............................................John Murch, Lab. assistant............................Denise Wolsson Mixed a t ................................................... HendonStudios Special fx ....................................Jeanette Toms Kim Hilder Budget........................................................... $2.6 million Laboratory................................................Cinevex Asst editor...................................Stella Savvas Standby props.......................Karen Monkhouse Length............................................................... 90minutes Lab. liaison..................................................BruceBraunSpecial effects..............................................ChrisMurray, Publicity......................... Helena P. Wakefield — G auge........................................................ 35 mm Length................................................................90minutes International Media Marketing Dave Hardy Shooting stock.............................................7294 Gauge........................................................ 35 mm Laboratory.............................................Colorfilm Cast: Ned Manning, Natalie McCurry, Peter Costume cutter..........................................Jam es Watson Shooting stock ................................................Fuji Length................................................

80 minutes Whitford, Ollie Hall, Sandy Lilllngstone, Lyn Story board artist..................................Sabastian Lakosta Cast: Isabelle Huppert (Colo), Robert Menzies Gauge........................................................ 35 mm Colllngwood, Nikki McWaters, Melissa Davis, Scenic artist................................................... BillyMalcolm (Robert), Norman Kaye (Tom), Monica Synopsis: After shrinking to insect size, Dot Wilbur Wilde, Brett Cllmo.

Carpenters................................................... AndyHlckner, Maughan (Bea), Peter Aanensen (George), finds herself In a terrifying world of huge Marcus Smith, Synopsis: The near future, a harsh world Sheila Florance (Martha), Bunduk Marika spiders and massive ants. Desperately, she Andy Chauvell, where only the cunning and the tough are free.

(Bunduk). and her friend, Keeto the Mosquito, hunt for the Geoff Howe A young man becomes part of the cast-off Synopsis: A love story between two blind magic bark that will return her to her normal Construction m anager............................... DenisSmith society and finds himself imprisoned in a drivepeople who teach one another to see. size.

Asst editor....................................................PeterCarrodus in.

Standby painter............................................AllanArmethec DEPARTURE FREE ENTERPRISE COMRADES Stunts co-ordinator........................................MaxAspin Animal co-ordinator...................................... DaleAspinProd, company........... Cineaust (One 1983) Ltd Prod, company......................B & D Productions Prod, company................... Skreba Productions Producers............................................. ChristineSuli, Producer.....................................Geoff Burrowes in association with Still photography............................................ Jim Sheldon Brian Kavanagh Director......................................................... John Dixon David Hannay Productions Paul Hogan’s a sst................................. Lee Dlllo Director......................................Brian Kavanagh Nurse...............................Jacqueline Robertson Scriptwriter....................................

John Dixon Dist. company....................... Curzon/Bill Gavin Scriptwriter..............................................

Michael Gurr Trades assistant.....................................MatthewConnors Based on the original idea by...........John Dixon Producer......................................... Simon Relph Based on the play by............................... MichaelGurrPhotography................................ Keith Wagstaff ► Driver................................................................ IanFreeman Co-producer...............David Hannay (Australia)

CINEMA PAPERS March — 47

Production Survey continued

Mike Vivian Sound supervisor........................ Terry Rodman Construction m anager...................Wilfred Flint KANGAROO Asst editor..................................... Liz Goldfinch Sound recordist.....................John Schiefelbein Sound editor...............................Penn Robinson Prod, company........................................... NakedCountry Painters.......................................... John Gibson, Editor....................................................Ray Daley Editing assistant.......................Jeanine Chialvo Productions Ltd Lee Houston Prod, designer.................................... Les Binns Still photography.................. Robert McFarlane Sound editor......................................... Greg Bell Exec, producer..........................................DennisWright Best boy..................................................... LaurieFish Dist. company................Filmways Australasian Distributors Pty Ltd Stunts co-ordinator...........................

Peter West Prod, supervisor.............................................. BillRegan Runner.............................................Mark Bishop Producer..........................................Ross Dimsey Model maker...................................... Bill Dennis Prod, co-ordinator................................. Jan Stott Catering........................................ John Falthfull Director...........................................................

Tim Burstall Still photography.......................

Peter Flanagan Prod, secretary............................................KarenMcKenna Laboratory............................................. Colorfilm Scriptwriter...................................... Evan Jones Runner.......................................Glenn Williams Prod, assistant............................................. LydiaCover G auge........................................................ 35 mm Based on the novel by...................................D.H.Lawrence Safety officer................................. Art Thomson Location manager...........................................PhilMcCarthy Shooting stock...........................................Kodak Photography....................................Dan Burstall Catering.................................. Mustard Catering Asst location m anager.................................Stan Leman Cast: Kristina Nehm (Trilby), Justine Saunders Sound recordist.............................................PaulClarkMixed at............................................

Atlab Prod, accountant........... Managecomp Pty Ltd, (Mollie), Bob Mazza (Joe), Ernie Dingo (Phil), Editor.........................

Edward McQueen Mason Laboratory.................................................... Atlab Stan Seserko Kylie Belling (Noonah), Kath Walker (Eva), Prod, designer.............................................TracyWattLab. liaison..............................Bruce Williamson Financial controller.......................................John Kearney Dennis Walker (Bartie).

Exec, producer..........................Introndie Pty Ltd Budget...............................................$2.5 million Financial adviser...........................................KentLovellSynopsis: A contemporary film about an Prod, co-ordinator..................................... Jennie Crowley Length..............................................100 minutes, 1st asst director......................... Bob Donaldson Aboriginal family.

Prod, manager................................Darryl Sheen G auge........................................................ 35 mm 2nd asst director.................................Ian Kenny Location manager..........................................NeilMcCart Shooting stock ...................................... Eastman 3rd asst director................................. Don Keyte Unit manager............................................MichaelBatchelor Cast: Tom Burlinson (PC), Nicole Kidman GOOD MAN DOWN Continuity.............................................. ChristineLipari Prod, office runner...................................MelissaWiltshire (Jade), Bud Tingwell (Simpson Senior), Jill Producer’s assistant...................................... Joy Souter (Formerly Birdsville) Prod, accountant......................... Jim Hajicosta Perryman (Miss Dodge).

Camera operator...........................................John Haddy Prod, company........... PBL Productions Pty Ltd Secretary..............................................Helen Ritt Synopsis: Making Waves is a fast-moving Focus puller.................................................DavidStevens Producer....................................................... BrianRosen 1st asst director..........................................StuartFreeman contemporary comedy/romance about two Clapper/loader...................................Lee Parker Director........................................................... CarlSchultz 2nd asst director....................................

Stephen Saks people whose lifestyles are as different as Trainee..................................................... MagnusMansie Scriptwriter............................................ ...RobertWales 3rd asst director...............................................IanFreeman night and day. A celebration of wind, waves Key grip........................................................DavidCassar Additional dialogue........................................BobEllis Continuity..................................................... Judy Whitehead and love. A movie of music and action, Asst grips..................................................MarcusMcLeod, Photography................................................ DeanSemler Assistant to the producer...............................KikiDimsey including all the colour and excitement of Ian (Jo) Jury Sound recordist...........................................PeterBarker Casting..........................................................

Greg Apps windsurfing’s most spectacular activity — Special fx Editor..............................Richard Francis-Bruce Focus puller................................................ HarryGlynatsls wave-jumping. photography.................Visual Effects Pty Ltd Prod, designer..........................................GeorgeLiddle Clapper/loader............................................. GregHarrington Gaffer............................................................ColinWilliams Composer.....................................................ChrisNeal Key grip........................................................ GregWallace Tracking vehicle operator............Brian Bosisto MY COUNTRY Prod, co-ordinator.................................ElizabethSymes 2nd grip.................................................... RichardAllardlse Electrician..................................... Guy Hancock Prod, manager............................ Carol Hughes Prod, company..............Warhead Films Pty Ltd Gaffer............................................ Ian Dewhurst Gene operator.........................Steven Bickerton Sydney location manager...........Maude Heath Producers..................................................

AngusCaffrey, Boom operator............................................ GrantStuartUnit manager............................................... ChrisJonesElectrician..................................................... NickPayne AMKayn Boom operator....................................... StephenHaggerty Trainee....................................................JenniferHorton Bourke location m anager............. Bevan Childs Director.......................................................

Angus Caffrey Art dept m anager............................ Robert Leo Asst art director...........................................DavidO’Grady Prod, secretary........................................... Rosie Rosen Scriptwriters...............................................AngusCaffrey, Costume designer........................... Terry Ryan Make-up supervisor.................................... FionaCampbell A M Kayn Prod, accountant..........Moneypenny Services, Make-up........................................................Joan Hills Make-up assistant....................................... AnnaKapinski Alan Marco Based on the original idea Hairdresser.................................................... PaulPattison Hairdresser.................................................. DarylPorter Accounts assistant.................. Nicola Rowntree by.............................................................Angus Caffrey Wardrobe supervisor............................... Jam es Watson Make-up bus driver....................................KelvynO’Brien 1st asst director.................. Charles Rotherham Photography...................................................RayBoseley Head cutter................................................ SherylPilkinton Wardrobe supervisor..................................Jenny Arnott 2nd asst director......................................MichaelFaranda Sound recordist.................................... PeterFalk Cutter/machinist...........................................KateWilson Ward, co-ordinator..........................................VivWilson 3rd asst director...........................................Jane Griffin Editor......................................Clayton Jacobson Standby wardrobe.................................. LucindaMcGuigan Ward, assistant.......................................MichelleLeonard Composer...............................................StephenBates Continuity................................................. Pamela WillisProps buyer...................................Phillip Eagles Standby wardrobe...................................FrankieHogan Assoc, producer........................................... CamLappin Casting................................................... Forcast, Standby props..............................................John Stabb Props co-ordinator........................................ KrysPorter Michael Lynch Prod, m anager................................................. AMKayn Set dresser.......................................................Jill Eden Props buyer................................................StuartMenzies Extras casting................................................ Sue Parker Unit m anager...................................................

AMKayn Carpenter..................................................... PeterHern Standby props.............................................. ChrisJam es Casting consultants...............................Forcast 1st asst director............................................. PaulCaffrey Construction m anager............................... GerryPowderly Art dept runner..............................................Ross Newman Camera operator......................................... DavidWilliamson 2nd unit director.............................................

Ray Boseley Stunt co-ordinator........................................ GlenBoswell Special effects.................Visual Effects Pty Ltd Focus puller............................................. RichardMerryman Casting...............................................John Flaus Still photography.....................................VladimirOsherov Fx co-ordinator.............................................BrianPearce Lighting cameraman.....................................

Ray Boseley Clapper/loader..............................Anna Howard Wrangler.......................................................John Baird Fx assistan ts......................... Jamie Thompson, Camera operator............................................ RayBoseley Key grip......................................................... MervMcLaughlin Best boy.......................................................... LexMartin Peter Stubbs, Focus puller................................................Jo Bell Grip.................................................................. PatNashRunner........................................Michael Rumpf Geoff Little, Clapper/loader........................................... Jo Bell Asst grip.................................................... BrysonDavisCatering......................................Wolfgang Graf Steve Pearce, Camera assistant...................................... Jo Bell Gaffer............................................................ John Morton Studios..............................

HSV Channel Seven Peter Armstrong Key grip.................................................... MichaelRoof Electrician...............................

Tex Foote Nurse........................................................ VictoriaSullivan Set decorators............................................. PeterKendall, Asst grip..........................................Paul Caffrey Art director............................................... AndrewBlaxland Laboratory...............................................Cinevex Barry Kennedy Electrician................................................Andrew Murphy Design assistan ts...................................... DebraOverton, Lab. liaison..................................................BruceBraun Scenic artist...................................................KateJoyce Boom operator............................................ DerekNewman David Bell Budget........................................................... $3.3 million Painter................................................. Alan Sims Art directors.....................................................Ian Cameron Art dept co-ordinator.................Wendy Huxford Length.............................................................120minutes Set construction......................................... BruceMichell, Chris Hubbard Costume designer...................................GeorgeLiddle G auge............................... 35 mm anamorphic Ron Michell, Wardrobe................................. Shelley Simpson Make-up/hairdresser......Lesley Lamont-Fisher Shooting stock............................. Eastmancolor Mai Punton, Neg. matching................................

Ursula Jung Make-up/ Cast: Colin Friels (Somers), Judy Davis Murray Wilson Musical director......................................StephenBates hairdresser a sst................................ ElizabethFardon (Harriet), John Walton (Jack), Julie Nihill Asst editor.................................. Gary Woodyard Sound editor...................................................Ray Boseley Wardrobe supervisor..................................AnnaWade, (Vicki), Hugh Keays-Byrne (Kangaroo), Peter Stunts co-ordinator...................Chris Anderson Narrators.........................................John Flaus, Utopia Road Hehlr (Jaz), Gerard Kennedy (Struthers).

Stunts........................... New Generation Stunts Richard Hutson Standby wardrobe........................................ Julie Middleton Synopsis: Richard and Harriet Somers leave Safety supervisor........................... Peter Culpan Still photography.................................AMKayn, Ward, assistant........................................ AndreaHoodexhausted post-war Europe for a new and freer Still photography............................ Greg Noakes Cam Lappin Props................................................................IanAllenworld. In Australia they meet and become Transport co-ordinator...........Campbell Burdon Catering..............................The Director’s Mum Props buyer.................................................. PeterForbes involved with Kangaroo, the awesome leader of Mechanic..........................................................BillHellerStandby props......................................... MichaelTolerton Budget..................................................$336,000 a political group called the Diggers. The Best boy............................................Greg Wilson Length................................................80 minutes Asst standby props..................................... :..LenJuddconsequences are disastrous. Based on the Runner............................................................RickLewisSpecial effects.............................................Steve Courtney Gauge........................................................ 16 mm novel by D.H. Lawrence,in which Lawrence Nurse................................. Rosemary Rogerson Shooting stock................................ Kodak 7291 Special effects a sst.................................. MarcusGardiner explores his political past and the sources of Catering..................................... Richard Roques Cast: John Flaus (Danby, Danby, Danby and Set decorator................................................BrianEdmonds power in individuals, marriage and society as a Mixed at.............................................. Soundfirm Danby), Susanna Lobez (Angela Jeffries), Scenic artists....................................................IanRichter, whole.

Budget.............................................. $6.6 million Frank Percy (Milton Stephenson), Richard Peter Colllas Length............................................................. 100minutes Hutson (Edmund Montague), Susue Arnold Signwriter................................... John Haratzls MAKING WAVES G auge........................................................ 35 mm (Marjorie Allsop), Don Munro (Grandad), Denzil Carpenters..................................Brenton Grear, Shooting stock.................................Kodak ECN (Formerly Wind Rider) Howsen (Governor-General), David Grey Alan Good, Cast: Jon Blake (Dave), Mark Hembrow (Clerk of Courts), John Howard (David John Kingston, Prod, company.........................Barron Films Ltd (Peter), Nikki Coghill (Jill), Terry Donovan Silverman), Andrew Bone (Christopher Karl Brunken, Dist. company...........................Barron Films Ltd (Bangles), Warwick Sims (Martin), Gerard Columbus), Lee Harding (The Surgeon).

Kevin Kilday, Producer.......................................... Paul Barron Kennedy (Big Jim), Toni Lamond (Mum), Bill Synopsis: The true story of the discovery of Geoff Stacker, Director....................................................... VinceMonton Kerr (Gilman), Barry Hill (Sir Julian), Patrick Australia. Sort of.

Alan Brown, Scriptwriters.......................... Everett De Roche, Ward (Mulcahy), Perer Whitford (Terry).

Bob Paton, Bonnie Harris Synopsis: An action/thriller/comedy.

Denis Donelly, THE RIGHT HAND MAN Photography...................................................Joe Pickering Gerald Marr, Sound recordist................................Mark Lewis Prod, company....................................YarramanFilms David Young, Editor.................................................John Scott Dist. com panies......................................... GUO, THE FRINGE DWELLERS Errol Glassenbury Composer..........................................Kevin Peak New World Pictures Set construction.............Johm Moore (Sydney), Exec, producer................................Paul Barron Prod, company.......................... Fringe Dwellers Producers................................... Steven Grives, Wayne Allen (Bourke) Assoc, producer........................................BonnieHarris Productions Pty Ltd Tom Oliver, Painters......................................Martin Bruveris, Prod, supervisor........................................... TerriVincent Producer......................................... Sue Milliken Basil Appleby Gus Lobb, Prod, co-ordinators....................................LesleyThomson, Director......................................Bruce Beresford Director................................................... Di Drew Tony Piliotis Roz Berrystone Scriptwriter............................... Bruce Beresford Scriptwriter.............................. Helen Hodgman Unit manager.............................................. Susie Campbell Based on the novel by.................................NeneGareAsst editor...................................... Louise Innes Story developed b y.................................. Steven Grives Sound editor......................................Tim Jordan Prod, accountants................................... RichardGoldsmith, Photography................................................... DonMcAlpine Based on the novel b y............Katherine Peyton Editing assistant............................Lisa Harrison Eric Sankey Sound recordist............................. Max Bowring Photography................................................ PeterJam es Fight co-ordinator....................... Glenn Boswell 1st asst director............................. Steve Jodrell Editor..............................................Tim Wellburn Sound recordist..............................................SydButterwo Still photography.........................Carolyn Johns 2nd asst director...............................Alex Dixon Prod, designer..........................................HerbertPinter Editor............................................Don Saunders 3rd asst director.......................................... PeterArmstrong Exec, producer........................................ DamienNolanNurse.....................................Jacqule Robertson Composer.........................................Allan Zavod Animal consultant..........................Heath Harris Continuity.....................................................ChrisO’Connell Prod, co-ordinator...............................RosemaryProbyn Prod, designer................................. Neil Angwin Horse m aster........................ Allen Fitzsimmons Casting..................................................... MichaelLynchProd, manager............................. Renate Wilson Prod, m anager............................... Helen Watts Best boy.......................................Allan Dunstan 2nd unit photography......... George Greenough Unit manager................................. Phil Urquhart Unit manager.........................................RoxanneDelbarre Runners.......................Alison McClymont (unit), Focus puller............................................... LaurieKorkwood Director’s asst...........................Katherine Shaw Location m anager..................... Lawrence Ryan Daniel Morphett (construction) Clapper/loader................................ MarkZagar Prod, accountant........................................ AnneGalt, Asst unit manager.........................................NickAlimede Unit publicist.................................... Annie Page 2nd unit cam era.........................................SimonAkkerman Moneypenny Services Prod, secretary........................................... Paula Bennett Catering.....................................Fillum Catering, Key grip.........................................................KarelAkkerman Prod, accountant.....................Elaine Crowther Prod, assistant runner.......... Sandy Hoffensetz Marike Janavicius Asst grip........................................... David Cross Accounts assistant............... Fiona McConaghy 1st asst director.............................Mark Egerton Mixed at............................................... Soundfirm Special fx 1st asst director.....................................Phil Rich 2nd asst director......... Carolynne Cunningham Laboratory............................................. Colorfilm photography..................Ron & Valerie Taylor 2nd asst director.................................... Stephen Elliott Continuity.......................................... Jo Weeks Lab. liaison......................./..Richard Piorkowski Gaffer............................................. Geoff Maine 3cd asst director........................................... TobyPease Extras casting................................................KateIngham Budget.............................................. $4.3 million Boom operator......................... Jack Friedman 4th asst director..................................Grant Lee Focus puller...................................Warwick Field Art director................................ Phil Monaghan Continuity......................................................NickiMoors Clapper/loader.............................................ChrisCole Length.............................................100 minutes Gauge........................................................ 35 mm Asst art director.............................................. PhilPetersProducer’s secretary................................DebbieLipton Key grip.......................................... Phil Shapiera Shooting stock......................................

Eastman Art dept assistant........................................Heinz Boeck Casting............................................................. LizMullinar Asst grip................................................... MitchellLogan Cast: Paul Goddard (Harry), Kathryn Walker Costume designer........................... Noel Howell Camera operator.......................................DannyBatterham Gaffer........................................................ RobbieYoung (Lily), John Wood (Bluey), Paul Chubb (Don Make-up....................................

Liddy Reynolds Focus puller.............................................AndrewMcLean Boom operator.................................. Eric Briggs McKenzie), Lynette Curran (Dora McKenzie), Hairdresser...............................Liddy Reynolds Camera equipment ..Samuelsons Film Service, Art director......................................Stewart Way Bruce Spence (Purdy), David Slingsby Wardrobe....................................... Noel Howell, Peter Backhouse Make-up..........................................Viv Mepham Denise Napier Key grip.........................................................Ross Erickson Asst make-up........................................ GeorginaBush(Spence).

Synopsis: The story of Harry Walford, an Props buyer.............................. Trevor Kerslake Asst grips.......................................Geoffrey Full, Wardrobe.......................................................KerriBarnett unlikely hero who overcomes hardship, Asst set dresser........................ Michelle French David Nichols Ward, assistant...........................................JudithParker emerges triumphant and, in the process, Construction m anager............ David Boardman Gaffer............................................................ MickMorris Props buyer.................................................HelenMacaskill pioneers the overland stock route from Construction engineer.............Matthew Nelson Electricians...............-rrrr..............

Peter Clarson, Standby props........................................... LouiseCarrigan Carpenters.................................Mike Wilkinson, _ DavidScandol Carpenter.............................

DaveThomson southern Queensland to Adelaide.

48 — March CINEMA PAPERS

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Production Survey continued

Boom operator....................................... Sue Kerr Camera operator.................................. Paul Cox the secret causes disintegration, shatters the Cast: Debra Lawrence, Richard Healy, Robert Art director....................................................... NicHepworth Camera assistant.....................Brendan Lavelle system of relationships and poses frightening Morgan, Tanya Uren, Jon Sidney, Margaret Art dept runner............................................AdamSpencer Key grip........... t....................... Paul Ammitzboll questions for the future. It is hard-edged drama Steven.

Costume designer.................................. GrahamPurcell Costume designer......................................Jenny Tate based firmly in fact, but its thrust is positive and Synopsis: David and Angela Burke are Make-up......................................Josy Knowland Mixed a t ................................................... HendonStudios it allows a safe conduct zone on the far side of infertile. The film follows their story as they Hairdresser................... Jan Zeigenbein (Ziggy) Laboratory...............................................Cinevex the minefield. Its aim is to raise awareness of progress to using in vitro fertilization.

Wardrobe dept.....................Utopia Productions Gauge................................................................35 mm incest in the community, and to show that the Wardrobe assistan t.......................Peter Bevan Shooting stock............................................... Fuji result of breaking the silence surrounding it YOUNG EINSTEIN Wardrobe standby..................Louise Wakefield Synopsis: A film about the life and work of can be positive rather than a continuing Prod, company............. Einstein Entertainment Costume maker................................Anna Wade Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). victimization of the child.

Pty Ltd Props buyer................................................. TerryStanton Dist. company.................................. Film Accord Standby props.................................. Harry Zettel WAR BRIDES DESIDERIUS ORBAN Corporation (L.A.) Special effects.......................................... Mirage (Working title) Prod, company.......... Tony Wilson Productions Producers................................. Yahoo Serious, Set decorator................................. Annette Reid Producers................................................LucindaStrauss, David Roach Prod, company............................. Juniper Films Scenic artist....................................Billi Malcolm Tony Wilson, Line producer............................. Warwick Ross Dist. company............................ Juniper Films Carpenters..................................... Paul McKey, Director........................................... Tony Wilson Director.......................................Yahoo Serious Producer.....................................John Tristram Robyn Hartley, Photography..................................

Tony Wilson Scriptwriters..............................

Yahoo Serious, Director....................................... Jam es Wilson Jam es Gannon Sound recordist..............................Leo Sullivan David Roach Scriptwriter................................ John Tristram Set construction manager......Ken Hazelwood Length...............................................................50 minutes Photography.............................. Garry Maunder Asst editor............................................ Stephanie FlackBased on the original idea by.....Yahoo Serious Gauge................................................................ 16mm Photography................................................... Jeff Darling Sound recordist........................... Ralph Steele Stunts co-ordinator................................... BernieLedger Synopsis: War Brides is the story of some of Sound recordist................................. Geoff Grist Editor............................................Jam es Wilson Stunts.............................................................GlenBoswell, the 15,000 Australian women who married Editor.......................................... Peter Whitmore Prod, manager................... Janette Greenwood Richard Boue American servicemen during World War I Music co-ordinator..................... Cameron Allan Prod, accountant.............................. Martin Ellis Stand in stunt/doubles..............................RobertSimper, Exiles by choice, the majority left Australia in Exec, producer...............................................RayBeattie Still photography........................ Gordon Clarke Rick Anderson the US Army’s massive manoeuvre called Prod, manager................... ......Antonia Barnard Laboratory............................................ Colorfilm Stunt safety officer................................... ClaudeLambert ‘Operation Brideship’ to join their sweethearts Unit manager.....................................

Tic Carroll Lab. liaison................................. Brian Geraghty Still photography.............................................Jim Townley on the other side of the world. Forty years later, Prod, secretary..........................Sue Pemberton Length................................................50 minutes Horse master................................Graham Ware they talk about their experiences.

Prod, accountant............................................

Lea Collins Gauge........................................................16 mm Wranglers.................................................... ChrisHartwig, Prod, assistant............. Rosemary Stephenson Shooting stock..............................................ECN . Les Ash, 1st asst director........................................... KeithHeygate WITCH HUNT Cast: Desiderius Orban, Lloyd Rees, Judy Robert Watchirs, 2nd asst director................ Murray Robertson Cassab.

Mandy Beaumont, Prod, company............ Documentary Films Ltd 3rd asst director.............................................P.J. Voeten Synopsis: A reflection on 101 years.

Tracy Porter Producers................................................ DamienParer, Continuity....................................................... Jan Newland Animal co-ordinator.......................... Dale Aspin Barbara A. Chobocky Creative asst to the director............Lulu Pinkus LIFE IN SPACE Unit safety officer.........................................ChrisHession Director.............................Barbara A. Chobocky Casting consultants...............................Forcast, Action vehicle Editor................................................................ LizStroud Prod, company..........Independent Productions Michael Lynch co-ordinator.........................Mike Hendrikson 1st asst director............................................... LizStroud Dist. company............Independent Distributors Camera operator........................................... Jeff Darling Runner......................................................... Paula Bennett Length................................................ 90 minutes Producer............................................. Peter Butt Focus puller.................................................. GaryPhillips Publicity............................................Liz Johnson Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Director............................................... Peter Butt Clapper/loader.................................. Susie Stitt Catering....................................................Mai Kai Shooting stock..............................................ECN Exec, producer.......................................

Graham Ford Key grip................................................... BrendanShanley Transport manager.........................Ralph Clark Cast: George Donikian.

Length...............................................................50minutes Gaffer............................................................ RickMcMullen Insurance................................ Tolley & Gardner, Synopsis: Witch Hunt is a story of trial and Syn op sis: The originof life and the Boom operator........................................ StephenHenley Valerie Baker error, innocence and guilt. It was an attempt to controversial suggestion that life did not begin Art directors......................................Steve Marr, Laboratory............................................. Colorfilm find a crime — the so-called “ Greek on earth but was seeded from the depths of Peter Harris Lab. liaison..........................Richard Piorkowski Conspiracy” , but it turned into a massive error space.

Costume designer........................... Mishi Watts Length............................................. 110 minutes in judgement that was revealed as a Costume co-ordinator............................... Susan Bowden G auge.......... ............................................. 35 mm conspiracy of a far larger order — a conspiracy Make-up.....................................................SherryHubbardMAKE WAY FOR THE MACHINE against members of the Greek community.

Shooting stock........................................... Kodak Hairdresser................................ Wendy de Waal Prod, company..........Independent Productions Cast: Rupert Everett (Harry), Hugo Weaving Ward, assistan ts..............................Mel Dykes, Dist. company............Independent Distributors (Ned), Arthur Dignam, Jennifer Claire, Caroline Weight Producer............................................. Peter Butt Catherine McClements (Sarah).

Props buyer.....................................................Joy Thompson Director................................................Peter Butt Synopsis: Ned Rowlands is the driver of Cobb Standby props............................................

AlisonGoodwin Exec, producer.......................................GrahamFord & Co's seventy seat passenger coach, The SH O R TS Choreography.................................

Aku Kadogo Length...............................................................50minutes Leviathan. His skills attract the attention of Set construction...................................... MarcusErasmus Synopsis: Investigates the effect of new Lord Ironminster’s son, Harry, who before an Asst editor.............................Michael Beauman technology on work and leisure in capitalist accident was considered the best dragsman in Still photography..............................Vivian Zink society.

EPHEMERAL DESIRE the country. Harry is determined to race his rig Wrangler.........................................................

Ray Winslade to set a new record and needs Ned’s help. Ned Prod, company...........................Hexagon Films Best boy..................................................... ShaunConway A MEETING OF MINDS agrees, and finds himself involved in a Producers...........................

Pantelis Roussakis, Publicity.................. The Rea Francis Company relationship which is more than a mere race Kevin Shanely Prod, company.............Ministry of Education— Unit publicist.................................... Jan Batten against time.

Director................................ Pantelis Roussakis Curriculum Branch Catering....................................................... Feast Catering Scriptwriter..........................Pantelis Roussakis Dist. company..............Ministry of Education — Laboratory....................................................Atlab Photography........................................ Colin Kerr Curriculum Branch THE SURFER Lab. liaison............................Bruce Williamson Sound/Music..............................

Rohan Walker Producer.............................................

Ivan Gaal Budget............................ ..................$2.2 million Prod, company........................... Night Flight Ltd Laboratory........................Cine Film Laboratory Director................................................Ivan Gaal Length...............................................90 minutes in association with Length...............................................................

22minutes Scriptwriter..............................Arthur Thompson G auge........................................................35 mm Producers’ Circle Gauge........................................................16 mm Photography................................................. John Ruane Shooting stock...........................................Kodak Producer............................... Jam es M. Vernon Shooting stock......................................

Eastman 7291 Sound recordist...........................

David Hughes Cast: Yahoo Serious (Albert Einstein), Odile le Director....................................................... FrankShields Synopsis: A mystical phenomenon interlaced Editor................................................... Ivan Gaal Clezio (Marie Curie), John Howard (Preston Scriptwriter.................................................. DavidMarsh with drugs, eroticism and a grotesque twist of Composer....................................Laurie Balmet Preston), Pee Wee Wilson (Mr Einstein), Sue Photography....................................Mike Edols some well known fables, set against a hot Exec, producer...........................W.O. Thomas Cruikshank (Mrs Einstein), Sound recordist............................................. MaxBowring summer evening in Sydney.

Assoc, producer......................... Helen Redden Synopsis: The incredible, untold story of a Editor.....................................................Greg Bell Prod, manager............................Rob McCubbin 26-year-old apple farmer and genius from Prod, co-ordinator............................Gay Dunlop Music performed b y ................... Laurie Balmet JUSTRA Tasmania. In 1905 he discovered relativity . . .

Prod, manager..................................Penny Wall Sound editor................................David Hughes in 1906 he invented rock ’n’ roll.

Prod, company.....................Justra Productions Unit manager............................... Grant Neilson Editing assistants....................... Mark McAuliff, Producer...................................................... DanaRayson Location m anager...................................CharlesCarbone Tony Paice Director.......................................................... Je ss Tapper 1st asst director............................................John Warren Laboratory......................................................VFL Scriptwriters..................... Jennifer Hutchinson, 2nd asst director..........................Peter Kearney Length...............................................................25 minutes D O C UM EN TAR IES Je s s Tapper, Continuity............................................ Stephanie Richards Gauge........................................................16 mm Peter Millyn Focus puller..................................................John Ogden Shooting stock............................ Eastman Color Photography..............................................Lyndal Murray Clapper/loader............................................Paula South Synopsis: The film follows the involvement Sound recordist.........................................MirellaRigoli Key grip..................................................... MurrayHead CASS’S STORY and progress of four students with various Editor...........................................................Daniel Coburn Gaffer................................................ Ken Moffat backgrounds and interests with their Prod, company........................ Tasmanian Film Composer...............................................Rod Lee Boom operator................................. Eric Briggs prospective mentors.

Corporation Pty Ltd Location manager........................................TrudiHouston Art director.................................................. MartinO’Neil Producer.................................................. DamianBrown 1st asst director......................... Heidi Kenessey Art dept runner..........................................Jam es WyngDirector.................................................... DamianBrown SOMETHING OF THE TIMES Continuity.........................................................LizCotter Make-up.......................................................AnnieHeathcote Scriptwriter................................................MarionOrd Prod, company....................................AustralianInstitute Camera operators................Michelle Donovan, Wardrobe..................................... Fiona Nicholls Photographer............................................RussellGalloway of Aboriginal Studies Dan Byrne Standby props..............................................ColinGibson Sound recordist.......................................... JulianScottDist. company.....................................AustralianInstitute Key grip........................................................ John Griffin Asst editor................................................... DanielWiessner Editor.............................................................Ross Thompson of Aboriginal Studies Boom operator.............................................SavinChabo Stunts co-ordinator........................... Max Aspin Composer.............................................. ChristianWojtowicz Director........................................ Kim McKenzie Art director................................................Sabina Moore Rigger.......................................... David Thomas Exec, producer................................................IanShadbolt Photography............................... Kim McKenzie Still photography..................Nicola Delimihalis Still photography............................. Pierre Vinet Assoc, producer......................................... RobinLevinson Sound recordist...........................

Kim McKenzie Catering........................................................GhitaPreston Safety officer..................................................KenMcLeod Prod, secretary...................... CarmelJohnson Editor............................................Kim McKenzie Laboratory..............................................Cinefilm Unit publicist.....................................Ken Doyle 1st asst director.................................. John Wild Music composed and Length............................................................... 20 minutes Catering.......................................................... Jan Drummond 2nd asst director.......................................WendyRimon performed b y .................... Cathie O’Sullivan, Gauge..................................................... 16 mm Length............................................... 90 minutes Location manager.......................................... KrisKozlovic Chris Sullivan Shooting stock..............................................Agfa Cast: Gary Day (Sam), Gosia Dobrowolska Continuity.................................................. ShirleyBallard Neg. cutting..............Negative Cutting Services Cast: Felicity Robinson (Julie), Bruce Leyland (Gina), Tony Barry (Calhoun), Rod Mullinar Casting consultant........................................ Jon Stephens Mixer..............................................United Sound (Ray), Lucy Clifford (Stella), Eileen Driver (Hagen), Gerard Maguire (Jack), Kris Camera assistant....................................... AdamKropinski Opticals........................................Acme Opticals (Shopkeeper), Rowan Woods (Bible basher), McQuade (Trish), David Glendinning (Murph), Key grip.........................................................GaryClements Laboratory................................................... Atlab Robert Jones (Ticket seller).

Steven Leeder (Slaney).

Asst grip........................................................MarkTomlinson Length...............................................................45minutes Synopsis: A film sonnet about Julie, Stella and Boom operator................................Perry Dwyer Gauge........................................................16 mm Ray, who need each other despite not having WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE Art director...................................... Jon Bowling Synopsis: This film examines some of the met, and are unlikely to, but for synchronistic Make-up................................... Margaret Pierce, Prod, company..................... M.W. Productions remaining traces and memories of the buffalo flows.

Isobel Fowler Producers..................................... Alan Madden, shooting camps of the Northern Territory Jillian Wood Wardrobe.................................................... KarenWeldrick before WWII. White shooters relied upon local NIGHTFIND Props buyer.............................................Kay Alty Director.......................................... Alan Madden Aboriginal labor and the lives of certain Prod, company........................... Odyssey Films Standby props..............................................PeterCassAboriginals came to revolve around the buffalo Scriptwriter.....................................Alan Madden Producers.................................................. StevenJaconson, Still photography.................................... Jacquie Gardner Photography......................................John Lord industry.

Marcus Corn Runner............................................. Colin Grubb Sound recordist.................................Jack Healy Director..................................................... StevenJacobson Length..............................................52 minutes Editor.............................................. Alan Madden VINCENT, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF Scriptwriter................................................Steven Jacobson G au g e......................................................... Video Composer..........................................ChristopherGordon VINCENT VAN GOGH Based on the original idea Cast: Shanti Gudgeon (Cass), Lyndel Rowe Prod, manager................................... ...ChristineSammers Prod, company.......................Illumination Films b y ........................................................... StevenJacobson (Ingrid Walker), Kit Taylor (Neal Walker), lain Continuity...........................................Peter Falk Producers.......................Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Photography.................................. Marcus Corn Lang (Steve McCarthy), Mary McMenamin Camera assistant..............................Mark Lane Will Davies Sound recordists................. .........Marcus Adler, (Melanie), Alicia Tucker (Karen Walker), Gaffer................................................ ChristopherGordon Director.................................................. Paul Cox Michael Siu Christopher Hamley (Robert Walker), Rebecca Sound editor..................................... ChristopherGordon Based on the original idea b y ..............Paul Cox Editors........................................................StevenJacobson, Cody (Joanne), Noreen Le Nottee (Kath Still photography.............................. Peter Falk Photography......................................

Yuri Sokol Marcus Corn Bartholomew), Libby Wherrett (Renate Paul).

Tech, adviser....................................Jillian Wood Prod, designer....................................Asher Bilu Composer........................................Peter Myers Synopsis: This is the story of a 13-year-old girl, Runner........................................ Trevor Quigley Exec, producer...............................David Toben Prod, supervisor..........................David Walpole one of the thousands of children in Australia Length................................................ 70 minutes Prod, accountant..................... Santhana Naidu 1st asst director....................... Kathy Chambers each year who are victims of incest. It is also G auge........................................................ 16 mm 1st asst director......................Brendan Lavelle Continuity.................. ....7..................Toby Thain the story of a family in crisis when disclosure of Shooting stock.................................. 7291,7294

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Production Survey continued Focus puller.................................................. MarkLaneSynopsis: A crippled man and his fanatically RUNNING FROM THE GHOST GETTING STRAIGHT Clapper/loader.............................. Matthew Corn religious sister live in a shack in the middle of a Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Key grip.............................................Peter Darby vast desert. The man dreams of leaving in a Dist. company................................................ FilmAustralia Dist. company................................................Film Australia Asst grip....................................................GideonWarhaft flying machine of his own invention. A comedy Producer.................................................... MacekRubetzki Exec, producer..............................................TomHaydon Gaffer..................................................... CameronWallace of the ironic.

Director...........................................

Nick Torrens Producer.................................................... MacekRubetzki Boom operator.............................. Stephen Ellis Photography..................................Andy Fraser Director................................... Phillip Robertson Art director.....................................David Jam es THE WEDDING Sound recordist............................Rod Simmons Photography...................................Tony Wilson Make-up.................................... Meagan Adams Prod, company............ Matrimonial Production Editor.............................................. Nick Torrens Sound recordist......................................BronwynMurphy Props..................................... Phillippa O’Collins Producer....................................................... ColinHarrisEditor.............................................................. RayThomas Prod, assistan ts.............................Gerry Letts, Special effects.............................. Rolland Pike Director.........................................................Colin Harris Ian Adkins Prod, assistant...................................

Ian Adkins Special make-up Scriptwriter...................................................ColinHarrisGauge........................................................16 mm Length................................................ 48 minutes effects................................Clayton Jacobson Laboratory......................................................VFL Gauge........................................................

16 mm Synopsis: One of the Real Life series, the film Set construction............................................NoelAbrecht Synopsis: A film set within the Chinese com­ follows a group of patients from a drug and Still photography............................................ BenLoweBudget.................................................... $38,000 Length...............................................................

30 minutes munity of Hong Kong.

Here, people know little alcohol treatment clinic during their last days in Dialogue coach..............................Peter Tulloch G auge........................................................16 mm of the romantic social life generated by British the clinic and the first few weeks of their return Best boy........................................................ChrisCorbett Shooting stock.........................

ECN 7291,7294 presence. The film is about two hawkers, a to the community as they struggle to cope with Runner......................................................... JenniCannon squatter and their families as they struggle to a world without drugs.

Publicity..........................................................NeilWardSynopsis: A comedy about a wedding that doesn’t quite go according to plan. make a home and living in the face of a wellCatering........................................ Val Jacobson, organized bureaucracy.

GROWING UP JEWISH IN Jill Corn AUSTRALIA Laboratory......................................................VFL Length................................................................15minutes Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia THE SCIENCE OF WINNING G auge........................................................ 16 mm Prod, company............................. Film Australia Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia Shooting stock................... Eastman 7291/7294 Dist. company.............................. Film Australia Exec, producer..............................................TomHaydon Cast: Steven Jacobson (Chris), Robert de Producer........................................... John Shaw Producer................................... Macek Rubetzki Rosario (Tom).

Director.................................. Don Featherstone Director.........................................................AvivaZiegler Synopsis: An alien spaceship is the last thing Scriptwriter............................ Don Featherstone Photography................................................ TonyWilson Chris expects to find in his backyard. Even Researcher.......................................Jon Ossher Sound recordist.............................................. LeoSullivan more unexpected are the exciting events which Photography.............................................AndrewFraser Editor............................................Wayne Le Clos follow. A fantasy adventure featuring a teenage Sound recordist..................... Rodney Simmons Producer’s assistant.......................... Ian Adkins FILM A U S TR A LIA boy's encounter with a vicious alien.

Editor........................................................ LindsayFraser Length...............................................................48minutes Unit manager....................................

Jon Ossher Gauge........................................................16 mm THE ROOM Producer’s assistant........................ Gerry Letts Synopsis: Personal film by Aviva Ziegler about AUSTRALIAN INNOVATION Camera assistant....................................... AntonGraham growing up Jewish in Australia.

Prod, company........................... Odyssey Films 2nd unit photography...................................John Hosking Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Producers.............................. Steven Jacobson, Gaffer......... .....................................Bruce Gailey Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia Marcus Corn HOMELESS Narrator..........................................................PaulRicketts Producer........................................................John Shaw Director......................................................StevenJacobson Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Length............................................................... 48minutes Director.............................................................IanMunro Scriptwriter................................................StevenJacobson Dist. company................................................Film Australia Gauge........................................................

16 mm Scriptwriter....................................................... IanMunro Based on the original idea Producer.................................................. ColleenClarke Shooting stock..............................................ECN Researcher..........................Con Anemogiannis b y ........................................................... StevenJacobson Director.........................................................AnnaWhyte Synopsis: Australian sporting achievement Sound recordist....................................... RodneySimmons Photography.................................. Marcus Corn Scriptwriter................................................... AnnaWhyte has declined dramatically since the golden age Unit manager...................... Con Anemogiannis Sound recordists.......................... Marcus Adler, Photography.............................................AndrewFraser of the sixties. The debacle at the Montreal Producer’s assistant................................... GerryLettsSound recordist...............................Howard Stry Ben Lowe Olympic Games prompted the government into Length............................................. 125 minutes Editors.................................... Steven Jacobson, Prod, manager............................................ NeneMorgan action and there are now many national and G auge........................................................16 mm Marcus Corn Lighting............................................................ IanBosman commercial sports science institutes. How Shooting stock..............................................ECN Com poser.................................................... PeterMyers Length...............................................................28 minutes effective are they? Are the commercial, Synopsis: A positive look at the achievements Prod, assistant............................. Jenni Cannon Gauge.................................................... Betacam scientific and national pressures too much for Continuity..................................................... TobyThainof Australian innovation, presenting an S y n o p sis: Four short videos for the an athlete? What are the ethics . . . is it still analysis of how it works, how it has worked and Focus puller............................... Anthony Wilson International Year of Shelter for the homeless. sport? where it and its contemporary counterpart, Clapper/loader.............................. Matthew Corn Camera assistant...................................... AdrianWardtechnology, should go.

SINGLES Key grip......................................... Steve Pawley INTERIOR RESTORATION AND Asst grips...................................... Noel Abrecht, BENNALONG’S HAVEN DECORATION Prod, company..............................Film Australia Scott McLure Dist. company...............................Film Australia Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Gaffer..................................... Cameron Wallace Producers................................ Macek Rubetzki, Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia Electrician................................. Gideon Warhaft Ian Adkins Producer.......... ,.................................John Shaw Producer................................................

Elisabeth Knight Wardrobe..................................... Sarah Lazzari Director............................................ Karl McPhee Director.................................Jam es Richardson Director............................................... Keith Gow Props buyer...................................................LeonBainaPhotography....................................Kerry Brown Photography...................................

Tony Wilson Scriptwriters.......................................Keith Gow, Special effects......................................... RollandPike Sound recordist....................... Bronwyn Murphy Sound recordist.............................. Leo Sullivan Elisabeth Knight Still photography......................................... ChrisLazzari Editor...........................................

Lindsay Fraser Editor.........................................................MarthaBabineau Photography................................................KerryBrown Tech, adviser..............................John Jacobson Length................................................ 90 minutes Prod, manager............................................ NeneMorgan Sound recordist...................... Rodney Simmons Best boy.........................................................NickTowler Gauge........................................................16 mm Length............................................................... 75minutes Editor...................................................Keith Gow Publicity...............................................Neil Ward Synopsis: One of the Real Life series, the film Gauge........................................................16 mm Prod, assistant........................ Virginia Pridham Catering...................................... Val Jacobson, is a foray into the world of the unattached.

Synopsis: Observational film about the Length................................................15 minutes Jill Corn Charles is recently divorced and struggling to journey through the rehabilitation process of Gauge........................................................16 mm Length......................................

25minutesalcoholic Aboriginals at Bennalong’s Haven. get his life together. He is in love and trying to Synopsis: This is the sixth in the Australian Gauge............................................... Super 8 mm establish a relationship. At the sam e time, a Heritage Commission's series, Artisans of Shooting stock................................Kodachrome40, small group of women vie for his attention.

Australia. It shows the work of Christine Cooke BETTER RICH THAN RED Ektachrome SM 7244 and Elizabeth Stevens who work in Melbourne.

Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Cast: Rachel Friend (Melissa), Adele Hakin SOLID PLASTERING They demonstrate marbling, woodgraining, Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia (Carol), Natalie Lewenberg (Jenny), Chris gilding, tortoiseshell, porphyry, stencilling and Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Exec, producer............................................. TomHaydon Ward (Matt). some investigation work on the walls of Villa Dist. company................................................Film Australia Producer.................................................... MacekRubetzki Synopsis: At first, The Room seemed just like Alba, an unrestored and unoccupied building Producer................................................ ElisabethKnight Director............................................ Curtis Levy any other. But ,to four children left alone in the in Studley Park, Melbourne.

Director...............................................

Keith Gow Photography...................................Andy Fraser house one night, it would become a nightmare Scriptwriters........................... Elisabeth Knight, Sound recordist............................................. RodSimmons — something beyond their comprehension. A KIDS IN TROUBLE Keith Gow Editor..............................................................TomLitchfield special kind of fantasy drama.

Photography....................................Kerry Brown Producer’s assistants..................... Gerry Letts, Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Sound recordist......................Rodney Simmons Ian Adkins Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia SHARKY’S PARTY Editor.................. .................................Keith Gow Length............................................. 48 minutes Producer....................................................MacekRubetzki Prod, company.................. Lawless Enterprises Prod, assistant.........................Virginia Pridham Gauge........................................................16 mm Director...........................................................Sue Cornwall Producer...................................................... PeterLawless Length................................................13 minutes Synopsis: A film about the top stratum of Photography.................................. Tony Wilson Director.....................................Greg Woodland Gauge....................................................... 16 mm commercial and social life in Hong Kong. It Sound recordist..............................Leo Sullivan Scriptwriter............................... Greg Woodland Synopsis: This is the fifth in the Australian centres around the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Editor............................................................... LesMcLaren Photography................................................Steve Dobson Heritage Commission’s series, Artisans of Club, observes the values which once made Prod, assistant................................... Ian Adkins Budget.....................................................$70,000 Australia. It shows the work of Larry Harrigan, Britain a great colonial power, the clubs, the Length...............................................90 minutes Length............................................................... 30minutes a third generation solid plasterer. He has been Taipans, the servants and the good life. Yet, for Gauge........................................................16 mm G auge........................................................ 16 mm working on the exterior of the Collingwood this world, the days are now numbered.

Synopsis: One of the Real Life series, the film Synopsis: Sharky’s social style is lacking, but Town Hall in Melbourne for the past seven is about the criminal justice system and its his luck shines at a party where men are ockers years and has almost finished the massive treatment of juvenile offenders. The film DEMOCRACY and women demand more. restoration job. He demonstrates the various includes, for the first time, footage shot in the Prod, company..............................Film Australia kinds of plastering including running moulds, Australian court while cases are being heard.

Dist. company...............................Film Australia making an urn, casting a baluster.

SPIRITS Exec, producer............................................. TomHaydon Prod, company.......................... Meaningful Eye LOOKING AFTER YOURSELF Producer................................... Macek Rubetzki ULURU — AN ANANGU STORY Contact Pty Ltd Director....................................... Graham Chase Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia (with assistance from the Creative Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Photography................................................ TonyWilson Dist. company................................................Film Australia Development Branch of the Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia Sound recordist...............................Leo Sullivan Producer...................................Elisabeth Knight Australian Film Commission) Editor.........................................Graham Chase Director......................................................... KeithGowProducer......................................................... DonMurray Producer.............................................. AlexanderProyas Gauge........................................................16 mm Scriptwriters................................................. KeithGow,Director........................................................ DavidRoberts Director............................................... AlexanderProyas Scriptwriter................................................. DavidRoberts Synopsis: One of the Real Life series, the film Elisabeth Knight Scriptwriters........................ Alexander Proyas, Photography.................................................TonyGailey follows a political candidate in a marginal seat Producer’s assistant...............................VirginiaPridham Peter Smalley Sound recordists.......................................... MaxHennser, through the seven weeks of the campaign to Narrator................................. ........... Katrina Lee Based on the original idea Rob Stalder the numbers coming in and the gathering of Length...............................................20 minutes by...................................................... AlexanderProyas Editor.............................................................. RayThomas the faithful for the election night party.

Synopsis: Mature Onset Diabetes is very Photography................................................ DavidKnaus Producer’s assistant....................................Trish DeHeer common among older people. This film shows Soundrecordist........................................... PeterMiller 2nd unit photography..............................AndrewFraser older people how they can manage their DOCTORS Editor............................................................CraigWood Asst camera......................................Mandy King diabetes by proper diet, exercise, care of the Com poser.................................................... PeterMillerProd, company.............................. Film Australia Length...............................................................50 minutes feet, and consultation with their dieticians and Dist. company............................... Film Australia Prod, accountant................ G & S Management G auge.....................................16 mm, videotape doctors.

Exec, producer..............................................TomHaydon Services Scheduled release................................February1986 Producer.................................... Macek Rubetzki Art director................................................... Sean Callinan Synopsis: Uluru — An Anangu Story is a NEWS Director......................................................... TonyWheeler Costume designer.................................. CarmenDirigible unique portrayal of Australian history. Rarely if Photography...................................

Steve Mason Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Choreography............................Tony Carmona ever before has the opportunity been available Music performed b y.................................... PeterMillerSound recordist.............................................MaxHenser Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia to present the entire history of an area, from Producer.................................................... MacekRubetzki Sound editor................................................ CraigWoodEditor.............................................................. Sue Horsley the times before the white man to the present Director....................................... Graham Chase Mixer............................................................. PeterMillerProd, assistants........................ Clare Edwards, day through the perspective of Aboriginals Rosalind Gillespie Sound recordist..................................Bob Hayes Still photography.................................... “ Fuzzy” Night whose lives have spanned such a period. The Length............................................................... 90minutes Editor.......................................................GrahamChase Animation..............................Catherine Linsley program is set against the backdrop of Uluru G auge........................................................ 16 mm Camera assistant............................................Jim Ward(Ayers Rock) and is a personal, human story.

Tech, adviser................................................. AlanStewart Synopsis: One of the Real Life series, the film Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Publicity............................................F. Ferguson follows Dr Bruce Shepherd through the Synopsis: One of the Real Life series, the film Laboratory.............................................. Cinefilm THE VISIT aftermath of the Medicare dispute. Shepherd is is an inside story of life at The Sydney Morning Budget..................................................... $73,000 Prod, company.......................

Film Australia committed to the privatization of health care Herald. The film looks at the daily process from Length............................................................... 50minutes Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia and the film explores the personalities and the the editorialdecision-making, the news G auge........................................................16 mm Exec, producer........ ................

Tom Haydon lifestyle of the surgeons and their relationships gathering, the meetings, to the late night rolling Shooting stock ............................................. 7291 Producer..................

Macek Rubetzki with the community. of the presses.

Scheduled release................................Mid-1986

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52 — March CINEMA PAPERS

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Director........................................ Tony Wheeler Gauge....................................................... 16 mm Length................................................48 minutes Prod, co-ordinator.................... Sally Semmens Photography.................................................TonyWilson Synopsis: Personal film about Mike Edols’s Gauge........................................................16 mm Length................................................20 minutes Sound recordist.............................................. LeoSullivan return to the Mowayun Aboriginal community in Shooting stock......................................... Kodak Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Editor............................................................... Sue Horsley north-west Australia after several years of Scheduled release...................December 1985 Synopsis: A film about women, industrial Prod, assistant............................ Clare Edwards banishment. relations and the Australian economy.

Synopsis: A film to delve behind the bland G auge........................................................ 16 mm scientific walls of an herbarium, to reveal the Synopsis: One of the Real Life series, the film rich matrix of history, scholarship and common WORLD HERITAGE HENRY HANDEL RICHARDSON is about a Vietnamese refugee family and the unity found there.

Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Prod, company..............................Film Australia visit to Australia of a son they haven’t seen for Dist. company...............................Film Australia Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia four years. A moving film which witnesses the WONDERS DOWN UNDER Producer.................................................. DanielaTorsh Producer....................................... Oliver Howes family’s attempts to come to terms with their Prod, company......... Production Group — AAV Director..........................................Oliver Howes Director..............................................Jane Oehr past and to share their present with their son.

Producer...................................David Campbell Scriptwriter....................................Oliver Howes Scriptwriter........................................ Jane Oehr Director.......................................... Ray Wagstaff Prod, manager..............................Nene Morgan Producer’s assistant............. Rosalind Gillespie VOICES ON THE PAGE Length..............................................110 minutes Scriptwriters............ Clemenger-Harvie Pty Ltd Length............................................................... 48minutes Photography.....................George Komoneskey Gauge....................................................... 35 mm Gauge........................................................16 mm Prod, company............................. Film Australia Synopsis: A series of documentary films on Synopsis: A dramatized documentary on the Composers...................................... Men at Work Dist. company.............................. Film Australia Exec, producer.........................................VincentO’Donnell life and work of the Australian novelist Henry Producer................................................. MalcolmOttonAustralia’s five world heritage areas. (South Musical director.......................................... KevinHocking West Tasmania, Lord Howe Island, Kakadu, Handel Richardson.

Director................................................Ian Walker Laboratory..................................................... AAVCinevex Willancha Lakes and Great Barrier Reef).

Photography................................................KerryBrown Budget...................................................$160,000 Sound recordist.......................................GrahamWise WOMEN’S STUDIES SERIES Length................................................................17minutes Editor........................................... Peter Jennings Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia G auges........................................... 16 mm, video Producer’s assistant...............Virginia Pridham Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia FILM A U S TR A LIA Shooting stock .......................................Eastman Length............................................................... 22minutes Producer.................................................. DanielaTorsh Cast: John Farnham, Little River Band, Dame W OM EN’S FILM U N IT Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Director......................................................... LiliasFraser Edna Everage, Barry Humphries, Don Shooting stock............................. Eastmancolor Scriptwriter...................................................LiliasFraser Dunstan, Prue Acton.

Synopsis: The first in a series of films about Producer’s assistant............. Rosalind Gillespie Synopsis: Tourist promotion for Victoria.

Australian writers and their work, planned for Length........................................10 x 20 minutes DOUBLE X use in secondary schools, TAFE colleges and Gauge........................................................16 mm YOU CAN’T BUY THAT IN Prod, company............................. Film Australia tertiary institutions. The series is concerned Synopsis: A series of Women’s Studies Pro­ Dist. company.............................. Film Australia with writers as interpreters of society. David AUSTRALIA grammes for junior, secondary and upper Producer.......................................Daniela Torsh Williamson is seen in various activities, such as primary students in Australia. The series Producer.......................................................

SallySemmens Director..........................................................Julie Cunningham a rehearsal of "The Club” , writing at home, includes how women fought for the vote, the Scriptwriter.......................... Garrie Hutchinson Scriptwriter...................................................Julie Cunningham discussing his work with drama students, and battle for access to universities, the struggle for Exec, producer.....................Vincent O'Donnell Photography...........................................LorraineBinnington at a Sydney Theatre Company board meeting, equal pay, women politicians, women artists, Budget..................................................... $25,000 Editor.............................................Annie Breslin while the film gives an insight into his working women s c ie n t is t s , wom en la w y e rs, Length................................................................15minutes Prod, secretary.............................Sharon Miller methods and philosophy. sportswomen and women writers. The pro­ Gauge.....................................................

Betacam Producer’s assistant...............Virginia Pridham grammes are being developed in conjunction Synopsis: A film about the role and function of Editing assistants......................... Julia Gelhard, WE ARE THE LANDOWNER with the Curriculum Development Centre of the the Industrial Supplies Office in relation to the Laura Zusters Schools Commission and all State Educational manufacturing industry.

Prod, company............................. Film Australia Animation.............................Julie Cunningham, Departments.

Dist. company.............................. Film Australia Lee Whitmore, Producer...........................................................IanDunlop YOU’VE GOT IT Paul Livingstone, Director............................................................. IanDunlop Don Ezard, Producer....................................................... SallySemmens Scriptwriter....................................................... IanDunlop Margaret Johnson, Scriptwriter................................................. AlisonTilson FILM V IC TO R IA Photography.................................................GaryKildea, Ian Barbour Exec, producer........................................ VincentO’Donnell Ian Dunlop Painters................................... Paul Livingstone, Budget..................................................... $20,000 Sound recordists..........................................GaryKildea, Cynthia Miller Length............................................................... 12minutes Philippa Kirk In-betweener................................... Wayne Kelly G auge............................................................ BVU ALL IN TOGETHER Editors............................................... Ian Dunlop, Tech, advisor.....................................Don Ezard Synopsis: Equal employment policies of the Prod, company.......................... Can-Aus Films Philippa Kirk Length................................................12 minutes SEC. Dist. company...............Focal Communications Producer’s assistant........................................IanAdkins Gauge........................................................35 mm Producers.......................................Mike Boland, Narrator............................................................ IanDunlop Shooting stock......................................... Kodak Tarni Jam es G auge........................................................ 16 mm Synopsis: The beginning of civilisation as we Director.........................................................MikeBoland Shooting stock..............................................ECN know it from the woman's point of view.

NEW S O U TH W ALES FILM Photography................................................. MikeBoland Synopsis: Today, one of the most positive Sound recordist....................................... GeorgeCraig CO R PO R ATIO N aspects of traditional Aboriginal Australia is the DOWN THERE Editor............................................................TonyPatterson outstation or clan homeland movement. After a Prod, company.............................................. FilmAustralia, Exec, producer................. Vincent O’Donnell general introduction to Yirrkala Aboriginal Prod, co-ordinator...............Sally Semmens Family Planning Association township in north-east Arnhem Land, and the BUSH FIRE BASICS Musical director..........................Chris Copping Dist. company................................................FilmAustralia, Yirrkala Homeland Resource Centre, the film Sabina Wynn Mixer............................................................. TonyPatterson Prod, company........... AVES Creative Services goes to Baniyala, homeland settlement of the Producer........................................Sabina Wynn Laboratory............................................... Cinevex Producer.............................Georgina Reynolds Madarrpa clan. The picture that emerges is of Director.......................................... Sabina Wynn Budget..................................................... $25,000 Director........................................Lyndall Arnold traditional Aboriginal people running their own Scriptwriters................................. Sabina Wynn, Length............................................................... 23minutes Scriptwriter........................................ Dick Jarvis affairs, and exploiting western technology in Louise Cox, Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Photography................................Mark Crawford the process, with competence and joy.

Claudia Vidal Synopsis: A film made for the Department of Exec, producer..............................Peter Dimond Sport and Recreation and the Victorian Photography.................................................

Sally Bongers Prod, co-ordinator.................. Sharon Ghossein WHEN THE SNAKE BITES THE SUN Camping A ssociation concerning the Sound recordist........................................... VickyWilkinson Narrators..................................... Peter Gwynne, Prod, company...............................................FilmAustralia Editor.........................................................DeniseHaslem integration of disabled people into the Cecily Poison Dist. company................................................ FilmAustralia Residential Camping Program.

Exec, producer............................Daniela Torsh Synopsis: A series of eight ten-minute training Exec, producer..............................................TomHaydon Producer’s assistant............ Rosalind Gillespie programmes produced for the Bush Fire Producer............................................. Ian Adkins Lighting........................................ Sally Bongers Council of New South Wales. Basic procedures FREE CLIMBING Director............................................... Mike Edols Gaffer............................................Lee Whitmore are demonstrated for beginners and advanced Producer..............................Sally Semmens Photography.....................................Mike Edols, Backgrounds............................... Lee Whitmore bush fire fighters.

Director..................................................... NatalieGreen Fabio Cavaderi Photography animation....................Don Ezard Scriptwriter............................... Louise Shepard Sound recordist............................................ MarkBrewer Animator............................................ Pam Lofts Photography............................................. NatalieGreen Editor............................................................... TimLitchfield Length............................................................... 20minutes Exec, producer..................... Vincent O'Donnell Producer’s assistant....................................John Russell G auge........................................................ 16 mm Exec, assistant.....................Mary Gustavsson 2nd unit photography.......................................VitMartinek Shooting stock.............................................7291 Length............................................................... 20minutes Synopsis: An educational film about female Gauge............................................. Super 16 mm reproduction and sexuality.

Shooting stock ...................................... Eastman Synopsis: A film that promotes rock climbing EQUAL PAY and encourages others to try the sport. The film will feature experienced women climbers.

Prod, company.............................Film Australia Dist. company..............................Film Australia P R E-PR O D UC TIO N Producer...................................... Daniela Torsh THE FRENCH COLLECTION Director.....................................................CynthiaConnop Help us make this Production Prod, company.....................................MT Prods Scriptwriter...............................................CynthiaConnop Survey as complete as poss­ Producer.................................... Steven Cozens BABAKiUERIA Photography.....................................Erica Addis, ible. If you have something Director..................................... Steven Cozens Kevin Anderson, Prod, company.......................... ABC TV Drama Liaison......................................................... JulietGrimm which is about to go into preAndy Fraser, Producer........................................

Julian Pringle (Film Victoria) production, let us know and we Jan Kenny Director................................ Don Featherstone Exec, producer..................... Vincent O’Donnell will make sure it is included.

Sound recordists................................. Pat Fiske, Scriptwriter.......................... Geoffrey Atherden Length............................................................... 23minutes Sue Kerr, Based on the original idea Call Debi Enker on (03) Gauge................................................. Videotape Averil Nicholl, by.......................................Geoffrey Atherden 329 5983, or write to her at Synopsis: A film about Madame Toussaint’s Geoff Wilson Photography...............................Julian Penney visit to Australia to study the Neville Scott Cinema Papers, 644 Victoria Editor............................................Sara Bennett Sound recordist...........................Chris Alderton Collection.

Street, North M elbourne, Prod, manager.............................Nene Morgan Prod, designer.............................Graeme Gould Victoria 3051.

Unit managers.................................Jane Griffin, Technical producer......................... Barry Quick NATIONAL HERBARIUM Marguerite Grey, Prod, manager..................... Stephen O’Rourke Scriptwriters....................................... Jill Morris, Adrienne Parr Prod, secretary........................................AnnabelJeffery Mary Lancaster Prod, secretary............................ Sharon Miller 1st asst director.............................................KateWoods Exec, producer......................Vincent O’Donnell Gaffer............................................... Ian Bosman 2nd asst director...............................David Sandy ►

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CINEMA PAPERS March — 53

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Continuity................................. Rhonda McAvoy Script editor..................................Barbara Masel Casting......................................... Jennifer Allen Synopsis: An original half-hour for television.

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Art dept, co-ord............................... Judith Ditter Based on the play b y ....................Robyn Archer Costume designer..........................Anna Senior Com posers...............................................Various Make-up....................................Violette Fontaine Assoc, producer....................Sandra Alexander Hairdresser........................................Joan Petch Prod, accountant.............Rosenfeld Kant & Co. Standby wardrobe........................ Paula Ekerlck Producer’s assistant.................. Cate Anderson Casting.................................Sideshow Alley Ltd Props buyer................................... Peta Lawson BUTTERFLY ISLAND Standby props............................ Louis Carrigan Musical director...............................Andrew Bell Prod, company.........Independent Productions Set construction......................... Brian Hocking Studios..................................................... ABC-TV Dist. company..........Independent Distributors Art dept, runner................................ Marc Ryan Budget...................................................$336,326 Producer.......................................Stanley Walsh Runner....................................Alison McClymont Length.......................................... 50-60 minutes Assoc, producer..........................Hugh Stuckey Catering....................................... Kaos Catering Cast: Robyn Archer.

THE LAST FRONTIER Exec, producer.................................Gene Scott Length..........................................6 x 48 minutes Synopsis: The programme is based on the Director...................................... Graham Rouse Prod, company.......................Ayer Productions Gauge........................................................ 16 mm successful cabaret produced in London and Writing team headed b y ............. Hugh Stuckey Dist. company.......... Ten Network, Worldvision Synopsis: The Challenge is the dramatized across Australia.

Consists of songs, prose and Script editor................................. Carol Williams Producer....................................... Tim Sanders story of the 1983 land and sea battle for the poetry fitted together to make up a mosaic of Prod, manager............................. Terry Vincent Director......................................... Kevin Dobson America’s Cup. The miniseries looks beyond new ways of looking at women.

Old images are Length........................................ 22 x 30 minutes Scriptwriters......................... Michael Laurence, the final contest for the cup to the genius, juxtaposed with new lyrics, layers of Irony and Synopsis: 22 episodes depicting the lifestyle Roger Dunn, talent and endeavour of those involved, who humour bring out startling meanings in familiar and experiences of a family-run Queensland John Misto made an impossible dream become reality. songs and new songs celebrate new women.

Barrier Reef resort Island.

Based on the original Idea b y ..........................................................MichaelLaurence, COOPERS CROSSING PLEASE TO REMEMBER THE FIFTH Hal McElroy FUTURETROUPERS OF NOVEMBER Prod, company................Crawford Productions Sound recordist.............................................. TimLloyd Prod, company....................Chadwick Douglas Producer...................................Oscar Whitbread Editor.....................................Stuart Armstrong Prod, company...........................ABC-TV Drama Film and Television Directors.........................................................ArchNicholson, Prod, designer....................................... Igor Nay Producer......................................................JulianPringle Producer.......................................Brian Douglas Colin Budds, Exec, producer................................................

Hal McElroy Director................................................

Peter Fisk Scriptwriter................................... Brian Douglas Chris Langman Assoc, producer.............................................

Neil Balnaves Scriptwriter...............................Keith Thompson Editor.................................... Patrick Edgeworth Scriptwriters..............................

Tony Morphett, Prod, co-ordinator.............................................Jo Rooney Based on the original Idea Production associate................ Kent Chadwick Christine McCourt, Prod, manager.......................................... Sandra Alexander by........................................... Keith Thompson Prod, supervisor................................ Phil Collins Vince Moran, Prod, secretary..........................................

Jenny Ward Research...................................

Dana Chrastina Length........................................ 13 x 30 minutes Peter Hepworth Prod, accountant......................... Michael Boon Lighting................................................Ezio Belli G au ge.....................................................1” video Photography..............................Brett Anderson Prod, assistan t............................ Mandy Selling Sound recordist............................................DaveDundas Synopsis: In the near future, an out-of-work Sound recordist......................... John McKerrow 1st asst director.......................................... StuartWoodProd, designer.............................................LeighTierney theatre troupe inadvertently prevent the piracy Editors........................................ Lindsay Parker, 2nd asst director...........................................NickReynolds Technical producer..................................... BarryQuick of Australia’s underground power source by a Ross Evans Continuity....................................................Kristin Voumard Prod, manager......................Stephen O'Rourke most devious and deadly organisation.

Composers..................................................

GarryMcDonald, Casting........................... Suzanne Johanneson, Prod, secretary........................................AnnabelJeffery Laurie Stone Liz Mullinar & Assoc Prod, assistant.................................................

Liz Steptoe THE HOUR BEFORE MY BROTHER Exec, producers........................................

Hector Crawford, Lighting cameraman..................................MartinMcGrath 1st asst director............................................ ScottFeeney DIES Ian Crawford, Camera operator........................................MartinMcGrath 2nd asst director..........................Vld McLelland Terry Stapleton Focus puller........................... Calum McFarlane Script editor................................. Barbara Masel Prod, company...........Australian Broadcasting Clapper/loader................................................ PhilMurphy Casting.................................................... JenniferAllenAsst producer............................Judith Coward Corporation Prod, co-ordinator..................................... LaurenBean Key grip....................................................GrahamLitchfield Synopsis: An original 50-minute play for tele­ Dist. company............Australian Broadcasting Prod, manager............................................. ChrisPage Asst grip..........................................Ian McAlpine vision.

Corporation Prod, supervisor.......................C. Ewan Burnett Electrician...................................................... RayKalcina Producer..............................................Noel Price Unit m anager.....................................Philip Stott Boom operator................................................ PhilTepene Director.......................................Jam es Clayden A SHARK’S PARADISE Prod, secretary.............................................CarolMatthews Art dept, co-ordinator................................ LouisaLanceley Scriptwriter.....................................Daniel Keene Prod, company..................... McElroy & McElroy Prod, accountant..........................Jeff Shenker Costume designer.............................

Miv Brewer Based on the play by.....................Daniel Keene Dist. companies......................................NetworkTen, 1st asst director.............................Jamie Leslie Make-up...................................... Viv Mempham Photography......................................Chris Davis Worldvision 2nd asst director..................... Strachan Wilson Hairdresser...............................................FranciaSmeets Sound Co-ordinator.............................. Bill Doyle Producer....................................................... KeithAberdeln Continuity..........................................................LizPerry Wardrobe..........................................................PiaKryger Editor................................................Barry Munro Exec, producer..........................Jam es McElroy Script editor.....................................

Debbie Cox Asst, editors................................................CarrieBeehan, Prod, designer..........................................GunarsJurjans Length................................................90 minutes Casting............................................................ Jan Pontifax Kim Moodle Location Designer....................................... ColinGersch Synopsis: The story of three undercover cops Story editor..............................Tony Cavanaugh Sound editor.................................................TonyVaccher Exec, producer................................... Noel Price working on the Gold Coast to keep Surfer's Focus puller...................................Craig Barden Editing assistant...........................................John Dennistone Prod, manager................................ John Winter Paradise safe for the tourists.

Clapper/loader............................................. GaryBottomley Best boy....................................................... GrantAtkinson Prod, secretary...................................Sarah Hall Key grip...................................................WarwickSimpson Runner.......................................................... ScottBradley 1st asst director....................Jam es Lipscombe WILLING AND ABEL Asst grip............................................John Dynan Publicity................................................... VictoriaBuchan 2nd asst director...........................Dorothy Faine Gaffer.......................................................Malcolm McLean Studios................................McElroy & McElroy, Prod, company......................... Liberated Artists Continuity.................................. Annette Rogan Boom operator.............................. Greg Nelson Five Dock Pty Ltd Casting....................................... Marion Pearce Art director........................................Brian Betts Budget........................................................... $4.5 million Producers..................................................... LynnBayonas, Lighting cameraman......................Chris Davis Asst art director............................................ Jane Saunders Length..........................................4 x 60 minutes Ted Roberts Camera operator............................ Rod Coates Make-up......................................... Maggie Kolev G auge........................................................ 16 mm Scriptwriters................................... Ted Roberts, Focus puller................................ Trevor Moore Hairdresser....................... Michael Longliatano Synopsis: This four-hour mlnlserles Is a Peter Schreck, Camera assistant......................Vic Guglielmlno Wardrobe....................................................RobynAdams contemporary love story about an American David Boutland, Key grip................................. Tony Woolveridge Ward, standby........................................... RubenThomas woman’s struggle to carve out a new life for Peter Kinlock, Asst grip....................................................... PhilipOyston Props buyer...................................................GlenJohnson herself and her family In the Australian out­ Hugh Stuckey, Electrician................................................AndrewHolmes Special effects.............................. Terry Wilcox back,and of the two men who love her.

Michael Aitkens, Boom operator.................................................IanCregan Set decorators............................... Dawson Lee, Leon Saunders Make-up......................................Ray Cartwright Rob Withers, Script editor................................... Ted Roberts Wardrobe........................................ Anne Brown LIVING FOREVER John Rouch, Length........................................14 x 60 minutes Ward, designer..........................Gunars Jurjans Prod, company............ Chadwick Douglas Film Brett Vietch Cast: Shane Withlngton, Grant Dodwell.

Special effects.....................................Rod Clack and T.V. Set construction....................................... GordonWhite Synopsis: Two young men, Charles Willing Mixer............................................. Paul Freeman Dist. company....................................Thorn EMI Asst editors...................................................June Wilson, and Abel Moore, advertise their services for Catering.......................................................SweetSeduction Producer.......................................................BrianDouglas Owen Johnston any money-making operation. Inept, if Studios................ Melbourne Theatre Company Director......................................................... BrianDouglas Neg. matching.......................................... Jennie Keen, enthusiastic, businessmen, their very jobs lead Mixed at......................................................... ABC Scriptwriter................................................... BrianDouglas Jill Lord them into situations that are dangerous, Laboratory.............................................. Cinevex Based on the original Idea Music editor................................................. DavidHolmes mysterious and often highly amusing. They are Lab. liaison.................................................. BruceBraun by...............................................................BrianDouglas Dialogue editors..........................................Gavin Myers, aided and abetted by twelve-year-old Parra­ G auge........................................................ 16 mm Photography................................................ BarryMalseed Michael Carden matta Jones and the delightful Angela Reddy.

Shooting stock......................Eastmancolor Neg Editor............................................................... KenSallows Editing assistants..........................................Fred Klrkup Cast: Rhonda Wilson.

Exec, producer......................... Richard Tanner Mixer..........................................Richard Brobyn Synopsis: A brother and sister attempt to Prod, m anager..............................Phillip Collins Stunts co-ordinator...................

Chris Anderson come to terms with each other through an Prod, secretary......................................... Janine Scheplsi Fx editors.......................................................Julie Murray, exploration of their past.

Prod, accountant..........................Carolyn Fyffe Bruce Climas PR O D U CTIO N 1st asst director............................ Phillip Collins Runner.......................................................WayneMitchell HUNGER Casting................................................ Greg Apps Laboratory...............................................Cinevex Casting consultants........... Liz Mullinar Casting Prod, company........................... ABC TV Drama Lab. liaison..................................................BruceBraun Lighting cameraman...................................BarryMalseed Producer......................................................... Jan Chapman Cast: Andrew McFarlane (Dr Tom Callaghan), THE CHALLENGE Clapper/loader................................ Steven Swift Scriptwriter...................................... Louis Nowra Liz Burch (Dr Chris Randall), Pat Evison (Violet Prod, company.................................Roadshow, Budget.................................................. $500,000 R esearch...................................................... DanaChrastina Carnegie), Lewis Fitz-Gerald (David Gibson), Coote & Carroll, Length............................................................... 96minutes Prod, manager.............................. Carol Chlrlian Bruce Barry (George Baxter), Lenore Smith Golden Dolphin Productions G auge........................................................ 16 mm Unit m anager.......................... Beverley Powers /Kate Wellings), Maurie Fields (Vic Buckley), Dist. company...................................Roadshow, Shooting stock .............................................7294 Prod, secretary.......................................... Susan Wells Max Cullen (Hurtle), Gil Tucker (Joe Forrest), Coote & Carroll Cast: Jim Hurtak, Professor Peter Singer, 1st asst director.......................................GrahamMillar Terry Gill (Sgt Carruthers).

Producers.................................... Tristram Miall, Professor Arthur Birch, Barbara McGregor.

2nd asst director..........................................Steve Stannard Synopsis: A Royal Flying Doctor Service is Bob Loader Synopsis: The control of Life, Tomorrow’s Producer’s assistant............................... RhondaMcAvoy located in the outback town of Coopers Director...................................... Chris Thomson people — Today! Australia’s stance in man's Casting.......................................... Jennifer Allen Crossing. The two doctors, Tom Callaghan and Scriptwriter...................................David Phillips next stage of evolution, Life Control.

Synopsis: An original 90-minute telemovie Chris Randall, not only contend with the Photography.................................Russell Boyd written by Louis Nowra. medical challenges, but also with the small Sound recordist................................Mark Lewis community In which they live.

Editor.......................................... Lindsay Frazer LONG TAN JOE WILSON Prod, designer........................... Larry Eastwood Prod, company..............The Long Tan Film Co. THE HARP IN THE SOUTH Prod, company........Bigola Beach Productions Exec, producers............................. Matt Carroll, (proposed) Pty Ltd Prod, company....................................... AnthonyBuckley Greg Coote Scriptwriters..............................David Horsfield, Exec, in charge of Dist. company.............................................Seven Network Productions Pty Ltd Lex McAulay, Producer...................................Alexandra Cann production..............................Harley Manners Producer..................................................AnthonyBuckley Bruce Horsfield, Director.....................................Jack Thompson Prod, co-ordinators.....................Barbara Ring, Director..................................................... GeorgeWhaley Julianne Horsfield Scriptwriter....................................................KeithDewhurst Julie Ritchie Scriptwriter............................Eleanor Wltcombe Based on the original Idea Prod, manager..................................Jenny Day Based on the short stories Based on the novel b y....................... Ruth Park by............................................ Bruce Horsfield by..............................................................HenryLawson Location m anager.....................David Malacari Photography.................................................. PaulMurphy Exec, producer..........................Bruce Horsfield Sound recordist............................................. PaulBrincat Unit manager............................. Richard Carroll Editor............................................. Wayne le Clos Prod, accountant......... Manfred and McCallum Editor............................................................... TimWellburn Prod, accountant............................Catch 1-2-3 Prod, designer........................................ BernardHides Length..............................................110 minutes Jenny Verdon Prod, designer..........................................HerbertPinter Composer............................................Peter Best Gauge........................................................ 35 mm Asst, accountant.................

Elizabeth Anderson Exec, producer............................................... RayBeattie Exec, producer........................ Robert Mercieca Synopsis: A recreation of the Battle of Long 1st asst director...........................Colin Fletcher Prod, manager........................................StephenJones Prod, manager............................................. CarolHughes Tan, when an Australian patrol of 108 men 2nd asst director...................

Murray Robertson Prod, accountant....................................... Jenny Verdon Location m anager...................................... RobinClifton fought off more than 1000 experienced Viet 3rd asst director............................. Jane Griffin Location m anager........................................MarkThomas Prod, accountant...........Moneypenny Services Cong. Based on the survivors’ own gripping Continuity..........................................Pam Willis 1st asst director........................Tony Wellington Casting......................................................... Susie Maizels accounts, the story illustrates the thesis that Casting....................................................Forcast, 2nd asst director..............................Toby Pease Casting consultants.........Maizels & Associates the war in Vietnam was won militarily, but lost Continuity................................................... Jenny Quigley Rae Davidson, Publicity.......................................... Network Ten politically.

Michael Lynch Casting.......................................................... KateIngham To be mixed at............................................UnitedSound Key grip............................................. Ray Brown Director of photography..............................LouisIrvine Laboratory.............................................Colorfilm THE PACK OF WOMEN 2nd unit photography..................Steve Wlndon Art director............................................... StewartWay Lab. liaison.......................... Richard Piorkowski Gaffer....................................... Brian Bansgrove Costume designer..................................AnthonyJonesProd, company.....................Sideshow Alley Ltd Budget............................................... $4.2 million Producer.......................................Diana Manson Boom operator............................ Jack Freidman Make-up...................................................MarjorieHamlin Length ....................................6 x 60 minutes Art director...............................Andrew Blaxland Construction manager................................DerekMills Director........................................ Ted Robinson Synopsis: A miniseries based on Ruth Park’s Asst art director.............................Rob Robinson Sound editor....................................................LeeSmithScriptwriter.................................. Robyn Archer best-selling novel of the same name. ► Wrangler......................... ,............. Ray Winslade Catering...........................................John Faithful Laboratory....................................................Atlab Length.......................................... 6 x 60 minutes Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Cast: Matthew Fargher (Joe Wilson), Kim Krejus (Mary Brand).

Synopsis: Based on the Henry Lawson stories of Jo e Wilson.

CINEMA PAPERS March — 55

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Production Survey continued

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Post-production................. ATV 10 (Melbourne) Asst prod, co-ordinator................................Jane Godwin has got ’em: Neighbours. Ramsay Street . . .

THE JOURNEY Cast: Elspeth Ballantyne (Meg Morris), Maggie Post-production co-ordinator...........Karan Peel the stage for an exciting drama serial . . .

Prod, company.......................... ABC TV-Drama Kirkpatrick (Joan Ferguson), Gerda Nicholson Prod, manager...............................................RonNoseda drawing back the curtain to reveal the intrigue Producer......................................................JulianPringle (Ann Reynolds), Joy Westmore (Joyce Barry), Unit manager.............................. Maurice Burns and the passions of Australian families . . . and Director............................................................UllaRyghe Ernie Bourne (Mervin Pringle), Lynda Stoner Prod, secretary..................................

Vicki Cerra their neighbours.

Photography.............................. Julian Penney, (Eve Wilder), Louise Siversen (Lou Kelly), Prod, accountant........................ Doug Johnston Laurie McManus Glenda Linscott (Rita Connors), Pepe Trevor 1st asst directors..............................

Phil Jones, PETROV Prod, manager.....................Stephen O’Rourke (Lexie Patterson), Jackie Woodburne (Julie Tony Forster, Prod, secretary........................................AnnabelJeffery Prod, company............PBL Productions Pty Ltd Egbert).

Richard Clendinnen 1st asst director.............................................KateWoods Dist. company............. PBL Productions Pty Ltd Continuity......................................................TaraFerrier, Synopsis: A powerful and unique drama series Script editor................................ Barbara Masel Producer...............................................Bob Weis exploring the lives of women in prison.

Carmel Torcasio Cast: Jeni Thornley.

Line producer............................................ MargoMcDonald Casting director........................................... GregRossPrisoner is about the crimes they committed, Synopsis: An original half-hour for television.

Director.....................................................MichaelCarson their Casting consultant.........................................Jan Pontifax personal hell behind bars and their Scriptwriters...................................................CliffGreen, Focus puller...................................................PaulTilleypassionate and often violent struggle to come Mac Gudgeon Clapper/loader............................................ CraigDusting to terms with their demeaning experiences.

MY BROTHER TOM Based on the original idea b y ......... Sam Lipski, Key grip............................................................ IanPhilips Robert Manne Prod, company................Crawford Productions Gaffer.............................................................. TimMorrison Photography...................................................RonHagen (Communications Pty Ltd) SONS AND DAUGHTERS Boom operator.................................. Leigh Tate Sound recordist............................ Lloyd Carrick Producer.........................................................RodHardy Art director.................................. Andrew Reese Prod, company......... Grundy Television Pty Ltd Editor........................................................ EdwardMcQueen-Mason Director.......................................................... PinoAmenta Asst art director...........................Elena Perrotta Producer...................................................... PosieJacobs Prod, designer......................................Jo Ford Scriptwriter................................ Tony Morphett Wardrobe supervisor/ Directors....................................................... MarkPiper, Production assistant/ Based on the novel by.............. Jam es Aldridge costume designer....................................ClareGriffin Russell Webb, extras casting.........................................Simon Rosenthal Photography...............................................Jamie Doolan Make-up........................................................ BradSmith, Andrew Howie, Prod, co-ordinator.........................Lesley Parker Editor....................................................Phil Reid Elizabeth Harper Gaye Arnold Prod, manager.............................................Tony Winley Prod, designer.............................................OtelloStolfo Hairdressers.........................................Sue Kelly, Scriptwriters.............................................Various Unit manager.................................Mason Curtis Exec, producers......................Hector Crawford, Doug Glanvllle Script editor..................................................

GregHaddrick Location manager.........................Ron Stigwood Ian Crawford, Wardrobe..................................................... AnnaBaulch, Story editor.........................Maureen Ann Moran Prod, accountant.......................... Margot Brock Terry Stapleton Ann Went Based on the original idea b y .........Reg Watson Asst accountant..........................................DavidEdwards Assoc, producer............................ Michael Lake Props buyer...............................................RolandPike Sound............................................................ AlanScott, Prod, assistant...............................Maggie Dunn Prod, m anager..............................Daryl Sheen Standby props...............................................PaulKiely, Zbyszek Krzyszkowiak 1st asst director...........................Brian Giddens 1st asst director.................................. John Wild Darcy Chene Editors........................................................... CliveJenkins, 2nd asst director................. Hamish McSporran Continuity.................................... Elizabeth Perry Special effects.............................................TerryWilcock Michael Hagen Casting..................................................Dina Mann' 3rd asst director.........................................HalinaSztynda Sound editor.............................................MelissaClarke Prod, designer............................................... KenGoodman Continuity....................................................JenniTosi Music editor.................................................DavidHolmes Asst art director..........................................BernieWlnack Composers.....................................................DonBattye, Casting..............................................Liz Mullinar Publicity...................................................... Susan Wood Best boy..................................... Greg Robinson Peter Pinne Camera operator...............................Ron Hagen Length........................................ 2 x 120 minutes Runner.......................................... Con Mancuso Exec, producer............................................... DonBattye Focus puller........................................ Phil Cross G auge........................................................ 16 mm Publicity......................................................GTV 9 Assoc, producer......................................Graham Murray Clapper/loader...........................................LaurieBalmer Studios.......................................................GTV 9 Synopsis: The love affair of two youngsters Prod, manager............................................ Janet Veale Key grip......................................................... TonyHall Mixed at........................... Crawford Productions from antagonistic Catholic and Protestant Unit manager..................................................

Ray Walsh Asst grip............................................GregTuohy Laboratory............................................... Cinevex families alienates the population of a small Prod, secretary..............................................LisaFitzpatrick Gaffer............................................ Brian Adams Lab. liaison................................................. BruceBraun country town.

Floor managers.......................................... Soren Jensen, Electrician..................................... Tim Morrison G auge......................................16 mm (location), David Watts Boom operator............................................. ChrisGoldsmith video (studio) NEIGHBOURS Asst directors................................ Jeffrey Gale, Art director.....................................................RobRicketson Cast: Kris Orchard (David Lockhart), Tony Karen Moore, Art dept a ss t.................... Damian Broomhed Prod, company......... Grundy Television Pty Ltd Hawkins (Harry Jones), Julianne White (Diana Lesia Hruby Producer......................................... John Holmes Art dept attachment.................................AndrewPearson Fields), Ben Mendelsohn (Bart Jones), Peter Casting........................................... Sue Manger, Costume designer....................................... Rose Chong Directors....................................Brendan Maher, Kowitz (Jim Donnegan), Peter Whitford Helen Satter Make-up...................................................... KirstinVeysey Chris Langman, (Charles Garrett), Nina Landis (Kate MacLighting supervisor....................... Peter Russell Max Varnel, Hairdresser.......................................Rocky Ford Arthur), Katrina Foster (Jocelyn Cole), Sonja Staging supervisor.................Gunther Neszpor Andrew Friedman, Wardrobe supervisor........................ Phil Eagles Tallis (Georgina Jones), Antonia Murphy (Jan Make-up.................................. Rachel Del Santo Ward, standby................................... Gail Mayes Julian McSweiney Garrett), David Whitney (Stephen Lockhart).

Hairdressers........................... Greg Hanneman, Props buyer........................................Daryl Mills Scriptwriters.............................................Various Synopsis: Prime Time is a new concept in Gail Edwards Standby props.................................. John Stabb Script editors.....................................Rick Maier, serial television: a behind-the-scenes look at Ward, assistants..................Margarita Tassone, Choreography.............................Alexander Ilyin Phil East an Independent television company.

It features Norman Tunbridge, Set dressers............................................ GraemeDuesbury, Script supervisor................................. Ray Kolle the drama and action that goes into making a Julie Taylor Kim Sexton Based on the original Idea b y ........Reg Watson weekly current affairs programme. "AssignProps...............................................Peter Morris, Still photography.................................... VladimirOsherov Sound............................................... David Muir, John Messenger Best boy........................................................ BrettHull m enr is the programme. David Lockhart owns Grant Vogler, the show, the company that makes it, and js Set designer......................................Leore Rose Runner.......................................................... MarkBishop Keith Harper, the new current affairs “ star” — sharp and Music editor...................................................GaryHardman Unit publicist.......................................... Di White Rob Saunders aggressive. We watch his team bring him the Vision switcher.......................................KathleenHinchcliff Catering...................................................... DannyPopper Editor........................................................... DavidJaeger big stories each week.

Tech, directors................................. Pat Barter, Post production sound....................... Soundflrm Prod, designer...........................Robbie Perkins Laboratory............................................... Cinevex Keith Cartwright, Composer.....................................................TonyHatch PRISONER Budget............................................... $3,047,000 Graham Manion Exec, producer...............................................RegWatson Length..........................................4 x 60 minutes Catering....................................... Taste Buddies Assoc, producer...........................................PeterAskew Prod, company......... Grundy Television Pty Ltd Post-production..........................Custom Video Gauge................................................................16mm Producer......................................... Marie Trevor Prod, co-ordinator..................... Debra Schone Cast: Alex Menglet (Petrov), Eva Sitta (Evdokia Cast: Tom Richards (David Palmer), Leila Prod, manager........................... Roslyn Tatarka Directors................................. Kendal Flanagan, Petrov), Leonid Gelbak (Karpinsky), Elena Hayes (Beryl Palmer), Pat McDonald (Fiona Sean Nash, Floor managers....................... Peter O’Connor, Eremin (Mrs Golovanov), Nicholas Kanarev Thompson), Ian Rawlings (Wayne Hamilton), Alan Williamson Tony Osicka, Abigail (Caroline Morrell), Belinda Giblin Alister Smart Asst directors........................................MarianneGrey,(Zbigniew), Kirk Alexander (Windeyer), Ron Pinnell (Dalziel), Dennis Moore (Lockwood), (Alison Carr), Oriana Panozzo (Susan Palmer), Jo Rlttan Scriptwriters.............................................Various Brian Blain (Gordon Hamilton), Sarah Kemp Casting............................................................ Jan Russ,Kym Gyngell (Stubbs), Wyn Roberts (Spry).

Story editor............................................. GwendaMarsh Synopsis: The story of the defection of Soviet (Charlie), Danny Roberts (Andy Green).

Sal Creswick Script editors................................ Neil Luxmore, diplomat Vladimir Petrov in Canberra in 1954.

Synopsis: Continuing drama centred around Lighting supervisor...................Keith Ferguson Pauline Clayton the Hamilton and Palmer families, their friends Based on the original idea b y ........Reg Watson Staging supervisor.......................................ColinMorris and relatives in Sydney and Melbourne.

PRIME TIME Sound............................................................Ross Thompson Art director.............................................. StephenKeller Editor..............................................Phil Johnson Make-up.........................................................Julie Corbert, .Crawford Productions Prod, company.

Prod, designer...............................Geoff Hatton David Henderson '(Broadcast) Pty Ltd TRACY Composer......................................Alan Caswell Hairdressers............................................ GlendaMann, ........... Graham Moore Producer..........

Sue Warhurst Exec, producer................................Reg Watson Prod, company. ...............Greg Shears, PBL Productions Pty Ltd Directors.........

Assoc, producer..............................................Ian Smith Wardrobe.....................................................IsabelCarter, Dist. company..

Paul Maloney, PBL Productions Pty Ltd Cathy Turnbull, Prod, manager...................................... ChristineAspinall ' Chris Shell, Producers....... ............... John Edwards, Prod, secretaries..................................... Francis Digiglio, Frenny Cook Steve Mann, Tim Read Wendy Walker Peter Andrlkldls Props buyer...................................................MarkGrivas Directors.......... ..................Don Crombie, Floor manager................................................ RayLindsay Standby props......................... Paul Sutherland, ......... Terry Stapleton, Kathy Mueller Scriptwriters Asst directors............................................ MurrayGroube, Kim Naggs Graham Hartley, Scriptwriters.... ............... Michael Fisher, Linda Wilson Shane Brennan, Music editor..............................................WarrenPearson Ted Roberts, Casting............................................................ Jan Russ, Graeme Farmer Vision switcher........................................... JennyWilliams Leon Saunders .............Peter Herbert, Jane Daniels Photography........

Tech, directors..............................................Jack Brown, ............... Andrew Lesnie Script editors Lighting supervisor....................... Rod Harbour Rlc Nott, Morgan Smith, Sound recordist.... ....................Bob Clayton Staging supervisor...........................................BillWebb Editors..................

Jocelyn Moorhouse Howard Simons .............Andrew Prowse, Make-up.............................................................Jo Pardy ...............Jane Watson Denise Haslem Catering...........................................................TrioCatering Research..........

Hairdresser...............................................WilliamMcilvaney Prod, designer..... .....................Louis Pull ............Stewart Burnside Post-production................. ATV 10 (Melbourne) **_ _*. !-__n 1/»a(Max Ramsay), Elaine Smith Photography.....

Composer............. ....................Paul Clark Wardrobe........................................................ BigiMalinausk ............... Martin Armiger Sound recordist.

Cast: Francis_1 Bell .................. Karan Peel Prod, co-ordinator Props buyer..................................... Mark Grivas ............... Cathy Flannery Editor.................

(Daphne Lawrence), Paul Keene (Des Clarke), ........Hector Crawford, Standby props........................................... Susan BirjakProd, manager.... ......................Mike Fuller Exec, producers Myra De Groot (Eileen Clarke), David Clencie Unit manager.......

Ian Crawford, Music editor..................................................

John White ......... Christopher Jones (Danny Ramsay), Peter O’Brien (Shane , Terry Stapleton Prod, secretary....

Vision switcher..............................Jim Mauridis ...................Nikki Traynor Ramsay), Alan Dale (Jim Robinson), Kylie ................ Howard Neil Prod, accountant..

Tech, directors.........................................HowardSimmons, ...................Jane Corden Assoc, producer....

Flinker (Lucy Robinson), Stefan Dennis (Paul ......... C. Ewan Burnett Prod, assistant.....

Peter Merinow .................Louise Crosby Prod, supervisor....

Robinson), Anne Haddy (Helen Daniels).

1st asst director.... ......... Virginia Bernard Catering......................................... Helen Louers .......... Philip Hearnshaw Prod, co-ordinators.

Synopsis: Love ’em or hate ’em,but everybody

56 — March CINEMA PAPERS

Set decorators...........................................DarrenJones 2nd asst director......................Michael Faranda Based on the original idea Mixed a t ........................................ ABC Brisbane Set construction......................... Robert Hearne 3rd asst director......................... Edward Waring by................................................. The P.O.T.S. Length................................................ 25 minutes Asst editor.......................... Rebecca Grubelich 2nd unit director....................Corrie Soeterboek Photography............................... Julian Mather, G au g e......................................... BVU videotape Sound editors................................................GlenNewnham Continuity.........................................Ann Walton Roger Bradbury Shooting stock..............................................Sony Ross Chambers Casting............................................. Liz Mullinar Sound recordist...............................................LeeFaulkner S yn op sis: A light-hearted look at the Stunts co-ordinator.................... Glen Ruehland Extras castin g........................................ Ann Fay Editor............................................................BruceRedman seriousness of a dog day afternoon where Still photography....................... Terry Forrester Camera operator..................................... AndrewLesnie Exec, producer................. Craig Collie (Sydney) dukes rub shoulders with princes; where Armourer...................................... Brian Holmes Focus puller..................................................ColinDeane Assoc, producer........... Rory Sutton (Brisbane) bitches who make some noise in the world owe Best boy.............................................Jon Leaver Clapper/loader..............................................PeterTerakas 2nd unit director..........................................BruceRedman much to the personal dogma of their masters.

Runner.............................................. Phillip Stott Key grip.......................................Brett McDowell Lighting cameraman............Julian Mather It’s a dog’s life, and these are some of the most Publicity...................................................... Susan Wood Asst grip............................................. John Tate dognified.

Camera assistant...............................Tim Wilson Catering.............................. Bande Aid Catering 2nd unit cameraman...................................Steve Arnold 2nd unit photography................................ RogerBradbury Nurse......................................................... Joanne Scheffler Gaffer............................................................PeterO’Brien Mixer................................................................ LeeFaulkner A DAY AT THE RACES Budget............................................................$2.8 million 3rd electrician.............................................. Steve Carter Narrators...........................................Chris Frost, Length...........................................4 x 60 minutes Boom operator.............................Mark van Kool Alan Frost Prod, company........... Australian Broadcasting Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Art director..................................Dee Molineaux Still photography........................................ RogerBradbury Corporation Asst art director/Special effects Tech, adviser....................................Mike Groom Producer....................................................... PeterCookeShooting stock ...................................... Eastman liaison..............................................Tony Moss Runner................................................ Tim Wilson Director......................................................... PeterCookeCast: Michael York (Carl Zlinter), Sigrid Thornton (Jennifer), Noel Trevarthen (Dr Catering....................................Vicky Matheson, Scriptwriters................................................. PeterCooke, Costume designer.......................................FlelenHooper Stephen Edwards), Don Barker (Tom), Greg Debbie Fleming Laurie Stanborough Make-up supervisor.....................Bob McCarron Carrol (Joe), Ilona Rogers (Jane), Swawomir Studios........................................................... ABCBrisbane Sound recordists............................................ MelRadford, Make-up artist.........................................AnnabelBarton Wabik (Stanislaus), Sydney Jackson (Forrest).

Mixed a t .........................................................

ABC Brisbane Quentin Black, Hairdresser.................................................... PaulWilliams Mike Charman Laboratory............................................Cinecolor Synopsis: A love story, set in Victoria’s Wardrobe supervisor....................... Lyn Askew Length...............................................

15 minutes Editor............................................................BryceDean mountain region, between an English girl and a Standby wardrobe............................ Rita Crouch G auge........................................................ 16 mm Prod, manager.............................................. DickRead displaced Czechoslovakian migrant. During Props buyers...................................... Bill Booth, Shooting stock..................................7240, 7250 Prod, assistant............................................... TimWilson World War II, as a doctor in the German army, Joyce McFarlane Cast: Chris Frost, Alan Frost.

Producer’s assistant...............Ingrid Andersen Carl Zlinter did things that he’d rather forget.

Props standby............................... Max Manton, Synopsis: A climber’s eye view of the ascent Lighting cameram an.................................. PeterCookeBut, in his new life as a construction worker on Jo Johanson of Mt Beerwah in S.E. Qld. The climb Camera assistant....................

Roger Bradbury a road building project, he finds his past Special effects............................... Chris Murray, incorporates an overnight ‘hanging bivouac’, Sound editor............................................... BryceDean Inescapable.

David Hardie roof climbing, spectacular scenery and some Editing assistant............................

Peter Cooke Set finishers........................................ Ian Heron, of the more obscure problems encountered by Mixers............................................. Mel Radford, FEATHERS FUR OR FINS Martin Bruveris Warwick Finlay rock climbers.

Scenic artist........................................ Alan Craft Prod, company........... Australian Broadcasting Asst mixer.....................................................LeighFaulkner Set construction m anager..............Ray Elphick Corporation Narrator........................................................... Jim Devine THE BLUE LIGHTNING Asst editors................................... Lyn Williams, Producer..................................... Ian Henschke Mixed a t ......................................................... ABCBrisbane Erin Sinclair Prod, company.......Roadshow, Coote & Carroll Scriptwriter..................................................... DonSpencer Laboratory............................Cinecolor Brisbane Sound dept trainee...................Andrew Buchan Photography..............................................WayneHarley, Dist. company........................... CBS, Network 7 Lab. liaison.............................. Leigh Brightfield Editing assistants.......................... Lyn Williams, Peter Cooke, Producer.....................................Ross Mathews Length...............................................................

30 minutes Erin Sinclair Tye Tet Fai Director............................................... Lee Philips Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Stunts co-ordinator....................... Glen Boswell Sound recordists........................ Mike Charman, Scriptwriter............................................... WilliamKelley Shooting stock..............................Eastmancolor Still photography..............................Vivian Zink Quentin Black Photography...............................Geoff Simpson Synopsis: A look at the people hooked on Best boy................................Johnathan Hughes Editors..........................................................DavidHalliday, Sound recordist.................................. Tim Lloyd horses who live at, and live off, the track, in Publicity............................... Sandra O’Halloran Steve Rhodes, Editor...................................................Ted Otton pursuit of amusement or enterprise.

Unit publicist....................... Sandra O’Halloran Leanne Petersen Prod, designer....................... Chris Breckwoldt Catering.............................................Kate Roach Composers.....................................................DonSpencer, Exec, producers........................................... AlanSloan, DREAMTIME — THE EVIL ONE Laboratory.............................................Colorfilm Allan Caswell, Greg Coote, Budget............................................... $4,509,000 Mick Hamilton Matt Carroll Prod, company........... Australian Broadcasting Length.......................................3 x 120 minutes Exec, producer................................. Craig Collie Corporation Prod, co-ordinator................................. Susanne Darcey Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Producer’s assistant................................ DebbieOverell Producer...................................................... RobinJam es Prod, manager....................... Andrew W. Morse Cast: Chris Haywood (Steve), Tracy Mann Music performed by........................................DonSpencer Unit m anager................... Stephen Maccagnan Scriptwriter...................................Bruce Murphy (Connie), Nicholas Hammon (Harry), Linda Mixer........................................................WarwickFinlay Based on the authentic Aboriginal legends of Prod, secretary...........................Edwina Nicolls Cropper (Joycie), Tony Barry (Mick Brennan), Presenter.........................................................DonSpencer Prod, accountant....................... Tony Hulstrom the Dreamtime Aileen Britton (Big Caroline), Jack Webster Animation.................................... Bob Tomkins, Photography................................Brett Ramsey 1st asst director....................................... MichaelBourchier (Bobby), Nicholas Papademetrlou (Theo).

Ian Beattie, 2nd asst director...........................Jake Atkinson Sound recordist.......................................QuentinBlack Students of Qld. College of Art Synopsis: A miniseries based on the true story 3rd asst director............................. Nick Alimede Editor....................................................... StephenRhodes Mixed a t ......................................................... ABCBrisbane of cyclone Tracy, which virtually destroyed Prod, designer................................... Nick Read Continuity.................................................. Jackie Sullivan Laboratory..........................Cinecolour Brisbane Darwin in December 1974.

Producer’s assistant.................. Debbie Overell Producer’s assistant................... Frances Grant Lab. liaison...............................Leigh Brightfield Camera assistan t................................Rod Jong Casting consultant............................Liz Mullinar Length..........................................14 x 5 minutes Focus puner................................................Martinlurner Special fx photography...............Mel Morschella G auge.............................16 mm to 1” videotape Make-up....................................................... DawnThompson, Clapper/loader..................................................Jo Murphy Shooting stock.....................7247 Eastmancolor Lyndall Rhodes Camera assistan t........................................AnnaHoward Synopsis: A series for children based on the P O S T-P R O D U C TIO N Key grip........................................................RobinMorgan Wardrobe........................................................ LenBauska album "Feathers Fur or Fins” . Each pro­ 2nd unit photography................................DannyBatterham Props................................................................ LenBauska gramme features an Australian animal. Don Asst editor................................................... RogerCarter Gaffer.............................................Trevor Toune Spen cer (P laysch ool) introduces and Neg. matching............................................. BarryMcKnight Electrician............................... Graeme Sheldon ALICE TO NOWHERE describes each animal through songs. This Sound editor...............................................RogerCarter Boom operator..................................Phil Tipene series includes the platypus, koala, sugar Mixer............................................. Quentin Black Prod, company................ Crawford Productions Art director....................................................DaveDuguid glider, black swan, wombat, shark, flying fox, Producer...................................Brendan Lunney Asst art director....................................... Eugene IntassNarrator....................................... Belzah Lowah Director......................................................... John Power Opticals.......................... Ken Phelan (Colorfilm) cockatoo, kookaburra, goanna, emu and Costume supervisor....................................KerryBarnett Scriptwriter...................................................DavidBoutland Make-up...........................................................VivMepham Studios....................................ABC TV Brisbane kangaroo.

Mixed a t......................................................... ABCBrisbane Based on the novel b y .................................EvanGreenHairdresser...............................................FranciaSmeets Wardrobe stand-by.......................................KateGreenLaboratory........................................... Colorfilm Photography................................................ DavidConnell FIVE TIMES DIZZY Sound recordist...................... Andrew Ramage Props buyers................................................SuzyHoyle,Lab. liaison...................................................BrianMcGerharty Prod, company........Samson Film Services Ltd Monette Lee Length...............................................................

20 minutes Exec, producers......................Hector Crawford, Producer..........................................Tom Jeffrey Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Ian Crawford, Standby props.............................. John Osborne Director......................................................... John Eastway Terry Stapleton Shooting stock...............................Eastmancolor 7247 Scriptwriters............................................... NadiaWheatly, Special effects.............................................Steve Courtley Synopsis: A short tale in a series based on Assoc, producer.......................................MichaelLake Set construction m anagers......Alan Flemming, Terry Larson Danny Rollston Aboriginal Dreamtime legend. The story is told Prod, co-ordinator..................................... LeonieJansen Based on the original Idea imaginatively through strong poetic images Asst editors....................................... Marg Sixel, Prod, manager.....................................Grant Hill b y.............................................. Nadia Wheatly and intimate narration.

Julia Gelhard Location manager.....................................MurrayBoyd Sound recordist......................Martin Harrington Stunts co-ordinator...................... Glen Boswell Asst location manager........ Cameron Strachan Editors.........................................................AileenSolowiej, Prod, secretary............................................FionaKing Still photography..........................Jim Townley, THE FAR COUNTRY Janet Stubbings Ken George Prod, accountant..................... Rob Threadgold Composer...........................................Chris Neal ...Crawford Productions Prod, company...........

Tech, adviser.................................... Jack Davis 1st asst director.................................. John Wild Prod, manager...................................... AdrienneRead Producer.................... ......... John Barningham Wrangler..................................... Bill Willoughby 2nd asst director........................Brett Popplewell Location manager........................Craig Sinclair Director........................ ................ George Miller Prod, runner................................. Charlie Revai 3rd asst director...........................................PeterNathan Prod, secretary.............................Julie Ploumer ..............Peter Yeldham Scriptwriter.................

Focus puller................................................. Greg RyanPublicity................................ Elizabeth Johnson Prod, accountant......................... Jill Coverdale ................... Nevil Shute Based on the novel by Catering...........................................Out to Lunch Clapper/loader.............................................TerryHowells Asst accountant.........................................DonnaWillis .....................Ron Hagen Photography...............

Laboratory................................................... Atlab Key grip....................................... Ian Bennelleck 1st asst director........................... Keith Heygate Sound recordist......... .............. John Wilkinson Lab. liaison................................. George Kenny Asst grip......................................Stuart Crombie 2nd asst director..............................Nicola Long Editor........................... ................... Adrian Carr Budget.............................................. $2,500,000 Gaffer........................................... Stewart Sorby 3rd asst director.................................Tessa Say ...................Otello Stolfo Prod, designer............

Length................................................ 96 minutes Electrician................................Richard Tummell Continuity..................................................Sharon Goldie Composers................. .......... Garry McDonald, Boom operator.............................................ScottRawlings Gauge........................................................ 35 mm Casting............................................................

Sue Parker Laurie Stone Shooting stock...............Kodak Eastman colour Art director.................................. Phillip Warner Extras casting............................................Jennie Kubler Exec, producers......... .......... Hector Crawford, Cast: Sam Elliot (Harry Wingate), Rebecca Asst art director.......................... Sally Shepard Lighting cameraman...................................... KimBatterham Ian Crawford, Gllling (Kate McQueen), John Meillon (Dr Make-up....................................... Kirstln Veysey Camera operator.............................................. IanMarden Terry Stapleton Giles), Robert Coleby (Trowbridge), Max Wardrobe................................Margot McCarney Camera assistant......................................... John Scott .................

Michael Lake Assoc, producer..........

Phipps (Cathcart), Ralph Cotterill (Words), Wardrobe supervisor.................................. ClareGriffin Key grip.......................................................NobbySzafranek Prod, supervisor.......... ........... C. Ewan Burnett Ward, assistant............................................. John SheaRobert Culp (Mclnally).

Gaffer.............................................................RickMcMullen Bernadette O’Mahoney Prod, co-ordinator.......

Synopsis: Harry Wingate Is sent by San Make-up.................................................... FelicitySchoeffel ............... Ray Hennessy Best boy..........................................Brett Keeping Prod, manager............

Francisco gem collector to retrieve the Props buyer.................................................... LisaGraham Boom operator.............................................GerryNucifora Location manager....... ....................... Don Linke fabulously expensive opal, The Blue Light­ Standby props....................... Shane Rushbrook Art director............................................... RichardRoberts ....................Vince Smits Prod, accountant........ ning. Harry travels with Kate McQueen to Opal Best boy.......................................Peter Maloney Costume designer...................................MirandaSkinner 1st asst director.......... ................Brian Giddens Ridge where Lester Mclnally holds the opal In Runner...............................................Ken Mahlab ...................Tony Forster Make-up/Hairdresser....

Jane Draysey Stewart 2nd asst director.........

Publicity...................................................... Susan Woodhis fortified stronghold. It is these three Standby wardrobe....................................... SuzyCarter 3rd asst director.......... ........... Strachan Wilson determined individuals who cause conflict In Budget............................................................$2.8 million Set dresser................................................. Sandy Wingrove Continuity..................... .........................Liz Perry the outback town.

Length..........................................4 x 60 minutes Standby props........................................ MatthewCumming Focus puller................. .......................Louis Puli G auge........................................................ 16 mm Art dept assistant............................................ TimFryer Clapper/loader........... ..............Gary Bottomley Shooting stock.................. Eastman 5291,5294 Special effects............................................KeronHansen ..............Joel Witherden Key grip........................

Synopsis: A woman is murdered . . . a truck is A DAY AT THE DOG SHOW Choreography............................................... AlltaNorthey Asst grip....................... ......... Warwick Simpson hijacked . . . and terror comes to the loneliest Construction manager.......................... GeoffreyHowe .Australian Broadcasting Special fx co-ordinator ................. Brian Pearce Prod, company... road in the Australian outback. Alice to Corporation Scenic artist.....................................................LynRowland Gaffer.......................... ..................Brian Adams Nowhere is a story of desperate men and Carpenters............................................... AndrewTickner, .............Debbie Fleming, .................

Tim Morrison Producers...........

Electrician................... lonely people. It is an action-packed drama in David Stenning, Steven Rhodes Boom operator............ .................. Greg Nelson which the characters act under the awesome .............. Debbie Fleming Daniel Flowers Scriptwriter.........

Asst art director........... ......Bernadette Wynack influence of the vast emptiness that is the ......... Graham Chadwick Asst editor...................................................... PaulFraser Sound recordist..

Make-up....................... ................ Maggie Kolev Australian outback. ............... Steven Rhodes Stunts co-ordinator..................................... ChrisHession Editor..................

Hairdresser.................. ............... Jenny Hughes .....................Rory Sutton Tightrope teacher.................................. Stephen Champion Exec, producer...

Wardrobe.................... .............Donald Lindsay THE BEERWAH BOLT .......................Dick Reed Still photography...................................... RobertMcFarlane Prod, manager...

Ward, assistan ts......... ................Marion Boyce, .....................Kim Cardow Tutor/dialogue coach..................Cathy Gatenby Reuben Thomas Unit m anager....

Prod, company............................................ABC ..............Ingrid Andersen Runner......................................................... LindaPavilack Prod, assistant....

Props buyer................. .................. Murray Kelly Dist. company.............................................. ABC ............. Michael Fanning Catering.........................................................John Faithful, Camera operator.

Standby props............ ................ Martin Kellock Producers......................................Lee Faulkner, ..................Gary Johnson Set decorators............. ................Brian Dusting, Art director.........

Tram Broadcast Bruce Redman .............. Debbie .Fleming John Rouch, Mixed a t .......................................................AudioO’Brien Narrator...............

Director......................................... Lee Faulkner

CINEMA PAPERS March — 57

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Production Survey continued

3rd asst director............................Nick Alimede Construction m an.....................................DennisSmith Sound editing a sst.......................Sasha Vitacek Directing attachment................... Claire Dobbin Stunts co-ordinators........................ Peter West, Sound editors............................................... MikeJones, Continuity................................. Judy Whitehead Martin Pashley Dee Jones Producer’s secretary......................Janet Clarke Tutor..............................................Judith Cruden Still photography..........................Gary Johnson Casting............................................Lee Larner Unit nurse.................................................. JacquiRobertson Publicity...................................... Georgie Brown Focus puller.................................Brian Breheny Camera equipment..................................... TramBroadcast Catering.............................................Kate Roach Clapper/loader............................ Mandy Walker Best boy........................................................ GregFitzgerald Mixed at......................................................... ABC Key g rip s......................................Barry Hanson, Runner................................... Andrew Merrifield Length................................................ 80 minutes Geoff Full Publicity................... Harrison Communications G auge........................................................ 16 mm Asst grip s..................................Darren Hanson, Cast: Gwen Plumb (Mother Paul), Ron Catering.............................................Kathy T rout David Nichols Haddrick (The Abbot), Fiona Stewart (Sister Studios......................Filmcentre, North Sydney Gaffer.............................................Lindsay Foote Mixed a t .....................................................CustonVideo Gabriel), Tim Eliott (Father Bernard), Danny Electrician..................................... Greg Rawson Caretti (Brother Jamie), Tom Farley (Mike), Budget...................................................$530,000 Boom operator....................................Phil Keros Length............................................................... 93minutes Dane Carson (Tim Hollander), Saviour Sammut Art director.................................................... ..KenJame.s FUNERAL GOING (Brother John), Basil Clarke (Father Gregory), Shooting stock...................................... Betacam Asst art directors......................Julieanne Mills, Cast: Robert Coleby (George Bailey), Barbara Fred Steele (Cardinal ’Mbupo).

Prod, company.......................... ABC TV-Drama Kelvin Sexton, Stephens (Irene Bailey), Gordon Piper (Jack Synopsis: Two nuns climb the wall of a rural Producer......................................................JulianPringle Graham Blackmore Benson), Syd Heylen (Chooka Morris), Joyce monastery, turn its cherry liqueur into a thriving Director........................................................ JulianPringle Costume designer....................

Bruce Finlayson Jacobs (Ivy Clements), Brian Moll (Ernie commercial enterprise, and set up a campaign Scriptwriter.................................................... CoryTaylor Make-up/hairdresser....................... Jo se Perez Slater), Joan Sydney (Maud Tremball), Max for the canonization of its founder, the child Based on the original idea by...........Cory Taylor Asst make-up/ Meldrum (Anton Felix), Kevin Golsby (Hackett), convict, Athuan.

Lighting..........................................................Sam Chung hairdressers........................................... Jenny Boehm, Tushka Hose (Pandora Bailey), Scott Bartle Sound recordist............................................DaveDundas AnnaKarpinski (Hector Bailey).

Prod, designer.............................. Stephen Gow THE HAUNTED SCHOOL Standby wardrobe........................................ Julie Barton Synopsis: Hector, a handicapped boy, Technical producer.......................... John Nixon Asst wardrobe........................................

RochelleFord Prod, company.......................ABC TV/Revcom becomes the centre of international media Prod, manager......................Stephen O’Rourke Wardrobe mistress................. Lorna Darbyshire attention when he is abducted by a bunyip. The Dist. company...............................................ABC Prod, secretary........................................AnnabelJeffery Seam stresses........................................... WiggyBrennan, Producer.........................................................RayAlehin bunyip, Hector's friend and an accepted Prod, assistant........................................... EmmaPeach Enia De Angelis Director........................................................ FrankArnold member of Hector’s foster family, saves Hector 1st asst director............................................ ScottFeeney Draughtsman..................................Bryce Perrin Scriptwriter...............................Helen Cresswell from being taken away from those he loves and 2nd asst director..........................Vld McLelland Props buyers.....................................Daryl Mills, sent to an institution.

Photography................................................

Peter Hendry Script editor................................. Barbara Masel Derrick Chetwyn Casting.................................................... JenniferAllenSound recordist.................................Ron Moore Standby props............................John R. Daniell Editor...................................................Lyn Solly Cast: Tracey Higginson (Ruth), Dasha Blahova Special effects..............................................CliveJones, Prod, designer................................... Tony Raes (Helena), Bill Zappa (Micky), Steven Jacobs IN BETWEEN Wayne Wood Prod, m anager............................................. Judy Murphy (Dan), V anessa Downing (Patricia), Neil Special effects asst.......................... Les Gough Prod, company...............In Between Television Unit m anager..................................................

Val Windon Fitzpatrick (Kevin), Robert Alexander, Barbara Art dept assistant......................................... TobyCopping Productions Pty Ltd Prod, secretary................................ Sandra Cox Fasano.

Art dept attachment..................................... Julie Cleland Producers......................................Chris Warner, 1st asst director............................................ AlanParsons Synopsis: An original half-hour for television.

Model maker................................................PeterO'Brien Kim Dalton 2nd asst director................Scott Hartford Davis Directors........................................Chris Warner, Asst model maker............................ Kim Sexton Continuity................................................

Larraine Quinnell GAME OF LIFE Mandy Smith Flying model maker......................... Geoff Tuck Casting assistant...................................MaureenCharlton (Formerly Youth In Australia ’85) Scriptwriters.......................Maureen McCarthy, Head scenic artist.............................Ray Pedler Camera operator........................... Roger Lanser Scenic artist....................................Clive Jones Shane Brennan Prod, companies............ Communique Pty Ltd, Clapper/loader.......................................... RobertFoster Brush hand.............................................. MichaelRumpf Ultrafun Pty Ltd Based on the original idea Camera assistant......................................... PaulPandoulis Construction manager.............................. DannyBurnett b y ........................................................ MaureenMcCarthy Dist. company...................Communique Pty Ltd Key grip...................................John Huntingford Asst construction manager................ Brian Cox Producer..........................................................Jim George Asst grip........................................................ GaryBurdett Photography..................................Jaem s Grant Set makers..................................... Patrick Carr, Directors................................ Michael Pattinson, Gaffer..............................................................TimJonesSound recordist.................................. Ian Wilson Robert Hern, Editor........................

Zbigniew (Peter) Friedrich Louise Meek, Electricians.................................................... KenPettigrew, Michael Hill, Composer.................................................... MarkMcSherry Geoff Bruer, Robert Wickham Arthur Vette, Exec, producer................Cinepak Investments Hugh Piper, Boom operator.............................................DavidPearson Con Mustard Management Services Ltd Jam es Bradley Generator operator.......................... Bob Woods Assistant editor........................Amanda Holmes Scriptwriter....................................Hanafl Hayes Assoc, producer......................................AndrewWiseman Asst production designer.................Col Rudder Sound editor.................................Roger Savage Prod, manager........................... Ann Darrouzet Editor............................................. Chris Benaud Design assistan t................. Therese Makinson Safety supervisor........................................ PeterCulpan Unit manager..............................Wendy Clarke Prod, designer........................................ Bob Hill Make-up.................................................ChristineBalfour, Location co-ordinator..........Christine Gallagher Still photography..........................Les O'Rourke Jiri Pavlin Prod, research co-ordinators.............Kris Wyld, Prod, secretary.............................. Toni Vernon .

Judy Menczel Dialogue coach Wardrobe..................................................Jolanta Pollett (American)............................Susan Gorence Prod, manager................................ Brenda Pam Wardrobe co-ordinator.................................ElsieEvansProd, accountant.........Roseby & Lenny Pty Ltd, Jennifer Davies Dialogue coach Prod, secretary.........................................PatriciaWaites Ward, assistan t........................................... ChrisPedersen (English)................................................MichaelLaurence Prod, assistan t.......................

Christine Brophy Props buyer..................................................ColinBailey Prod, accountant........................................ DavidBarnes Location manager/ 1st asst director............................. Jamie Legge 1st asst director.......................... Stephen Jones Standby props............................. Roy Eagleton, aviation consultant................................. DavidClarke Continuity.................................................. RobynCrawford Chris Ryeman Casting consultants......... Maizels & Associates Focus puller................................................. ChrisCain Pilot................................................................NickDaniel Lighting director................... Robert McDonnell Special effects............................ Brian McClure Stage hand/driver....................................AndrewWilson Gaffer.......................................... Rory Timoney Make-up...................................... Caroline Lette Set decorators......................................Tim Tulk, Second electrics........................ Daryl Pearson Stage hand...............................................RodneyHayward Russell Burton, Music performed b y ......................The Allniters Boom operator...............................Craig Beggs Best boy................................................. Jim Hunt John Loggan Music supervisor....................... uary Hardman Generator operator...................................HaroldYoung Art director............................................ GeorginaGreenhill Video facilities......... Tram Broadcast (Sydney), Set construction.............................. Laurie Dorn Unit runner..................................... Robin Newell Asst art director......................... Kerith Holmes Lemac Film & Video (Melbourne), Standby set maker.......................... Lex Hagen Prod, office runner.........................Joanne Roth Make-up..................................... Vicki Friedman Jumbuck (Brisbane), Asst editor............................ Jam es Tsatsaronis Wardrobe........................................................ Jan HingPublicity.................. The Rea Francis Company Smith Video (Adelaide) Standby set finisher...................................... BobGriffin Unit publicists.................................Rea Francis, Ward, assistant...............................Gayle Beach Post-production facilities.............. 20/20 Vision, Still photography......................... Martin Webby, Jan Batten Gary Johnston Standby props............................................ AdeleFlere Gemini Sound Length......................................... 8 x 25 minutes Sound editor..................................................

Rob Scott Catering........................................

Out To Lunch Publicity................................................... GeorgieBrown Mixer...........................................David Harrison Mixed at............................................... Soundfirm Gauge..................................................... Betacam Length.......................................... 8 x 50 minutes Stunts............................ New Generation Stunts Laboratory............................................... Cinevex Shooting stock............................................ Video Cast: Carol Drinkwater (Fanny), Jam es Laurie Still photography....................... Maria Stratford Lab. liaison..................................... Bruce Braun (Joseph), Emil Minty (Patrick), Grant Navin Cast: Nick Conway (Master of Ceremonies), Best boy..........................................Peter Jordan Budget..............................................$4,750,000 (Richard), Beth Buchanan (Vanessa), Leigh Denny Gordon (Miss Heroine), Ian Nimmo Runner.................................................. VeronicaMaughan Length...........................................5 x 60 minutes Nicholls (Clarissa), Vic Hawkins (Blackburn), (Soap box orator), Peter Carmody (School Catering................................

SweetSeduction Gauge........................................................16 mm Lynne Porteous (Lil), Mervyn Drake (Charlie), teacher). Reporters: Lisa Hensley, Lizbeth Studios........................................Open Channel Shooting stock............................................. 7294 Duncan Wass (Rev. Dalton).

Kennelly, Angela Martinkus, Simon Njou, Mixed at......................................................SoundFirmScheduled release.......................... March 1986 Simon Peart, Brett Thompson, Mark Wooder.

Synopsis: A young English governess finds Laboratory...............................................Cinevex Synopsis: The project is a series of eight herself alone and unemployed in Sydney Cast: Kerry Mack (Chubbie Miller), Nicholas Lab. liaison.....................................Bruce Braun television programmes designed to reflect the Eadie (Bill Lancaster), Wayne Cull (Haden Town. Her plight is brought to the attention of Budget..............................................$1,192,000 Clarke), Malcolm Robertson (Carson), Stephen realities of being a young person in Australia in the local bishop’s wife, who offers her a small Leeder (Hawthorne), June Salter (Maud), Barry Length...........................................4 x 55 minutes grant to open her own school in a remote gold 1985.

Hill (Edward), Maureen Edwards (Alice), Gauge.......................................................16 mm, mining settlement.

Stacey Testro (Marian), Bud Tingwell (Sam 1” video tape A HALO FOR ATHUAN Shooting stock.........................Kodak ECN 7294 Hayes).

Prod, company.............................................ABC Cast: Sheryl Munks (Angie), Jim Petrovski Synopsis: A sweeping true life story of love, HECTOR’S BUNYIP Dist. company................. ..............................ABC (Alex), Vichea Ten (Saret), Fatima Uygun scandal and breathtaking adventure set Producer......................... ...................Alan Burke Prod, company................ ........... Filmrep Ltd (Fatima), Ly Lackhena Mak (Kanya), Lupco against the epic days of pioneering long­ Director............................ ...................Alan Burke Dist. company.................. .JNP Films Pty Ltd Talevski (Tome). distance aviation. .......... Helen Boyd Producer..........................

Scriptwriter..................... ...................Alan Burke Synopsis: In Between is a four-part made-for.......... Mark Callan Based on a radio play by .......... Julie Anne Ford Director............................ television miniseries about a group of four LAND OF HOPE Photography.................. .............Julian Penney Scriptwriter....................... .Judith Colquhoun adolescents from Turkish, Cambodian, Mace­ Story consultant.............. ...... Lynn Bayonas Prod, company ..................... Filmrep Limited Sound recordist.............. ............ Chris Alderton donian and Anglo-Australian backgrounds, ........Peter Knevitt Editor............................... .................... Bill Russo Dist. company.. ................. JNP Films Pty Ltd Photography................... facing the challenges and dilemmas of growing Prod, designer................ ..............Quentin Hole Producer......... ......................Suzanne Baker Sound recordist................ .......... Richard Hill up in a multi-cultural society. It shows the ........................Gary Conway, Composer....................... .............Tony Bremner Directors.........

Editor................................ ..Stuart Armstrong pressures on them, the conflicts and difficulties Chris Adshead Prod, manager............... .............John Moroney Prod, designer................. .......... Darrell Lass they have to face, and the decisions they have .....................John Patterson, Scriptwriters....

Unit m anager................. ........ Beverley Powers Exec, producer................. ......Jam es Davern to make as they are pushed into adulthood.

Anne Brooksbank, Prod, secretary............... ................. Padma Iyer Prod, co-ordinator........... ......... Julie Forster Tony Morphett 1st asst director.............. .............Graham Millar Prod, manager................. ..............Rod Allan THE LANCASTER MILLER AFFAIR Photography........ ..............................Jan Kenny 2nd asst director............. .......... Steve Stannard Prod, secretary................ ...Lynne Rowlands ......Lancaster Miller Prod, company.............

Sound recordist... ..........................Don Connolly Continuity........................ ...............Anthea Dean Prod, accountant............. .............Catch 123, Productions Pty Ltd Therese Tran Casting............................ ............Jennifer Allen, Editor................... .................Stewart Armstrong Dist. company............... ......Lancaster Miller Irene Gaskill 1st asst director............... ..........Craig Bolles Prod, designer..... .......................Owen Williams Productions Pty Ltd Composer........... ..........................Mike Perjanik Lighting cameraman...... .............Julian Penney 2nd asst director............... ........ Peter Voeten ......Kerry Jackson Producer....................... .............Paul Davies Exec, producer.... ....................... Jam es Davern Camera operator............ ............Russell Bacon 3rd asst director.............. ........... Henri Safran Director.........................

Prod, co-ordinator ....................Susanne Darcey Focus puller..................... ..................Brett Joyce Continuity......................... .....Jackie Sullivan Scriptwriter................... ........Peter Yeldham Prod, manager.... .... Rosanne Andrews-Baxter Key grip............................ ..............Alan Travena Casting.............................. ......... Garry Keane Photography.................. .......Ross Berryman Unit manager...... .Christiaan Hoppenbrouwers Camera operator.............. ......John Thornton Asst grip........................... ........... Paul Lawrence Sound recordist........... .............Ross Linton ........Mai Hamilton Prod, secretary.... ..................... Edwina Nicholls Gaffer............................... .............Martin Perrott 2nd unit camera operator Editor............................. ......Richard Hindley Prod, accountant. ....................... R.J. Chalmers, Electrician....................... ................ Pierre Drion Camera assistant............. ............ Greg Kung Prod, designer.............. ........

David Copping .....Peter Ledgway Bolten & Assoc.

Boom operator................ ....................Geoff Krix Key grip............................ ........Frank Strangio Composer.....................

1st asst directors. ......................... John Warran, Asst art director............... ........... Andrew Harris Gaffer................................ .......... Jamie Egan Assoc, producer.......... ......... David Hannay Stuart Wood Boom operator................. ........... Brett Heath Make-up.......................... .............Suzie Stewart Prod, supervisor........... ...............Irene Korol ......Debra Overton 2nd asst director.. ........................ Peter Kearney Asst designer...................

Wardrobe........................ ......Carolyn Matthews .....Sally Ayre-Smith Prod, co-ordinator........

3rd asst director... ............................Nicola Long Ward, assistant............... ..................Ron Dutton Make-up........................... ......... Lloyd Jam es .Steven Maccagnan Unit manager................

Continuity............. ............................... Liz Barton Hairdresser....................... ......... Lloyd Jam es Props buyer...................... .................... Bill Booth Prod, secretary............. ........ Antonia Legge Casting................ .................Mary-Ann Eckstein Ward, assistant................ ........ Tracy Padula Standby props................ ...................Don Page, Prod, accountant.......... ...Howard Wheatley Lighting camera.. .............................. Jan Kenny Peter Moroney Props buyer/dresser........ ....Louella Hatfield Asst accountants.......... ...Antony Shepherd, Camera operator.. .............................. Jan Kenny Asst editor....................... ........... Philippa Byers Asst props buyer.............. ..Robbie Campbell Nancy Bekhor Focus puller........ .......................... Daren Keogh .............Tony Hunt Musical director............... .................Mike Kenny Standby props..................

Prod, office attachment .......... Debbie Saffir Clapper/loader.... ..................... Miriana Marusic Music performed by........ ......................Adelaide Art dept attachment........ .........Chris Batson 1st asst director............ ...Michael Bourchier Key grip........... .......................... Bruce Barber Symphony Orchestra Carpenters....................... ......Marcus Smith, ......... Jake Atkinson Errol Glassenbury 2nd asst director..........

Asst grip.............. ~T~.............. George Wormald Sound editor...............,... ...................Des Horne Budget............................................... $1.4 million Length........................................ 12 x 25 minutes G au g e ......................................................... Video Cast: Rebekah Elmaloglou (Mareka), Helen Kambos (Yaya), Stavros Economidis (Georgio), Mary Kostakidis (Roula), Dominic Elmaloglou (Costa), Jane Clifton (Mrs Wilson), Jim Holt (Brian Brooking), Joanne Samuel (Chris Brooking), John Doyle (Professor), Ray Meagher (Red Headed Person).

Synopsis: When the going gets tough the kids get going and the world goes five times dizzy.

58 — March CINEMA PAPERS

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Gaffer............................................................. Sam Bienstock Stunts co-ordinator.................................... FrankLennon Prod, manager.............................................CoralCrowhurst Continuity..............................Margot Snellgrove Electrician..................................................... Greg Fitzgerald Tutors............................................................. Sue Morrow, Casting........................................................... Sue Manger, Prod, secretary................................ Julie Vance Electrics a s s t ........................................ JonathonHughes Judith Cruden Helen Salter Prod, assistant................................. Anita Atkins Boom operator................................................Jo e Spinelli Unit nurse............................. Jacqui Robertson Lighting cameraman................................. KevanLind 1st asst director.......................... Brian Sandwell Art director.....................................Ron Highfield Tech, adviser........................ Kazue Matsumoto 2nd asst director...........Geoffrey Newnham Focus puller.....................................John Lomax Art dept co-ordinator....................... Penny Lang Wranglers........................................ Ken Wood, Boom operators...............................................IanWilson, Camera assistant.........................

Chris Cole Costume designers.........................Terry Ryan, Ross Wilson Daphne Pearson Key grip.......................................................LesterBishop Fiona Reilly Camera supplies.......................Tram Broadcast Make-up....................................................... HanaFiserova Asst grip.............................................Terry Cook Make-up....................................................MarjoryHamlin, Best boy.....................................Greg Fitzgerald Wardrobe......................................................ElsieRushton Gaffers........................................................ RogerWood, Mary Rea Runner.................................. Andrew Merrifield Props buyer................................................PaddyMcDonald Derek Jones Hairdresser.....................................................WilliKenrick Publicity.................. Harrison Communications Stage assistants.............................................DonPage,Boom operator.............................................AndyDuncan Wardrobe buyer........................................... NickiReillyCatering............................................Kathy T rout Gerard Collins Art director...................................................... KenMcCann Standby wardrobe...................................... FionaNicolls Studios.................... Film Centre, North Sydney Video editor................................................... JohnBerryMake-up..............................................Cassandra Hanlon Props buyers.................................................. BillyAllen,Mixed a t ....................................................CustomVideo Lighting director............................David Arthur Wardrobe.................................................HeatherMcLaren Mark Dawson Budget..................................................$530,000 Technical producer..................................... PeterOllierWard, assistant........................................ AndreaBurns Standby props.............................................. ColinGibson Length................................................ 93 minutes Vision mixer...................................Bruce Wilson Props buyer..................................... Kerrie Reay Scenic artist......................................... Eric Todd Shooting stock.................................... Betacam Length...........................................7 x 30 minutes Standby props.............................................PhilipCumming Set construction..............................................PhilWorthScheduled release.................... Seven National Cast: RuthCracknell (Maggie), Garry Set decorator............................................... ScottBird Asst editor................................................ MelissaBlanch Network McDonald (Arthur), Henry Szeps (Robert), Carpenter.................................... Ian Hathaway Sound editors................................................MikeJones, Cast: Graham Dow (Pop), Robert Carlton Judy Morris (Liz).

Set construction........................................ AlistairThornton Martin Pashley (Ray), Olivia Martin (Dee), Kristin Veriga (Sid), Synopsis: The continuing trials of Arthur as he Asst editors................................................. SimonSmithers, Editing assistants........................................DianePrior,Kazue Matsumoto (Ishikawa), Ritchie Singer faces the problem of looking after Maggie, his Robert Werner Cathy Fenton (Parker), Kurt Schneider (Benkie), Kenji Konda ageing mum.

Editing assistants.......................................SimonSmithers Dubbing editor.............................................DianePrior (Mikio).

Robert Werner Asst dubbing editors....................................MikeJones, Synopsis: Ishikawa, a Japanese business­ Best boys..........................................Mike Wood, POP MOVIE Martin Pashley man, takes up residence in Sydney to direct Paul Booth Prod, company..................

Musical Film Pty Ltd Best boy...................................................... Jamie Eganthe construction of a waterfront development.

Runner...............................................Henk Prins Producers..........................................Ray Argali, Runner............................ Toby Churchill-Brown Unbeknown to him his employees, seeing the Publicity.............................................

Liz Harvey Daniel Scharf Publicity................... Harrison Communications opportunity to make a quick quid, use his name Catering....................................... Kaos Katering Director............................................... Ray Argali Unit publicist.............................................. MandyCookto try to acquire the adjoining property. This is Mixed at.........................................................Atlab Scriptwriter.........................................Ray Argali Catering........................................Kaos Catering the home of Pop McKenzie, scrap merchant, Laboratory.................................................... Atlab Photography..................................... Ray Argali, Studios............................Filmrep Ltd, Mort Bay his grandchildren and their beloved Clydesdale Length........................................ 6 x 120 minutes Mandy Walker Mixed a t ....................................... Custom Video horse, Sam. Cast: Jo se Caffarel (Garcia), Philip Henville Sound recordists................... Bronwyn Murphy, Laboratory....................................................Atlab (Peter), Ken Talbot (Shorty), Kelan Angel Daniel Scharf, Budget.............................................. $4,595,000 (Matt), Tonya Wright (Joanne), Melissa THE LOCAL RAG Pat Fiske Length........................................ 10 x 50 minutes Kounnas Justine Clarke (Carmen), Prod, company....................................... ABC-TV Editors............................................................ RayArgali,Marc Gray(Robin), G auge........................................................ 16 mm (Mike), Gerry Duggan (Professor Producer........................................... Keith Wilkes Bettina Petith Cast: Maureen Green (Young Maureen Quinn), Poopsnagle), Ric Hutton (Count Sator).

Director..........................................................KeithWilkes Prod, designers........................... Noel Crombie, Patricia Kennedy (Old Maureen Quinn), Patrick Synopsis: A group of country children run a Scriptwriter.................................................. CoralDrouyn Maria Ferro Dickson (Paddy Quinn), Benjamin Franklin holiday camp for city children — there are Based on the original treatment Producers attachment.......Anna Grieve (AFTS) (Kevin Quinn), Penelope Stewart (Young Nesta horses and trail bikes, an old mining town and b y.............................................................. ColinTalbot, Editors attachment.................... Debra Weddall Quinn), Melissa Jaffer (Old Nesta Quinn), Drew caves to explore and, best of all, very little adult Stephen Rice (Film Victoria) Forsythe (Old Frank Quinn), Melita Jurisic supervision. P rofessor P oop sn agle is Script editor........................................ Bill Garner Assoc, producers........................John Cruthers, (Kathleen Quinn), Peter Kowitz (Leo Quinn), searching for a long lost form of super steam Prod, designer.............................Alwyn Harbott Bryce Menzies Richard Moir (Dominic Quinn). power which requires various minerals. The Prod, secretary................................. Sarah Hall Prod, supervisor.........................................DanielScharf Synopsis: The sag a of an Irish Catholic names and locations of these minerals have Prod, assistan t...............................................

Lee Heming Prod, co-ordinator...................................Cristina Pozzan working-class family, set against the bitter­ been engraved on golden salamanders and 1st asst director........................................MaggieGoller Prod, accountant....................... Jennifer Davies ness, successes and disappointments of the hidden in the area around Secret Valley. With Continuity........................................................

Lee Heming 1st asst director.......................................

Cristina Pozzan Australian labour movement through the years the help of Dr Garcia, Professor Poopsnagle’s Casting............................................... Greg Apps Camera assistan t...................................... KatinaBowell 1890-1972. nephew Peter and the children from Secret Lighting director............................... Ron Cromb Gaffer......................................... Brian McKenzie Valley, they set out to unravel the riddle of the Synopsis: Down-to-earth story of a mixed Boom operator........................................... SimonWilmot salamanders. group of professionals and casuals, transients Asst art director....................................... MichaelRumph THE LAST WARHORSE and permanents, who make up the production Music performed by....................................... Joe Camilleri, Prod, company................................ Filmrep Ltd QUEST FOR HEALING crew of a suburban newspaper.

Azmen, Dist. company....................... JNP Films Pty Ltd Lynx, Prod, company......... Independent Productions Producer........................................... Helen Boyd Midnight Oil, Pty Ltd MOTHER AND SON Director.............................................Bob Meillon Do Re Mi, Dist. company...........Independent Distributors (Series 3) Scriptwriter................................................... ColinFree I’m Talking, Pty Ltd Story consultant........................................... LynnBayonas Prod, company............................................ABC Rose Tattoo, Producer.................................................. RichardDavis Based on the original idea b y ............Colin Free Dist. company.............................................. ABC Modern Force, Director.....................................................Richard Davis Photography................................................ PeterKnevitt Producers....................................Geoff Portman, Celibate Rifles Scriptwriter...............................................RichardDavis Sound recordist....................................... RichardHill John O’Grady Sound editor...............................................Simon Wilmot Based on the original idea b y........Danae Brook Editor............................................................DavidJaeger Director....................................... Geoff Portman Mixer............................................................BruceEmery Photography................................ Hans Heidrich Prod, designer........................................... DarrellLassScriptwriter........................... Geoffrey Atherden Animation.......................................................LisaParrish, Sound recordist...............................Noel Quinn Exec, producer...........................................Jam es Davern Script editor................................ John O’Grady Lucinda Clutterbuck Exec, producer................................Gene Scott Prod, co-ordinator........................................ Julie Forster Photography...............................Richard Bond, Mixed at..............................................

Soundfirm Prod, manager........................ Cheryl Buckman Prod, m anager............................................... RodAllan Murray Tonkin, Laboratory............................................... Cinevex Still photography.....................Cheryl Buckman Prod, secretary......................... Lynne Flpwlands Glenn Traynor, Lab. liaison......................................Bruce Braun Mixed at..................................................Colorfilm Prod, accountant........................................Catch123, Denis Ghatt, Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Laboratory............................................. Colorfilm Therese Tran Greg Hilton Shooting stock......................................Fuji 8521 Lab. liaison..........................

Richard Piorkowski 1st asst director............................................PeterConroy Sound operators..............................John Segal, Synopsis: A five-part series dealing with Budget............................................................ $1.1million 2nd asst director......................................... PeterWarman Wayne Kealy various aspects of the Australian rock music Length.......................................... 6 x 50 minutes 3rd asst director.......................................... KerryJackson Prod, designer............................ Graeme Gould industry and its relation to young people.

Gauge........................................................ 16 mm Continuity.....................................................TracyPadula Composer......................................... Bill Motzing Shooting stock.............................. Eastmancolor Casting..............................................Garry Keane Scheduled release..............................April 1986 Technical director.....................................DennisMurphy PROFESSOR POOPSNAGLE’S Synopsis: A worldwide investigation of the Vision Switcher......................Steve Harrington traditions and methods of alternative healers.

STEAM ZEPPELIN Camera operator.......................................... John Thornton The series shows there are methods of Prod, company........................................

Grundy Motion Camera assistant..........................................GregKung healing, used forthousands of years, Pictures Pty Ltd Key grip........................................................ PeterLedgway developed through constantly changing Producer..................................................... RogerMirams Gaffer...........................................................Jamie Egan societies but remaining essentially the same.

Directors.................................................. HowardRubie, Boom operators......................................... CathyGross, They work on the root cause of illness and take Russel Webb Ian Wilson the whole being into account: mind, body and Scriptwriters...............................Bruce Stewart, Design assistant.........................................DebraOverton Help us make this Production spirit.

Betty Quin, Make-up........................................................LloydJam es Survey as complete as poss­ Rick Maier, Hairdresser................................................... LloydJam es ible.

If you have something SATURDEE Ken Saunders Wardrobe........................................................AnnBenjamin Based on the original idea Ward, assistant.............................................Jane Seymour which is about to go into preProd, company.....................LJ Productions Ltd production, let us know and we by............................................................. RogerMirams Asst props buyer......................Robbie Campbell Dist. company................Seven Network (Aust.)

Sound recordist......................... Lloyd Coleman Props buyer/dresser................................ LouellaHatfield will make sure it is included.

Producers.....................................................John Gauci, Editor.......................................... Gabe Reynaud Standby props...............................................TonyHunt Louise Hall Call Debi Enker on (03) Exec, producer................................. Ian Holmes Special effects...........................Reece Robinson Director............................................. John Gauci 329 5983, or write to her at Assoc, producer..................... Robert Guillemot Art dept attachment................................ JenniferKernke Cinema Papers, 644 Victoria Scriptwriters........................Judith Colquhoun, Prod, supervisor.....................Emanuel Matsos Scenic artist.............................................DeannaDoyle Peter Hepworth Street, North Melbourne, Prod, co-ordinator................................. MargaretSlarke Carpenters............................................... MarcusSmith, Based on the novel b y .............Norman Lindsay Prod, accountant.......................................... Judy Coffey Victoria 3051.

Errol Glassenbury, Photography......................................... Clive Sell Prod, assistant........................Joanne Charlton Gerard Marr Editor..........................................Scott McLeland 1st asst director..............................................TimHiggins Exec, producer..........................Stephen Vizard Construction m anager................. Dennis Smith 2nd asst director......................................... Jamie Crooks Assoc, producer......................................... FrankBrown Sound editors...........................

Mike Jones, 3rd asst director................................ David Byak Martin Pashley Prod, supervisor.....................................Frank Brown►

PRODUCERS

CINEMA PAPERS March — 59

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Prod, secretary...........................................Sarah Byrne Prod, accountant..............Maclean & Patterson 1st asst director.............................................KathHayden 2nd asst director............................................ SigiImitus Continuity.................................Robyn Crawford Casting..................................... Lee & Jo Lamer Camera operator............................... Phyl Cross Camera assistant............................Sean Lander Help us make this Production Key grip................................................. Tony Hall Gaffer...................................................... MalcolmMalean Survey as complete as poss­ Costume designer....................................... Rose Chong ible. If you have something which is about to go into preChong & Merkel Make-up................................................... PatriciaPayne production, let us know and we Budget............................................... $1.4 million will make sure it is included.

Length........................................................10x30 minutes Call Debi Enker on (03) G auge.................................. Shooting Betacam, 329 5983, or write to her at eventual release on 1-inch tape Cinema Papers, 64.4 Victoria Synopsis: Saturdee focuses on the exploits of Peter Gimble and his friends, providing us with Street, North M elbourne, a guided tour of the development of a boy into Victoria 3051. a young man. It explores the factors that impinge upon his development. Some of these factors, such as the concept of mateshlp, are uniquely Australian, whilst others, such as the struggle against an older generation’s con servativeness, are common to all Casting............................ .............Liz Mullinar adolescents. The series is set between the Casting consultants........ .............Lee Larner, middle to late twenties, in and around Kreswick Jo Larner in Victoria.

Camera operator.............. ........David Connell Focus puller..................... ..............Greg Ryan SWORD OF HONOUR Clapper/loader................. .........Bruce Phillips Prod, company......Simpson Le Mesurier Films Key grip........................... ......... Ian Benallack Producer...............................Roger Le Mesurier Asst grip s......................... .... Stuart Crombie, Directors........................................ Pino Amenta, Arthur Manousakis Catherine Millar Gaffer................................ ........Stewart Sorby Scriptwriters..............................Roger Simpson, Best boy........................... ......... Peter Malony Kathy Mueller, Genny operator................ ......... Dick Tummel Peter Kinloch, Boom operator................. .......Scott Rawlings Tom Hegarty Art director........................ .Virginia Bieneman Based on the original idea Art dept secretary........... .... Maria Pannozzo Costume designer........... .......... Jane Hyland by...................................... ......Roger Simpson Photography........................ ........David Connell Make-up........................... ...Felicity Schoeffel Sound recordist.................. ....Andrew Ramage Make-up assistant........... ....Wendy Freeman Editors................................. ................Phil Reid, Hairdresser....................... ......Cheryl Williams Peter Burgess Wardrobe supervisor...... ......Margot Lindsay Prod, designer................... .......Bernard Hides Standby warcfrobe........... ....Jeanie Cameron Composer............................. .......Greg Sneddon Military dresser................ .......Phil Chambers Exec, producer................... ......Roger Simpson Ward, assistant................ .......... Anna Baulch Assoc, producer................. ...Brian D. Burgess Costumière....................... ......... Mary Gauzzo Prod, co-ordinator............... Rosslyn Abernethy Props buyers................... ....Harvey Mawson, Location/unit m anager....... ........... Paul Healey Sue Maybury Location assistant/Film Storyboard artist.............. ......... Sue Maybury Victorian attachment...... ........Tim Browning Props assistants.............. .......Tony Hanning, Prod, assistant..................... .............Jenny Gray Jam es Cox Standby props.................. ........... Harry Zettel Prod, accountant................ .... Candice Dubois Draughtsman................... ...Peter Macdonald Asst accountant.................. .............Debra Cole 1st asst directors................. ......John Powditch, Special effects.................. ........... Brian Pierce Bob Donaldson Special effects assistants ........Peter Stubbs, 2nd asst director................. ....Brett Popplewell Jamie Thompson 3rd asst director.................. ...............Ian Kenny Scenic artist...................... .............Kate Joyce Set finisher....................... ..Graham Mathews Continuity............................. ..............Jenny Tosi

PRODUCERS

Production Survey continued Key grip........................................ Rob Hansford Carpenters..................................................... RayTaylor, Asst grip............................................. Ian Phillips Dominic Villella Gaffer.......... i.................................Bruce Towers Set construction m anager.............Ray Pattison Boom operator...................................Colin Swan Construction assistant............ Danny Corcoran Mobile bus driver....................................... AlisonCoopArt director.........................................Phillip Ellis Asst art director...............................Leore Rose Sound editor...............................................GlennMartin Make-up.............................Vivienne Rushbrook Stunts co-ordinator.......................................... BillStacey Prosthetic make-up........................ Nik Doming Safety co-ordinator.............Kurt Von Schneider Still photography.......................................... SuzyWoodHairdresser................................. Doug Glanville Wrangler....................................................GeraldEgan Wardrobe supervisor........................Keely Ellis Armourer...................................................... BrianBurnsWard, assistant.............................Judy Dymond Ward, standby............................. Sandy Cichello Production office runner......... Cameron Mellor Props buyer...................... Steven Jones-Evans Art dept runner......................... Michael Mecurio Publicity.....................................................MarianPage Standby props...............................................KateMurray Special effects.............................................BrianPearce, Catering................... Beeb and Jane Fleetwood Peter Stubbs Mixed at.........................................................Atlab Set d ressers...............................................SimonCarter, Laboratory....................................................Atlab Len Barratt, Lab. liaison............................. Bruce Williamson Graham Blackmore Budget...............................................................$5million Length........................................4 x 120 minutes Scenic artist................................ Colin Burchall Gauge.........................................................16 mm Set construction...........................Gordon White Shooting stock..........................................Kodak, Asst editor...................................Carmen Gallan Fuji Stunts co-ordinator....................... Glen Rueland Scheduled release.................................... March1986 Stunts........................... New Generation Stunts Cast: TracyMann (Esse Rogers), Andrew Still photography.................. Tom Psomotragos Clarke (Tony Lawrence).

Dialogue coach............................................PeterTulloch Synopsis: A love story and family saga set Best boy.......................................................... RoyPritchett against the turbulence and optimism of fifteen Runner...........................................Simone North of the most significant years in Australia's Publicity......................................................Susan Wood history — 1965-1980.

Catering.............................Back Door Catering, Keith Fish Studios................................................Channel 7 WHOSE BABY? Laboratory.................Victorian Film Laboratory Prod, company........... ...Crawford Productions Lab. liaison....................................................JohnHartley (Television) Pty Ltd Budget........................................................... $2.7 million Producer.................... ..................Mark Defriest Length........................................ 2 x 120 minutes Director........................ ..........................Ian Barry G auge........................................................ 16 mm Scriptwriters............... ..................Vince Moran, Shooting stock......................... ECN 5291,5294 Peter Schreck C a st: Angela Punch-McGregor (Gwen Based on the novel by .....................Colin Duck, Morrison), Drew Forsythe (Bill Morrison), Martin Thomas Robyn Gibbes (Joanne Lee Morrison), Vicki Photography............... ................. Jamie Doolan Luke (Jess Jenkins), Peter Curtin (Noel Sound recordist.......... ..............John McKerrow Jenkins), Lisa Crittenden (Nola Jenkins), Moya Editor.......................... ..................... Grant Fenn O ’ Su lliv an (A m elia W illiam s), Rhys Exec, producers......... ........... Hector Crawford, McConnochie (Justice Barry), Wynn Roberts Ian Crawford, (“ Ted” Hudson K.C.), Vincent Ball (Robert Terry Stapleton Monahan K.C.).

Assoc, producer... ................. Michael Lake Synopsis: The true story of two mothers who Prod, co-ordinator. ...................... Gina Black gave birth to daughters in the Kyneton Hospital Prod, m anager.... ...............Stewart Wright in 1945. One of the mothers, subsequently 3rd assistant/ believing the babies were switched, brought unit manager.... ..................Chris Odgers the matter to extensive litigation. The story ........................Ron Sinni Prod, accountant.. follows the lives of the families as the .......................Barry Hall 1st asst director... daughters grow into young women. ................. Jamie Leslie, 2nd asst directors.

Richard Clendinnen .Rhonda Bark-Shannon, Continuity............

Karinda Parkinson Please help us keep this survey Casting................. .............Graham Moore, accurate. Phone Debi Enker on Kim Larn Frecker (03) 329 5983 with any errors or Focus puller......... ..............Brett Anderson Clapper/loader..... .................Craig Barden omissions.

Australian Film Commission 4 — Research and Development

The Australian Film Commission provides limitedfunds for specialpurpose grants, investments and loans to qualified practitioners in film and video in Australia.

The research and development of new technology and software intended to increase the technical or creative capacity of the Australian film and video community.

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

Deadline for applications: 2 April, 1986 Please note: the deadline for applications for activities commencing during the period 1 January-30 June, 1987 is 30 September, 1986.

The A F C now invites applications for activities in thefollowing categories scheduled to commence during the period 1 July-31 December, 1986.

Theform offunding, whether by way of grant, loan or investment, will beat the A F C ’s discretion.

1 — Publications 1 The research and writing of critical works on subjects related to the cultural and aesthetic aspects of film and video.

2 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.

2 — Special Events Festivals, awards, seminars, conferences, etc., with the following objectives: 1 The exploration of cultural, aesthetic and industrial matters.

2 Recognition of achievements within the Australian film and video community.

For copies of application forms and further information please contact:

FILM DEVELOPMENT DIVISION 3 — Travel And Study 1 Overseas travel for the purpose of obtaining information for dissemination to the Australian film community, or to undertake research and development (see category 4).

2 Domestic travel to enable Australian film and video practitioners to attend appropriate events or organisations within Australia.

3 Attachments to appropriate organisations in Australia and overseas.

4 Visits to Australia by suitably qualified overseas personnel.

The Project Officer — Special Purpose Funding, (02) 925 7355. Toll Free (008) 22 6615.

Applications must be made in writing on the appropriate application form and addressed to: Cultural Activities Commission Australian Film Commission G PO Box 3984 Sydney N S W 2001.

In accordance with A F C policy, applications will be considered without discrimination on the basis of applicants’ sex, age, race or physical impairment.

N B Organisations in receipt of general purpose grants from the A F C are not eligible to apply for assistance under this scheme.

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A M E M B E R OF T H E N IL S E N G RO UP

Telex AA 3 1 1 8 5

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81 p r o d u c t io n s ta r ts a n d $ 1 5 0 m illio n s p e n t in 1 98 5 The 1985 calendar year (January-December) saw 81 Australian features, m in is e rie s and t e l e ­ features go in front of the cameras, with (not count­ ing ABC drama produc­ tions, for which figures are not available) budgets totalling $1 47,681,900.

Since the ABC produced six miniseries and three telefeatures, there can be no doubt that the overall total was well over the $150-million mark.

Figures given in the tables opposite are those supplied to Cinema Papers by producers. A number of producers — those whose productions are marked ‘N/A’, for ‘not available’, in the budget column — did not want their budgets published, but were prepared to supply them o ff the record, to enable us to co m p u te th e o v e ra ll figures and averages.

Only two of the 81 pro­ ductions, E m m a ’s W a r and T h e Q u e s t f o r L o v e , declined to supply any figures; for these, we have made w hat we believe to be accurate guesses for purposes of the overview.

Not included in the tables are such overseas productions as C o m ­ ra d e s and S p e a r f ie ld ’s D a u g h te r , ►

T

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N

T itle (Production com pany/Prod ucer/Director)

Budget

S ta rt d a te

Around the World in 80 Ways (Palm Beach Entertainment/David Elfick and Steve Knapman/Stephen MacLean)

2,250,000

30 September

Australian Dream (Filmside Ltd/Susan Wild and Jackie McKimmie/Jackie McKimmie)

600,000

24 August

The Big Hurt (The Big Hurt Ltd/Chris Kiely/Barry Peak)

690,000

16 September

Cactus (Dotine Ltd/Jane Ballantyne and Paul Cox/Paul Cox)

1,500,000

19 September

Cool Change (Delatite Productions/Dennis Wright/George Miller)

3,500,000

18 February

Crocodile Dundee (Rimfire Productions/John Cornell/Peter Faiman)

8,800,000

15 July

Dead-End Drive-In (Springvale ProduCtions/Andrew Williams and Damien jlarer/Brian Trenchard-Smith)

2,600,000

9 September

Departure (Cineaust [One 1983]/Christine Suli and Brian Kavanagh/Brian Kavanagh)

1,800,000

11 November

Devil in the Flesh (Collins Murray Productions/John B. Murray/Scott Murray)

1,600,000

11, March

Dot and the Bunyip (Yoram Gross Film Studio/Yoram Gross/Yoram Gross)

N/A

Dot and the Whale (Yoram Gross Film Studio/Yoram Gross/Yoram Gross)

N/A

July

Emma’s War (Belinon/Clytie Jessop and Andrena Finlay/Clytie Jessop)

N/A

14 January

Fair Game (Southern Films International/Harley Manners and Ron Saunders/Mario Andreacchio)

1,260,000

January

For Love Alone (Waranta/Margaret Fink/Stephen Wallace)

3,800,000

25 March

Fortress (Crawford Productions/Raymond Menmuir/Arch Nicholson)

4,400,000

4 April

4,500

August

4ZZZ — The Movie (Johnny LaRue Enterprises/Johnny LaRue/Johnny LaRue) Free Enterprise (B & D Productions/Geoff Burrowes/John Dixon) The Fringe Dwellers (Fringe Dweller Productions/Sue Milliken/Bruce Beresford)

6,600,000

30 September

N/A

16 September

Good Man Down (PBL Productions/Brian Rosen/Carl Schultz)

4,300,000

23 September

Going Sane (Sea-Change Films/Tom Jeffrey/Michael Robertson)

2,100,000

15 July

I Live With Me Dad (Crawford ProduCtions/Ross Jennings/Paul Moloney)

1,000,000

1 July

700,000

March

1 Own the Racecourse (Barron Films/John Edwards and Timothy Read/Stephen Ramsey) Jenny Kissed Me (Nilsen Premiere Ltd/Tom Broadbridge/Brian Trenchard-Smith)

1,400,000

11 March

Kangaroo (Naked Country Productions/Ross Dimsey/Tim Burstall)

3,300,000

21 October i

Leonora (Revolve/Geoff Brown and Derek Strahan/Derek Strahan) Making Waves (Barron Films/Paul Barron/Vince Monton) Malcolm (Cascade Films/Nadia Tass and David Parker/Nadia Tass) The More Things Change . . . (Syme International Productions/Jill Robb/Robyn Nevin) My Country (Warhead Films/Angus Caffrey and Ali Kayn/Angus Caffrey)

500,000 2,500,000

26 August 16 September

990,000

29 July

2,320,000

22 April

336,000

October

Playing Beatie Bow (SAFC Productions/Jock Blair/Donald Crombie)

4,400,000

15 April

The Right-Hand Man (Yarraman Films/ Steven Grives, Tom Oliver and Basil Appleby/Di Drew)

5,459,000

9 October

Short Changed (Magpie Films/Ross Matthews/George Ogilvie)

1,250,000

April

The Steam-Driven Adventures of Riverboat Bill (Phantascope Ltd/Paul Williams/Paul Williams)

N/A

August

The Still Point (Rosa Colosimo Film Productions/Rosa Colosi mo/Barbara Boyd-Anderson)

N/A

May

A Street to Die (Mermaid Beach Productions/Bill Bennett/Bill Bennett) The Surfer (Night Flight Ltd/Frank Shields and James Vernon/Frank Shields)

340,000 N/A

March 18 November

Twelfth Night (Twelfth Night Productions/Don Catchlove/Neil Armfield)

591,400

5 August

Unfinished Business (Lypsync Productions, with Unfinished Business Pty Ltd/Rebel Penfold-Russell/Bob Ellis)

102,000

April

War Story (Suatu Film Management/Bill Nagel and Davids Hannay/Philippe Mora) What’s the Difference? (MW Productions/Alan Madden and Jillian Wood/Alan Madden)

62 — March CINEMA PAPERS

July

3,000,000 N/A

30 January ’ ;23 September

Wills and Burke (Stony Desert Ltd/Bob Weis and Margot McDonald/Bob Weis)

2,000,000

January

Young Einstein (Einstein Entertainment/Yahoo Serious and David Roach/Yahoo Serious)

2,200,000 _ _

23 September

T itle (Production company/Producer/DireCtor)

Budget

S ta rt d a te

Archer (Roadshow, Coote & Carroll/Moya Iceton/Denny Lawrence)

1,300,000

24 June

Call Me Mr Brown (Kino Film Company/Terry Jennings/Scott Hicks)

1,000,000

October

Double Sculls (PBL Productions/Richard Brennan/lan Gilmour)

1,400,000

15 April

Handle with Care (Alsof/Andrena Finlay and Anne Landa/Paul Cox)

N/A

Hanging Together (Australian Film Theatre/Hugh Rule/John Ruane)

500,000

8 February

Hector’s Bunyip (Filmrep Ltd/Helen Boyd/Mark Gallan)

530,000

2 December

The Last Warhorse (Filmrep Ltd/Helen Boyd/Bob Meillon)

530,000

4 November ’

Natural Causes (ABC/Michael Carson/Michael Carson)

,

The Perfectionist (Pavilion Pictures/Pat Lovell/Chris Thomson)

— 1,475,000

Robbery (Indian Pacific Films/Michael Thornhill/Michael Thornhill) Rooted (ABC/Alan Burke/Ron Way)

March 15 April

<D

The Quest for Love (Entertainment Media Ltd/Peter Beilby/Jeremy Cornford) Remember Me (MoElroy & McElroy/Patric Juillet/Lex Marinos)

5 August

N/A 1,000,000 860,000 —

June

0

March ' 22 July 25 February

m a)

A Single Life (Australian Film Theatre/Hugh Rule/John Power)

600,000

1 > April

c

Stock Squad (Independent Productions/Tom Jeffrey/Howard Rubie)

900,000

March

0

21 October

to

3

2 Friends (ABC/Jan Chapman/Jane Campion)

—

Alice to Nowhere (Crawford Productions/Brendan Lunney/John Power)

2,800,000

11 November

The Body Business (PBL Productions/Stanley Walsh/Colin Eggleston)

2,900,000

18 July

The Book of Athuan (ABC/Alan Burke/Alan Burke) Colour in the Creek (PBL Productions/Mike Midlam/Robert Stewart)

— 1,600,000

9 August February

Dancing Daze (ABC/Jan Chapman/Geoffrey Nottage, Peter Fisk, Ron Elliott and Jane Campion)

---- ; S

6 May ®

Fame and Misfortune (ABC/Noel Price/Noel Price and Carl Zwicky)

—

9 October

2,800,000

9 September

Five Times Dizzy (Samson Film Services/Tom Jeffrey/John Eastway)

1,400,000

11 November

The Great Bookie Robbery (PBL Productions/lan Bradley/Marcus Cole and Mark Joffe) *

3 to

0 S'

The Far Country (Crawford Productions/John Barmingham/George Miller)

Game of Life (Communique and Ultrafun/Jim George/Michael Pattinson, Louise Meek, Geoff Bruer, Hugh Piper and James Bradley)

M l

600,000 4,200,000

1 August 26 August

(A

which shot segments in Australia during the year.

Nor do the tables include extended series, such as the McElroys’ R e t u r n t o E d e n , or serials, s u c h as G r u n d y s ’ P r i s o n e r and Craw­ fords’ P r i m e T i m e , on w hich substantial amounts of production dollars were, of course, spent.

Across the board, the average cost of a produc­ tion was a little over $2 million. Surprisingly, over half the features were in th e u n d e r -$ 2 -m illio n bracket, with only three budgeted at over $5 m illio n : C r o c o d i l e D u n d e e ($8.8 million), Free E n te rp ris e ($6.6 million) and T h e R ig h t-H a n d Man ($5,459,000).

Most miniseries were budgeted between $1 and $5 million, with only two ( G a m e o f L if e and Pop M o v ie ) costing less, and two (SimpsonLe Mesurier’s S w o r d o f H o n o u r and the ABC’s co-production with the UK’ s Portm an Film s, T u s i t a l a ) costing more.

No telefeature cost more than $2 million.

P er c a t e g o r y , t he detailed breakdown is as follows:

Theatrical features Total number produced Total budgets Average budget

In Between (In Between Television Productions/Chris Warner and Kim Dalton/Chris Warner and Mandy Smith)

1,192,000

7 November

Under $1 million $1-$2 million $2-$3 million $3-54 million $4-$5 million Over $5 million

The Lancaster Miller Affair (Lancaster Miller Productions/Paul Davies/Henri Safran)

4,750,000

11 July

Miniseries

Land of Hope (Filmrep Ltd/Suzanne Baker/Cary Conway and Chris Adshed)

4,595,000

May

The Haunted School (ABC/Ray Alchin/Frank Arnold)

The Local Rag (ABC/Keith Wilkes/Keith Wilkes)

—

—

6 October

10 November 5 May

Pokerface (ABC/Keith Wilkes/Richard Sarell) 300,000

July

Professor Poopsnaggle’s Steam Zeppelin (Grundy Motion Pictures/Roger Mirams/Howard Rubie and Russell Webb)

2,400,000

July

Quest for Healing (Independent Productions/Richard Davis/Bill Leimbach)

1,100,000

25 March

Saturdee (LJ Productions/John Gauci and Louise Hall/John Gauci)

1,400,000

30 September

Shout — The Story of Johnny O’Keefe (View Pictures/Ben Gannon/Ted Robinson)

2,200,000

July

Sword of Honour (Simpson Le Mesurier Films/Roger Le Mesurier/Pino Amenta and Catherine Millar)

5,000,000

13 May

A Thousand Skies (A Thousand Skies Productions/Ross Dimsey and Robert Ginn/Davld Stevens)

Pop Movie (Ray Argali Productions/Ray Argall/Daniel Scharf)

4,400,000

28 January

- Tusitala (ABC, in association with Portman/Ray Alchin/Don Sharp)

5,000,000

June

Whose Baby? (Crawford Productions/Mark De Friest/lan Barry)

2,700,000

14 October

42 $86,559,900 $ 2,060,950 14 10 8 4 3 3

Total number produced 25 ABC in-house 6 productions Total budgets* $51,337,000 Average budget* $ 2,701,947 Under $1 million $1-$2 million $2-$3 million $3-$4 million $4-$5 million Over $5 million

2 5 6 -

4 2

Telefeatures Total number 14 produced ABC in-house productions 3 Total budgets* $ 9,785,000 Average budget* $ 889,545 Under $1 million $1-$2 million

6 5

*not including ABC in-house productions.

CINEMA PAPERS March — 63

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The ingenuity of the technicians in the Australian film industry has always been a source of fascination to me. I don’t know whether it comes from some unique aspect of the Australian character, but there is a wealth of stories about the bush mechanic who, with nothing but a billy lid and a length of fencing wire, was able to repair some high-tech piece of equipment and save the day. Actually, this ability is probably a result of our isolation: we have often had to make our own parts to repair the equipment, rather than wait months for spares to come from overseas. It may be getting easier to get the spares nowadays, but there is still a tradition of building our own versions of overseas equipment, whether because of cost or because of unavailability.

The early years of sound film in Australia saw totally home-made equipment, often built from a description of the American hard­ ware, rarely from first-hand know­ ledge. With special effects, it was more likely to have been from looking at imported movies and working out how to do it here. The result was often cheaper — and better, because the person doing it didn't stop to think how complicated it was.

The tradition is still alive today, nowhere more so than with Brian Bosisto, purveyor of cranes, camera mounts and smoke machines to the Australian film industry. Bosisto began his career in films as a stringer for Movietone in South Australia. He also worked as a news­ paper photographer (for the Adelaide News)] and it was that, together with the Movietone experience, that got him a job as a television news cameraman when TV began in South Australia in 1957.

Unlike the branch of electronic showbusiness that TV news is today, ,back in 1957, as Bosisto puts it, “ there was just me, an editor and a journalist” . It was a job which suited him well, allowing him to pursue his interest in equipment, even to the point of processing his own film on a hacd-wound drum. The 16mm cameras he used were very new toys compared to what he had used at Movietone — a 35mm Cineflex (“ the American Arri they made for World War II” ), which Movietone supplied to its 50 or so stringers around Australia.

At Channel Nine in Adelaide, Bosisto introduced a young country boy (working in the station props bay) to news camerawork. And, when Bosisto left to do commercials (“ because I thought there was more money in it” ), the boy — called Dean Semler — took over his job. Since then, Bosisto has worked with DOP Dean Semler on two major features.

And it was, in fact, Semler who suggested that Bosisto would be a good subject for a Cinema Papers interview.

According to Semler, one thing that had really stuck in his mind had been Bosisto’s solution to the problem of obtaining exclusive news interviews for the station with visiting politicians or celebrities. How had he done it? “ Well,” explains Bosisto, “ we got this old Thames van, and had it all lined up with a 16mm Auricon” — a sound-on-film camera — "permanently mounted inside,

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Fred Harden talks

to the Australian film industry’s most famous and resourceful do-it-yourself expert.

mere there’s snake

tbere’s Bran

“ I want you to start up on the left-hand side o f the road, and get up to 100 kilometres an hour as fast as you can,”

just behind the driver’s seat. We’d pull up, say at the airport, and get people to come in and sit down. We could only frame head and shoulders, and the interviewer sat off screen, asking questions. We had these sets of curtains we could pull across behind them, with the different airline names. If they came TAA, you’d pull across the TAA background. “ The lights were all permanently set and, because we operated off battery current, we had this big vibrator, which buzzed away. We kept it in one of those big, padded ice-cream containers as a barney.”

After a while, however, Bosisto moved on, only to find himself over­ taken by technology. “ When I left the TV station,” he recalls, “ most of the film work I was doing was for the South Australian Film Corp. After a few years, I began to find that I’d put in a quote for, say, $2 0 ,0 0 0 — as cheap as I could do it and still make a living. And some bastard would come along and quote $8 ,0 0 0 to shoot it on videotape. So, it was either, go to video myself — and that changes so quickly that I ruled it out — or try something else.

Camera cranes "I’d always wanted a camera crane, so I decided to build one. I should have done it 2 0 years ago, but it was the Fire in the Stone feature that prompted it. I knew they wanted a crane, so I said, ‘Could I build it?’

Years ago, I used to be a fitter and turner, and everything I ever made, I made myself. So I built a crane. “ Ross Berryman and Ian Jones were the cameramen and, although I like Ian a lot, he used to find fault with everything. Each criticism he had, I’d rectify overnight, even rebuilding the thing at times, so it would be ready next day. During that film, I must have rebuilt the crane twice, just to please Ian. And I've done that with almost every feature: in all, I've probably rebuilt it about four times to get it to its present state. Dean Semler, Ross Berryman, Keith Wagstaff, David Eggby, Andrew Lesnie, Geoff Simpson, Ernie Clark and John Haddy all reckon it's the greatest crane they’ve ever been on!”

Bosisto’s crane was in the best tradition of bush technology. “ I’d never seen a large crane, but I could see the logic behind it; so I started by looking at photos of American cranes. The first one I built had ball bearings in the turntable. That wasn’t any good, so I rebuilt it with a steel-to-steel bearing. I don’t know how the others do it, so this could be unique! But it seems to work all right it is very smooth, being machined steel-to-steel surfaces with grease.

Ball bearings are very smooth; but, when you stop pushing, they keep going. Because mine has the friction, it starts to move slowly and comes to a stop by itself. “ On Fire in the Stone, the crane was mounted on a Daihatsu, and a trailer towed the bits behind. The first complaint was that the focus puller had to sit on the opposite side of the platform to the operator, so he couldn’t read the markings on the lens. I built a bigger platform, but that meant the structure wasn't good

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enough, and it began to twist. So, I replaced that when I came back, and now it’s the only crane in Australia that you can sit on like that — and all to save Ian Jones from having to put chinagraph marks on the other side of the lens!

"Then I decided to put it on rails as well, but I wanted something solid and economical. I now carry around a hundred feet of track. It’s heavyduty Cyclone 2 -inch tubing, which means that, if you want it longer, you just ring up Cyclone and they deliver as much as you need. The base is Cyclone scaffolding, too, so every­ thing is interchangeable. And the joiners are scaffolding joins, which makes/it sound a bit like a train when it’s rolling. But a tracking crane shot is almost never lip-sync, so it’s no problem : it’s purely for the spectacle."

From making the crane for him­ self, Bosisto began to look into marketing it. "I promoted it around the place," he says. ‘.‘ In Sydney, Dean saw the photos of it at McElroys and, being mad on cranes (and smoke!), he rang me up to ask what it was like. I came to see him with some more photos, and they booked me for the whole shoot.

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night. “ When I was going to do Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Dean asked me, ’How high can you make a crane?’ So I went to Don Bishop, and he worked out an aluminium-braced lattice-section design. I rang Dean and said, ‘32 feet’. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Build it!’ So I did. Since then, I’ve taken it up to 50 feet by using the Hot Head. We used it for other things on Max, like suspending the dwarf in the train fight sequence by adding an out­ rigger from the people platform, and hanging him on piano wires. We used it on rails in the Underworld séquence, when it didn't matter if we saw our own tracks: there was so much pig shit on the ground anyway."

Camera Tracking Vehicle

Bosisto branched out again when the Reunion people wanted a camera car that would do 150 kilo­ metres an hour. "I told them they were mad,” he says. "But that’s what they wanted, so I asked people I,know, ‘What was the fastest and smoothest car?’ And the answer was a Dodge Phoenix or a Chevy Impala or a Pontiac Parisienne made “ I figured that there is between 1964 and 1969, when they nothing more reliable made those American tanks that just float along the road when you drive than a Holden motor, them. You see them in the movies, and they can be found when they hit a bump and the back anywhere if they blow rises up. The back springs are six foot four long, and there is a transfer up.” spring as well.

"I found this old Dodge that had been in a demolition derby and “ I began to rebuild it again with a been left sitting out in a vegetable complete new jib. That was when I garden for a couple of years. I added the tracks, because Dean offered the guy $2 0 0 , took it home, had asked, ‘Does it come on and it took two of us a weekend to tracks?’ and I said, ‘Yeh, of course!', cut the body away, because the and built them. The crane sits on a panels were all crushed and folded-. platform which has a wheel on each I’ve added air shockers all round as corner that 'are like those on an well, so everyone now says it’s the Elemack, except" that they’re not smoothest thing they’ve ridden on. aluminium but steel and weigh 92 “ When I started building it, I kilos each! That is enough weight to thought it was a bit silly to make just balance it, and saved me packing a camera car that didn’t do anything the base with lead that I would then else. On the semi-trailer I use to cart have had to cart around as a lump. the things around, I’ve got a wind You see, I’m not a designer, so machine, the camera car and a everything I’ve made has always camera crane. On a shoot, when it been over-engineered — too strong just says 'Bosisto required’ on the for what’s required. For the design call sheet without saying what equip­ calculations, I use a guy in Adelaide ment they want, I’d inevitably have called Don Bishop — a structural to unload everything, just to get at the engineer who’s a genius with a slide one thing they wanted. So, when I rule. I draw up what I want, and take built the car, I built it to provide a the drawings round to him; he works base for the big crane. It has a out what the stress on each bolt square box-section frame, and it is should be, and so on. angle-webbed so that, when you put "The Department of Labour and . a jack under one corner, it lifts the Industry understand it; I don’t. But whole side, unlike 9 car. And I built a they need those calculations to smaller crane for it to use while approve the crane. Everything that tracking. lifts a person has to have a permit. “ The first time we used it on Even an Elemack should be Reunion, the cameraman and Ernie registered, but somehow we seem Clark were sitting on the jib, and the to manage to get away with that. The director said, ‘I want you to start up on the left-hand side of the road, and centre bolt on the crane has a fourget up to 100 kilometres an hour as ton shearing strain on a one-inch bar. And, with my belief that it is fast as you can’. That was his first better to be over-engineered, I mistake. ‘Then,’ he says, 'the black found stronger stuff that has a Torana with the young hoons will fourteen-ton shearing strain, plus a come up alongside and jeer at the 30% safety factor. It’s the sort of pin camera, and then you take off and you put in a cherry picker that goes pull away.’ I thought it was all a bit 90 feet in the air and weighs three stupid, but I got up to a hundred k as tons. It means that I sleep better at fast as I could. . . and left the Torana M arch CINEMA PAPERS

D rivin g a n d d eliverin g : “ W e f ille d th e w h ole va lley w ith m ist, sa y s B o sisto o f a m e m o ra b le -d a y on Robbery Under Arms.

A ll p a r t o f th e service: B o sis to 's tru ck ta k e s th e d iffic u lt w ay o u t du rin g th e sh o o tin g o f Fair Game. j . f ■'

T h e B o sisto cam era ca r to w in g — a n d sh o o tin g — th e stagecoach on Robbery Under Arms. T he ro a d w as rou gh , b u t th e s h o t was sm o o th .

Thè car w ith a f u ll co m p lem en t o f cam eras a n d crew o n Robbery Under Arms. T he ex a ct sp e c ific a tio n s te n d to ch an ge a fte r each jo b , as a re su lt o f crew in p u t.

sitting a mile away. It couldn’t catch up!”

Take two. ‘‘Don’t take off quite so fast,” said the director, ‘‘but still get to a hundred . . . " “ So,” says Bosisto, “ as the guys jeered at the camera, I took off. The Torana said he was doing about 140 to try and catch me. The shot was great, and Ernie Clark thought it was terrific. But I don’t think I’d do it again at those speeds, because 80 or 90 ks gives the same effect. “ The car can do it, though. The steering is right down low, and you drive from where the back seat would be. The driver sometimes has trouble seeing, when you stick all the people and stuff on it, so I added a second steering wheel on the left that lets you sit up a bit, but will still allow you enough control to swing the car into a drift if you want. But most of the car commercials and things I’ve done involve you driving dead straight down the tarmac or the beach, and the other cars are the ones that move around you.”

Bosisto’s camera mount is not just used for filming other cars. “ When I got Robbery Under Arms,” he says, “ I started to rebuild again, because some of- the horses, the quarter horses, for instance, can go from a standstill to a full gallop within the length of a room. I added another throttle, and a brake near one of the seats at the back. All the brakes are connected to three master cylinders, which is a bit complicated, but it works. The front two are stronger than the back cylinder, and there are power brakes overall. “ The driver concentrates on the forward view, and watches out for cows crossing the road. He has enough power, with the 440-cubicinch motor I’ve got in it, so that the grip sitting in the back can hold the brake, plus the power of the throttle, and judge the speed of the horses exactly. The jib that goes out the side doesn’t swing, but can be mounted on the left or the right. In the current configuration, it has the hydraulic legs out to level it like a cherry-picker, and these fold in when it is used as a camera car. The top can have boards on it, to make it a flat surface, and the crane drops through that if need be. “ It is pretty versatile. On Robbery Under Arms, we were towing the stagecoach from an offset arm that can be put on either side, or from any position on the back. On Free Enterprise, we were towing the AC Cobra from the middle of the car, but using the crane at the back. That meant the cameraman was sitting looking in at the driver's window, and could see him as he threw a hammer at the windscreen of another car, and then crane up to look at the car as it went off the road.

It was all done on Take One.”

Wind Machines If there is one thing Brian Bosisto has become famous for of late, it is his ability to fill the air with fog, smoke and dust. It started — again — with Robbery Under Arms. “ They asked me to build a wind machine,” he says. “ I remembered from Razorback the problems that Bernie, who was in charge of the

wind machines on that, had. There were two separate aeroplane motors on trailers. The trailers were hard to back and, once they’d been manoeuvred into position, they stayed there. So, when they’d say: ‘Start the wind, Bernie!’, it would putter into life; and, when they’d say, ‘Stop the wind, Bernie!’, he’d kill it.

But aeroplane motors are not meant to stop and start like that: they are made for flying long distances. And, when they are mounted upside down on the wind machines, they have trouble when the oil drains to the heads, and the plugs all oil up.

When I saw how much time Bernie spent cleaning things, I decided that I’d make mine another way. “ I figured that there is nothing more reliable than a Holden motor, and they can be found anywhere if they blow up. So, I mounted two of them on a turntable that turns 180 degrees, and each one is itself on a turntable, and can be tilted up and down. But I didn’t know how power­ ful they were going to be: 3,000 revs is supposed to be their optimum capacity. The guy who made blades for me said that the 186 engine wouldn't be strong enough, and that I’d need the 220 engine. When I first started them up, I got 3,200 revs from them, so he took the blades back and changed the pitch, so that now we can get 2,900 revs, which really pushes out the wind — so much so that two are too powerful, and I’ve got rid of one. Both together, they would blow you off your feet at eight feet away, so I'm going to mount one of them on a truck and the other on a trailer that you can walk around.

“All the dust in the 747 scene in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome is mine, and that was from half a kilometre away.” “ I made a hopper for the dust, but I don’t like using it for dust storms.

The difference between static fans and aeroplane propellers is that the aero blade blows straight; but, four feet from my blades, the air has turned 360 degrees, and it does it again at about seventeen feet. So, you’ve got this swirling airstream; and, when I put this electrical-motorfed hopper on top, it just produces an even mass of dust. I prefer the effect you get with a bucket: you play it like music, feeding it out gradually, and it makes it more realistic. “ After seeing Razorback, I decided I should add smoke to it.

And, after drilling lots of Holden manifolds full of holes, I worked out where to inject the fog fluid to produce fantastic smoke: you just turn on a small tap, like a motorbike petrol tank, and it lets you adjust the flow as accurately as the dust bucket. So, now I can do dust, smoke, snow — and rain, with a lot of water from a fire hose aimed into both fans: instead of falling straight down, it drops on an angle and looks most realistic. “ All the dust in the 747 scene in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

is mine, and that was from a half a kilometre away. Remember that it was a full-size 747, so it was a bag of talcum powder on every take. I like the talcum powder we get in Adelaide better than the grey Fuller's Earth that you get here, because you can get the talcum from a fawn to a dark brown, and it looks like real dust. All the simulated travel dust on that picture was mine.

It was: ‘Start rockers! Start the dust!' “ On Fair Game, the grip had a crane, so I was the mechanic and the armourer and had the tracking vehicle. Each day, we had to drive it through walls, and the next day it had to look like new. The art department and us would be working every night while the others were down the pub. The tyres were like grand prix racing tyres, with side walls as thin as a bicycle tyre. They only had two spares and, four times a day the runner was taking them into Burra, about 30 or 40 kilometres away, to fix them. We found out how to patch them with PKs, and the tyres ended up all shiny, with all these PKs on the sides! “ Andrew Lesnie, the DOP — he worked for Dean Semler on Bodyline — had this shot of the ratbag’s car coming over this sand dune at night. We had all this light mist in the air and the lights were all at the back, so the car was preceded by this enormous shadow, and then all the quartz halogens and the headlights hit. It looks great. =at. “ There was no wind — there is no way you can beat God: you have to be on his side — so I was going up and down this track, half a mile up, turning quickly round, then laying another trail. I didn’t have a radio, so I kept going until someone came out to say ‘Stop!’ There was so much smoke that they couldn't see, and they had to call a teabreak until it cleared. Even then, they had trouble finding their way back to the kitchen!”

Bosisto 9s gear (N B : D im e n s io n s a n d specifications are correct for now, but may change at any time!)

G88 Volvo low-loader. This holds the camera car/crane, wind machine and, in the chicken coop up the front, there is an arc welder, oxy welder, compressor, grinder, d rills , v ic e bench and all maintenance tools. “ That’s a service that people get for free when they employ me,” says Bosisto.

2 Wind machines: Holden engines, nine-blade, 36-inch static fans.

Camera car/crane: Crane: maximum height, 50 feet — 15 metres (with Hot Head). With one person and Panavision Gold camera: choice of 33’ (10.2 metres) or 27'6” (8 metres 60). With full crew: 23'6” (7 metres 30) and 18’6” (5 metres 70). Rails available.

Camera car: Platform: 15x7 feet, dead flat. Small crane goes from road level to 8 ’6 ” at speed, or from road level to 1 0 ’6 " by turning end platform. Engine: 440 cubic inch Chrysler. Full permits for each state.

Mini Moke on the back.

Bosisto Motion Picture Services, 2 Barr Smith Drive, Urrbrae, SA 5064. Ph: (08) 79 7772.

St Kilda Council is pleased to again be presenting their annual Film Festival.

NATIONAL THEATRE, BARKLY ST, 1 7-20 APRIL. A selection of the best of Australian films with an emphasis on 16mm shorts, documentaries, and experimental work. Cash prizes. All films screened to be paid a basic rental.

Filmmakers are invited to submit works for consideration on /2" VHS or 16mm, together with an application form, before the end of February.

Nigel Buesst, Director St Kilda Film Festival, PB No. 3, St Kilda PO, 3182. (03) 347 5525.

MAVIS BRAMSTON PRODUCTIONS LTD.

• In the Offer Document dated 26th July, 1985 in i respect of the film “Frenchman’s Farm”, it is stated 4 that Mr. Keith Dewhurst is the writer of the screen^ play. This is not correct. Mr. Dewhurst was never contracted to write the screenplay. We apologise for this mistaken entry.

Colson Worner Executive Producer

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Le/L Richard Moir in W rong W orld. Right, Streep andRedford in Out of Africa.

WRONG WORLD

On dangerous ground Last February, Jo Kennedy won the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival. This prestigious prize, from a European festival regarded as second only to Cannes, is the highest international honour so far bestowed on an Australian film.

Yet Kennedy’s achievement, over­ coming a field which included Vanessa Redgrave, Sally Fields and Diane Keaton, was completely ignored later in the year by the voters in the Australian Film Institute awards, who chose not to include her among the nominations for Best Actress. It was a rejection which appeared all the more difficult to explain in a year which boasted a record output of feature films but, with few exceptions, is remembered only for the numbing mediocrity of the work.

Perceived, perhaps, as a rene­ gade film, Ian Pringle's low-budget feature, Wrong World, got only one nomination — for Ray Argali’s cinematography — while lesser films, seemingly designed to capitalize on 10BA, were heaped with accolades. Most of them were conventionally middle-class: accept­ ably infused with a hearts-on-thesleeve liberalism, they successfully stroked the AFI voters with safe, comfortable narratives, imbued with la s h in g s of tre n d y 's o c ia l conscience’.

Anyway, who cares what the Germans think? After all, Wrong World was just too disturbing, its angst-ridden atmospherics recalling some of the recent West German cinema (Reinhard Hauff, Wim Wenders), and its Intellectual sensibilities comparable with Monte Plellman’s Two Lane Blacktop

(1971) or Nicholas Ray’s They Live

by Night (1948). Positive reaction amounted only to a condescending concession that, for $640,000, Wrong World was indeed a wellmade film.

The plot certainly does not con­ form to AFI-voter mentality. David (Richard Moir), a socially-committed medical doctor, having failed to become "the Albert Schweitzer of Bolivia” , dulls the pain with morphine. Addicted, he drifts through New York and the American mid-west, finally referring himself to a drug withdrawal clinic in his home town of Melbourne.

While going cold turkey, David meets the streetwise junkie, Mary (Jo Kennedy). Their relationship, made necessary by a mutual desire to escape the institution, is' Instinctively testy and suspicious: they behave like threatened, feral animals, despite their individually-felt desires for warmth and affection.

They begin to drive in a state of suspension — even trance — towards Mary’s home town of Nhill, isolated on a desolate stretch of the Victoria/South Australia border.

Their intimacy grows, but the affection is checked by one unstated condition: their eventual, unavoid­ able separation.

Pringle and co-writer Doug Ling have given David an omnipresent voice-over. By turns humorous, depressively e g o ce n tric and strained by flowery literacy, it is nevertheless a structural link for the entire script. What Is more, It serves to enrich David’s character. “ The problem,’’ he declares,, "is how to stop thinking. America has cracked it. If you start thinking in America, all you have to do is turn on the tele­ vision or go for a drive. If rein­ carnation is true, then I want'to come back as an American.”

Without the benefit of a voice-over,

Jo Kennedy must capitalize on every moment of her screentime.

Pier t o u r - d e - f o r c e of a performance should also be judged against the masculine bias of the screenplay.

Mary’s relationship with David slowly thaws, but the delicate webs they build to connect their lives are still encircled by their transitory experiences. To hope for more w ould be unrealistic. Never promising more than It can deliver, Wrong World refuses to cajole or seduce its audience by com­ promising its realism. The slowly melting cores within its initially icy characters are drawn out by Mary, and we realise we are seeing both characters during a period of rare mutual warmth and compassion. It is a pleasurable hiatus in the futile, even cynical, melancholia of their lives.

Apart from Kennedy’s remarkable performance, Pringle is well served

by Ray Argali’s sumptuous cinema­ tography and decisive editing; by Eric Gradman’s sparsely evocative s o u n d tra c k ; by m e m o ra b le secondary characters (Esben Storm, Nick Lathouris); and by a controlled performance from Richard Moir, given the task of creating a credible character out of an amorphous, slippery and tortured protagonist with a burnt-out centre.

Perhaps Wrong World simply threatened the Australian film community with its portrayal of in d ivid u a ls collapsing under personal and social pressures we prefer to see as endemic only to Europe and North America.

Whatever the reason, Wrong World's failure to perform at the AFI Awards probably cost it widespread local distribution. More than twelve months after Berlin, the film has finally found a limited release. Hope­ fully, it will have a better reception from art-house audiences quick enough to catch it.

If not, David’s personal despair, which permeates most of the film, may come ironically to reflect the fear being felt for the international future of our films during the second half of this decade: “ The money’s finished. It had to run out sometime Everything does. The blood, the passion, the fear . . . everything except the loneliness. I decided to go back to Australia. What better place to see out the end of the world?”

Rod Bishop

Wrong World;

D ir e c te d b y ta n P rin g le .

P r o d u c e r : B r y c e M e n z ie s . E x e c u tiv e p r o d u c e r : B a s ia P u s z k a . A s s o c ia te p r o d u c e r : J o h n C ru th e rs . S c r e e n p la y : Ia n P r in g le a n d D o u g L in g . D ir e c to r o f p h o t o g r a p h y : R a y A rg a li. P r o d u c t io n d e s ig n : C h ris tin e J o h n s o n . E d ito r: R a y A rg a li. M u s ic : E ric G r a d m a n . S o u n d r e c o r d is t: B r u c e E m e ry . C a s t: R ic h a r d M o ir ( D r D a v id T ru e m a n ), J o K e n n e d y (M a ry ), E sben S to r m (L a u re n c e ), R o b b ie M c G re g o r (R o b e rt), N ic L a t h o u r is (R a n g o tt).

P r o d u c t io n com pany: Seon F ilm P ro d u c tio n s .

D is tr ib u to r s : B r y c e M e n z ie s a n d B a s ia P u s z k a . 1 6 m m . 9 5 m in u te s . A u s tra lia .

1985.

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OUT OF AFRICA

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South of Eden To entertain her guests after the evening meal, Karen Blixen would construct a fictional romance based on a premise provided by one of them, Denys Finch Hatton. The story she devised would hold her listeners by means of the simplest, most effective narrative device: a linear, ‘what’s going to happen next?’ tech­ nique. These fictions, based on exotic locales and dealing with twodimensional romantic figures en­ gaged in a series of conflicts and encounters, provide an appropriate model for Sydney Pollack’s film about her, Out of Africa.

It is a visually breathtaking film, based on a series of books by ‘Isak Dinesen’ (Blixen’s nom de plume), together with Judith Thurman’s bio­ graphy of her and a biography of Finch Hatton by Kenyan resident Errol Trzebinski. And, although it is based on Blixen’s actual experi­ ences in East Africa in the early part of this century, the film is reminiscent of the epic romances of David Lean (Dr Zhivago, Ryan’s Daughter) in the way in which it subordinates both the locale and the social back­ ground to the romantic problems of a larger-than-life couple.

Pollack is one of the most com­ mercially successful directors cur­ rently working in Hollywood (of the thirteen films he directed prior to Out of Africa, eight have appeared on Variety’s list of 'All-Time Rental Champs’). And, since the failure of Castle Keep in 1969, he has con­ sistently chosen films with strong commercial potential — The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, Absence of Malice, Tootsie — rooted in reality, but softened by his recurring romantic lyricism.

Perhaps the most revealing Pollack film is They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), in which the harsh existentialism of Horace McCoy’s novel is subverted by Pollack’s determination to fore­ ground the pathos and romanticize the depression dance marathon which is its setting.

With Out of Africa, Pollack claims to have encountered the problem that 'Dinesen’s' account of her life on a Kenyan coffee farm was difficult to translate onto film because of its narrative incoherence. "There was hardly a story,” he has said. “ It’s a pastorale, a beautifully formed memoir that relies on her prose style, her sense of poetry and her ability to make universal truths out of very specific small things.”

But, even if Dinesen had wallowed in the hardships, the disease and the misery of transplanted Europeans, it is reasonable to assume that Pollack p

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Raining in her heart? M eryl Streep and Charles Dance in Plenty.

Star’s war

PLENTY would have crafted a similar film to the present one. Despite all the attention to detail — the extensive location work at the Ngong Dairy in Karen (named after Blixen), at Masai Mara, the Kenyan extension of the Serengeti Plain, in the Rift Valley, the Ngorongoro Crater and at Lake Manyara in Tanzania; the detailed recreation of lamps, draperies and china to match Blixen’s originals; the acquisition of a good deal of her furniture; the careful use of vintage cars and planes; and the research into traditional African songs — the film is a love story which selectively uses these aspects to foreground its inherent romanticism.

Out of Africa opens impressively and progresses rapidly, following a number of well-established narrative conventions dealing with the cultural dislocation of Europeans attempting to duplicate their civilization in a totally alien environment. The emigration of Blixen (Meryl Streep) from Denmark to Kenya in 1913 to marry her cousin, Baron Bror von Blixen (Klaus Maria Brandauer), and establish a coffee plantation in the East African highlands establishes a strong narrative basis, given the obstacles she encounters, and her husband’s promiscuity and indol­ ence. Indeed, the scenes between Streep and Brandauer are marked by a particular tension which evaporates once the Austrian actor disappears from the film.

During this early section, Karen’s curious relationship with her hus­ band, coupled with the interest in the economic fragility of the coffee plantation and the attractiveness of Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford), provides sufficient dramatic interest. But, following Karen’s bout of syphilis, the impossibility of child­ ren and the departure of the Baron, these narrative strands are pushed into the background by the romantic overdetermination of Robert Redford’s presence — or, more cor­ rectly, by Pollack’s representation of the actor (who has now appeared in six of the director’s films).

It would be relatively easy to con­ demn the film’s soft last half, when the apparent focus for the film — Karen’s plaintive and repetitive cry that she once owned a farm in Africa — is reduced to a minor motif, while the lush romanticism of Pollack, rein­ forced by his cinematographer, David Watkin, and by John Barry’s

70 — March CINEMA PAPERS

score, creates an Edenic back­ ground for the two lovers.

There is, however, an innocent sincerity about the whole project.

One im m ediately knows, for instance, that Redford washing Streep’s hair will be filmed with the sun behind the star, visually magnifying the intentionally twodimensional characterization. Every aspect is underlined; there are no surprises, and the audience is con­ tinually reassured by a familiar narra­ tive form.

Whilst Streep’s Blixen (demonstra­ ting once again her ability to master a foreign accent) occupies the screen for most of the time, it is Redford’s Finch Hatton who remains the figure of knowledge within the film.

Unlike the other characters, he is aware of the consequences of World War I on East Africa. He also shares a special affinity with the Masai and, finally, with nature, represented by the lions at the end of the film.

But Redford’s character appears to owe more to the actor’s previous roles, particularly Jay Gatsby and the mature Jeremiah Johnson (in what was also a Sydney Pollack film), than to any semblance of actu­ ality. If audiences can still accept this conception of the male hero, how­ ever, as well as share the director’s ethereal conception of Love, then Pollack stands a good chance, with Out o f Africa, of maintaining his spectacular run of commercial hits.

Geoff Mayer Out of Africa: Directed and produced

by Sydney Pollack. Executive pro­ ducer: Kim Jorgensen. Co-producer: Terence Clegg. Associate producers: Judith Thurman and Anna Cataldi.

Screenplay: Kurt Luedtke, based on writings by Isak Dinesen, Judith Thur­ man and Errol Trzebinski. Director of photography: David Watkin. Produc­ tion design: Stephen Grimes. Editors: Fredric Steinkamp, William Steinkamp, Pembroke Herring, Sheldon Kahn.

Music: John Barry. Sound: Peter Handford. Cast: Meryl Streep (Karen Blixen), Robert Redford (Denys Finch Hatton), Klaus Maria Brandauer (Baron Bror von Blixen), Michael Kitchen (Berkeley Cole), Malick Bowens (Farah Aden), Joseph Thiaka (Kamante), Mike Bugara (Juma), Michael Gough (Lord Delamere), Suzanna Hamilton (Felicity). Production company: Mirage, for Universal. Distributor: UIP. 35 mm.

150 minutes. USA. 1985.

On the London stage, David Hare’s Plenty was a neo-Elizabethan brawl of class clashes and political tirades, part of a fashion that also produced, on TV, the Richard Eyre/lan McEwan collaboration, The imita­ tion Game, and Hare’s own Lick­ ing Hitler. The last two were both sour looks at the way in which sexual politics could screw up the secret war effort, Fred Schepisi's film is not at all like this. “ The heat of passion, the power of anger” , announces the attendant hype, while the presence of trans­ atlantic megastar Meryl Streep in the linking role (played on stage by Kate Nelligan) guarantees the delivery of both. Chosen apparently to prevent any upper-class Briton from imposing Tory taste on Hare’s polemic, Schepisi gives the film as much of both the agony and the argument as his star will allow. The result is a glossy parable, marred on occasion by an exasperating detachment, but lifted to worth by an inspired mixture of the politically apt and the cinematically elegant. “ There will be so many days like this," exults Susan Traherne (Streep) in the first scene, as the church bells of France chime and she looks out over the Gallic countryside she has, in a very minor capacity, helped to rid of the Hun. The irony is as thick as the accent of the usefully poly­ phone farmer (John Serret), who politely omits to express his doubts that the world will change just because the British say it will: there are always more Huns. And Susan, in her way, has been part of the occupation, one minor pawn in the great game Britain has enjoyed play­ ing with the lives and futures of other nations for centuries.

Plenty charts Susan’s fall, rise and fall again as a political groupie, and eventual diplomat’s wife and hostess in postwar Britain. She battles austerity to acquire blackmarket spoons and cheese-graters for the Coronation, carries on a strained love affair with low-level diplomat Raymond Brock (Charles Dance), while pining for the arms of Lazar (Sam Neill), the spy who relieved the tedium and tension of her stint underground in France.

When they are reunited in the film's final scene.it is, a disappointment.

So is the Coronation, even though it is spent on a couch with wide boy Sting, source of the royal cheesegraters. Marriage to Brock is no better: a dismal, cross-Chanel liaison, leading into a glum role as am bassador’s wife, sleeping through the Jordanian day while her husband huddles earnestly with oil sheiks. What remains of the king­ dom, the power and the glory expires in the bad show of Suez, and Susan is back in the island rest home again.

Schepisi’s taste for the mytho­ logical and the epic is suppressed in Plenty, expiring under the inevitable transmutation of Hare’s play from political panorama into star vehicle.

As in Silkwood, the mixture of rhetoric and romance is often uneasy, with Significance hurried by

in the background while, in the downstage spotlight, the star fluoresces.

Sensibly, Schepisi acquiesces, re­ ducing the background to what are essentially painted flats, symmetrical and featureless, against which Streep shines. After flashy starts, the roles of both Charles Dance and Tracey Ullman (as her bohemian pal, Alice) fade into the same vague brume ecossaise, while Sting's per­ formance, latest in a series of onenote larrikins, never gets started.

Acting honours outside the lead performance are parcelled out between international hired head John Gielgud, as a testy but decent ambassador, and Ian McKellen, who plays Brock’s Foreign Office boss with a tone of ecclesiastical

ennui, lamenting Britain’s declining diplomatic role like a cardinal explaining the essential rightness of the rhythm method.

Understandably, there’s little of Barbarosa's cavalier flourish in Plenty, nor the earth magic of Iceman. This is frosty filmmaking, betraying an Australian’s dislike of cold and damp and British restraint.

Schepisi was clearly seduced by Streep’s passion into turning Susan Traherne from what she truly is — an unbalanced, over-sexed adolescent, doomed to become the subject of sensational biography and, finally, a supporter of hunt saboteurs and committees to save the whale — into a passionate, self-willed, yea-sayer to life, a kind of Zorba, who falls foul of the Whitehall colonels and her own capacity for living. With a lesser star than Streep, the result might have been a gross embarrassment.

As it is, Plenty is a rich, ripe pudding of politics and romance, worth a poke of anybody-s thumb.

John Baxter

Plenty: Directed by Fred Schepisi.

Producers: Edward R. Pressman and Joseph Papp. Executive producer: Mark Seiler. Associate producer: Roy Stevens. Screenplay: David Hare, based on his own play. Director of photography: Ian Baker. Production designer: Richard MacDonald. Editor: Peter Honess. Music: Bruce Smeaton.

Sound recordist: John Mitchell. Cast: Meryl Streep (Susan Traherne), Sam Neill (Lazar), Charles Dance (Raymond Brock), John Gielgud (Sir Leonard Darwin), Tracey Ullman (Alice Park), Sting (Mick), Ian McKellen (Sir Andrew Charleson). Production company: Edward R. Pressman Productions, for RKO. Distributor: Greater Union.

35 mm. 124 minutes. USA. 1985.

from outward appearances, making assumptions. The first time we meet the nineteen-year-old Geraldine, we are left to guess. Nervous and fidgety, she fumbles out a story to Connie about how she wants the job of looking after Connie’s four-yearold son, Nicholas (Owen Johnson), at a remote country farm, so that she can hide her pregnancy from her parents, and have the baby adopted out before proceeding with a tradi­ tional white wedding to her boy­ friend, Barry (Lewis Fitz-Gerald).

The country lifestyle, in a farm tucked away in stunning mountain scenery, turns out to be as remote from Geraldine's working-class out­ look as, it soon appears, childrearing is at odds with Connie’s

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

Cold comfort farm In a scene about half way through The More Things Change . . . a Telecom man (Alex Menglet), mis­ takes the pregnant child-minder, Geraldine (Victoria Longley), for the wife of Lex (Barry Otto). Enter Lex’s true wife, Connie (Judy Morris), just home from work, and shock registers on his face as the couple embraces. A beautifully-timed comic scene, it is also tinged with some­ thing painfully poignant. For, in many ways, the camaraderie that exists between Geraldine and Lex (which explains the Telecom man’s misunderstanding), directly under­ mines the strained marriage. And, if Lex isn’t the father-to-be, where is he?

But there is also a sense in which the Telecom man’s position is identical to that of the audience: a witless observer, gathering up clues

Barry Otto as the ineffectual Lex in The More Things Change . . . independent career drive.

Geraldine is young, inexperi­ enced, “ let loose in the world with­ out a feather to fly” , as Lex unflatteringly puts it, yet gaining for the first time in her life a sense of identity and confidence as she prepares to bear a child. Connie slowly comes to the realization that her struggle as breadwinner (Lex’s ‘job’ — the result of yet' another of his dream solutions — being to keep up the farm) is mismatched by her hus­ band’s ineptitude. “ What,” she finally asks, “ are we breaking our backs for?"

The drama and tension are meas­ ured by the confrontation of the various characters over their common plight in surviving a very chilly winter. Geraldine is at first coolly received by Lex and, to an extent, by Connie. She eventually becomes a symbiotic partner for each, catalyzing essential — though

discordant — realizations. And, by the time Connie and Lex face the im­ possibility of maintaining their marriage, another, that of Geraldine and Barry, looms. Such ‘discordant harmony’ is characteristic of the film, even to the extent that it can be described in a single image: Connie and Lex in the foreground, their communication floundering, staring out of a closed window at Geraldine and their son, Nicholas, whose game-playing is a cause for exuber­ ance and celebration.

Yet, for all the precariousness and fragility on which the characters’ lives hang, the film is also a testa­ ment to growth and change. Thor­ oughly contemporary, The More Things Change.. . is as much a film for the eighties as The Big Chill was about the eighties. It suggests, with intelligence, bravery and little con­ descension to sentimentality, that relationships are not founded on sacrifice, but on individuals realizing their own sense of fulfilment and personal achievement.

Robyn Nevin has come to direct­ ing the film from a background in theatre direction and acting (she is associate director of the Sydney Theatre Company). She has brought to the task a command and a faith that are refreshing — and masterful.

Like a latter-day Renoir, she shows a quality of restraint, simplicity, respect and resignation in her handling of the unfolding drama — qualities that are all but absent from today’s cinema.

The cast delivers eloquent and subtle performances, particularly newcomer Victoria Longley and established actress Judy Morris, whose role here bears many similari­ ties to a part she played last year in the ABC telemovie, Time’s Raging.

Working from a deftly under­ written script by Moya Wood, pro­ ducer Jill Robb has assembled a prodigious crew. Shot by Dan Burstall in glowing widescreen format, designed by Jo Ford and edited by Jill Bilcock, The More Things Change . . . is majestically modest in its design and scope.

Inverting the commonplace prin­ ciple of what constitutes a film­ worthy subject (it is a compliment to call this a ’small’ film), The More Things C h a n ge .. . deserves a wide audience. It is a reminder that the cinema is about experiences that are emotional, reflective and vital. As Woody Allen once put it, it’s about “ trying to get things to come out perfect in art, because it’s real diffi­ cult in life".

Paul Kalina

The More Things Change Directed by Robyn Nevin. Producer: Jill Robb. Associate producer: Greg Ricketson. Screenplay: Moya Wood.

Director of photography: Dan Burstall.

Music: Peter Best. Production design: Josephine Ford. Editor: Jill Bilcock.

Sound recordist: John Phillips. Cast: Judy Morris (Connie), Barry Otto (Lex), Victoria Longley (Geraldine), Lewis Fitz-Gerald (Barry), Owen Johnson (Nicholas). Production company: Syme International, in association with the New South Wales Film Corporation.

Distributor: Floyts, 35 mm. 94 minutes.

Australia. 1985.

MARIE

Hail, Marie Roger Donaldson’s most recentfilm, Marie, has links with his previous work — a concern for family (Smash Palace), an absorption jn ‘ the ten­ sions that arise when personal loyal-, ties come into conflict with moral ; responsibilities (The Bounty). How­ ever, despite the thematic continui­ tie s , Marie seems less a '‘personal’ project than a job that had to be done; The intricate network of details and the measured pacing of Donald­ son’s previous American film, The Bounty, which has been generally underrated, gives way, in Marie t o a more fundamental commitment to the basics of story-telling. There is ... nothing intrinsically wrong with such an approach, of course; it is simply a question of the filmmaker’s priorities ; ' for this .project.

In order for its protagonist, Marie Ragghianti (Sissy Spacek), to acquire the;status of heroine, and to Framed? Sissy Spacek in the title role o f Marie. ►

CINEMA PAPERS March — 71

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join the army of American individuals who have stood up against a corrupt system and won] she must undergo the customary audition. And it’s a particularly tough one: Donaldson launches Marie into the midst of trauma in the opening sequence and doesn’t release her until-the end. Every event in the film is linked, in one way or another, with the ordeals, private and. professional, that she has to undergo. Anything extraneous is ruthlessly gleaned away: everything is subservient'to the details of Marie’s painful passage and Spacek’s nicely con­ trolled performance.

Based on the book, Marie: A True Story by Peter Maas, whose Serpico .provided the basis for th e ' film directed by Sidney Lumet, Donaldson’s film begins in 1968 and follows Marie’s flight from a wretched marriage into her struggle to raise her children and manage her profes­ sional career. The latter goal finds her, in her role as Chairperson of the Tennessee Board of Pardons and Paroles, at odds with those who ' appointed her in the first place. Both State Governor Blanton {Don Hood) and his legal counsel- Eddie Sisk (Jeff Daniels), a friend of Marie’s when she worked her way. through university, are deeply involved in the corruption of the Board. Her attempt; ;-to deal with the situation produces a chain of events that put at risk her life; and the lives of those around her.

A title after the opening credits proudly proclaims that Marie Ragghianti is “ a real person” , and that this is “ a true story” . This seems to be intended to lend a certain credibility to the drama. Indeed, as we have just seen Marie brutally beaten by her husband and hurled from her home, if»'does carry a dramatic punch. However, the telling of the story owes more to Way Down East, Orphans of the Storm and D.W. Griffith, than it does to any detached account of Marie’s move from a working-class environ­ ment to a position of State, office. ' The method of Marie is very much that of a melodrama of protest: the p rie s of battle are clearly drawn and the characterization is born of familiar stereotypes. In fact, the direction of the performances is ' such that the State officials reek of sleaze and corruption from the moment they appear on the screen, and áre divested of anything even vaguely resembling a redeem­ ing virtue.

Marie, on the other hand, is pure of heart- There is a suggestion early on, as she approaches Sisk in search of work, and, then conveni­ ently ignores his hints about what.is, expected from her ( ‘Like you and me, th a t B oard serves the Governor’s pleasure” ), that her

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actions are not altogether squeaky clean; but the implications of this are ignored as the drama returns to its pre-ordained direction.

Like a number of others*!n the breed of heroines who have, recently leapt on to our screens ’ (irL for example, Silkwood, Country and Places in the Heart), Marie finds that the problem is not simply one of dealing with territory that tradition (and patriarchy) has ; classified as. male. Her professional life directly endangers her domestic one after she decides to go public with the knowledge that has the power to bring down the State government.

And, since the film spends consider­ able time establishing Marie’s rela­ tionship with her children, the result is that the threat posed by the State officials challenges the security of The Family as much as it does the system of government which they have dishonoured. ; As it builds to its courtroom climax, Marie creates a considerable degree of dramatic intensity. What it lacks, though, is any substance beyond its sense of outrage. Marie’s development from bored and battered housewife to articulate spokesperson for honest govern­ ment is asserted rather than shown.

Sissy Spacek’s performance goes some way towards giving her character’s growth conviction, but it is (arguably) less successfu||than Marsha Mason's in the telemovie, Lois Gibbs ànd the Love Canal (directed by Glenn Jordan, 1982), another melodrama of protest, and one which has much in common with Marie.

In a similar fashion, it is never clear precisely what it is that the Governor and his cronies have done.

Donaldson’s film, clearly, is little concerned to propose any tangible insight into its drama about politics in the South. Rather, its focus is firmly on the plight of its protagonist, and on her battle against the (as it happens, all-male) forces thatline up against her. It is an efficient, occasionally affecting, but ultimately safe film.

Tom Ryan

Marie: Directed by Roger Donaldson.

Producer Frank Capra Jr Executive producer: Elliot Schick. Screenplay: John Briley, based on the book, Marie: A True Story by Peter Maas. Director of photography: Chris Menges. Editor: Neil Travis. Art director: Ron Foreman.

Music: Francis Lai. Costumes: Joe Tompkins. Cast: Sissy Spacek (Marie Ragghianti), Jeff Daniels (Eddie Sisk), Keith Szarabajka (Kevin McCormack), Morgan Freeman (Charles Traughber), Fred Thompson (Himself). Production company: Dino Di Laurentiis Corpora­ tion. Distributor: Hoyts. 35 mm. 112 minutes USA. 1985.

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dying) with the bomb The poster for Dennis O'Rourke’s Half Lifè i,sa GaugUin-style picture of an idyllic Pacific-island seashore, in the background of which ^is the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explo­ sion Just how this area — specific­ ally, the Marshall Islands — has been irrevocably changed from a 'paradise’ into an invisible cesspool of caesium, and other radioactive wastes, is chillingly and lucidly un­ folded in O’Rourke’s rivetting docu­ mentary. ■ Described, in an opening title, as a ¿Parable for the nuclear age’, Half Life is also a story of the callous and radisi exploitation of a ¡¡hi rd World society by a superpower which- is now in the process of absolving itself from its responsibilities.

The film then utilizes archival foot­ age (some of it declassified US A to m ic E n e rg y C o m m issio n material), titles, newly-shot interviews with islanders, doctors and Ameri­ can weather observers present during the test period, and film of recent hearings in Washington, where com pensation for. the islanders is being sought. ' The earliest footage recalls the paranoia and optimism with which the nuclear age was ushered in: Eisenhower and other government officials convince the American public of the need to stockpile nuclear weapons and keep an edge over the communists. The natives of Bikini Atoll, where the detonations actually took place, are seen being evacuated, while a patronizing com­ mentary informs us- that these ‘simple people’ are happy to lose their homeland “ for the benefit of mankind” , Another staged piece of footage has a US Army officer, sounding somewhat like W.C. Fields, con­ gratulating the Bikinians on being good fellows and leaving quietly.

Animals are tethered on target ships, to stand in for humans “ in the interests of science".

Science apparently wasn’t satis­ fied. Lagging behind the Soviet Union, the US was hastening to develop the more powerful hydro­ gen bomb'. In March 1954, ‘Bravo’, the first American H-bomb, was detonated according to schedule on Bikini, in the full knowledge that the prevailing wind conditions would carry fall-out to the downwind atolls of Rongelap, Rongerik and Uterik, Born to the USA. Tanira Jorju holds her grandson, Kimo. K im o ’s parents were children on Rongelap in 1954.

whose inhabitants Had not been evacuated.

The US government admitted that contamination of'these atolls and their inhabitants (as well as of the crew of a Japanese trawler in the area) had taken place, but gave assurances that no islander had been physically injured, and that all were well and under medical care. '.The US, of course, now had a group of subjects for the study of the long-term effects of radiation exposure. These effects are revealed, in the course of the film, to include cancers and genetically deformed children. ; Another extraordinary piece of archive film shows islanders being brought, to a Chicago hospital for tests, with a commentary describing how these ‘savages’ were safely delivered back. Jiome, '"none the. worse for the experience. A later interview discloses the truth: the death of at least one of the group on the mainland.

Half Life is a compact and 1 smoothly edited film, which provides essential information, placed -'tp create a slow crescendo of disgust and outrage. The footage, hew and old, speaks for itself, but the film uses the resources of cinema to make its impact. Music is important.

The plaintive chords of a’ Hawaiian steel guitar are used as a theme. A well-chosen extract - from Shosta­ kovich’s Fifth Symphony accom­ panies shots of the H-bomb test, synthesizing awesome beauty and horror, and reminiscent of the Straub/Huillet film, Introduction to Schoenberg’s Accompaniment for a Cinematographic Scene, which juxtaposed this piece of music with scenes of bombers dropping th e ir c a rg o as an ultim ate sound/image of doom.

There is only one lapse into mani­ pulation, during a section showing the preparations for the ‘Bravo’ test.

Intercut with the archive scenes are two new sequences, of peaceful beach scenes and children playing.

Apart from venturing dose to the complacent potion of happy natives spending their days in the sun, this is: an unnecessary underlining of information we already" have; that the islands were not evacuated.

O’Rourke keeps his exclamation point of horror for the penultimate Sequence. It is not shots of mal: formed babies or chronically sick adults, but a filmed address 1o the Marshall Islanders by President Reagan, on the occasion of%the termination of America’s trusteeship.

He speaks of the many-good things that have been built and .brought to the islands and the great gift of democracy bestowed;' andwishes them well for the future.' ‘Bravo’', apparently never happened; Mark Spratt

HALF LIFE

Half Life Directed, written, produced and ''photographed by Dennis O'Rourke Associate producers Martin Cohen, Lawrence J Henderson and Dàvid Thaxton. Editor Tim Litchfield Archival film research David Thaxton and Kevin Green Music. Bob Brozman Sound recording Martin Cohen and GaryWIdea. Production company O'Rourke an < - w iH f- o F>nir ìaxers Pty Ltd 35 mm 86jnmutes Australia 1985

THE COLOR PURPLE

Neverending story For a long time, Steven Spielberg has reportedly wanted to make a ‘serious’ film — one that will show the Hollywood snobs what a very good director he is. Spielberg is without doubt a good director. Un­ fortunately, The Color Purple is not the movie to prove it. While he has created a visually beautiful and wellacted film, Spielberg has become so bogged down in the ‘art’ of direction that what he has created is a series of very intense, very beautiful scenes which do not add up to a magnificent whole.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize­ winning novel by Alice Walker (who has been hailed by some critics as a worthy successor to William Faulk­ ner), The Color Purple is the story of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg), a black woman who survives a life filled with unhappiness and degradation imposed on her by men.

The story takes place over a period of more than 40 years, and the book is composed entirely of letters — letters from Celie to God, from Celie to her sister, Nettie, and from Nettie to Celie. Through them, the lives of the characters are revealed and dissected, so that what appears ambiguous at the begin­ ning becomes exceedingly clear by the end. And Celie herself does something similar, going through a gradual self-awareness, until she becomes whole, ‘young’ and ‘happy’.

But, because of the confines of the narrative — or perhaps because, out of necessity, a movie has to show, rather than imply, things — Celie is more ambiguous at the end of the

film than at the beginning, which is the opposite of the book.

What we grasp from the book and see portrayed in the film is a young girl who is raped by her ‘Pa’, whose resultant children are sold, and who must then face a miserable exist­ ence as drudge to a bullying widower with several bratty children.

Mister (Danny Glover), as Celie calls her husband, beats and berates her to the point where she retreats into a shell. Not only does she not protest: somehow she pathetically thinks that she deserves Mister’s contempt.

To his credit, though, Spielberg does not show scenes of repeated violence — a pit into which he might easily have fallen — but, like the book, alludes to more than he shows.

Unfortunately, this happens too much in some places — particularly in Spielberg’s downplaying of the lesbian relationship between Shug (Margaret Avery) and Celie, a major part of the novel — and too little in others, where he dwells at length on Celie’s preparations to shave a man she wants to kill.

The character of Shug, beautifully played by Avery, is the woman whom Mister loves and who, by her encouragement and love of Celie, helps the latter to change from a piti­ fully downtrodden ember into an inferno. Shug is a close-at-hand example of freedom and strength for Celie, whose life up until her marriage has been made happy only by the existence of her sister, Nettie (Akosua Busia). When Nettie is sent away by Mister, she vows to write, but Mister hides all her letters.

Eventually, when Shug helps Celie find her sister’s letters, Celie is able to muster her inner strength and prove that she is not ‘pore’, ‘black’, ‘ugly’ and ‘a woman’, but a,person.

Whoopi Goldberg, like all the actors in the film, is perfect in her role. She ages gracefully in a placid way that displays the kind of inner strength which her character must evince near the end of the film.

Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey (as Sofia) are also good in support­ ing roles.

Although much has been made of the sociological implications of the film in the US — many black groups have protested that its depiction of black men is universally negative — it is not so much against black men as against bullies (even if they do, here, happen to be mostly black men).

If Spielberg can be faulted, it should be in the more specific instance of Mister, whose character does not change (as it does in the novel). In the book, Mister mellows, and regrets the way he has treated Celie. The film touches only very slightly on his attempts to make amends: what little transformation is evident is underplayed to the point of making the final shot of the film oblique and confusing.

The period of the story — approxi­ mately 1906 to 1947 — is beautifully realized. The art direction of Robert W. Welch, the cinematography of Allen Daviau and the music score by Quincy Jones are all evocative of the American South during those decades. Yet, with all these things in evidence — acting, visuals and a universal story — The Color Purple simply misses the mark. By the end of the film, the audience feels drained, because of the emotional intensity of many of the scenes; but there is no cathartic effect. Even if Celie is content and happy, it is now we who feel like shells.

This aspect of the film is particu­ larly evident in the last third, which is

R hythm and booze: Margaret A very as Shug, cutting the rug at H arpo’s Juke Joint in The Color Purple. merely a series of endings, all equally dramatic, which close doors and chapters over and over again.

Just as he had a climax in every scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark and far too many endings in E.T., Spielberg here cannot resist the temptation, even in this ‘serious’ context, to keep the audience wondering when the film is going to end. Two or three endings might have been excusable, but four or five try the patience.

Meanwhile, though the film may do well at the box office and will probably be nominated for multiple Oscars, audiences who had been waiting for the ‘serious direction’ of Steven Spielberg should probably try to catch The Sugarland Express or Jaws on video, to remind themselves what a good director he can be.

Patricia King Hanson

The Color Purple: Directed by Steven Spielberg. Producers: Steven Spiel­ berg, Kathleeen Kennedy, Frank Mar­ shall and Quincy Jones. Executive pro­ ducers: Jon Peters and Peter Guber.

Screenplay: Menno Meyjes, based on the novel, The Color Purple, by Alice Walker. Director of photography: Allen Daviau. Editor: Michael Kahn. Produc­ tion design: J. Michael Riva. Sound: Willie Burton. Costumes: Aggie Guerard Rodgers. Cast: Whoopi Gold­ berg (Celie), Danny Glover (Mister), Margaret Avery (Shug), Oprah Winfrey (Sofia), Willard Pugh (Harpo), Akosua Busia (Nettie). Production company: Amblin Entertainment, in association with Quincy Jones, for Warner Bros.

Distributor: Roadshow. 35 mm. 152 minutes. USA. 1985.

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Hell’s gate Public or corporately-funded art has always had to do something, not just be: celebrate the dubious achieve­ ments of some recently dead ruler, for instance, or carry a railway across a river. As a result, it has been an affair of compromises: the beauty of a railway bridge is second­ ary to its ability not to collapse beneath the first express train.

Films have always had a function, too, though critics prefer to ignore it.

To adapt an old Latin tag (which, as I recall, was always used to indicate something venal), they are about bread and circuses: that is to say, they have to entertain a lot of people and make money out of doing so.

Which makes it fairly amazing that, after the debacle of Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino has been able to make another multi-million dollar film. It is less surprising that it should have been under the aegis of Dino De Laurentiis. Unlike the UA execu­ tives with whom Cimino came into conflict over Heaven’s Gate, De L a u re n tiis is no c o rp o ra te accountant with both eyes on the balance sheet: he has always com­ bined a sound commercial sense with the gambler’s instinct of a true impresario.

Cimino is a kind of maverick, too: for all his narrative arrogance and hit-and-miss thematics, he is firmly in the great tradition of American filmmaking. Like Ford and Hawks, like Altman and Aldrich (and Spielberg, before he began to regress), Cimino deals in myth first and psychology second. And, like The Deerhunter, Year of the Dragon is a stunning mixture of the extraordinarily brilliant and the staggeringly inept, the visu­ ally sublime and the psychologically banal.

It is also as much about Vietnam as The Deerhunter was — and in the same way, too, since the earlier film’s war scenes were little more than counterpoints to the main, allAmerican story. “ Fucking politics,’’ snarls. the hero of Year of the Dragon, police captain Stanley White (Mickey Rourke), as he tries to get on with the job. “ This is Vietnam all over again. Nobody wants to win this thing.”

This thing’ is Stanley’s campaign to clean up Chinatown, and he treats it as a crusade. His main adversary is Joey Tai (John Lone), a classic American success, who has climbed to a position of almost unshakeable power in Chinatown’s drug and pro­ tection rackets. Stanley is a secondgeneration Polish immigrant, and his sense of Americanness is severely threatened by the closed world and traditional rules of Chinatown. But Joey, too, is an American, who has created an economic power-base, just like Don Vito Corleone and Coca-Cola.

In that sense — in many other senses, too — Year of the Dragon is an old-fashioned gangster film, far removed from the heist movies that dominated the genre in the sixties and seventies. Like Little Caesar and Scarface, the film is about two worlds in conflict. And, as in those early gangster movies, while what is legally right and wrong may be clear, the moral position is far more

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ambiguous.

This shared heritage is a more successful and credible link between the two protagonists than the Chinese-American newswoman, Tracy Tzu (Ariane), with whom Stanley has an improbable affair, and who is constantly trying to ‘expose’ Joey. Undermined by both ex-model Ariane’s performance (at best competent, at worst embarrass­ ing) and by her distinctly Japanese appearance, the sub-plot is the repository for almost everything that is awful in the film, from its strained dialogue to its overblown main location in an unexplained luxury hitech penthouse.

The core of the film, though, can easily transcend such details. The thematic duel between Stanley and Joey, first across a broad office desk, then escalating through a series of violent confrontations up to a final apocalyptic face-out on a rail­ road trestle, with Stanley in his Marine combat jacket and Joey in a Mercedes loaded with drugs, shows Cimino at his impressive if not always likeable best — as an assembler of distinctive visual metaphors.

Here, the metaphors are those of hell (or the underworld) — in, for example, the choreographed violence of the machine-gun attack on the restaurant base of Joey’s main rival for Chinatown power; the attack on Stanley’s home, in which his wife, Connie (Caroline Kava), has her throat cut; or the discovery of two corpses in a dripping noodle factory.

Around these moments, as in all his previous films, Cimino has strung together the story (co-scripted by Midnight Express’s Oliver Stone).

Where the guiding visual motif in Heaven’s Gate was the circle, here it is the overcrowded compositions through which Cimino tracks his main characters with a skill that is often awesome: however crowded the background, the foreground is never lost.

And these scenes hold the film together, rendering the overall sloppiness of structure (always Cimino’s weakest point) and the grating obviousness of some of the dialogue more or less minor irritants.

The parallel of John McEnroe some­ how springs to mind: the irritating arrogance and the total lack of cool are overruled by a sheer and passionate skill.

Like The D eerh un ter and Heaven’s Gate, Year of the Dragon is a deeply conservative film, relying on the problematic frontier-society notion of the little guy needing the strength and violence of the big guy to save him.

Stanley’s is an action-based philo­ sophy, full of latent racism (as a European immigrant, he both resents and fears the new wave of Asian Americans), and Year of the Dragon illustrates it to the exclusion of all else. Liberty Valance must be e lim in a te d . O thers (Ransom Stoddard in Ford’s film, Stanley’s friend, Bukowski [Ray Barry], here) may talk, but the hero (Tom Doniphon/Stanley White) must act. Thus America exorcises its demons. And, though Cimino is as yet no John Ford, he has about him — and Year of the Dragon has about it — that

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Dragonslayer: M ickey R ourke as Stanley White in Michael C im ino’s

Year of the Dragon.

disturbing aura of American great­ ness. Perhaps, too, the experience of Heaven’s Gate (or maybe it was Dino De Laurentiis) has taught Cimino that, in movies, com­ promising with function has often gone hand in hand with greatness.

Nick Roddick Year of the Dragon: Directed by Michael Cimino. Produced by Dino De

Laurentiis. Executive in charge of pro­ duction: Fred Caruso. Screenplay: Oliver Stone and Michael Cimino, based on the novel by Robert Daley.

Director of photography: Alex Thom­ son. Production design: Wolf Kroeger.

Editor: Françoise Bonnot. Music: David Mansfield. Sound: David Stephenson.

Cast: Mickey Rourke (Stanley White), John Lone (Joey Tai), Ariane (Tracy Tzu), Leonard Termo (Angelo Rizzo), Ray Barry (Louis Bukowski), Caroline Kava (Connie White). Production com­ pany: Dino De Laurentiis. Distributor: Hoyts. 35 mm. 136 minutes. USA. 1985.

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Modern crimes Towards the end of Jenny Kissed Me, there is an image that neatly, if unintentionally, illustrates one of the film's major flaws. Lindsay Fenton (Ivar Kants) and his surrogate daughter, Jenny (Tamsin West), are being pursued by the police, who aim to apprehend Lindsay for kid­ napping, and return Jenny to custody as a ward of the state.

Jenny is in an institution because her m other, C arol (D e b o rra -L e e Furness), has left the home in the hills that she shared with Lindsay for the faster times of Melbourne. Unfor­ tunate choices there have landed Carol in the midst of the cocaine and massage-parlour trades; and, as a result, the police have taken Jenny from her. Tormented by the loss of the child and her mother, Lindsay has snatched Jenny back.

While the pair are on the run, the camera rests briefly on two news­ paper headlines that proclaim their predicament. The Age announces that they are the focus of ‘Victoria’s largest manhunt’, while Truth lewdly ponders Lindsay’s motives as ‘Love or lust?’.

Like The Age, Jenny Kissed Me aims to present a story that is authoritative, probing, confronting and even illuminating. But, like Truth, it also wantsaspicyangleonthe' subject: one that might shock, titillate or add a bit of oomph. And, in succumbing to the temptation of the latter, the film surrenders any semblance of the former. Though an exploration of the problems faced by the trio indicates some potentially involving raw material — the pre­ carious state of the family, the legal limbo of de facto relationships, the difficulties faced by women who are unsuitable mothers, the trauma that besets children when adult relation­

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ships are severed — the execution eclipses much of it. What might have been a sensitive, perceptive account of the fragile and complex relation­ ships between adults and children is reduced to an overblown and fairly vacuous tearjerker.

Following somewhat belatedly in the wake of a cycle of films that portray men as devoted parents (Kramer vs. Kramer, Smash Palace, Table for Five, Author, Author, Ordinary People), Jenny Kissed Me contrasts the troubled relationship between Carol and Lindsay with the rapport shared by Lindsay and Jenny. It even (unnecessarily) accentuates the bond between man and child with heavy-handed references to the fact that Lindsay is not Jenny’s natural or legal father. This information makes him seem like a Very Nice Guy and casts some suspicion on Carol’s chequered past.

Not that Carol needs any more suspicion cast upon her, for her character supplies another of the film’s flaws, and one that is disturbing in its implications rather than simply problematic as a con­ sequence of indecision. For most of the film, Carol exists as a catalyst — an erratic variable who indicates the importance of the other stable and caring adult in Jenny's life. With the goal of depicting the male as a worthy parent, Warwick Hind’s script sacrifices the female pro­ tagonist, crucifying Carol in order to canonize Lindsay.

Spouting much half-baked jargon about the irrelevance of marriage and virtually rejecting her role as a mother, Carol seems to embody somebody’s fairly uncharitable perceptions of feminism. The only things that she is liberated from, however, are any redeeming features. As both lover and mother, she is portrayed as a villain: a woman who is selfish, stupid, sexually deceitful and, worst of all, a

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terrible mother.

She resents it when her child’s cries of pain from the neighbouring room interrupt her sex life. She dis­ passionately puffs on her hash pipe at home while the child is rushed to hospital with acute appendicitis. She pouts when Lindsay spends their scarce resources on a bike for Jenny’s birthday rather than additions to her own wardrobe. And she alleviates the boredom of country life by succumbing to the a d v a n c e s of a neighbour.

Meanwhile, Lindsay teaches Jenny about the local fauna, visits her in hospital when she is sick and brings home the bacon. Finally, Carol packs up and leaves the love­ able Lindsay. Ignoring Jenny’s dismay, she separates the child from her single caring parent and re­ locates in Melbourne, traumatizing both of the people she allegedly loves. What more? She works in a massage parlour, has friends who live on the profits of drug-dealing, and is oblivious to Jenny’s anguish and deterioration from sweet little girl to Problem Child. In short, the woman is a monster, a caricature masquerading as a character, who destroys any argument for reading the film as a genuine effort to deal with the complexities of modern relationships.

It is primarily the depiction of Carol that lends the film its final and most ironic defect. Offering itself as a tale "which could only have happened in the present ”, Jenny Kissed Me purports to examine the problems and pressures of contemporary relationships. Yet, beneath its glossy surfaces (and, thanks to Bob Kohler's photography, the film looks lustrous), it applauds the most conservative elements of highly traditional values. Its resolution Love locked out: Tamsin West as Jenny and Deborra Lee-Furness as Carol in Jenny Kissed Me.

consists of Carol seeing the error of her ways, marrying Lindsay (thereby establishing his legal tie to Jenny), confessing her love for the child and swapping her night job for a post behind the supermarket cash register.

This miraculous transformation — just in the nick of time, as Lindsay is about to expire from a terminal disease — seems to contradict the film’s claim to modernity. Marriage and fidelity are restored to their pedestals, responsible parenthood is shown to be within the grasp of even this reprobate, and the film ends with mother and daughter back in the idyllic hills, apparently smiled upon by a benevolent rein­ carnation of the dearly departed.

The saddest thing about Jenny Kissed Me is that it is incapable of presenting a sympathetic male character without damning his female equivalent, as if they were somehow mutually exclusive. And, when Carol is finally ‘redeemed’, it is in the most patronizing way possible, so that she can strive to fill his vacant shoes.

Finally, however, one ceases to lament the missed opportunities that litter the film and simply surrenders to disbelief at its superficiality Debl Enker

Jenny Kissed Me: Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. Producer: Tom Broadbridge. Screenplay: Warwick Hind, based on an original screenplay

by Judith Colquhoun. Director of photography: Bob Kohler. Editor: Alan Lake. Art director: Jon Dowding.

Sound recordist: Paul Clark. Com­ posers: Trevor Lucas and Ian Mason.

Cast: Ivar Kants (Lindsay Fenton), Deborra-Lee Furness (Carol Grey), Tamsin West (Jenny Grey), Paula Duncan (Gaynor Roberts), Steven Grives (Mai Evans). Production company. Nilsen Premiere. Distributor: Hoyts. 94 minutes. Australia. 1985.

The leaving of Liverpool

Bitter shrimps

January is, of course, early in the year; but I shall be surprised if 1986 offers a more likeable film than Chris Bernard’s A Letter to Brezhnev. It is much more than merely likeable, however: it is an important film in the much-touted, never-quite-safelyarrived British cinema renaissance — utterly indigenous, cutting loose from stereotypes, rooted in the actuality of casual, messy living. It also shows itself aware of the capacity for romance and excite­ ment in the most straitened circum­ stances, but does not sentimentalize either.

It’s attitude to lower-class life is far removed from the gentilities of, say, This Happy Breed or Millions Like Us, let alone the patronage accorded the lower orders in other­ wise distinguished films such as Brief Encounter. British cinema has, traditionally, been full of comic working-class types providing light relief from the more serious matters that preoccupy their social betters.

Just as tiresomely, it has sentiment­ alized them in pseudo-poetic ways in the likes of A Taste of Honey, or depicted them with self-consciously gritty realism in other films of that short-lived ‘new wave’ of the early sixties. A Letter to Brezhnev, by contrast, takes its protagonists seri­ ously, but without being solemn about them.

The two girls in the film — Teresa (Margi Clarke) and Elaine (Alex­ andra Pigg), the former a chicken processor, the other on the dole — both want more out of life than the daily grind of their Liverpool lives has to offer. Teresa seems to have more go, but only in the direction of vodka and sex, and the men are both scarce and inadequate. Elaine, nicely contrasted (not just physically but temperamentally) describes her­ self as^'a straight Kirby girl short on adventure” .

The film wittily observes their reversal when two Russian sailors — the bear-like Sergei (Alfred Molina) and the more sensitive Peter (Peter Firth) — hove into view in the pub to which the girls have fled from a man whose wallet Teresa lifted when he tried to pick them up. It is, in fact, the quieter Elaine who has the adven­ ture: while Teresa and Sergei achieve instant (and constant) sexual compatibility, Elaine and Peter spend the night in talk. Elaine, having fallen in love, writes the eponymous letter, is invited to Russia and, despite being told that Peter is married, heads off in the film’s last scene. Opposed by most of those around her, she is urged on

by Teresa, who sees her own chances thinning, and is "afraid of what’s round the corner".

Throughout, it is the girls who take the initiative. They want men, but aren’t about to be pushed around by them; they pay the hotel bill for the Russian sailors; and, while men is what they want, they will set the terms. The most touching relation­ ship in the film is that between Teresa and. Elaine: their final airport scene is written and played with a

In Anthony Mann’s Thunder Bay (1953), a community of Cajun shrimp fishermen on the Gulf of Mexico combat James Stewart’s oil­ drilling company in its attempts to sink off-shore wells in their fishing grounds. A crescendo of violence is resolved when the first well brings in a gusher of foot-long king prawns.

We mention this because Louis Malle’s Alamo Bay comes on like Thunder Bay inside out. Based o n . a real-life New York Times story, it starts out to be about a small red­ neck community’s intolerance of the Vietnamese who settle there and compete in the floundering shrimp industry. At the outset, the film shows us the daily rhythms of people beached in a stultifying Texas town: commercial fishermen working their boats, popping Lone Stars at the Zanadew [sic] Lounge, and driving muscle pick-ups with ,30-06s in the window racks down highways empty save for the occa­ sional ‘Drive friendly’ sign.

Malle wanted Alamo Bay to be an elliptical documentary about such details. Screenwriter Alice Arlen wanted Alamo Bay to be a socialrealist message picture about pre­ judice, racism and class conflicts.

Tri-Star Pictures probably wanted a product for the Tender Mercies/ Places in the Heart market. Stars Amy Madigan and Ed Harris seem to have wanted the story of an incan­ descent, destructive amour fou. The upshot: an epic battle between Phantom India and Ruby Gentry.

Ruby Gentry wins.

The first half unreels issues, pack­ ing the elements for a social analysis into a traditional movie structure.

Dinh (pronounced ‘Dean’ and ^

fine regard for mutual feeling and disparate degrees of resignation and apprehension, as Teresa con­ signs herself to Kirby and Elaine to Russia.

The film’s attitude toward the Soviet Union is fresh and funny. A girl in a take-away shop, whose boy­ friend comes off second best in a set-to with the Russians, hurls after them “ Fuckin’ communist aggres­ sors!” Elaine’s fond and forthright mum (Mandy Walsh) warns her that Russians are "only interested in depriving people of their basic human rig h ts ” ; and a wellmeaning Foreign Office official (Neil Cunningham) warns her against the constrictions of Russian life.

But the anti-communist feeling at all levels is satirically played off against the way in which, for Elaine, Russia comes to stand for romance and adventure. As she points out, in leaving Kirby, "I haven’t got any­ thing to give up” . "FROM KIRBY TO KREMLIN” (as the tabloid headline screams) looks like a desirable move to her.

It’s not as though suburban Kirby — or Liverpool at large — are pre­ sented in the tradition of poetic squalor: in a series of graceful long shots and beautifully composed overhead shots, the old city is allowed its vestiges of Victorian dignity, which are as much a part of it as the vibrant, youthful life refusing to be subdued by poverty and un­ employment. A Letter to Brezhnev is one of the few British films that gives any sense of the life of a provvincial city in its sheer variousness: dignity jostles with dreariness, insularity with vitality, and the effect in terms of the film’s concerns is dram atic rather than merely picturesque.

Nearly 30 years ago, Lindsay Anderson berated British cinema for being "an English cinema (and Southern English at that), metro­ politan in attitude, and entirely middle-class . . . snobbish, antiintelligent, emotionally inhibited, wil­ fully blind to the conditions and problems of the present, dedicated to an out-of-date, exhausted national ideal.”

A Letter to Brezhnev is too un pretentious a film to make solemn claims about. Nevertheless, it seems to me to make a real assault on those attributes which Anderson rightly complained of. It has the authentic look and sound (Frank Clarke’s script is full of great one-

East meets west: Alfred Molina as Sergei and Margi Clarke as Teresa in Letter to Brezhnev. liners but, overall, has a still more impressive idiomatic fluency) of casual, irrepressible life. On this showing, Bernard has more to offer British cinema than Richard Atten­ borough and David Puttnam com­ bined.

Brian McFarlane

A Letter to Brezhnev: C h r is

B e rn a rd .

G o d d a rd .

S pack.

D ir e c te d b y P ro d u c e r: Janet

C o -p ro d u c e r:

A s s o c ia t e

C a r o lin e

p ro d u c e r:

Paul

L is t e r .

S c r e e n p la y : F ra n k C la r k e .

D ir e c t o r o f p h o to g ra p h y : B ru c e M cG ow an.

P r o d u c t io n d e s ig n : L e z B r o th e r s to n , N ic k E n g le fie ld , J o n a t h a n S w a in .

M u s ic a rra n g e r: W o lfg a n g K a fe r. E d ito r: L e s le y W a lk e r. S o u n d r e c o r d is t: R a y B e c k e tt. C a s t: A lfr e d M o lin a (S e rg e i), P e te r F irth (P e te r), M a r g i C la r k e (T e re s a K in g ), A le x a n d r a P ig g ( E la in e S p e n c e r), T ra c y L e a (T ra c y ). P r o d u c t io n c o m p a n y : Y eard re a m ,

in a s s o c ia tio n

w ith

F ilm

Four

In te r n a tio n a l a n d P a la c e P r o d u c tio n s .

D is t r ib u to r : R o a d s h o w .

35 mm .

95 m in u te s . B rita in . 1 9 8 5 .

Warmed by more than the Gulf Stream: Ed Harris and Amy Madigan in Alamo Bay.

CINEMA PAPERS March — 77

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played by Ho Nguyen) journeys through Texas to join fellow Viet­ namese refugees sardined by the dozen into an aluminium mobile home which glows in the moonlight like a television tube. Glory (Amy Madigan) returns from the big city to help her father keep the family fish business from going belly-up in the wake of a red-neck boycott caused by his chumming up with the Viet­ namese. Unhappily married Shang Pierce (Ed Harris) endlessly sets and hauls in his nets in a losing battle with the loan sharks. He is sucked into the undertow of an old romance with Glory as he becomes the de facto leader of the disgruntled red­ neck fishermen.

The penumbra of the Vietnam war hangs heavily over the film for a time. Shang, whipped into action by outside military advisers — the Klan — and wearing his ‘Nam Vets of Texas’ tee-shirt, leads the defence of local waters against foreign invasion at the helm of the Klan vessel, ‘Amatuer’ (they love to kill), The in­ vading Vietnamese are Vietcong to the locals. The war has been brought home.

But that’s the one that got away: the second half of the film jettisons all that social analysis.

Most novelistic films start out by plopping themselves into the midst of ‘reality’, then rippling out to take in the whole ocean. But Alamo Bay works like a whirlpool, contracting rather than expanding its focus.

The narrowing of the social scope is visually paralleled by the contrac­ tion of the broad Texan landscape and the expansive seascape of the opening scenes into progressively smaller spaces in the town, con­ cluding in the final shoot-out in the shrimp-processing plant. The rivalry between Shang and Dinh, which Is not fully developed in either the romantic or the political story, is at least expressed in a last visual con­ traction, as their bodies are carried out on identical stretchers, and each inserted head-on into its own closefitting ambulance.

In a traditional structure, one expects the social plot and the romantic plot to intertwine, as the lovers represent, in their personal story, the dynamics of the social or political story. But, in this case, they are not interlinked. We are tossed from the social story to the romantic one, but not back again. The line snaps, and the film’s drift into the hot stuff involves marooning the politics rather than cross-representing them.

There’s a Bermuda Triangle for films, loo.

What is discarded when a fish is cleaned is what is missing in Alamo Bay, too. But Malle fills in with dis­ armingly modest contributions: never a chance of choking on a bone, with the deft constructions under-played to take advantage of the progressively TVish visual style of the film.

An example: the first day Dinh goes out on the Vietnamese boat, the nets are emptied onto the deck and everyone — including the helmsman — crowds excitedly round. One of them sorts the various sea-things into piles, using a brandnew Texas auto licence plate as a sorter. We are wondering: where did that come from? Meanwhile, the un-

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attended boat nearly collides with Shang Pierce’s boat.

The diverging forces of the entire movie can be seen here. Its instinct for moment and detail — its specificity — is there in the close-up of the fish-sorting and the blithe enigma of the licence plate. But there, too, clearly separated, is its determinism, literally forcing it off one course and onto another: the one intended to destroy Shang.

The event in the film which chooses the latter and scuttles the former stands out not only for the acting — it’s the dance scene, with Madigan and Harris radiating sex — but also for Malle's method: flickers of detail, understatement, everything as little as possible.

Madigan and Harris — their energy, their desire — steal the show, slow-dancing, crab-wise, into the vacuum left as the social theme weighs anchor and sinks slowly in the west, a plucky Ry Cooder score accompanying.

Diane Routt and R.J. Thompson

Alamo Bay: P ro d u c e rs :

D ir e c t e d b y L o u is M a lle .

L o u is M a lle a n d V in c e n t

M a lle . E x e c u tiv e p r o d u c e r . R o s s M illo y .

S c r e e n p la y : A lic e A d e n . D ir e c t o r o f p h o t o g r a p h y : C u r tis C la rk . P r o d u c t io n d e s ig n e r :

T re v o r

W illia m s .

E d it o r :

Jam es B ru c e .

M u s ic : R y C o o d e r .

S o u n d : D a n n y M ic h a e l. C a s t: A m y M a d ig a n (G lo ry ): E d H a r r is ( S h a n g P ie rc e ), H o N g u y e n (D in h ), D o n a ld M o ffa t (W a lly ), T ru y e n V. T ra n (B e n ), R u d y Y o u n g (S k in n e r), C y n t h ia C a rle (H o n e y ),

M a r tin o

L a s a lle

( L u is ) .

P r o d u c t io n com pany: T ri-S ta r P ic t u r e s / D e lp h i III. D is t r ib u t o r : FoxC o lu m b ia .

1985.

35 m m .

U S A . 9 8 m in u te s .

“Whatfools these mortals be..." John Hargreaves, Meredith Phillips and the Easter Island gods in Sky Pirates.

Plumbing the heights Tales of swashbuckling heroes and plucky heroines are, of course, almost as old as the cinema itself.

Recently, however, the remarkable Steven Spielberg has claimed the territory as his own, with Harrison Ford as the archaeologist, Indiana Jones, in Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The pheno­ menal success of these two slick productions makes them an inevit­ able yardstick against which subse­

quent entries in the lucrative field of exotic adventure films will be measured.

That this should be so may not be entirely fair, but it is certainly inevit­ able, particularly when filmmakers appear to be guided by the maxim that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Which brings us directly to Sky Pirates, a $4-million-plus pro­ duction that rarely soars to the heights to which it aspires.

An episodic film that appears stitched together rather than seam­ less, Sky Pirates regularly expects its audience to accept too great an amount on faith, buckles under the strain of trying to do too much, labours under the burden of a script that lacks the sparkle so vital to this type of entertainment, and simply relies too heavily on other recent films — primarily the aforementioned Indiana Jones sagas — for its inspiration.

To be sure, Spielberg, too, owed a debt of gratitude to the past, notably to those cliffhanger serials that held so many of us enthralled at the Saturday afternoon pictures. But Spielberg elevated the formula several levels.

Produced by John Lamond (whose credits include Australia After Dark, The ABC of Love and Sex, Felicity, Pacific Banana and Nightmares) and Michael Hirsh, Sky Pirates was filmed in such dis­ parate locations as Melbourne and the skies above Ballarat, the outback and the Great Barrier Reef, and as far afield as Bora Bora and Easter Isla n d , the hom e of those mysterious, Fraser-like stone heads.

Directed by Colin Eggleston (who made the excellent featurette, The Long Weekend), Sky Pirates is set in the forties, and stars the versatile John Hargreaves in the unaccus­ tomed role of an Aussie Biggies — a devil-may-care flyer named Harris.

We meet Harris, replete with dash­ ing if unorthodox flying leathers, as he arrives at a misty (the fog machine is working overtime in Sky Pirates) airfield to pilot a secret US/Australian air force flight across the Pacific. Among those on board are co-pilot and senior Australian officer Savage (Max Phipps), who, for reasons that are never made clear, harbours a deep-seated hatred of the insubordinate Harris; the hard-drinking US general, Hackett (Alex Scott), and his aide, Logan (Wayne Cull); and the Reverend Kenneth Mitchell (Simon Chilvers), who also appears to be a scientist with an unclerical penchant for the occult and the supernatural.

Not aboard, to Harris’s chagrin, is the reverend’s attractive daughter, Melanie (Meredith Phillips), though their knowing glances assure a subsequent reunion.

In the cargo bay of the vintage Dakota C-47 is a packing case con­ taining . . . no, not the Ark of the Covenant, but a third of a sacred stone tablet initially unearthed by grave-robbers on Easter Island and known as Moai (as in ‘‘He who disturbs the secret Moai meets death” ).

The flight takes off with an escort that includes two P51 Mustangs, providing director of photography Garry Wapshott with the first of several engaging aerial sequences.

But, when the curious Logan begins tarTipering with the cargo, all hell breaks loose, and a mysterious force takes control of the aircraft in a wellstaged, descent into a time warp.

Subsequent adventures take Harris, Savage, Mitchell and Logan to a strange, becalmed sea filled with rusting and rotting aircraft and ghostly ships, not to mention a lot more mist; back to Melbourne and a court martial for Harris, who is some­ what inexplicably sentenced to several years in the brig, but escapes in the nick of time to save Melanie from Savage; and to Easter Island, via a remote outback outpost full of Mad Max extras and a barkeep (Bill Hunter) whom the everoptimlstic Harris engages in a game of Russian roulette a la Deer Hunter There are some flat rejoinders (‘‘You really do fight dirty,” declares an awed Melanie. ‘‘Only some­ times,” replies Harris) and a touch of double entendre: after a brief, seductive cuddle, Melanie declares they need to get some rest. “ You’re making it hard,” says Harris. “ Sleep on it,” is her response.

There are also wing-tip heroics and a booby-trapped cave. But, try as it may, Sky Pirates comes nowhere near generating the kind of suspense and surprise that got Raiders off to such a stirring start.

And the film works up to a fairly pre­ dictable finish, as Savage and his right-hand villain, Valentine (Adrian Wright)7get their just desserts, Harris gets the girl, and the gods that rule Easter Island are reunited with a chunk of rock that glows in the dark.

Substantial production.work obvi­ ously went into the making of Sky Pirates, and the aerial sequences are first-rate. Hargreaves makes a surprisingly good swashbuckler, and the rest of the cast isn’t exactly made up of slouches, either.

Alas, though, they are given precious little to work with, in a plot that has too many holes even for an adventure fantasy, and a script singularly lacking in zest. One can’t help thinking that the project might have been better served in structure and development as a miniseries rather than a feature film.

As it is, one is reminded, not so much of the adventures of Indiana Jones, as of that home and travel loan commercial that precedes the feature in most cinemas these days.

It’s not much worse and, blissfully, much shorter.

Peter Krien

Sky Pirates:

D ir e c t e d b y C o lin E g g le ­

s to n . P r o d u c e r s : J o h n D . L a m o n d a n d M ic h a e l Lam ond.

H ir s h .

S c r e e n p la y : John D ir e c t o r o f p h o t o g r a p h y :

G a r r y W a p s h o tt. P r o d u c t io n d e s ig n e r .

K r is tia n F r e d e r ic k s o n . S p e c ia l v is u a l e ffe c ts : D e n n is N ic h o ls o n .

Sound r e c o r d is t: G a r y W ilk in s .

E d ito rs : J o h n

L a m o n d a n d M ic h a e l H irs h . C a s t: J o h n H a r g r e a v e s (H a rris ), M e r e d ith P h illip s ( M e la n ie ), M a x P h ip p s (S a v a g e ), B ill H u n te r ( O 'R e illy ) , S im o n C h ilv e r s (R e v e re n d (G e n e ra l

M itc h e ll) , H a c k e tt),

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(H a y e s ), A d r ia n W r ig h t (V a le n tin e ). P r o ­ d u c t io n com pany: John Lam ond M o tio n

P ic tu re s .

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CINEMA PAPERS March — 79

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Like other Norman Jewison films, Agnes of God treats a serious (in­ deed, quite difficult) subject with a degree of technical skill that, while it never lapses into surface gloss, leads the audience a little too confi­ dently through all the intricacies.

In this case, the subject is that of a young English-speaking nun in French-speaking Quebec, Sister Agnes (Meg Tilly), who gives birth to a baby. Agnes denies she has ever had intercourse, claims not to re­ member the birth, and is subse­ quently put on trial for murder.

Throughout, she manifests only spiri­ tuality (occasionally in the form of stigmata), and the film definitely flirts with the idea that it was a virgin birth.

Jewison, working from the ex­ tremely successful stage play by John Pielmeier (which, oddly, recalls C h ild 's P la y , turned into a film by Sid­ ney Lumet in 1972), keeps things moving thanks to an investigative psychiatrist (Jane Fonda), conflict between her and the Mother Supe­ rior (Ann Bancroft) and some skele­ tons in the convent’s closet.

The result is a film that impresses more as a to u r d e fo r c e than a serious think-piece. The main problem is that it never bridges the gap between images of spirituality-which abound in the film, thanks to Sven Nykvist’s (remarkably protestant) cinema­ tography-and an attempt to ground those images in character.

Meg Tilly, part saint, part spacedout hippy, is impressive, as is Ann Bancroft as a fairly worldly Mother Miriam Ruth. But, to my mind, the film’s best performance comes from Jane Fonda in the far less flashy role of the psychiatrist, coming to terms with her own lapsed Catholicism, and put in a position where it is she, not the convent, who is obliged to be convinced of the miracle. In Fonda, one can s e e the clashes of ideas, which tend to become more fire­ works elsewhere in the film. It is a great and restrained piece of film acting.

Nick Roddick

Usually, it is the merchandizing which follows the film. But, in the case of The Care Bears Movie, it has been the other way round: this animated film features the wide range of ‘Care Bears’, which, in real (?) life, are cute little dolls currently enjoying the popularity of the Cabbage Patch Kids and a few of the minor saints.

The film, despite the unpromising preconceptions which a slightly cynical reviewer might harbour

80 — March CINEMA PAPERS

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(Blatant Exploitation! Commercial Dross!), is surprisingly stomachable, even with the billions of heartshaped objects (from elephants’ trunks to door hinges) which pepper the film.

A typical good-versus-evil premise forms the core of the film, with the Care Bears Crew battling an evil force that is trying to turn a friendless kid into a major-league nasty. And this keeps the film from dragging, or the schmaltz from breaching adult tolerance levels.

Technically, the single-frame ani­ mation is pedestrian, and the colours are neither as rich nor as iridescent as the Disney philosophy might suggest.

But it works: after all, you can’t really knock a film that espouses the virtues of loving and caring and being nice. And there is a warm glow to be had from the heartfelt laughter of all those three- and fouryear-olds.

had developed the characters instead of going for a violent-heroic •climax, C a th o lic B o y s might have been a satisfying movie. Instead, it is only occasionally engaging.

Jim Schembri

That I should be writing a short review of Eureka to mark its fleeting appearance on the Australian reper­ tory circuit nearly three years after its initial release, is a matter of some considerable injustice.

Shelved in the US, buried in Britain (see C in e m a P a p e r s , 53), E u re k a is, for all its 'invisibility', one of the towering achievements of eighties cinema — a film of such scope, ambition and challenge that it deserves to be seen, in no matter what form.

But, without wanting to denigrate the outlets the film h a s found — that it can still be seen at all is reason enough to be thankful — the colours and compositions of Nicolas Roeg’s vision, stunningly realised by cinematographer Alex Thomson, deserve bigger screens and state-ofthe-art equipment.

A sort of metaphysical whodunnit, E u re k a traces the life, times and death of gold miner, then millionaire, Jack McCann (Gene Flackman), his daughter (Theresa Russell) and her husband (Rutger Hauer). It is not a straightforward film, going the furthest that Roeg has yet gone into layered time structures and inter­ locking patterns of memory and storytelling. But it is immensely rewarding, dealing with 'big' sub­ jects like power, passion and possession, and bringing off the challenge more completely than anything since the days of Lang and von Sternberg — a true piece of cinema, in fact, unrealisable in any other medium, unsummarizable and unmissable. See it, please, before it disappears again.

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[3K » T Catholic Boys is another mediocre ‘sensitive comedy’ about teenagers growing up in sixties America.

Although fledgling director Michael Dinner produces some funny and sympathetic moments as he follows five schoolmates through a Brooklyn Catholic school, the film suffers from an obsessive focus on brutality. As a result, the boys’ friendships grow by superficial and predictable experi­ ences of violence, intimidation and sexual awakening.

The two main characters are Michael Dunn (Andrew McCarthy), a new boy at the school, and Ed Rooney (Kevin Dillon, brother of Matt), the lazy, cool head of the gang. Dunn Is sensitive and independent, and Rooney is im­ pressed by his strength in the face of teacher victimization.

There is early humour and pathos as friendships develop, but they are soon lost in a tiresome preoccupa­ tion with Catholic discipline, frustra­ tion and masturbation (one boy never talks, he just wanks). The film’s best moments are devoted to Dunn’s romance with the cornershop girl, Danni (Mary Stuart Masterson), who dropped out of school because her father was stricken by melancholia.

Despite the cameo presence of Donald Sutherland, as the sage but stern headmaster, Masterson alone evokes sincerity amid the chaos of adolescent pranks and problems.

In the end, however, nothing is resolved, only contrived, leaving one with the feeling that, if the writers

Michael Visontay

Nick Roddick

With so-called kids’ movies seem­ ingly strung out permanently between the twin poles of sexual awakening and outer space, it is good to be able to welcome — albeit with reservations — a kids’ film which contrives to be both watchable and entertaining without a single spaceship or shower scene.

True, Follow That Bird does briefly transform one of Sesame Street’s more inept regulars into the equally inept, if supersonically airborn, Super-Grover. But this is only so the scraggly mutt can try and rescue Big Bird, lured from the off­

Z beat homeliness of the Street to a ‘real home with his own kind’, personified (or ornitholified) by the Dodos, a splendidly daffy brood of mid-western feathered loonies. The other inhabitants of the Street, human and manipulated, set out to bring back the Bird.

Opening with a shot of the Warner Bros logo and the familiar promise that “ this movie is brought to you by the letters ‘W’ and ' B’ ’’, F o llo w T h a t B ir d preserves S e s a m e S tr e e t's (and the Muppets’) almost unique skill of talking to kids and adults at the same time and in the same language.

Boasting guest appearances by Paul Bartel (as a sloppy short-order cook), Chevy Chase (reprising his S a tu r d a y N ig h t L iv e newsreader), and Waylon Jennings (as a singing truckdriver), the film is good-natured funny and well-paced. Directed by Ken Kwapis, it is, astonishingly, pro­ duced by Ken Loach’s erstwhile collaborator, Tony Garnett.

Nick Roddick

Very much an 'art film’ from the direc­ tor of last month’s medieval epic, F le s h a n d B lo o d , The Fourth Man (De v ie r d e m a n ) is not a film about which it is easy to be indifferent.

The story of a gay Dutch writer (Jeroen Krabbe) who, on a poetry­ reading visit to the seaside, gets drawn into the web of a mysterious beautician (Renée Soutendijk), and who looks set to become the fourth man to marry her and die, it is told by director Paul Verhoeven, his regular script-writer, Gerard Soeterman, and cinematographer Jan De Bont, as something between an occult night­ mare and a Russ Meyer melodrama.

Eyes burst out of key-holes, cocks are cut off with scissors, fellatio takes place in a mausoleum and the hero, having gasped "Through Mary to Jesus!” as he comes (his real reason for sleeping with Soutendijk - or so he thinks - is to get to her boyfriend,

Herman), is finally driven mad by Her­ man’s death in a particularly messy road accident, and takes refuge in the arms of a nurse he takes for the Virgin Mary.

Designed (rather too obviously) to shock everybody-catholics through the blasphemy, straights because of the explicitly homosexual scenes, gays because of the melodramatic tone - T h e F o u rth M a n is neverthe­ less a strikingly energetic piece of filmmaking, confirming, for anyone who still doubts it, Verhoeven’s ability to come up with powerful images, and his equally frequent uncertainty about how best to use them.

Nick Roddick

Goodbye New York begins with New York WASP Nancy Callahan (Julie Hagerty) quitting her job, find­ ing her good-for-nothing, cocaine­ sniffing husband in bed with another woman, and leaving for a promising new life in Paris.

Worse than being shot out of the sky or hijacked, she falls asleep on the plane and ends up in Tel Aviv. In the style of T h e O u t-o f-T o w n e rs , she is stuck there without baggage or money.

In part a guided tour of Israel, the film’s other intentions are summed up in the final reprise: "if at first she says no, try again.” Several male cha ra cte rs dressed like d isco hustlers are congenially disposed to this philosophy.

Occasionally, the good-bad taste of a P o r k y ’s or an A n im a l F io u s e sur­ faces - like when Nancy takes on a would-be contender to King Kong in a banana eating contest, or when her newly-found boyfriend, David (Amos Kollek), meets a Jewish American Princess who suggests that they “go fuck their brains out" - but it’s nearly all predictable drudge.

If you don't make it to the end, here is what happens: she gets to Paris and he gets laid in the back seat of his car at Tel Aviv airport.

I expect that it would have been more enjoyable watching this film in Israel-or any country where an audi­ ence spontaneously react to what is happening on the screen with hoots and guffaws. It would appear that that is the audience that co-star Kol­ lek had in mind when he produced, directed and scripted the film.

Paul Kalina

Throughout his 30-year career, Satyajit Ray’s peculiar genius has lain in his ability to meld Indian sub­ jects and Western-style filmmaking.

From P a th e r P a n c h a li (1955) to Th e C h e s s P la y e rs (1977), he has made

a series of films that have ‘opened up’ India with the aid of Western psychology and, to a certain extent, dramaturgy, but which, for all their opening up, have never been hybrids.

In this context, The Home and the World (Ghare-Baire) comes as something of a disappointment: its concern (an almost perfectly balanced debate between traditional Indian values and the intelligentsia's desire for progress) and its setting (East Bengal during the anti-partition riots of 1908) are resolutely Indian.

But its script, adapted by Ray him­ self from a novel by his mentor, Rabindranath Tagore, makes few concessions. At its centre is a triangle whose points are more ideo­ logical than personal: Nikhil (Victor Banerji), the educated landowner who wants oersonal before political p ro g re s s ; S a n d ip (S o u m itra Chatterji), the hypocritical middleclass radical; and Bimala (Swatilekha Chatterji), who is coaxed out of purdah by Nikhil, only to fall briefly to the superficial charms of Sandip.

Rather than open this tale up, Ray submits it to a rigorously formal mise-en-scene, in which close ups, two-shots and careful triangular compositions prevail, and exteriors are reduced to a minimum. The result is a film of great beauty and intelligence, but one so restrained as to be almost dull.

Nick Roddick

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A combination of court-room drama, glamorous romance and taut thriller, Jagged Edge is a fluid reworking of a familiar Hollywood formula.

Uniting two talented and appealing actors — Glenn Close, as lawyer Teddy Barnes, and Jeff Bridges as her client, Jack Forrester — it intro­ duces a world of beautiful people, power, affluence and intrigue, and leavens it with a dash of social message.

The film traces the relationship between Barnes and Forrester from the time that he is accused of his wife’s.grisly murder and she agrees to emerge from the safety of corporate law to defend him, primarily against the onslaught of a ruthless district attorney.

It is keen to identify its social concern as The Law — an arena where justice is seen to depend pre­ cariously on sexual attraction, professional ambition and power plays. There is also a cursory examination of the moral dilemmas facing those who endeavour to adm inister the law in good conscience.

However, questions of issue effec­ tively take a back seat to the romance, the sparring between Barnes and the D.A (played with elegant menace by Peter Coyote), and the red herrings and revelations required to fuel the whodunit.

Crisply shot by Matthew F. Leonetti and smoothly directed by Richard Marquand, J a g g e d E d g e is consistently involving viewing, but perhaps a little too faithful to the formula, once again reducing a con­ fident and competent career woman to a victim blinded by her own passions in order to resolve the narrative.

DebiEnker

As with his previous films, A lie n and B la d e R u n n e r , Ridley Scott’s Legend is a depiction of the struggle between good and evil dis­ tinguished by a potent evocation of atmosphere.

This time Scott trades the hightech flights of fantasy for a full-blown fairytale, with production design (by Assheton Gorton) that creates a landscape befitting the Brothers Grimm.

The lush but mysterious forest harbours the traditional assortment of inhabitants: mischievous goblins, magical fairies, an imposing castle ruled by a suitably depraved and power-hungry lord (played with relish by Tim Curry) and two pubescent protagonists on the road from innocence to maturity.

As Jack (Tom Cruise) and the Princess Lili (Mia Sara) act out their fairly static functions in the narrative — depicting friendship under threat, loss of innocence, the fight with the forces of darkness, salvation and eventual reunion — director Scott’s interest seems to lie more in the Pandora’s box of the forest than with the characters.

His consistent strength is the capacity to lead the viewer on a trail of visual surprises. The combination of wonder and trepidation produced by this trail, and enhanced by Jerry Goldsmith’s moody score, is a fitting companion to a fairytale that is part adventure, part moral quest and part symbolic interpretation of sexual awakening.

Debi Enker

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the great pitfalls of Shake­ speare’s work: easy enough to make charming, almost impossible to make anything more. Taken out of its original context of a masque-style entertainment, it comes across to a modern audience as a kind of panto­ mime in which an actor cavorts around in a donkey head, while a bunch of Renaissance yuppies wander aimlessly through the forest spouting stilted verse.

In Celestino Coronado’s film (a fairly precise record of a stage show developed over a period of time by B ritish mime and th e a tric a l innovator, Lindsay Kemp), the problem is all but solved in the most unlikely of ways: by focussing on the masque side of the show, and leaving the other themes to emerge as they may (instead of the usual procedure of underlining the ‘serious’ side — after all, it is Shake­

speare — and trying somehow to Freudianize the fairies).

The result is a magnificent piece of ‘total cinema’ — all colour, light and movement, dominated by Kemp’s own campy Puck. It is also the best piece of filmed Shakespeare since Kozintsev’s K in g L e a r, restoring the real magic (or magick) to the play — not the dreary ’white’ magic of the modern conjuror, but the dark gods who linger in the background of many a Shakespeare play (most notably M a c b e t h ) , and whose emergence into the 2 0 th century is generally a source of embarrass­ ment. Not so with Kemp: his D r e a m is a triumph — of Shakespeare pro­ duction, of cinema and of audio­ visual magic.

Nick Roddick

The two most disappointing things about National Lampoon’s Euro­ pean Vacation are that it is not very funny and that it is directed by Amy Heckerling, whose F a s t T im e s a t R id g e m o n t H ig h stands out as the most substantial of the eighties teen movies.

In her second film, J o h n n y D a n g e r o u s ly , Heckerling’s feel for comedy, sharp eye for milieu and grasp of film history and language were apparent. And, while the opening and closing sequences of V a c a tio n do display an appealing touch of irony and a hint of the director’s perception of American culture, the intervening time is marred by uninspired lunges at comedy based around the subject of the American tourist.

As the Griswalds weave their way from London to Rome — destroying Stonehenge, whingeing, eating, and donning silly clothes — two minor sub-plots are inserted: the family’s u n w ittin g in v o lv e m e n t in a kidnapping, and their equally inadvertent appearance in a soft­ core porn film.

An uncharacteristically sanitized offering from the National Lampoon team, V a c a tio n seems designed as a vehicle for Chevy Chase, who labours through a portrait of the middle-class American male as boorish schlemiel.

As he drags his patient wife (Beverly D’Angelo) and irritating children (Jason Lively and Dana Hill) through the high points of Europe, one is tempted to echo the wit of his son, Rusty: “ Aw, c’mon Daayd, this is really rank.”

DebiEnker

CINEMA PAPERS March — 81

A The production team responsible for Return to Oz, first-time director Walter Murch, formerly a highlyrespected sound editor, and pro­ ducer Paul (Police Academy) Maslansky, emphasize that their project is not a remake of the fondlyremembered 1939 screen version of the Oz stories.

The screenplay, by Murch and Gill Dennis, is based on L. Frank Baum’s second and third books, The Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz. Thus, unlike the MGM version, there are no cute Munchkins on view; and, though the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man are still present, their physical appear­ ance is totally different, being based on original drawings in Baum’s books.

On this trip, Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) leaves Toto at home, and journeys off with a talking chicken. Other sidekicks like Tik-Tok, a clockwork soldier, Jack Pumpkinhead and the Gump, who resembles a flying moose head. The baddies are Prin­ cess Mombi (Jean Marsh), who keeps a different head for every day of the month, and the Nome King, a stone-faced grouch who looks like a bit of Mount Rushmore.

So, with a cast of characters as in­ geniously conceived as this, and boosted by a $24-million budget, why is Return to Oz so relentlessly downbeat and grim? The land of Oz itself is a dime-a-bunch alien land­ scape, and the mechanical charac­ ters are clumsy rather than awe­ some.

Poor old Nicol Williamson is once again typecast in his ZardozlExcalibur mode as the Nome King (also doubling as a dubious doctor. The direction is as perfunctory as the creatures themselves and, at 110 minutes, audiences may be excused for feeling that the legend of this emerald forest is truly a neverending story.

Paul Harris

ish trapper, and Daisy McConnahay (Natassja Kinski), the young fire­ brand who abandons a comfortable home to join the rebels, against a constant background of collective action.

At a first viewing, there seem to be no more than ten shots in the whole film that contain less than three peo­ ple, and the nearest thing to an in­ tim a te scene - an e n c o u n te r between Tom and Daisy, three years into the w a r- has background action so busy it must consciously be in­ tended to rob them of their privacy.

As in both his previous films, Hud­ son puts his point across with relent­ less determination, forever losing his principals in the noisy swirl of street protests, field hospitals, society par­ ties and battle scenes.

It is almost as though a radical theatre director from the sixties had got hold of a huge budget, and had been determined not to let it cloud his vision. The result, sadly, is less a revo­ lutionary fresco,along the lines of, say, Wajda’s Danton, than a film that looks as though It has been shot by a second unit director: a series of big, big scenes, meticulously planned, fluently filmed, but lacking in focus awe-inspiring, but also somewhat numbing.

Nick Roddick

This time around, in Rocky IV (and there may be more), Rocky Balboa faces an even greater challenge than Mr T: a highly trained and conditioned Russian boxer called Drago (Dolph Lundgren), who has the build and personality of a stone wall.

The hordes of Rocky fans have naturally flocked to cheer loudly at his every punch, but writer/director/star Sylvester Stallone’s con­ cerns for his latest creation go beyond providing mere momentary thrills.

What makes the film the most successful sequel (yet) is the reson­ ance of the feel and spirit of the original Rocky. Of course, Balboa has come a long way, and he is richer and far more vain. But several good sequences show that, deep down — and whether he likes it or not — he is still a fighter.

Because Rocky’s adversary hails from the Soviet Union, critics have again focussed on Stallone’s poli­ tics. And there is, of course, a political strand in Rocky IV. But it takes second place to the story of the individual. And, even so, it is sounder and presented in a more palatable fashion than anything in Firefox, Red Dawn and 2010.

Jim Schembri

The main question which hangs over Hugh H udson’s Revolution is whetheritisamagnificentfolly.orjust a folly. What seems beyond doubt, barring box-office miracles, is that it will turn out to be a folly of some kind: a 125-minute, $50-million epic that very few people are going to want to watch.

Admirably avoiding the personali­ zation of history, Hudson (working from a script by Robert Dillon) places his two central characters, Tom Dobb (Al Pacino), the (supposedly) Scott­

82 — March CINEMA PAPERS

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Gradually honing down his casts from the sprawling canvas of Nash­ ville, via the six principals and limited sets of Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Robert Altman reaches what must presu­ mably be the reductio ad absurdum of intimate feature film-making: one man, alone in a room with a taperecorder.

Secret Honor, though, is unmis­ takably Altman, with all the usual dis­ locations, the usual one-off syntax, in which idiosyncractic verbal and visual rhymes replace the links of classic film-making and, above all, space for a single magnificent per­ formance: Philip Baker Hall as the man.

The man, of course, is Richard Milhouse Nixon, and the film is a kind of personal history, in which Hall is both Nixon, and Nixon commenting on Nixon from the outside. It is these changes, signalled by shifts in the rhythm and tone of the actor’s voice, that keep the film continuously alive.

They also provide what is perhaps the most complete portrait yet of the American politician upon whom his­ tory is most likely to dump. As in Arthur Adamov’s French absurdist play, Professeur Taranne, there is the sense of a man disintegrating as he comes to realize that the rules by which he has led his life are a contrick played on him by the real powerbrokers.

Not that Altman makes the mistake of presenting Nixon as a hapless vic­ tim: Hall’s president is nasty, brutish and extremely long-winded. But he is also a figure of great fascination. And Secret Honor has, for all its confines, more dynamism-more rawcinemathan all of last year’s action films com­ bined.

Nick Roddick

Going by title alone, one might ex­ pect to be treated to a teen movie bound for some frolicking on the holi­ day road (Where the Boys Are, Summer Camp, Spring Break etc).

Sex and sexual mores are the perennial pivots of the teen vacation; but, with Summer Rental geared to­ wards the family unit, the issues are tamer, though no less complicated.

If, from one angle, fifties American cinema and television promoted Momism, this film gives a good example of Popism (art movements aside) in the eighties - or, as Ray­ m ond D u rg n a t w o u ld c a ll it, “Momism, with its Bringing up Father tradition,’’ which harks back to the fifties.

Yet Summer Rental is “Momism in the Bringing up Father tradition” only insofar as Dad (John Candy) is idiotic to the point of embarrassment, and clearly a loser, especially when pitted against the seven-times winner of the Orange Cove regatta.

The credo of the fifties tradition is that it is Dad who believes himself to be in control, while Mom is actually in charge. Here, though, Mom is no wiser than Dad. This is where the film departs from the tradition, for it is Dad who realizes that “you can’t win ’em all, but one would be nice”, and sets out to take the trophy away from the reigning champion of the regatta, thereby regaining some of his self­ esteem.

According to Summer Rental, Popism in the eighties is the asser­ tion of Dad’s place at the head of the.

Z family, but only after Dad’s sad reali­ zation that he is a loser.

Raffaele Caputo

In one sense, Teen Wolf follows the line of most teenage sex comedies, where the main character is caught in the web of distinguishing true love from false. But, while this remains a consistent thread in the film, our teen hero is beset by a different, more urgent, but not unconnected problem.

Scott Howard (Michael J. Fox) is a teenager dissatisfied with being an average, unassuming lad — until he discovers he is a werewolf and, to his own surprise, manages to become the basketball team’s star player, to be the top pupil in his class, and to win over the girl of his dreams (albeit the wrong girl).

His real dilemma, however, is one of identity: Scott battles between his 'true being’ (which remains, even in his changed state) and the theatrics expected of him as ‘the wolf’. But the curious point of Teen Wolf] s the way in which Scott’s identity — who he wants to be — actually gets worked out: curious, because there is an un­ easy undercurrent to it all.

The fear and violence are deeply felt, and they emerge on the face of one of Scott’s closest friends, Lewis (Matt Adler) when, at a heated moment, Scott, as the wolf, lashes out at his persistent rival.

For Scott, recognition of this fear resolves his identity crisis. Who wins, I shall not disclose; but here is some Looney Tunes advice, which may give a hint, and which encapsulates Teen Wolf quite well: “ The big bad wolf/He learnt the rule:/You gotta get hot/To play real cool.” (From The Three Little Bops) Raffaele Caputo

It seems that the only relief from the crass teenage sex comedy is to be found in the screen adaptations of novels by S.E. Hinton, of which That Was Then...This is Now is the fourth (after Tex, The Outsiders and Rumblefish). Ms Hinton's world is of­ ten a despairing one, and this film is no exception.

The screenplay, by lead actor Emilio Estevez, emphasizes the downbeat atmosphere of the story, which is set in Minneapolis and in­ volves two inseparable friends, Byron (Craig Sheffer) and Mark (Estevez). In fact, the young men have lived in the same house ever since Mark’s mother was murdered by his father.

Mark is wild,immature and sullen, forever pulling~,stupid pranks, like

stealing cars. But Byron remains loyal to his friend until he meets and falls in love with Cathy (Kim Delaney), who returns his affection.

As Byron and Cathy see more of each other, Mark can barely conceal his frustration and jealousy, and when he reacts by getting Cathy’s younger brother hooked on drugs, the friends’ relationship undergoes a violent disruption.

Director Christopher Cain directs with more solemnity than necessary, and is not above adding such preten­ tious touches as having a tearful con­ fession by Mark played-with the reflection of a rain-streaked window on his face.

On the plus side, Sheffer and Dela­ ney are promising newcomers and Estevez once again demonstrates his range and power as an actor. His sullen teenager in this film is as con­ vincing as his frustrated yuppie role in St. Elmos Fire.

Transylvania 6-5000 is a horror spoof in which a group of reputable actors - Jeff Goldblum Joseph Bologna, Ed Begley Jnr, Carol Kane, Geena Davis - take one step back­ wards in their profession by trying to make the best of clumsy comedy.

The story concerns a latter-day Abbott and Costello-style duo (Gold­ blum and Begley), who are sent to Transylvania to discover or invent the true story of Frankenstein for a trashy tabloid.

David Stratton

During the retrospective of Daniel Schmid’s films in the AFI/Pro Helvetia Swiss Film Seasoh of mid-1985, one critic commented that Schmid, a close associate of Fassbinder (whom he directed in Shadows of Angels), would make a better director of opera than movies.

This view is supported by Tosca’s Kiss (II bacio di Tosca),

his documentary feature about the inhabitants of the Giuseppe Verdi Rest Home in Milan. Focussing on a handful of Italian opera stars of the thirties, the film self-effacingly allows them to take centre stage, perform­ ing arias, duets and reminiscences which never lapse into sentimen­ tality, because the protagonists are so wildly comic in their competitive self-awareness.

The octogenarian soprano, Sara Scuderi, is the star of the show, cheekily hamming up her self-per­ formance. But she is given ample support by others, such as the stiffly dignified Giuseppe Manacchini, movingly re-enacting his performand of Rigoletto in the cellar where his old costumes are stored, and the extraordinary Sardinian composerconductor, Giovanni Puligheddu, who wanders through the film like a refugee from Fellini’s And the Ship Sails On. This delicate, touching and ex­ tremely funny film betrays a grotes­ queness in its subjects that would no doubt have delighted Fellini. But it also displays what Schmid rightly describes as “ a dignity and great­ ness which are unique” . The final curtain calls, performed to canned applause from La Scala, are a joy, as is the entire film — and not just for opera buffs, either.

Tony Mitchell

divorce.

In Twice in a Lifetime, Yorkin re­ examines the theme, pulling no pun­ ches. Thanks to Colin Welland’s perceptive screenplay, the film is refreshingly free from mawkish senti­ ment and hollow sensationalism.

Gene Hackman, as usual, ap­ pears to act effortlessly, Ann-Margret again proves that she is not just a pretty face and Amy Madigan as Sunny displays the freckled feisti­ ness of a young Doris Day. Best of all, there is Ellen Burstyn as Kate. With her sweet, crumpled littlegirl face and soft, hesitant voice, she plays the kind of role we might have seen if Scorsese’s Alice has never nurtured any dreams.

Hackman’s Harry keeps old age at bay and changes his life by changing partners. (“But he’s 50!” says his daughter Sunny. “So is Clint Eastwood,” replies her brother compla­ cently). Unlike Burstyn’s character in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, however, we suspect that the loss of her husband will not mean another crack at life for Kate. This time, there will be no deus ex machina waiting in the wings.

The ‘real’ subject of Where the Buffalo Roam, we are told, is "those weird years between the sixties and the seventies — the Nixon years” .

Bullshit. Nixon may make an appearance, trapped in an airport urinal by Thompson. But the real subject of the film is Thompson and his brand of sixties radicalism, finally having to face up to the fact that being far out isn’t a form of existen­ tial tourism.

And, for all the skills of Murray and Boyle, Thompson’s sexist, slobbish and egocentrically liberationist philo­ sophy, committed to anything so long as it is vaguely connected with self-expression, becomes more than a little tiresome.

Nick Roddick

Christine Cremen

When they discover their quarry, they also stumble across a collection of his mythical mates: a werewolf, a mummy, a sex-crazed female Dracula, a crooked Mayor and the man­ datory mad scientist. The result is two hours.of cat-and-mouse, which worked betterwith Bud and Lou play­ ing the same game in the forties.

Written and directed by Rudy DeLuca and produced by Mace Neufeld and Thomas H. Brodek for New World Pictures, Transylvania 6-5000 suggests that the overuse of some stereotypes can produce a weary feeling of de ja vu: if you’ve seen one mad scientist, you’ve seen ’em all.

With a bit of wit or imagination, DeLuca might have been able to use his talented cast to some advantage.

As it is, what might have been a fresh approach to the territory traversed by Bud and Lou is simply a tiresome journey.

Linda Malcolm

Almost twenty years ago, Bud Yorkin directed Divorce American Style. Al­ though it paid lip-service to the happy ending, it also looked in pass­ ing at the economics involved in

There are two movies more or less at war within Where the Buffalo Roam. The first is a kind of hagio­ graphy of the semi-mythical father of ’gonzo’ journalism: the overrated Hunter S. Thompson, long-time Rolling Stone contributor, author of the memorable Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and writer of many other, lesser works.

The second film is a comic vehicle for Bill Murray, the best and most consistently innovative of the comedians to have survived (sic) Saturday Night Live, and Peter Boyle, who plays Karl Lazio, the sometime lawyer, occasional revolu­ tionary and full-time weirdo created

by Thompson.

The second film is worth seeing Where the Buffalo Roam for. But, since Murray plays Thompson, it is rather hard to disentangle the first film from the second. Playing together, however, Murray and Boyle create some great moments of cinematic farce, notably as they joust, verbally and physically, in an antiseptic hotel coffee shop, Murray in a Nixon mask, Boyle in full radical regalia, like a cross between a Sandinista and a member of the Grateful Dead.

The amusing conceit at the heart of Young Sherlock Holmes is the whimsical speculation that, contrary to existing Holmesiana, the initial meeting between the sleuth and Watson took place when they were both teenage schoolboys.

Steven Spielberg’s ‘house’ writer, Chris (Gremlins, Goonies, Indiana Jones) Columbus, has constructed a traditional narrative, which allows the producers to show off some expen­ sive studio recreations of fog-bound V ictorian London. A udiences weaned on British films will be only too familiar with them, from the likes of The Wrong Box, Oliver! and, more recently, a n o ther H olm esian homage, Murpler by Decree.

This story, however, centring on the pair’s first criminological investi­ gation, is compromised by a heavy reliance on elaborate special effects sequences, recalling previous Amblin entertainments, and a break­ neck pace which seems rather gratuitous.

By the time Holmes (Nicholas Rowe) and Watson (Alan Cox) have traced their way to the headquarters of a secret cult, deja vu has set in (could this be Sherlock Holmes and the Temple of Doom?).

Behind all the bluster and clutter, the in-jokes for Holmes aficionados and the hallucinatory set-pieces, there is not much truly to excite the imagination. And why hire a writer/director of Barry (Diner) Levison’s proven character and ability to direct a melange like this?

Paul Harris

CINEMA PAPERS March — 83

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In the name of the fathers BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI by Robert Phillip Kolker (BFI Publishing, 1985. $25.00 [pbk] ISBN 0 85170 167 1).

Although Robert Kolker’s book is clearly a post-structuralist auteur study, a fictional scenario can quite easily be read out of it. It might go like this: A young and very talented filmmaker is born under the sign of two cinematic fathers. His first feature, La commare secca (The Grim Reaper, 1962), bears the sig­ nature of Pier Paolo Pasolini, and also serves to exorcize that influence. The third feature, Partner (1968), is made under the sign of Jean-Luc Godard, and ends up as an anguished, modernist dead-end (“Partner is too Godardian to be good Godard, not to mention truly good Bertolucci imitating Godard,” writes Kolker).

Between these two films stands Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution, 1964), which, on aesthetic and formal grounds, claims some autonomy for its author, and points forward to the refinement of style to come in Strategia del ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem, 1970), II co n fo rm ista (The Conformist, 1970) and Last Tango in-Paris (1972).

But, the scenario goes on, an aesthetic (not to mention political) autonomy can only be gained at the expense of the father, hence the allegory of Godard’s murder in The Conformist (“ I’m Marcello and I make fascist movies, and I want to kill Godard who’s a revolutionary, who makes revolutionary movies and who was my teacher” ).

To reject one father is to embrace another. So Novecento (1900, 1976) is offered to the American cinema, but Hollywood proves to be a real castrating father, mutilating the film in the editing. The filmmaker regresses to the ‘security’ of the maternal womb (La luna, 1979), only to re-emerge and re-approach the image of the father through a contemporary social discourse ((terrorism, in La tragedia di un

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uomo ridicolo, Tragedy of a Ridi­ culous Man, 1981), rather than a strictly psychoanalytic one.

It is, of course, a slightly grotesque parody of Bertolucci’s career. But, given the density of psychoanalytic reference and structure in his films, together with his comments in inter­ views and texts, one can well imagine the kind of field-day a blind form of auteurism could have with Bertolucci.

This is not to say that Kolker’s auteurism is blind. His introduction provides a thumb-nail sketch of notions of authorship, taking his cue from Peter Wollen’s Signs and Meaning in the Cinema and Michel Foucault’s article, ‘What is an Author?’. Kolker notes what is, by now, a mandatory difference between the ‘author’ as biographical subject, and the ‘author’ as an effect of the text.

But, even though he is using a re­ furbished auteurism (which makes use of semiotic and psychoanalytic criteria), one suspects that, in some cases, he has appropriated the terminology without fully thinking through its methodology. The study is sprinkled with the terms ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’, but often used in a context in which ‘image’ and ‘referent’ would have done just as well.

Often, one suspects that Kolker is using the terminology to re-package certain standard interpretations of Bertolucci’s films. That may be an unfair accusation, and I certainly do not wish to condemn the book as a whole. But there sometimes seems to be less substance to the ideas than the critical language implies.

Take, for example, this passage on the 'film within a film’ in Last Tango in Paris.

For a moment, the film Tom (JeanPierre Leaud) is making is explicitly the film we see, just as the film Bertolucci is making is implicitly the film we see. If the apparatus were not present — and, more important, if the intel­ ligence that uses it to create the cinematic narrative of these fictional characters’ lives were not present — we would neither hear nor see anything. There would be no Last Tango in Paris, which is not reality but film.

But, of course, the cinematic apparatus is present. Does Kolker

really believe that a contemporary audience would confuse a film image with reality?

Detailed film criticism often runs the risk of over-interpretation, and this is especially true of Bertolucci, given his stylistic and formal rich­ ness. In this regard, Kolker offers an excellent, almost frame-by-frame analysis of the ‘myth of the cave’ scene in The Conformist. At the same time, though, in discussing in detail the use of compositions in the opening sequence of Last Tango in Paris, he can exaggerate its effect: The camera has intruded upon an agonized figure, attempted to compose him, to set him before our gaze, as Bacon might one of his tortured figures. But the figure resists the composition. We are yet unable to know anything but his despair. Through composition and its refusal, the film’s two subjects — the character and the viewer — are left uncomposed.

But the desire for composition cannot be denied; without it, cinema (and painting) would not be able to survive the anarchy that exists outside the frame. To create meaning, signifiers must be ordered, given form, held in place.

Only from the point of view of classical codes of composition can the opening shots of the film be seen as uncomposed. Anti-compositionalism is itself a code of composition; and, given that Kolker elsewhere in his study places Bertolucci within the tradition of modernist cinema (the apparent influence of Magritte, Bacon and others in his film), it shouldn’t be surprising that Berto­ lucci throws classicism into question.

I have perhaps lingered a little too long on what I see as the limitations of Kolker’s study, and it would be wrong to give the impression that the book as a whole is flawed, for there are many good things in it.

Especially good is the first chapter, ‘Versus Godard’, in which Kolker discusses the profound influence of the Godardian cinema on Berto­ lucci’s early career, and his need both to embrace and to challenge Godard.

The second chapter, The Search Below, fa cin g up to fascism : Bernardo Bertolucci on the 1900 set, with Donald Sutherland.

for Form’, concentrates on Before the Revolution, demonstrating Bertolucci’s experimentation with film form, and quite rightly placing him within the tradition of cinemodernism. Also discussed with real insight is the use of Verdi’s operas as a means of doubling a narrative’s commentary about the world rep­ resented. In fact, one of the best things about the study is the way in which Kolker makes us understand the real importance of Verdi as a consistent point of reference for Bertolucci.

The third chapter — the longest in ■ the book — is given over to discussing the major works of the seventies, from The Spider’s Stratagem to 1900. Here, the quality of analysis varies from the very good (Spider’s Stratagem and Conformist) to poor and fair (on Last Tango and 1900). The fourth chapter, on La luna and Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, is entitled ‘Collapse and Renewal’, and that in itself gives one an indication of Kolker’s position on the last of Bertolucci’s films to date. It looks at father/son configurations and a number of other themes from various perspectives — psycho­ analytic, Marxist and also feminist.

Most of the discussion is concen­ trated around 1900, a film Kolker sees as profoundly flawed but none the less most important, because it is the director’s most ambitious work.

Rolando Caputo

Brand X THE AUSTRALIAN FILM BOOK, 1930TODAY by Simon Brand (Dreamweaver Books, 1985, $25). ISBN 0 949825 10 7.

With the publication of “ this superb reference book” , as the dust jacket modestly calls it, the recent glut of reference books on Australian cinema may well have reached a nadir. Described as “ a comprehen­ sive listing ^of all Australian-made and made-in-Australia films since the advent of sound in 1930” , the book is noteworthy for the paucity of its background information and its total lack of critical analysis.

Clearly, the author is interested solely in mainstream feature filmmaking (which surely disqualifies the listings' claim to be comprehensive), and there is no source material which is not already available in the more precise context of Australian Film (1900-1977), by Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper (Oxford University Press, 1980). Indeed, most of the comments, especially in the earlier section, appear at times to be reworded from that book.

The publishers’ claims that the book “ also provides an insight into the rises and falls of the Australian film industry” are laughable: apart from a three-page introduction, the only continuous prose in the book is in the synopses, which are brief enough to be rejected by TV Week.

When the Kellys Rode (1934) is dismissed as “ the Ned Kelly legend retold yet again” ; Molly (1982) is p

CINEMA PAPERS March — 85

Some confusion? Above, D r George Miller on location fo r Thunderdome. Below, M r George Miller on location fo r Snowy River.

"the story of Molly, the talking dog” ; and, most ludicrous of all, Haydn Keenan’s Going Down (1982) is en­ capsulated as ‘‘the exploits and adventures of three girls out on the town” .

Even the factual information, on which the credibility of any reference book rests, leaves a great deal to be desired. The alphabetical index of directors (which includes, without acknowledging the fact, foreign directors temporarily working in Aus­ tralia, like Ken Annakin, Anthony Kimmins and Claude Whatham) is riddled with inaccuracies and omis­ sions. John Lamond, a prolific pro­ ducer-director by anyone’s esti­ mation, is listed with only one credit, Pacific Banana.

Other omissions from the list in­ clude Brian Trenchard-Smith’s The Love Epidemic (1975), Brian Kavanagh’s Double Deal and Bert Deling’s Dead Easy (both 1982), and the two Fantasm films, directed respectively by ‘Richard Bruce’ (Richard Franklin) and ‘Eric Ram’ (Colin Eggleston) in 1976 and 1977.

Nor is there any mention of the Essendon Airport version of Don Quixote (1973), co-directed by Robert Helpmann and Rudolf Nureyev. The worst howler in the listings, though, is the attribution of the director credit for both the Mad Max series and The Man from Snowy River to the same George Miller!

Misspellings of prominent industry personalities are frequent, e.g.

‘Anthony Ginnane’ for Antony I. Ginnane, ‘Bob Weiss’ for Bob Weis, ‘John Pinkey’ for John Pinkney, and ‘Frank Moorehouse’ for Frank Moorhouse. And the writers’ index is not a lot better. Jim Sharman is denied a co-writing credit for Shirley Thomp­ son versus the Aliens (1972), and the fictitious ‘Richard Imrie’ is listed as screenwriter for They’re a Weird Mob (1966) (Imrie is actually Michael Powell’s erstwhile collaborator, Emeric Pressburger, hiding under a pseudonym).

Brand claims that ‘‘there are still many Australian filmmakers dedi­ cated to the production of high quality innovative films. It is in the hands of this band of perfectionists that the future of the industry lies.”

However, it is precisely this area of activity that Brand neglects to survey with either an historical or a contem­ porary overview. The reader will search in vain for any mention of Third Person Plural (James Ricketson, 1978), Harry Hooton (Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, 1970), or even such cultural oddities as Ginnane’s Sympathy in Summer (1971) or Weis’s Children of the Moon (1975) — early, if embarrassing, features by now -established producers.

Some interesting (and even pre­ viously unpublished) stills, particu­ larly from the thirties, have been in­ cluded, and due acknowledgment is made to the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra Oddly, for a book of this kind, there is no biographical note about the author, merely a copyright insignia bearing the names of S. and L. Brodie. Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the author should wish to maintain a low profile.

Paul Harris

86 — March CINEMA PAPERS

The president and the showgirl GODDESS: THE SECRET LIVES OF MARILYN MONROE by Anthony Summers (Victor Gollancz/Century Hutchinson, 1985, ISBN 0-575-03641-9, $29.95).

In the mid-seventies, Leon Russell wrote a plaintive little song called 'Elvis and Marilyn’, about how two of America’s greatest postwar icons never met, never fell in love. It was a seductive thought: two people whose lives were lived so much in public should probably have got together. Anthony Summers’s Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe goes much further, establishing, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a liaison between Marilyn and, not one, but two figures even more public, even more memorable than Elvis: the Kennedy brothers, John and Robert.

Through the kind of painstaking research that journalists do better than biographers (and Summers is primarily a journalist), he has built up an overwhelming amount of circum­ stantial evidence that Marilyn Monroe had sexual affairs with both, while JFK was president as well as before, and that Robert visited her house the night she died.

Quite apart from the mythical im­ plications of all this — it tends to make the Rainier/Kelly marriage seem insignificant — it is a tale of extraordinary intrigue and com­

plexity, which has involved Summers in tracking down retired policemen, FBI informers, maids, lovers, security men and phone records. And, on the build-up to his revelations, which begin a little over half way through the book, he touches on quite a few other interest­ ing sidelines as well. Such as the fact that the aforementioned Rainier/ Kelly marriage was less a romance than a piece of tourist PR: noting that the smart set were drifting away from Monaco, Rainier sent out scouts to find a glamorous Hollywood bride who would put the place back on the map. Marilyn herself was an early candidate: she never met Rainier, but dubbed him ‘Reindeer’.

Then there is Frank Sinatra, in­ volved in something known as the ‘Wrong Door Raid’. ’Ol blue eyes (who was little more than middleaged at the time) called In a few favours to help his buddy, Joe DiMaggio, then married to Marilyn, who thought she was being unfaith­ ful to him. Unfortunately, the gallant defenders of the ballplayer’s honour burst into the wrong apartment. No knee-caps were broken, no con­ crete shoes fitted, but it was not a pretty incident.

All this, of course, is only of interest because the people involved are famous. Try as he may, Summers is unable to sustain much interest in, for example, Marilyn’s relationship with her longeststanding fan, James Haspiel, because no one has ever heard of him. Likewise, his research into early lovers, though it throws up some bizarre incidents and a flight or two of authorial balloon-pricking ("a visit to Conover in Canada,” he writes huffily about one pretender, ‘‘satis­ fied me his ‘documentation’ was forged” ), is not_the stuff that best­ selling biographies are made of.

Indeed, it is by the Kennedy revelations that Summers’s book stands or falls (it stands). Marilyn’s early life is built up from secondary sources, quite a few of them pub­ lished. And Summers clearly recog­ nizes this. Nevertheless, he comes up with some gems that make the first bit worth reading, too. Like Marilyn’s comment about using the casting couch to get work in the early days: ‘‘It wasn’t any big dramatic tragedy. Nobody ever got cancer from sex.” In a sense, though, Marilyn did: in her later years, she seems, by Summers’s account, to have been almost incap­ able of sexual pleasure, going through encounter after encounter out of some strange sense that they were expected of her.

Memorable, too, is Billy Wilder's comments on Marilyn's habitual late­ ness: “ I have an aunt in Vienna, also an actress. Her name, I think, is Mildred Lachenfarber. She always comes to the set on time. She knows her lines perfectly. She never gives anyone the slightest trouble. At the box office she is worth fourteen cents. Do you get my point?”

Marilyn’s lateness got worse after Some Like It Hot. Yves Montand, with whom she starred in Let’s Make Love and who was briefly drawn into the whirlpool of her love life, is quoted as pacing up and down the set, muttering: ‘‘Where is she? I can't wait and wait. I am not an automobile.” Marilyn seems to have spent most of her life treating people like cars, expecting them to be always waiting for her at the kerb until, finally, she decided to trade

them in for a new model.

Summers’s book is not perfect.

The sense of chronology is a little blurred in the early part (we will suddenly find Marilyn five years older on one page than she was on the page before); he is rather too much given to sentences beginning: ‘‘The telephone rang in the home of .. and the need to establish his credentials during the Kennedy section makes parts of it read like a congressional hearing into organ­ ized crime.

But what makes Goddess a much better book than many recent forays into the tragic fall of stars — notably Wired, Bob Woodward’s tacky, illwritten and even-worse-informed biography of John Belushi — is its combination of objectivity and sym­ pathy. Unlike Albert Goldman in his Elvis, Summers doesn’t build any huge cultural theories on the basis of a life gone wrong (though he does, briefly, try out a distinction between 'Norma Jean’, the person, and ‘Marilyn’, the star). But he does take into account both Marilyn’s private and public life, providing, in a way that few other star biographies have done, a comment on the image and an understanding of the person.-He has recognized a truth that can easily elude Hollywood chroniclers: that Marilyn is of interest, not just because she slept with the President of the United States, and not just because she made films, but because of both. And he has held the two parts together in a way that is in te llig e n t, re a d a b le and supremely informative.

Nick Roddick

Books received NB. Inclusion of a title in this list does not preclude a future review.

ALL-TIME BOX-OFFICE HITS by Joel Finler (Columbus Books/J.M. Dent, 1985, ISBN 0-86287-190-5, $29.95). Another Big Picture Book, nicely, if erratically illustrated (the picture for Jaws, for instance, is a piece of poster art for Jaws 3-D).

BURTON: THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH by Penny Junor (Sidgwick & Jackson/Century Hutchinson, 1985, ISBN 0-283-99104-6, $22.95). A ‘revealing’ biography of Burton by a London journalist, whose previous subjects have included Margaret Thatcher and Princess Di. DARK STAR: THE METEORIC RISE AND ECLIPSE OF JOHN GILBERT

by Leatrice Gilbert Fountain, with John R. Maxim (Sidgwick & Jack­ son/Century Hutchinson, 1985, ISBN 0-283-99260-3, $49.95). An excellently researched, ground­ breaking biography of the star whom the talkies are supposed to have killed.

THE I NTERNATI ONAL FI LM POSTER by Gregory J. Edwards (Columbus Books/J.M. Dent, 1985, ISBN 0-86287-254-5, $31.95). More art-book than coffee-table tome, with the unusual (from Edwards’s private

collection) far outnumbering the pre­ dictable. A welcome addition in an overcrowded field.

THE MOVING IMAGE: THE HIS­ TORY OF FILM AND TELEVISION IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA — 1896 TO 1985, edited by Tom O’Regan and Brian Shoesmith (History and Film Association of Western Aus­ tralia, 1985, available from Brian Shoesmith, Dept of Media Studies, WACAE, P.O. Box 217, Doubleview, WA 6018, ISBN 0-7298-0033-3, $13.00 incl. postage). Published to coincide with the Perth conference (see page 5 of this issue), and in­ cluding several of its papers.

NINETEEN NINETEEN by Hugh Brody and Michael Ignatieff (Faber and Faber/Penguin, 1985, ISBN 0-571-13714-8, $10.85). The screenplay of the British film, directed by Michael Brody, yet to be shown in Australia.

WETHERBY by David Hare (Faber and Faber/Penguin, 1985, ISBN 0-571-13489-0). The screenplay of David Hare’s directorial debut, on the top-ten lists of most US and British critics, and due for release here soon through Roadshow.

THE WORLD OF OZ: AN HISTOR­ ICAL EXPEDITION OVER THE RAINBOW, 1900-1985 by Allen Eyles (Viking/Penguin, 1985, ISBN 0-670-80871-7, $19.95). Not so much a tie-in as a history of the L.Frank Baum books and the films based on them, done with Eyles’s usual meticulous care.

-if

Special offerfor attentive readers of Cinema Papers Win a copy of the most controversial new book about Hollywood since Indecent E xposure - Steven Bach’s F in a l C ut, which chronicles the making of Heaven's G ate.

It is published in Australia by Jonathan Cape at $43.95. C inem a P apers is giving away five free copies to the first five correct answers to this question: Which (non-American, non-Australian) film is mentioned in every issue of C inem a Papers, May to November 1985 (inclusive)?

Send your answer in an envelope marked F in a l C u t to: Cinema Papers, 644 Victoria Street, North Melbourne, Victoria 3051.

Closing date is 31 March. All entries received by that date will be put into a hat, and the first five correct entries will get the free copies.

Be sure to include your name and address!

The answer and the winners will be announced in the May issue.

eg g s.

Getting it taped The problems of film-to-tape transfer The first Cinema Papers cinematographers seminar, sponsored

by Agfa-Gevaert Sydney, 22 March 1986 Technical information, case histories and discussions.

Panel to include working DOPs, makers of commercials, special effects technicians and representatives of labs and film stock companies.

For further details contact: Nick Roddick (03) 329 5983

AGFA

Fred Harden (03) 690 4397

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