Cinema Papers No.72 March 1989

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"Tile ability of both XT125 and XT320 to hold |>oth shadow and highlight detail in some very contrasty ^ 0 0 ?* situations proved to be quite a bonus"

"Before shooting "White Mischief" I did comparison tests on all the stocks available to me. Each has its own characteristic and Agfa, which has a slightly softer tonal range but very rich blacks, seemed like a good choice.

After 11 weeks shooting on location in Kenya and at Shepperton, I remain very impressed by Agfa stock."

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Roger Deakins, •/II Director of Photography, White Mischief - ’ 1 Photographed on AGFA XT Film. f| Location sound recorded on AGFA PER368 Tápe. ‘I -

AGFA XT FILM & PER368 TAPE I

They reflect the best of you j

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CONTENTS

N O . 7 2 MARCH 19 89

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P U B L I S H E R

B R IEFLY : NEWS AND VIEW S PAUL HARRIS, PLU S JO H N

P atricia Amad M AN A G I N G

CASSAVETES T R IB U T E S FR O M JO H N CONOMOS, ROLANDO

E D I T O R S

Philippa H awker P eter Tapp T E C H N I C A L

CAPUTO, RAFFAELE CAPUTO 6 TAKE T H E B U N N Y AND R U N :

E D I T O R

Fred H arden

ANN T U R N E R ’S CELIA: R EPO R T AND IN T E R V IE W RON BURNETT

A D V E R T I S I N G

P atricia Amad P eter Tapp F O U N D I N G

1 2 HEROES O F O U R T IM E : T H E MAKING O F A M IN I-SER IES: PU B U S

HE RS

IN C L U D ES TO N Y B U C K L E Y IN T ER V IEW . M ART COLBERT

P eter B eilby S c o tt M urray

1 6 F E D E R IC O F E L L IN I’S LA DOLCE VITA: H O W SW EET IT IS

DE S I GN Ian R o b ertso n

SAMROHDIE 2 0 CH ARLES D IC K EN S’ LITTLE D O R R IT ON FILM .

T Y P E S E T T I N G

Typ eset on M acintosh SE and processed from disk

by On T he Ball

NEIL SINTARD 2 0

P RI NT I NG

T H E TW O AGES OF THE NAVIGATOR.

PETER HUGHES 2 B SERIES BUSINESS: T H E M IN I-SER IES O F 1 9 8 8

P h o to O ffset P rodu ctions D I S T R I B U T I O N

IN R E V IE W . TNA BERTRAND 3 5 T H E D EA L. LYNDON SAYER-

N etw ork D istrib u tio n C o.

JONES 3 6 T H E EN D O F T H E W O RLD M OVIES: AUSTRALIAN S C IE N C E FIC T IO N FILM S. JO H N BAXTER 4 2 W O M EN GO N E W EST. ROSE LUCAS 4 6 STOP MAKING SCENTS: AROMARAMA.

TAMMYBURNSTOCK 4 6 T E C H N IC A L IT IE S : TO HAVE AND TO V E R T IC A L H O L D . FRED HARDEN 5 2 FILM REVIEW S: GORILLAS © Copyright 1989 M TV Publishing Limited

IN THE MIST, THE ACCUSED, AND THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST

Signed articles represent the views o f the author/s and not necessarily those o f the editors and publisher. While every care is taken with manuscripts and materials supplied to the magazine, neither the editors nor the publisher can accept liability for any loss or damage which may arise. This magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission o f the copyright owner. C in em a Papers is published every two months by M TV Publishing Limited, 4 3 Charles Street, Abbotsford, Victoria, Australia 3 06 7 . Telephone (03) 4 2 9 5 511. Fax (03) 4 2 7 9 2 5 5 . Telex AA 3 0 6 2 5 . Reference M E 230.

5 6 BO O K REVIEW S: THE IMAGINARY INDUSTRY, NUCLEAR

MOVIES, TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS AND BACK OF BEYOND 6 0 TV SCANNERS 6 1 SHAME SCENARIO 6 7 PR O D U C T IO N SU RV EY 7 7 CEN SO RSH IP LISTINGS 7 8 T H E LAST WORD ON R E F E R E N C E BOOKS. HOWARD H. PROUTY

C O N T R IB U T O R S JO H N BA XTER is a freelance writer; INA BERTRAN D is a lecturer in film at La Trobe University, Melbourne; KEN BERRYMAN is a freelance writer on film and manager o f the Melbourne office o f the National Film and Sound Archive; PH ILIPPA BU RN E is a freelance writer; RON B U R N ETT is the Director o f the International Centre for the Study o f the Image, McGill University, T oron to Canada; TAMMY BU RN STO C K wrote her AFTRS final-year thesis on Smell in the Cinema,; RAFFAELE CAPUTO is a freelance writer on film; ROLANDO CAPUTO lectures on film at the Swinburne Film and Television Scool, M elbourne; MARY C O L BER T is a Sydney writer and researcher; FE L IC IT Y C O LLIN S is a lecturer in Film Theory and Criticism at the Melbourne College o f Advanced Education; JO H N C ON OM O S is a freelance writer on film; FR ED HARDEN is a film and television producer specializing in special effects; PAUL HARRIS is a freelance writer on film; P E T E R H U G H ES is a lecturer in Media and Film at Ballarat College o f Advanced Education; RO SE LUCAS is a senior tutor in Literature and Cinema Studies at Chisholm Institute, Melbourne; BRIAN MCFARLANE is a lecturer in English at Chisholm Institute and author o f A ustralian Cinem a 1970-8;, ADRIAN M ARTIN is a freelance writer on film; HOWARD H. PRO U TY is assistant archivist at the M argaret Herrick Library, Academy o f M otion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles California USA; SAM R O H D IE is senior lecturer in Cinema Studies at La Trobe University, Melbourne; LYNDON SAYERJO N ES is a Sydney-based film lawyer o f Lyndon Sayer-Jones & Associates; N E IL SINYARD is a freelance writer.

Australian Film Commission

C IN EM A P A P E R S IS P U B L IS H ED W ITH F IN A N C IA L A S S IS T A N C E FROM THE A U S T R A L IA N FILM C O M M IS S IO N A N D FI L M V I C T O R I A .

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T H E INAUGURAL QANTAS/CINEMA PAPERS YOUNG FILMMAKERS AWARD was

L E T T I R

presented to Sydney filmmaker Christopher Tuckfield on 12 December in Melbourne.

The January 1989 issue of Cinema Papers, the first to be produced since the merger with Filmviews, was launched at the same time.

The Qantas Corporate Sponsorships Manager, Denis Crawford (pictured above with Award Winner Christopher Tuckfield and Cinema Papers board member John Jost), said he was pleased to inaugurate an award which would encourage the devel­ opment of skilled talent in the film industry, and enable young filmmakers to gain valuable overseas experience.

Christopher Tuckfield will study with Raul Ruiz in Le Havre later this year. Qantas provides the travel for him, and financial support came from the Australian Film Commission, Film Victoria and the New South Wales Film Corporation.

The judges for the award were Sue Murray, Jill Robb and Richard Franklin.

The presentation took place at Gina’s Place, Toorak. Hickinbotham Wineries provided wine for the launch, and The Balloonery provided decorations.

TO T H E EDITORS

R e : “ 1988 : Near enough: the year in retrospect”/ Adrienne Parr and Andrew Plain (Cinema Papers No. 71 January 1989)

IN T H E N A T IO N A L SU R V EY o f Australian film re­ leases and developments in 1988 ( C inem a Papers7\), authors Parr and Plain comment that, especially for the Australian audience, “the video-renting public essentially believes a cinema release (i.e. their recog­ nition o f a title as having screened at the cinema) to be the legitimization o f a film”, a legitimization which is important for a successful video life.

Given this factor, it is disappointing that Parr and Plain neglected to mention the work o f the State Film ----------------------------------------------------Centre o f Victoria, which operates the State Film Theatre, the only venue in Melbourne that consistently programmes and promotes first release seasons o f Australian short films, documentaries and features. We would particularly like to draw attention to three films singled out by Parr and Plain as “alternative” exhibition successes in 1988.

(1) The T ale o f Ruby Rose: The producers o f this film first negotiated a Melbourne release with the State Film Theatre. It was at our suggestion that they then approached the Chauvel in Sydney for a simultaneous release to maximize national press coverage. It was the extraordinary success o f both seasons (over 9 ,0 0 0 attendances at the State Film Theatre) that led to “moveovers” at the Brighton Bay in Melbourne and the Academy in Sydney, plus a return season at the State Film Theatre.

(2) C an e Toads - A n U nnatural History: The first release season at the State Film Theatre has generated the bulk o f the “fast and substantial profit” made in Australia for distributor, Ronin Films. C ane Toads ran continuously for 14 weeks to packed houses and now in its sixth month is still screening here as a successful weekend matinee.

(3) Salt Saliva Sperm a n d Sweat: This film which Parr and Plain call “the most notable” o f the Australian films in 1988 to address the relationship o f Australian cinema to popular culture, had an October season at the State Film Theatre where the box office returns were three times higher than those for its Sydney season at the Mandolin.Salt Saliva Sperm a n d Sweat is still running here as a Friday night late show.

As a Victorian government funded organization, the State Film Theatre has greater leeway to take commercial risks with more “difficult” product than any private enterprise exhibitor, but public recognition o f our work and our successes is essential to ensure the continuation o f an exhibition policy which offers many Australian filmmakers the chance for that very important theatrical release.

We have appended to this letter a list o f 27 Australian films which have had their Melbourne premiere seasons at the State Film Theatre during its 21 months o f full-time operation.

Yours sincerely,

Anne Hutton, Chris Brophy,

d e p u t y d ir e c t o r

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AUSTRALIAN RELEASES AT T H E STATE FILM TH EATRE 1987 - 1988 My Life Without Steve, C a m era Natttra, The Bullets o f the Poets, The White Monkey, Landslides, P ainting the Town, Ten Tears A fter, Ten Tears Older, Democracy, Friends a n d Enemies, Snakes a n d Ladders, Damsels Be D am ned, How the west was Lost, A ustralian D ream , With Tim e to Kill, Feathers, A n A ustralian Sum m er, The P ursuit o f Happiness, South o f the Border, R id in g the Gale, C a n nib a l Tours, C ane Toads, a n U n n a tu ral History, The Tale o f R uby Rose, Thanks Girls a n d Goodbye, A Song o f A ir, Salt Saliva Sperm a n d Sweat, A ustralia Daze, and Films o f the Victorian W om en’s Film Unit.

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NEW SEASON OF CHINESE FILMS In March Ronin Films will be bringing a season o f new Chinese films to Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney, accompanied by a delegation o f filmmakers and actors. The new films in the season are Swan Song (directed by Zhang Zeming), K in g o f the Children, The B ig P arad e (Chen Kaige), Horse T h ief (Zhuang Zhaung) and Old Well (Wu Tianming). Other titles in the season wil be Yellow E arth (Chen Kaige) (pictured above), The Black Cannon Incident (Hiang Jianxin) and R ed Sorghum (Zhang Yimou). The delegation o f filmmakers includes Wu Tianming, Huang Jianxin and Chen Kaige, with Zhuang Zhuang yet to be confirmed.

IN THE ARTICLE “Near Enough”, C inem a Papers 71, January 1989, it was implied that Tender Hooks was fully funded by the Special Production Fund. It was in fact financed with commitments from the Special Produc­ tion Fund, the ABC, the distributor and some 10BA funding. Our apologies to Chris Oliver, the producer.

• IN ISSUE 7 0 ,in the list o f AFI Award nominees, Kaarin Fairfax and Shane Connor should have been listed for roles in Poor M an ’s O range, not Always A fternoon and The True Believers, as stated.

THE HIGHLY BANKABLE US actor Dennis Quaid is rumoured to be considering the lead role in Till There Was You, a romantic comedy set in the wilds o f New Guinea, carrying a $14 million price tag. Nicole Kidman is ex­ pected to co-star opposite Quaid, who recently completed G reat Balls o f Fire, the biography o f Jerry Lee Lewis, in which he threw himself wholeheartedly into the title role, allegedly both on and o ff the set. The film's production company, McElroy and McElroy, has mainly con­ centrated on T V production but recently has been developing several cinema features.

JOHN CASSAVETES 1929-1989 Just say whatever comes into your heart -G L O R IA

FEW WEEKS AGO a friend told me o f John

FOLLOWING THE RELEASE OF Beaches (Touchstone), Bette Midler is developing further projects for her own production company, All Girl Productions, in which she is partnered with longtime associates Margaret Jennings South and Bonnie Bruckheimer-Martell, the latter credited as associate producer on Big Business, Midler’s most recent film. The trio spent two years developing Beaches, which was generally perceived by studio heads to be o f more limited appeal than other recent Midler vehicles like Ruthless People and Outrageous Fortune.

Based on a novel by Iris Rainer Dart, Beaches relates the tale o f how an unlikely friendship springs up between an aspiring actress, C.C. Bloom (Midler) and Hillary (Barbara Hershey), a spoiled girl from a rich San Francisco family.

The company has commissioned several scripts, including biog­ raphies o f Lotte Lenya, woman bandleader Ina Rae Hutton, and an untitled project about an entertainer performing for troops during the Vietnam war.

Cassavetes’ hospitalization. Last Sunday my kitchen radio told me the rest: “Ameri­ can actor-director and screenwriter John Cassavetes died...“Cassavetes dead. No longer will he be able to astonish us with his free-wheeling improvisatory magic o f bringing the cinema to life. And we ponder what may have caused his death. We know he died from a liver complaint. I f alcohol had any part to play in this, then Sylvie Pierre’s following words are more ironic than we dare contemplate: “What we most admire about the film [ Faces] is that it has borrowed from the effects o f alcohol - height­ ened awareness and lucidity, moments o f emotion and flashes o f insight - the very form, unsteady and rigorous, o f its poetry.”

Truer words have not been spoken about Cas­ savetes’ art. His was indeed an intuitive, unre­ strained cinema that treasured breaking down our self-imposed barriers between cinema and life. Cas­ savetes, like Rivette, saw filmmaking as a perilous experimental adventure in creating existential fic­ tion. His movie ushered in a new direct spirit in the American cinema o f the Sixties and Seventies. True, he had his detractors, but even they had to concede that Cassavetes, as an artist, was a courageous high risk-taker who helped to contribute a new human­ istic realism to American filmmaking.

Precisely what is it that makes us want to ac­ knowledge the emancipatory value o f Cassavetes’ “natural expressionism” (Jean Narboni)? What cinematic qualities characterize his impure gems o f human spontaneity? Cassavetes matters because he emphasized human feelings, speech and the daily rhythms o f life.

Cassavetes’ cinema will endure because he spoke o f our doubts, fears, hesitations, nervousness and our fleeting contradictory emotions as human beings. It is a cinema o f spontaneous self-creating that questions our cherished ideas about classical narrative cinema in terms o f script, performance, mise-en-scene and cinematography. Cassavetes was not concerned with technical questions o f filmmak­ ing; cinema for him was a matter o f feelings, a matter o f the heart.

THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF SAM PECKINPAH'S final excursion into the western genre, P at G arrett a n d Billy The K id ,(pictured below) has been restored almost to its original length o f 121 minutes. Prints in current circulation clock in at 106 minutes owing to extensive edits carried out by order o f MGM management before the film’s release in 1973.

Peckinpah, who died in 1984, always maintained that the cuts rendered the film incomprehensible with “important sequences that conveyed characters’ motivations being lost in the cutting”.

The restoration was carried out in California by Don Hyde, a former associate o f Peckinpah who operated a post-production facility and asked the director if he could transfer all o f his film prints over to videotape. Hyde restored cut material from a reel which Peckinpah had retained. The restored sequences include the previously deleted appearances o f Barry Sullivan as cattleman John Chisum and Dub Taylor and Elisha Cook Jr. as grubby cowpokes. The new version sparingly uses Bob Dylan’s offkey ballad, K nockin’ On H eaven’s Door twice interspersed with his guitar music; the original version fea­ tured the ballad throughout. Peckinpah’s regular music scorer, Jerry Fielding, left the project when MGM decided to maximize the use o f the Dylan track as a marketing tool for possible album sales.

Ironically, P at Garrett started life as a project that would have re-teamed the collaborators o f Two L an e Blacktop (1971), director Monte Heilman and writer Rudy Wurlitzer. When Blacktop opened to dis­ appointing box office returns, M GM offered the project to Peckinpah, who had scored a commercial success with The Getaway. In the late Fifties Peckinpah wrote a version o f the Pat Garrett legend that eventually reached the screen as the vastly altered One Eyed Jacks (1961).

JOHN CONOMOS

But I don’t think you can any more turn off what’s inside of you than you can die before you’re ready to die.

- JOHN CASSAVETES

ONFESSIONS DON’T COME EASY, but it

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goes something like this. Soon after hearing o f John Cassavetes’ death, I took down Maureen Lambray’s The G reat A m erican Film D i­ rectors and flipped through to the still o f Cassavetes.

Lambray’s book contains a consistently superb se- >•

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1929-1989 liked to have seen directed by Cassavetes. I came up with this list: Robert de Niro (great at improvisation: a collaboration about to happen on the Gershwin project, which makes Cassavetes’ death all the more tragic); Charles Grodin, Albert Brooks, Woody Allen (all non-stop talkers; it would have been great to capture them in long takes and let them fill the time talking their way out o f screen time, something Cas­ savetes has done repeatedly with other performers); a young Jerry Lewis (an ofFthe wall comedian meets an off-the-wall director - anyway, under all the tension Cassavetes’ films have a strong undercur­ rent o f comedy). Because Cassavetes’ camera proved the best observer o f actors, out o f perverse curiosity I would have liked to see what he could do with A1 Pacino, James Caan, Warren Beatty, Molly Ringwald and a young Greek actor by the name o f Vagelis Mourikis. Unfortunately, now that Cassavetes has passed away, it is all left to the imagination.

ROLANDO CAPUTO

Cassavetes’ Love Streams any number o f times, it’s as if a black hole is gradually opening up beneath one’s feet, which one is irre­ sistibly drawn into; but then suddenly discovering oneself actively slipping into it, with as much ten­ sion as one can expect pleasure. It’s an experience felt with many o f Cassavetes’ films, at particular moments and with varying degrees o f intensity. I believe it has something to do with love, even though the experience, in afterthought, is often couched in terms o f specific attributes o f style, such as the performance o f his actors, characterization or improvisation. And if not love, then something profoundly akin to love.

Cassavetes once wrote, in relation to Faces, that “the idea o f love as a mysterious, undiscovered world has come to have no place in our innermost imagination”. I think the metaphor o f a black space - at once seemingly empty, but so very rich in its darkness - suits Cassavetes, for his cinema is one that looks to free up a space that allows his audience to see, to touch, to know its darkness.

Perhaps in less abstract terms, and in my esti­ mation o f his films, heartfelt feelings and sensations are a way towards knowledge for Cassavetes another way o f knowing that is once again sensed or reinvested through style. I think it is unjust that Cassavetes’ cinema is often referred to as too idio­ syncratic or too personal to understand. Firstly, as I have already said, I believe his films are a way towards understanding relationships, the world, or oneself, rather than understanding as such. And secondly, because such claims suggest that Cas­ savetes has an almost completely self-centred in­ vestment in his films. Yet Cassavetes once stated, simply and eloquently, that “in telling a story, I think the important thing is to make it correspond to the emotions o f the audience you’re addressing.

I have a total awareness that a film can be successful only because an audience is interested in a particu­ lar subject.” More often than not, the subject and the emotions have issued from the peculiar rela­ tionships between men and women that John Cassavetes has dared to present us with.

H E N O N E W ATCH ES

lection o f photographic portrait studies o f (mostly) American filmmakers, amongst my favourites befrig those o f Aldrich, Boetticher, Walsh, Scorsese. The one that had always captivated me the most was that o f Cassavetes. It’s the kind o f photograph which makes you say, sotto voce, “I wish I had that face”.

I first came across the Lambray volume as a film studies undergraduate in the mid-late Seventies, and while the subject was the politique des auteurs, it helped put faces to names: but over and above that, in a completely impetuous way, more than through their films or commentaries about their films, I chose to like certain directors because of Lambray’s portrait.

For example, I had always liked Aldrich’s movies but, having seen Lambray’s photograph o f him, I became absolutely passionate about his cinema. In Cassavetes’ case it goes further. At the time I had never seen a film “produced and directed by John Cassavetes”, though I knew him as an actor ( The Dirty Dozen and Rosem ary’s Baby come to mind): but because I instantly loved that photograph I decided that I would love his films, whenever I would see them and whatever they would be. I know that may sound absurd, far from the most logical way to fashion one’s taste in directors, but at the same time I think there is a margin o f truth in the idea that cineastes are often pre-destined to like films and/or directors by factors that have little or nothing to do with the very particular aesthetic merits o f the films or filmmakers themselves. So it was that a face in a photograph produced a passion for Cassavetes’ cinema - it’s good to know that his filmography includes a title like Faces.

To this day, I cannot say with any certainty that I have attained anywhere near an objective critical perspective on Cassavetes’ cinema. Over the years I ’ve watched and rewatched his films and like them all. The first was Husbands, a staple o f the late-night television movie repertoire for many years, and then, after a few years’ waiting, the sublime G loria, seen at the old Valhalla: a movie about sentiments that does not fall into sentimentality, so rare an achievenient in the American cinema. In later years, television afforded an opportunity to see the delightful M innie a n d Moskowitz and two o f the early Sixties films, the much underrated Too Late Blues and A Child is W aiting, a film Cassavetes was to disown because o f the misguided liberal philoso­

phy o f its tampering producer, Stanley Kramer.

A few years back the Longford Cinema gave us a rare late-night screening o f Love Streams, perhaps his masterpiece, and the enlightened programming o f Paul Harris’ Liberty Cinema gave one the chance to catch up with A Woman Under the Influence and Opening N ight on a double bill. Finally, in the middle o f last year, Cassavetes’ last film, Big Trouble, was screened on television. That’s a short history o f a film viewing itinerary which speaks volumes, not only about the fate o f Cassavetes on the exhibition circuit, but also the place allotted to him by film culture in general.

This isn’t altogether a negative thing, It should be remembered that Cassavetes had a dual career, as an actor in commercial pictures ( The Fury, The Tempest, etc) and as a self-defined independent filmmaker happy to be outside the mainstream Hollywood industry, He once said: “I consider myself an amateur filmmaker and a professional actor.” While he should be remembered as a great director, he was never anything more than a good actor (though at times he could be brilliant, as he was in Love Streams and Mikey an d Nicky); in the acting stakes he was almost completely overshad­ owed by his wife, Gena Rowlands. The thing I like best about Cassavetes the actor was his masterful, smartarse, wiseguy grin, which Lambray, to my endless delight, captures. Lambray, by default, also captures something in her photograph which trig­ gers it off for me, the thing Roland Barthes called the punctum: :... it is what I add to the photograph and what is nonetheless already there” . Above his left eye, to the side and at a angle, Cassavetes has a slim white bandage concealing a bruise or a cut. It captures the attention immediately and irrevoca­ bly, it has an effect on me, but I can’t describe why, though it does make me think, in a metaphoric way, o f the physicality o f interrelations with his films, as if the power o f the emotions cutting across charac­ ters should leave physical bruises. Often, as in Love Streams, they do.

A critic once said o f Cassavetes’ cinema: “The first principle in a Cassavetes film is acting - not the actor, but acting itself - and his preoccupation with human behaviour as performance.” Agreed, but you can’t have the ‘acting’ without the ‘actor’, and this led me to think, in a completely hypothetical and utopian fashion, o f the actors I would most

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RAFFAELE CAPUTO

A BO V E, AND O N P R EV IO U S PAGE: John Cassavetes ph oto ­

graphed by M aureen Lambray. See The A m erica n Film Directors, Volum e I, M aureen Lam bray, Collier Books, New York, 1 9 7 6 .

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ANN T U R N E R

INTERVIEW

RY RON R U R N E T T

MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD AND

“They are playing a game.

They are playing at not playing a game.

I f I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.

I must play their game, o f not seeing I see the game.”

R .D LA IN G

TURNER'S CELIA

Knots

distinguishing characteristics o f the cinema o f the seventies and eighties is a concern for the depic­ tion o f children - the child as a centre o f the narrative, as the main protagonist. Films such as A lice in the Cities, A u R evoir Les Enfants, Hope a n d Glory, Em pire o f the Sun, come to mind. Whatever the differences between V these films, they share a common desire to “see” and understand the world through a child?s eyes and experience. The task is often a daunting one, framed as it is by the contradictions between a child’s vision and an adult’s, but also by the language o f children, the often metaphorical manner in which they explain their thoughts to adults and the form which those expositions take. In a sense the child o f these adult films is off-centre, a hybrid, a mix o f an adult’s memories o f his or her own past. The child is present in the context o f loss, filling in the gaps for the filmmaker and for the adult viewer. The danger, and it is an ever present one, is that the adult will see the substitution as real, that both filmmaker and viewer will not recognize the placement o f the child as a substitute for their need to once again, in an un threatening manner, become children. O f course these films also reveal how the child is always within the adult and how easily the child can be used to refer back to a world o f innocence which adulthood seems to have ripped away.

Yet, and this is the force behind R.D. Laing and the extraordinary work o f Alice Miller, the losses and difficulties o f childhood remain interminably present in the adult. Many o f these films can be seen as odysseys into the complexities o f adult memory. The process o f reconstruction is made more difficult by the contradictory way in which adults both affirm and repress the past. A film like A u Revoir Les E nfantsbnngs the past to life as a way o f purging the guilt which Louis Malle feels about his own lack o f awareness as a child, his inability to recognize what the Germans were doing to one o f his class­ mates, the way he was affected, the ignorance which dominated him. Child­ hood, however, is about strategies o f understanding which are both complex and simple and sometimes the former and the latter co-exist in a way which

drives adults crazy. The pathos o f the Malle film is situated in its desire to render the past as if that could somehow make the present more liveable. Malle is a pedagogue trying to teach himself a lesson which in retrospect he feels he didn’t properly learn when he was young.

Celia, in contrast, is centred on a child’s imaginary. It makes no apologies for being what it is, an exploration not only o f a child’s way o f seeing but o f the consequences o f that upon adults. Everything about the film is gloriously ambiguous. Children watch parents and not vice versa. Children judge their elders and quickly see through the superficialities o f their ‘vision’. There is a marvellous moment in the film when Celia’s father makes a pathetic attempt to seduce his neighbour. The neighbour’s children take it upon themselves to intervene and they turn a potentially voyeuristic scene into an embarrassment for the father. C elia is a film about children taking more control over their lives.

It is about their struggle to explain events to themselves from a perspective grounded in their own experience o f the world. Since “their” perspective is, for the most part, dominated by imaginary constructions, they inevitably end up confronting the way the adults in their lives deal with crises.

Celia lives in suburban Melbourne. It is the late 1950s. Her grandmother, who was her closest friend, has recently died. She was a radical feminist and almost, in the eyes o f Celia’s father a Communist. But those categories don’t matter to a child. And so, when Celia gets to know some ‘Communists’ next door her father’s complex and repressed relationship to his mother comes to the fore. He is afraid that Celia will turn ‘bad’. His efforts to repress her open admiration and love for her neighbours lead to a serious rupture in his relationship with her. She remains deeply in love with him, even when she discovers that he is responsible for the dismissal o f his neighbour from a gov­ ernment job. This ambiguous love/hate relationship is the central metaphor o f the film, because it is also a good strategy for revealing the tensions o f family life. When her father finally buys Celia a pet rabbit she is reassured but unforgiving. Then the Bolte Government, reacting to a plague o f rabbits decides to order all families to place pet rabbits in the Melbourne Zoo. Celia’s

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LEFT: Rebecca Smart as Celia

investment in her pet is very profound and though her father is somewhat protective, in the final analysis he gives in to the demands o f the state.

Celia’s effort to stand up for what she believes in, her ambiguous relationship with her father and some o f her friends, her intuitive devotion to the ideals o f her grand­ mother all lead to a breakdown in her capacity to distinguish between fantasy and reality. So fantasy takes hold and Celia constructs an internal world where she sets the rules and doesn’t have to worry about the consequences o f her actions.

It is the film’s concern with this internal, mental space which interests me because it is so difficult to represent and yet is so crucial to the way in which a child sees the world.

Celia’s family looks All-Australian, perfect, fair-haired, fair-skinned. Underneath the good looks and smiles are lay­ ers and layers o f repression and dissatisfaction. This is part o f what we consider to be ‘normal’ and so it is left up to Celia to crack through the layers o f defensiveness and the lies. It is a tribute to the film that the complexi­ ties o f her interactions with her father and mother are handled with such delicacy.

Just when everything looks as if it is about to break down, another fantasy takes hold and through its workings we are able to move to another level o f insight.

This is Ann Turner’s first feature film and I consider it to be quite an achievement. The experience o f viewing it was very intense, mainly because o f the strength o f the identifica­ tion which I had with Celia, but also because here is a film which situates itself politically, makes an important point about history and yet is personal. I wasalso struck by the sensitive cinematography and by the editing which brings sometimes disparate elements together in an almost operatic form. The sense which one gets from Celia is o f a film which manages to straddle the boundary between fiction and biography. Celia the character is so often a stand-in for the filmmaker, a surrogate who struggles with her identity, that at times the film explodes into a long series o f metaphors as a way o f resolving the gap between the biographical and the fictional.

That gap however is the motor force behind the film. It is as if Celia represents a tiny fragment o f our collective Australian memory, a tiny piece o f family history which stands for struggles rarely resolved but nevertheless implicit in every form o f communication which we make. C elia is about a past which we have all lived, albeit in different ways and at different levels, one that we have experienced through the institution o f the family.

At one point Celia burns an image o f her father. At another she kills a policeman. (Dream or reality?) At yet another she witnesses the burning o f her grandmother’s books. Yet throughout she still manages to understand what her father has long since forgotten, the world o f a child can never be stored away, dismissed, simply because without that world the adult would have no identity.

our desks and then she would stand on her desk and we’d have a whole English lesson on poetry, standing on desks! She would bring in her guitar and sing songs, etc.. Most o f the teachers in the school were outraged. So it was an overwhelming experience because it foregrounded my entire experience o f school. She only stayed there for a couple o f years but I think that she affected a number o f us very profoundly.

A fter that you decided to come to Melbourne - why ?

I picked up a Victorian student book and saw that there was actually a film television course which had a writing component, and there was nothing like that in Adelaide. It opened up an option for me which I hadn’t realized was possible until then, so I applied to Swinburne, was accepted and came to Melbourne.

What was one o f the highlights o f coming to Melbourne a n d to Swinburne ?

I think that there were several but the one which sits uppermost in my mind was seeing a whole variety o f films that I just hadn’t realized existed at all. Films o f the New German Cinema by Herzog and Wenders and Fassbin­ der. Some early Godard. Some o f the independent work being done in the United States. I started at Swinburne just wanting to be a writer and ended up being in love with the cinema. I began to dream about writing and directing, about bringing the images in my mind onto the screen. I suppose that is always the first step in thinking about film production, but for me it meant a whole shift in thought.

People who work in the film industry often underestimate the importance o f seeing a wide variety o f differen t film s. Obviously a lot o f your latent creative desires were brought to the fore, so what did you do then ?

I developed a couple o f scripts and then got to the point where I wanted to work with other people. So I applied for and got a job at Film Victoria. I worked in the area o f film culture and training programs. Film Victoria was an exciting place, an exciting context. There was this feeling in the air that film culture in Victoria was expanding and developing. The Independent Film Action Committee sprung up to support and lobby for independent films.

There were a lot o f fringe or marginal activities going on which supported the idea o f a growing independent sector.

A fter Film Victoria you moved onto the A ustralian Film Commission as a

W O U LD L I K E T H IS IN T E R V I E W to give the readers o f Cinema Papers a sense o f you as a film m a k er in relation to the larger context o f the independent cinem a in A ustra­ lia. For me, the interview fo r m a t is a privileged mode o f entry into the motivations a n d impulses which m ake people like yourself create a n d produce film s. Your situation interests me in particular, because you are both a writer a n d a director. So, originally fro m A delaide, you d id your in itial training a t Swinburne. W hat m otivated you to work in the cinem a in the fir st place?

Where to start? I had always intended to study law, to become a lawyer.

I don’t know at what point the shift occurred, but I became very interested in films, in filmmaking, and then I met Robin Archer, the singer, who became a teacher o f mine. In the class which I took with her she showed some extraordinary films, at least extraordinary for the time and for me, like I f and Easy R ider. I was in a conservative school, very academic, an established girls’ college in Adelaide. Most o f the teachers had been there for a very long time and suddenly Robin entered the scene and did things like making us stand on |

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I think a lot o f writers become very distressed with what happens to their scripts and they blame directors and producers - but you know it’s just inevitable, the script has to change. This varies from film to film. You get some actors who think they should change the script, and that can upset writers, justifiably. The writer has come up with the original concept and they have the structure and the motivation in their heads, then along comes an actor who changes an important part o f the script. It can turn into an awkward situation, but one o f the things which I found interesting about writing and directing my own film was that when things didn’t work out as I had wished I couldn’t turn around and blame anyone! I think what we are talking about is one o f those inevitable contradictions which will always be a part o f the production o f a film. The reverse is also true. Sometimes the actors are so good they bring a quality to the film which I, as the writer, could never have imagined. Or the cinematographer does something won­ derful, or the sound editor and mixer suggest an idea which brings a whole new level to the film.

Perhaps we could now talk about Celia. Could you describe how you developed the idea f o r the film ?

I had seen an article in the newspaper about the Bolte Government’s rabbit muster in the Fifties when Bolte in his wisdom decided to appease the farmers who were dis-, traught about the terrible rabbit plagues in the country.

Bolte decided to get rid o f every single rabbit in Victoria and so he banned pet rabbits. The children had to either destroy them or take them to the zoo, and so a lot o f kids took them to the zoo. In fact parents were faced with kids who were so distraught at losing their pets that even very conservative people started protesting to the government.

The government realized that it would lose a lot o f votes over this move and reversed its decision. People were ordered to get a permit and collect their rabbits from the zoo. So people turned up on the day, and there were thousands o f rabbits and hundreds o f parents and children: the rabbits had all bred in the weeks they had been enclosed and there was absolute chaos because all the rabbits looked the same and no one knew whose was whose. That struck me as a powerful metaphor for the way governments behave, trying to cope with one problem by looking at another, then reversing, and so on, and that sparked off the whole idea for the film. At the same time I had a friend who, I discovered, had to leave Victoria in the same year as this muster - her father was a Communist and worked in a government department. He was told either to leave the party or get the sack. Ironically he was already in a dilemma because o f the Hungarian uprising and the state o f the party at the time, so he and his family decided to leave, but reluctantly. That was in 1958 which is much later than the witch- hunting which had gone on before. I decided to draw upon the coincidence o f these two events and to develop a parallel story involving different yet related historical moments. I remember thinking at the time,”I don’t want to make this heavy, but I want to make it political, yet not so overtly political that it is ju st a political movie.”

I wanted to have the politics in place but just under the surface so to speak. I don’t know why, but I decided to do it through a child’s eyes, through Celia.

It turned out to be the best way o f con­ fronting the ideas which I was dealing CERTAIN INDIVIDUALS with.

HAVE FOUND THE FILM'S M aking a film through a child’s eyes always carries a risk o f the child becoming ENDING IMMORAL... a representation o f ad u lt desire, ad u lt need.

WHAT THEY'RE CHOOSING Now it strikes me that this can become a problem when the adu lt doesn’t see that the TO MISS IS THE TRAGEDY child they are creating is always goin g to be INVOLVED IN THIS - THAT in p a r t related to the ad u lt’s own experi­ ence o f childhood. Is the film about your THE SOCIETY IN WHICH own past?

CELIA IS CAUGHT UP IS I spent a lot o f time thinking about my own childhood, how I behaved and TEACHING THAT THOSE how 1 interacted with other children. I WHO LIE AND CHEAT TO had many close friendships and we oper­ ated together in gangs and we had gang PROTECT THEMSELVES WILL wars and we were often loving and often GET AHEAD very hard on each other. So I did try and go back into my childhood, in fact, I think I went back and wrote from that position!

The process you’re describing has a lot to do with memory, adult-child, childadult. Some o f the scenes in the film are very surrealistic an d it may be that what you have really captured is the child’s imaginary. In that sense the film looks a n d feels more like T ru ffau t’s The 400 Hundred Blows than, fo r example, Empire o f the Sun, where the child clearly represents the adu lt looking back. How did you

ANN T U R N E R

script consultant..Perhapsyou could tell us about that experience; fo r example how did you decide which scripts were bad an d which were good?

The thing you look for is whether the script fulfils the aims which it has set for itself. First you read the scripts as thoroughly as possible and then you select those which seem to have some potential on the page, something which . can be read and digested and which made sense on its own. Those scripts were taken to interview. You then had the opportunity to talk to the writer and see where they wanted to take the script. The really tricky thing about script­ writing is to first work out what you want to say and do with the script, what story it is you are telling and then you have to work at making that story as rich as possible. It has to succeed in its own right. And I think that principle covers all genres, all styles, from a film which is trying to break the rules to one which is trying to be mainstream, commercial. It really boils down to where you are heading and how well you are able to judge whether you have fulfilled the aims which you set for yourself.

So in terms o f character or plot development there weren’t any hard or fa st rules to ¿to by. D id you, however, expect scripts to follow a certain fo r m a t ?

I think certain areas o f the industry follow a strict format, almost a formula.

Personally, I don’t like that at all. I f you are writing a formula script then you should stick to the formula. But that’s something I dislike about many o f the exploitation films this country has made that have women being beaten up and raped or whatever. They are supposedly high adventure thrillers, yet so many o f them actually don’t even follow the rules o f genre within which they are trying to work. I f you are heading for a formula then you should know what the formula is. There are some people in the industry who see a film they like and think they will do something which is a hybrid o f that film and some other film but what they often end up with is a film without a clear structure and lacking in direction.

What interests me is that scriptwriting is so different fro m writing a short novel or a story because, in the f in a l analysis, it is sifted through by so many differen t people that it ceases to have the original feelin g which first provoked its creation. There is a critical g a p between the act o f writing which is both personal a n d public a n d the production process. How do you fe e l as a writer in the fa c e o f a ll the changes which inevitably occur?

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work with the actress? D id you ¿five her fr e e rein on the set to play with the ideas an d the script?

Rebecca Smart, who plays Celia, is a very intelligent and fine actress, so when she read the script she understood it very well. I talked to her about the script in the same way as I would have with an adult, and she always had intelligent and creative suggestions to make. In general I don’t think I made any concessions in the way in which I talked with the children in the film. I cer­ tainly didn’t talk down to them because I remember hating that myself when I was a child. I was also terrified o f working with children at the start because I hadn’t done it before. So I spoke to them more as a friend and that worked very well. We discussed the script and then went into a fairly intense rehearsal period o f two weeks with all the kids and adults. It was like rehearsing a play.

Things just grew, they didn’t need to be discussed. It was just going through the script, doing it, and talking about it in terms o f some o f the conflicts Celia had with her father, etc.

Another thing that was important was spending time with Rebecca talking about things other than the script. One weekend we went to Luna Park and I was goaded onto rides like the Gravitron - 1 was terrified. We had a lot o f fun and it spilled over back on the set. We had a better understanding o f each other: I had a new admiration for just how brave Rebecca was and she knew I was a total wimp at heart.

Thefilm is historical a n d so you have to use a lot o f devices topresent.thefeeling o f time. One o f the things which I noticed is that you picked an a'All-Australianlooking”fam ily, i f one can use those words. Why? I really wanted to make the film about Wasps and typical family life in Australia in the 1950s, everyone neatly dressed, not letting the neighbours hear about any problems, etc. Underneath all o f this o f course was a strong fear o f confronting emotions, feelings, ideas. So I wanted to make a film about that sensibility. In that sense it is from the period but is also critical o f it.

The character who is least like the rest is C elia’s grandm other, who is a fem inist. She as rebelled against all o f the values you have just mentioned.

Consequently she has been exiled by her fam ily. You show her to have had a tremendous influence on C elia but we don’t really come to grips with what has happened between her an d her son. H a d you intended to show more about that re­ lationship?

No, not more. What I wanted to show was how he had rebelled against his mother just as Celia was rebelling against him. What 1 was interested in was how each member o f the family dealt with rebellion not as something abstract but as a concrete part o f everyday life.

Yet C elia’s rebellion is quite ambiguous. She continues to love her fa th er and to show that love even when he has been hideous to her. There is a really poignant m om ent in the film when she is holding him, clasping him very close to her, and yet it isfu ll ofam biguity because in a sense she wants to kill him. Could you discuss that ambiguity a bit?

Well, I wanted to show a complex love/hate relationship between a father and a daughter. Celia has chosen her grandmother’s ideas and sensibility and she has done so at a gut level. Still, she loves her father and I think that is very strong in childhood where you are grappling with understanding things and . yet you’re ambivalent. You might get hurt by a parent but you still want to love them unconditionally. I think that’s the relationship I was trying to show, notwithstanding all o f the problems which arise as a result.

Celia enacts this ritu al where she throws her fa th e r into afire , so to speak. She mixes her love with a profound hate an d symbolically she kills him while all o f the tim e feelin g repulsed by the very idea o f having engaged in those thoughts. To me that is the essence o f fantasy.

Yes. I think ritual is also a very strong part o f fantasy and o f childhood. In my childhood we had a lot o f rituals. From the outside they looked like games but they weren’t really. Again it was a case o f going back and writing from memories o f my childhood. It wasn’t a conscious decision o f “I will ritualize this process.” I can’t say why I chose that particular ritual, lighting a bonfire and burning a picture o f the father, but the first time Celia can’t bring herself to do it: whereas the second time, after her father has whipped her and she has been very saddened by what has happened - she then does throw him in.

I am also interested by the locale o f the ritual, a quarry, which is a location which you use often during the film . This is a place which children identify with, where they g o to be children, a hidden place. To me the quarry represents the unconscious o f the children. I t is a place where they can dream a n d fantasize, and also a place where they can come to grips with their anxieties an d the conflicts which they have with each other. A n d yet, ironically, the parents don’t have a sim ilar outlet. They don’t have a palace o f illusions any more. This absence is what makes your film so interesting. I t suggests that the g a p between child an d adult is so large that it can never be bridged. I am rem inded o f the work o f Alice M iller here, an extraordinary psychoanalyst who has distilled these contradictions very well. The grandm other, however, is able to participate with C elia in jointly developing their fantasy worlds. I t is clear that you fe e l much closer to the grandm other (whom we never see) than anyone else.

I am really drawn to older people. I felt that in my childhood and still do.

Grannie can play and that is why she is in the quarry. She is less judgmental, less worried about being childish, playing the child. The contrast is an important one. I guess I was looking everywhere for the child and finally found her in the grandmother.

C an you talk a bit more about how you tried, through the film to inhabit the m ind o f a child?

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I found I went back to my own childhood a lot. The script went through several drafts over a number o f years, and I found through this process - which was pretty gruelling - that I remembered more and more o f my past. I found I could remember conversations,even insignificant conversations, with friends when I was nine or 10. I remembered vividly the gang wars at school and at the weekends, and the sort o f humour and hatreds we had. Our emotions were very intense: we either liked people enormously and would die for them, or we held them in a position o f extreme dislike and they were enemies - anything they did would antagonize us. Our games were often very violent It was a side o f childhood I ’d blocked out to some extent. At the time it often seemed funny rather than violent.

I worked these aspects into the script - often they were integral to the story, which explores the violence and power games in childhood, as well as those feelings o f total devotion and trust. And the often irrational love for and forgiveness o f parents, which is a whole different aspect.

Where would you situate C elia in relation to modern-day A ustralian film m akin g?

It’s a low-budget independent feature. The sort where no-one earns a proper salary and everyone’s doing it out o f the goodness o f their hearts. That

brings a certain energy to a shoot which is good - but it also means your back’s against the wall. Costs have to be cut at every point. The budget for C elia was probably about half that o f an “average” Australian period film. It made it a real challenge, and I think everyone, in all areas, worked superbly to see that the quality was there. The film doesn’t scream “low budget”. In fact, I don’t think an audience would know at all.

In terms o f the subject matter of C elia, it’s much more personal and Australian than a lot o f films being made or conceived at the moment. Because it was low-budget, and because o f the way the investment was raised, it didn’t have to conform to formulas. It didn’t have to try and appeal first and foremost to Americans. I had a free hand in the casting. These are all areas that are be­ coming luxuries to Australian filmmakers. I feel very grateful that I ’ve had the opportunity to make a film this way. I have the AFC, Hoyts, Film Victoria and the the producers, Seon Films, to thank.

For me, the rabbit muster represents a significant reflection on the A ustra­ lian national character an d history. H ere is an a n im al introduced by Europeans who comes back to haunt succeeding generations. The echoes fro m the late Fifties to the present are fe lt throughout the film . Do you agree?

I think the rabbit muster represents a number o f things - firstly, the govA

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ernmpnt, in an attempt to appease farmers, struck out at the most innocent form o f rabbit - the do­ mestic pet. Wild rabbits were a huge menace to the land but pet rabbits weren’t doing apything harmful. They were an easier target, so they were hit. There’s parallels here with the Communist witch-hunt: the people who were hounded, both in Australia and by M c­ Carthy in America, were intellectuals, idealists, who were often highly in­ volved in the Peace Move­ ment. The governments’ calling them threats to world peace was very similar to capturing pet rabbits. The fact that rab­ bits were introduced to the country is an aspect I ’ve never thought o f - given most Australians are of an immigrant background, I find this a parallel which is really outside the confines o f the story. It’s an issue o f such complexity.

In terms o f the echoes from the late Fifties to the present being felt throughout the film, I absolutely agree. We’re living in very conservative times, with many parallels to the fifties. The importance o f family units, intol­ erance to people who are different - Howard’s recent White Australia com­ ments are a chilling example - the obsession to make money and for material things, the effect, at a subconscious level, made by leaders like Reagan and Thatcher.I think we’re living in dark times at the moment, and in many ways Celia is dealing with just such times. Something I ’ve found interesting in people’s response to the film is that certain individuals have found the ending immoral. They see it only in terms o f the little girl getting away with something. What they’re choosing to miss is the tragedy involved in this - that the society in which Celia is caught up is teaching that those who learn to lie

and cheat to protect them­ selves will get ahead. This is fundamental to what the film is about. I can only presume that those who find the story im­ moral are perhaps people who have got where they are through similar means and aren’t prepared to face that. I t’s very interesting, and I can’t help feeling that sort o f conservative and intolerant reading o f the film is a reflection o f the times. It’s alarming iri itself. But so far it’s only been a small minority who have found this. I live in hope.

The sub-plot abou t Communism is very im ­ portant, but it seems to me that many questions are left unanswered, mainly because we don’t p e t enough d etail about the beliefs o f the fam ily involved.

One o f the limitations with the script was keeping it fundamentally from the child’s point o f view. That meant certain constraints on the amount o f political detail that could be included. I had to make a conscious decision how far I could go. I agree we don’t get enough detail about the adult Tanner’s beliefs, but ultimately you’ve got an hour and a half to tell a story..The Tanners were only one part o f Celia’s summer.

The film doesn’t set out to give an in-depth analysis o f the Communist party in Australia in the 1950s. I think that would have been very interesting, but it’s another story. Basically, the Communists in Celia are there as a family next door who have different beliefs from Celia’s parents, and something in common with Celia’s grandmother who was disliked by both her son and daughter-in-law. They’re very good people and Celia can’t understand why they’re being so badly treated. It’s the beginning o f Celia’s insight into adult politics.

■

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Buckley is staunchly defensive o f his bread and butter. “I really take exception to de­ rogatory statements such as ‘It’s only a mini-series’, which fail to reflect the fact that the mini-series may be saving all our bloody necks and we should be appropriately grateful. They’re very demanding to produce but Australian mini-series - not just ours but those o f Kennedy Miller, David Elfick and a few others - have a feature film quality about them, so there’s no compromise o f standards. They have a reputation o f being among the best,” he declares.

For Buckley this faith in quality' has paid off. His latest project, the fourhour The Heroes, was an ideal set-up from a producer’s viewpoint, closer to luxury than mere survival. In its first co-venture with Network Ten (which provided the presale) UK-based production company TVS financed the $5.9 rqillion project, inviting Buckley to supervise production, with full creative control: in return, requesting updates, a British actor in a major role, and a. quality product. TVS is said to be delighted with the latter, and Buckley, who

appreciated the “very satisfactory” association, will seek to explore similar financing potential once again.

Final proof, of course, will rest with the ratings. But TVS, Ten and Buckley have made sound preparations: the cast alone promises to attract wide audiences, combining an impressive list o f credits and experience: British RADA graduate Paul Rhys (winner o f the Bancroft Medal for outstanding talent), Welsh actor Tim Lyn, New Zealander John Bach, seasoned and acclaimed Australian performers Bill Kerr and John Hargreaves, mingling with the popular appeal o f Neighbours star Jason Donovan and T V host-turnedactor Cameron Daddo - both likely to inject the subject o f World War II with an appeal to a younger generation o f viewers.

Though pleased to observe the way Donovan and Daddo, with their high TV profiles, have fitted in, Buckley insists there is no star billing on Heroes it’s ensemble acting.

Appropriately so, for Heroes is about teamwork, about individual differ­ ences in the face o f a common cause. It differs from previous projects Buckley and his team have undertaken: he tends, wherever possible, to keep the same

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DEEPLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE STATE OF THE INDUSTRY AND THE FIN AN ­ CIAL CLIMATE FOR FEATURES, PRODUCER TONY BUCKLEY READILY CHANGES TONE AT THE MENTION OF TELEVISION, ESPECIALLY THE MINI-SERIES, TO WHICH HE ATTRIBUTES HIS SUCCESS AND SURVIVAL OVER THE LAST THREE YEARS. FOR BUCKLEY, AS FOR AN INCREASING NUMBER OF PRODUCERS, team, once trust and artistic rapport is estab­ THE 'M INI' HAD BECOME THE LAST BASTION, A MARKETABLE OUTLET FOR lished, but he likes to work on diverse subjects and in different styles. The Heroes is a war story QUALITY DRAMA IN A CLIMATE OF DECLINING PRODUCTION unlike others: no fighting, no war, no romance - just 14 men and the sea.

Based on a book by Ronald McKie, it tells the story o f one o f the great naval exploits o f the Pacific War: 14 men, many yet superstitious, refusing to sail on Friday the 13th until after midnight, Carse’s courage is in living with his fear. barely out o f their teens, sailed from Cairns in 1943 in a leaky fishing boat called the K ra it, to launch an attack on enemy shipping in Singapore Harbour, Yeldham’s “real enjoyment in writing mini-series lies in the opportunity to explore and develop character. In this case, the 14 men on a boat, with little 5,000 miles across the Indian Ocean. action, provides a microcosm, with the challenge in attributing each character “Heroes does not follow the traditional war story format,” explains director Donald Crombie, who worked with Buckley on their first feature, with recognizable traits, different responses to the danger and tensions as they near enemy waters. In their own quirky ways they betray these tensions. Jason C addie, in 1976, and whose recent mini-series credits are Cyclone Tracy, Robbery Under A rm s and A lien T ea rs. “Unlike the usual perceptions o f war, Donovan’s character, ironically nicknamed Happy, because o f his seriousness, sews; Davidson is driven to the edge o f danger, yet is passionately interested it’s not an action piece, but a character-based drama with no shoot-out to resolve the mounting tension through battle. Rather, it’s maintained in the in nature and wildlife,” he explains. pervasive though rarely-sighted presence o f the By fragmenting the action into smaller groups in different parts o f the enemy. There are close calls but no conflict. boat, Yeldham could focus on different activities, and interactions which HEROES IS A WAR “In fact there is only one shot fired in the created character and humour. During the two-week rehearsal, Crombie and the actors elaborated on the scenarios, working out how their characters spent entire four hours and that’s when a gun goes off STORY UNLIKE ANY when they’re cleaning it. The bullet hits the time on board, and how their character traits could surface through their tomato sauce botde which shatters, and severs activities. From a writer’s point o f view it was a terrific collaborative process, OTHER: NO FIGHTING, an artery in a man’s leg; so what starts out in which he was constandy consulted, sent rough cuts for comment and felt NO ROMANCE, farcical becomes serious - unexpectedly. It’s the an integral part o f the process. type o f reversal which makes Heroes different Both Crombie and Yeldham stress that the secret o f success in this type o f NO WAR - JUST from the usual action pieces, which are gungdrama lies in the preparation, in meticulous research. Both had put an ho about the fighting.” enormous amount o f effort into ferreting out information from all possible FOURTEEN MEN Scriptwriter Peter Yeldham (1915, Tusitala, sources: books, archives, anecdotes, interviews. Crombie says: “We were very C aptain Cook, The Lancaster M iller A ffa ir) fortunate that there were survivors to whom we had personal access, who could AND THE SEA explains the problem he faced in writing a war provide us with some o f the more intimate and details. The biggest challenge story. “Ideas on heroism and patriotism change was to get the characters so real in the two-week rehearsal period that when and date so much. Attitudes to war today are so different from those o f the all hell broke loose and we started filming, they all knew exactly what was Forties, so our basic dilemma was how to portray a true war story in 1989 so required. We created a lot o f the humour through exchange in rehearsal. We that heroism is relevant in today’s terms, yet still stay faithful to the story, needed to individualize the young men, as little had come through on them, especially as we had access to four survivors o f the event, We wanted to get away apart from the fact that they were similar in type, resourceful, adventurous. from the ‘Errol Flynn winning Burma’ routine, which would be viewed as “It’s very important, in this type o f drama, to- find the right balance farcical today, and the cliched ‘British stiff upper-lip’ scenario, also outdated. between the historical material and the drama. Too much factual, historical/ Our interest was actually in flawed men. archival material can make a drama very noble and worthy, but bog it down “We disguised a lot o f the heroism with honour, in the casual guise o f daily flat - the docudrama without the drama. Conversely, an excess of.drama is life o f which the men are unaware. We tried to individualize the flaws and re­ likely to lack substance.” sponses so that in the case o f the younger men who don’t know the meaning The logistics o f water-based action presented a new frontier - and chal­ o f fear there is a lack o f awareness o f danger or possibility o f death with that lenges - for Buckley and his team. He particularly praises the inventives and o f the older dominant characters, Carse, Davidson and Captain Lyons, whose ingenuity o f production designer Bernard Hides and director of photography responses again vary from man to man. Lyons, for instance, is a man possessed Paul Murphy, both o f whom had worked with him on previous TV projects.

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Film may be our greatest cultural export, as politicians and diplomats constantly claim, but o f the exports surely the least fostered. Certainly there are worthy schemes (AFC, Film Victoria etc.) but the gap between those and FFC production pre-re­ quisites are difficult to bridge. This hasn’t always been the case. No doubt the current decline and disorienta­ tion may be partly attributed to the facility and abuse o f the previous 10BA system which encouraged the production o f almost 4 0 0 films be­ tween 1970 and 1985. Nor can that be held up as the ideal.

In a small volatile industry sur­ vival has depended on versatility and resilience. With an impeccable sense o f timing some o f the major produc­ ers - Kennedy Miller, David Elfick, Buckley - previously locked into fea­ tures, monitored' the industry pulse and financial climate and gravitated to television during the last few years.

“I saw the writing on the wall” explains Buckley, “while we were making Bliss. At that stage H arp in the South was ear-marked as a feature but in the changing climate o f video explosion, which has reversed some­ what now, escalating budgets, and distribution problems I figured it was more pragmatic to change to TV and fortunately Ruth Park, author o f the book we were adapting, gave it her full support. Both H arp and its sequel Poor M an’s Orange worked well so I decided to stay on the track. It was a calculated decision for survival reasons.”

By small screen standards he should be exultant. The mini-series rated well locally and H arp was purchased by Channel 4 as was the sequel, which was bought unseen. On the strength o f these two programs Buckley was invited

by TVS U K to do The Heroes.

Future TV prospects also look bright. In May the ABC will screen M an on the R im , a series on the peopling o f the Pacific (which was actually oversubscribed by investors) to be narrated and anchored by anthropologist Allan Turner. In development (at second draft stage) is a four part mini-series on Joan Sutherland which has potential international sales, and in the pipeline Morrison o f Peking, which Bruce Beresford has expressed an interest in directing, though at this stage it is seen as “too ambitious”.

So where’s the problem, you may well ask?

The pendulum swings back to features and Buckley’s despondency returns. In fact he’s faced with the possibility o f temporarily closing doors “until we see which way the industry’s going ... W e’ve spent a lot o f time and money on development o f features which, at this stage, I cannot see us getting off the ground. We may need to modify our mode o f operation by working from home, as in the early days, and setting up production offices as needed.

The basic overheads o f running a small independent company in an inner city office are becoming considerable.”

Immediately he qualifies: “We’re not complaining because we’ve received very generous support from the AFC in the past and with two present projects: Sweet Lip, adapted from Robert Drewe’s short story in the The Body Surfers by the author and Ray Lawrence (in which Sam Neill will be playing the lead), and a new version o f On Our Selection (with Leo McKern) based closely on the original Steele Rudd version.

“In any case it’s not the role o f government instrumentalities to provide total support. As producers we have to reinvest some o f our money, and we’ve done that. But we’ve spent two-and-a-half years developing four features and two mini-series and - at present - 1 cannot see us getting more than one feature off the ground. I wouldn’t be able to make Bliss now. It’s sad, but at this stage I cannot see any future for an indigenous feature film industry. There’s nothing wrong with T V (he admits he’s a selective viewer) but it’s disappoint­ ing to have exciting opportunities wasted after all our efforts over the years.”

He is referring in particular to his recent bitter disillusionment: Tracks, a Ray Lawrence screenplay adapted from Robyn Davidson’s bestseller. Buckley had already invested $60,000 o f his company funds in its development, but at the time o f writing, when the option deadline expired, New World Pictures, had decided not to take up their development agreement. “They were unable to, or refused to, understand what we were trying to do. Regretfully, they wanted an A ustralian Out O f A frica, and despite appeals - why imitate? why not initiate? - they were quite unprepared to make a commitment. Before Christmas an Australian distributor was looking at it, but the arithmetic just didn’t add up for them: other distributors wanted an American star, a bigname director, and it just wasn’t the film we wanted to make.”

He still hasn’t entirely abandoned hope. “If some money comes up, I ’d

The script required a considerable amount o f night shooting, blow-ups o f Japanese boats in Singapore Harbour (the men actually de­ FROM LEFT: PAUL stroyed 36,000 tons o f shipping on their mis­ RHYS AS IVAN LYON, sion) and construction o f sets like the K rait, the Japanese fishing vessel which carried the JOHN HARGREAVES AS men through enemy waters and back.

TED CARSE AND JOHN Models o f Singapore, Japanese destroyers and boats and miniature explosions were shot BACH AS DONALD and later married with location footage shot in DAVIDSON Northern Queensland and Sydney studios.

Footage Murphy had shot earlier in Asia on 35mm, o f fishing boats, Singapore and sea scenes, was imposed on the other footage. Murphy and his team used tricks o f the trade like, glass painting, plate photography, front projection and blue screens for maximum effective­ ness. Murphy was not daunted by the special effects but the schedule allowed little time for preparation and trial.

For Hides the design and construction o f the K ra it, the centrepiece o f the series, was a major task. The model o f the original was far too small for the 14 men and camera crew so he improvised with a steel pontoon onto which was built a wooden-clad boat that could then be dismantled and transported to Sydney, where Hides constructed a wet and dry set to minimize time loss in production.

Buckley admits he finds mini-series quite daunting because it’s a relentless pace once you start: five to seven minutes per day o f quality footage is a tall order.

“We nearly killed everyone on The Heroes, through exhaustion. I must confess that if I did another production like this, with an intense 11-week shoot, I would attempt to give everyone a break in the middle - but this may be a pipe-dream.”

SOME OF THE HEROES:

PART II: BUCKLEY'S HOPE FOR THE FUTURE but we’ve never found the pot o f gold, and even now, the rainbow’s disap­ pearing... ” is producer Tony Buckley’s metaphorical summation o f his experience o f the Australian film industry’s flirtation with a feature film revival, to which he has been passionately committed throughout his 36-year career. Buckley’s work may be a barometer o f the industry: from the dark ages o f non-features and foreign domination in the Fifties; the active lobbying for government support in the Sixties; the boom o f the Seventies, when Buckley produced Caddie-, and the present state o f uncertainty.

Buckley is an interesting case study. Respected by peers, having worked for many film bodies and held many board positions, his name is synonymous with artistic and commercial success. Yet the above words highlight the transience and financial insecurity o f a small industry dependent on a volatile market, the fragility o f idealism counteracted by the hard pragmatism o f presales, private investment, escalating budgets and distribution deals in an industry lacking a fundamental infrastructure.

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like to get back to it,” he says. major source o f disappointment to us all, because we can’t see how we can keep Given Buckley’s track record for somewhat provocative films, the prevail­ it going,” he says.

He is cautious not to make mistake o f placing too much faith in the Film ing conservatism o f the marketplace frustrates him. “This is a risk industry, but Finance Corporation. “I ’m not sure how we return to an indigenous industry, when you challenge them with an exciting property (and great potential for but a lot will depend on the philosophy and strategy o f the FFC. In the midAmerican outlets) they turn timid and back off, preferring to retreat to proven Seventies we took bold risks, and much credit to the distributors, Greater formula genre films. When will someone wake up to the fact that there is only one Dirty D ancing, one Fish C alled W anda, and that their appeal is the Union and Roadshow - those need to be taken again. The FFC must make originality and freshness. The sequels or imitations rarely have that quality,” some adventurous decisions in the next six months, otherwise it’s going to be two years before there is a recovery. And although it’s not their policy and they His nationalistic streak prevails. “Anyhow, we shouldn’t be imitating won’t like me saying so, we have to look at total financing o f some projects American films. It’s the freshness o f our stories and films that’s been the break­ from time to time. It’s not going to be easy in the current financial climate through over there and elsewhere. I don’t object to the presence o f an American star - or other foreigners - in principle, if the part is appropriate. But without that.

“I f they’re adamant about private sector investment and presale I don’t see just casting token Americans in everything, we lose the identity o f our films. much hope,” he continues. At the moment, if they used initiative and sowed I just don’t think we build our own culture on imitating someone else’s.

Besides, it makes the last 22 years meaningless - we’d back to where we started some seeds in the ground there could be a chance o f survival. But if the same with a forgotten cinema.” error is made under 10BA, o f looking at the deal and not the project or the people making it, there’ll be no life injected into this moribund feature On these grounds, Buckley sceptically rejects the notion o f co-producindustry.” tion: “everyone’s pat answer to industry problems. But I have no faith in them: Buckley admits that under 10BA the system was abused without sufficient more often than not they end up as hybrids which don’t satisfy either coun­ controls. “Naturally the damage in the investment quarter was irreparable, try’s audience, and I ’ve heard some very bitter struggles,” he says. with umpteen dozen Australian films that we had to sit through at the AFI Co-financing, he claims, leaves scope for productions that have an individual look and an appeal to an international audience. Encouraged by his judgings every year (now sitting in vaults and cans, thank goodness) that never should have been allowed to be put into them in the first place. All they were rapport with TVS on Heroes, he hopes for a similar arrangement in the future. interested in was the deal. But the blame shouldn’t rest entirely with govern­ On home ground, he’s highly critical o f the lack o f reinvestment in the ment; the industry must shoulder some o f it. Producers didn’t get their act local industry by American distributors who enjoy handsome profits from the together to lobby effectively. Corporate affairs, too, should have had tighter Australian market, but argue that as distributors, reinvestment is not their function. controls.

“The scheme bolted, but there was insufficient inquiry into budgets of He remembers a period when local distributors were prepared to take risks films that contained a presale. People may not like controls in a high risk - admittedly on lower budgets - and in that time o f idealism and naivete 15 industry, but some controls would not have gone astray. Combined with years ago, he decided he’d like to try producing. The idea came to him when he was editing Wake in Fright, and sound lobbying and rational became intrigued by the sight o f a discussion, the system might lot o f different producers running have been saved.

I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOIN G AT THE MOMENT. I “Some avaricious individu­ around the set: at the same time, he bought a book at the local als made a lot o f money under LOOK AT THEATRE IN THE DOLDRUMS, FILM IS VIRTUALLY DEAD ON that system, exploited it, and newsagents - C addie: the Autobiog­ ITS FEET AND YET WE HAVE A PALACE OF DREAMS AT NORTH RYDE did not contribute to the in­ raphy o f a Sydney B arm aid - which dustry or its name and got out he stayed up all night reading. He TEACHING FILM AND TV AND THE PALACE OF DREAMS AT KENSING­ decided to combine the two: be­ in hard times.

“The industry must realize come a producer himself, and make TON [NIDA] TO TEACH ASPIRING ACTORS AND DIRECTORS, BUT I that it’s no use looking at fea­ C addie his first project.

WONDER WHERE ALL THESE POOR DEVILS ARE G O IN G ? AT THE tures purely as a money-mak­ His first stumbling entry into ing concern because if we look the intricate world o f production MOMENT THERE IS CERTAINLY NOWHERE. at the track record and the sounds hilarious by today’s stan­ numerical realities, despite the dards: “I knew I had to get a script occasional hype, the successes and a director but beyond that I have been modest and insufficient to keep an industry going. Even though our didn’t have the faintest idea how to go about all this. I knew Joan Long could budgets are modest by world standards, our actors terrific value, the extraor­ write because she had made Pictures That Moved and The Passionate Industry, dinary successes like Crocodile D undee - and God be willing we have more and a couple o f other films that I liked, so I asked her. When she hesitated are exceptions. It cannot keep an industry going. Ultimately it needs to be because she said she’d never written a proper feature script, I quickly informed supported in a constructive, meaningful way.” her that I ’d never produced anything either. Then I needed a director. At the time I was cutting The Choice at Film Australia, and observed that the direc­ There’s no doubt Buckley is seriously concerned; this isn’t criticism for its tor, Donald Crombie, could work with actors, so I invited him to direct, and own sake. “I am despondent at the lack o f direction in the industry in general,” he says. “It’s time a review o f the entire industry should be conducted to see so on. I think he thought I was mad: they all thought I was mad. It was a case how the different institutions relate to others, consider the future how each o f the blind leading the blind, but somehow, we managed.” should best be managed, and identify the nucleus. The functions o f cultural They more than managed, winning several awards and having critical bodies should be related to industry and education. A major review is much praise heaped on them: hardened British critics, especially, warmed to its needed.” “honesty’ and “rare emotion”. Obviously they were exhilarating days for Buckley doesn’t pretend to have the answers but he has the courage to Buckley. He says that the time was ripe, as well; there hadn’t been a feature with raise the questions. “I don’t really know where we’re going at the moment. I a major focus on a woman for some time, or an urban story that had a strong Australian nucleus. look at theatre in the doldrums, film is virtually dead on its feet and yet we have a Palace o f Dreams at North Ryde teaching film and TV and the Palace o f But somehow Buckley has a radar sense for narrative and timing (although Dreams at Kensington [NIDA] to teach aspiring actors and directors, but I he, o f course, would deny it). An avid reader, especially o f Australiana, he wonder where all these poor devils are going? At the moment there is certainly prefers at present to work with adaptations o f strong literary works. He has nowhere.” rarely come across strong original scripts in recent years, he says.

Pessimist or realist? Buckley, I feel, wants to feed on hope, like the rest.

Disillusioned with a number o f areas in today’s industry - the lack of After the official opening o f the Film Finance Corporation he heaved a sigh o f commitment by some crew, the financial struggles - he admits he was relief at Paul Keating’s speech because it acknowledged two very important “thinking o f going back to the principles we adopted [in the mid-Seventies] points, that not all things are commercially viable in a country the size o f o f giving new people a break ... I ’ve been doing a lot o f thinking: where did Australia; and that the FFC must keep in mind the importance o f cultural we start and where are we going? I ’m a bit despondent about it.” identity. Hope will prevail, but one must also differentiate between it and Though he started his career as a projectionist and editor, Buckley made his first impact with Forgotten C inem a (1967). One o f his first jobs had been fool’s gold...

■ resplicing an old nitrate print o f The Sentim ental Bloke. Fascinated to find that there had been a prolific early industry in Australia, he became absorbed in the F I L MOGRAPHY topic, researching it with the intention o f writing a book. He realized his talent a s p r o d u c e r : C addie (1976), The Irishm an (1978), The Night The Prowler didn’t lie in writing, so several years later he collected documentary material (1978), The K illing o f Angel Street (1981), Kitty an d the Bagm an (1982), Bliss working at Cinesound, and cut it to make what is still one o f the most (1985). f i l m : Forgotten C inem a (1967) Producer/Director, Snow, Sand and comprehensive documents on the early period o f Australian film. In drawing Savages(1970) Doco. Producer/Director, The Fifth Facade (1974) Producer, attention to the indigenous industry Australia had once nurtured, it helped to Steam Train Passes (1975) Producer, Now You’re Talking (1980) Prodicer, create a climate for government support to filmmakers, andintiatives such as Buckley’s Chance (1980) Exec. Producer, D ancing (1980) Exec. Producer, the Australian Film Development Corporation, the Film and Television Palace o f Dreams (1985) t e l e v i s i o n : The H arp in the South (1985), Poor M an’s Orange (1987), The Heroes ( 1988), The Peopling o f the Pacific (1988) School.

11 part series.

“We still have all those instrumentalities but the state o f the industry is a A

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films in Fellini’s long career, nor in relation to the Italian cinema, nor in any particular way to the cinema as a whole.

When the film appeared in 1960, Fel­ lini’s work was generally ill-received. The m ore sp e cta cu la r co n tro v ersies that surrounded La dolce vita had more to do with the provinciality of aspects of Italian lower middle-class culture, and the cultural back­ wardness of the Vatican, rather than with its merits or otherwise. For example, one of the lead­ ing serious film journals in Italy, Cinema nuovo, which had a vaguely left culture, held a forum among Italy’s leading critics, writers and intellectuals, includ­ ing Italo Calvino, Franco Fortini andPier Paolo Pasolini, enquiring about directions and trends in the Italian cinema as represented by Fellini’s La dolce vita, Antonioni’s L ’avventura, and Visconti’s Rocco e i suoifratelli. Fellini fared worst of all: on social-political grounds in comparison with Vis­ conti; in terms of a continued commitment to Italian neo­ realism (once again in comparison with Visconti); and, com­ pared with Antonioni, within a framework of visual complex­ ity, narrative experimentation, and a generalized notion of modernism. I don’t want to argue or resume controversies of nearly 30 years ago in Italy, but certainly, then, Fellini seemed, of the great Italian directors, the slightest on almost any terms you would c are to mention. It seems to me —and this is asking for the impossible - that La dolce vita, which is an extremely interesting film, would be all the more so if it could be seen, actively seen, in a context other than that of ‘great work’ and ‘masterpiece’ of the great artist.

In 1953, Fellini made a 20-minute film called L ’agenzia matrimoniale, which was part of L ’amore in citta, an anthology film with contributions by other filmmakers. In the Fellini incident a young man remembers a time when he was a reporter writing a story on marriage bureaux. In the remembered story, he seeks out a bureau in a vast old palazzo in a broken-down area of Rome. When he finds the bureau, which is seedy, desperate, and threadbare, rather than facing

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en A U S T R A L IA , La dolce vita appears as an isolated instance, surrounded by all the marks of masterpiece, great work - an un­ derstanding of a kind, but a somewhat hmited one. The terms for its revival are very dif­ ferent from those in England, for example, where it was screened in cinemas in more than six major cities as part of a general retrospective of Fellini’s films. Here, there has been no genuine context established for the film; certainly not in relation to the other N

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does is spread, possess others. It takes young sweet girls from the owners with the truth, he says that a friend of his, very the country, seduces them with promises, dazzles them with rich, but ill, believing himself to be a werewolf, can only be possibilities and spoils them forever. cured by finding a wife. A wife for a werewolf was not, to his Corruption in this short film, but in Fellini generally, astonishment, a problem for the agency. By the very next day certainly in La dolce vita, has a particular mechanism: it is they had found someone: a country girl, sweet, shy, innocent, the selling of a dream, the concoction of a fantasy. For the pure and very poor. Yes, she would marry a werewolf. You young man in L ’agenzia matrimoniale, it is the story of the could love anyone ... if you were poor and they were rich. The werewolf, for the agency, the dream of profit, for the young young man can’t go through with the deceit and pleads with girl, a dream, perhaps not of love, but of ease, freedom, the the girl, saying that marrying a werewolf would really be too sweetness of the countryside. terrible. He finally leaves her with her innocence and her If early Fellini films concentrated on subjects, like this poverty intact. one, close to post-war social reality in Italy, his later films, This simple, rather beautiful, certainly funny Fellini from La dolce vita onwards, retain the fink between fantasy, story is rather interesting in relation to La dolce vita. artificiality and corruption, but also another, contrary The main character, the one through whom you see dream, a contrary fantasy, that of innocence, more accu­ things, who narrates and informs you, is a male. His story is rately, of lost a remembered story. What he innocence. The remembers is a relationship to a CORRUPTION IN FELLINI IS ATTRACTIVE, NOT BECAUSE IT IS FILLED young man in woman and a relationship to inno­ WITH SIGNIFICANCE, BUT BECAUSE IT LACKS ALL SIGNIFICANCE...

L ’a g e n z i a cence (here, as with many other m atrim oniale THE SPECTACLE CORRUPTION IS A DREAM... BUT THE DREAM IS Fellini films, they are the same, dreams, or re­ innocence and woman, and to­ NOT CORRUPT, NOR IS THE DREAMER. IN FACT THE DREAM IS members, not gether they are like facts of nature: SOMETHING TO BE PRESERVED AND CELEBRATED FOR ITS PURITY, simply despera­ in La dolce vita, often splendid, tion, false sto­ ITS OTHERWORLDLINESS, ITS CANDOUR AND ITS LACK OF GUILT. marked as creatures, like Anita ries, seduction, Ekberg, or soft and sweet, kitten­ concoction, but also sincerity, truth and honesty. ish, like the little girl from Umbria). The main character, like There is, I think, in all of Fellini an interplay between Marcello in La doice vita, is a reporter, and though he dream, memory, nostalgia, innocence, and corruption which participates in the story he remembers, he is, in part, the sub­ appears as a deep commitment, or seemingly a deep commit­ ject of his own story: what he remembers, and the fact of re­ ment, to a morality (the evils of falsity, the snares of the world, membering place him in a situation of an onlooker, a specta­ the virtues of honesty, the smearing of innocence), or worse, tor of events, of the fives of others, and of himself, almost as when Fellini is at his most vulgar and kitsch, to a morafism. if he were gazing at himself in a mirror of the past.

But often, the morality has about it a certain falsity, since, A number of Fellini themes are recognizable: a world while condemning a world turned over to the artificial and the which is corrupt, though corrupt perhaps more out of poverty unreal, the film which makes that condemnation is part of the and the desperation of poverty than anything else (the terms world it condemns and, what is more, it revels in that world, of corruption are quite different in La dolce vita which it revels in making artifice, in short in making itself, in making presents a world of acting, of theatre, of wealth ... however a film, hence that carnivalesque, spectacle, circus feel to his insincerity is as much part of this setting as it is of the seedier films, and the evident joy in invention.. setting in L ’agenzia matrimoniale). What this corruption C I

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The pleasure of a Fellini is not so much in the purity of innocence - the in­ genuous prostitute Cabiria in Le nolle di Cabiria, the naive young girl in love with the vulgar, lower middle-class romantic screen image of a cardboard sheik in Lo sciecco bianco, the sweet, somewhat backward Giulietta Masina character in La strada, or, in L ’agenzia matrimoniale, the young country girl willing to marry a werewolf —but in the spectacle of corruption, in its energy, its joy, its freedom, its craziness, and, ultimately, its emptiness. Corruption in Fellini is attractive not because it is filled with significance, but because it lacks all significance or, more exactly, because it lacks substance. The spectacle, the carnival of corruption is a dream, in fact a remembered vision of childhood, the dream of a child, like Fellini, wanting to run away and join the circus.

The dream itself has no morality; its only signs are the energy, the inventiveness and the real childlike ingenuous­ ness in which it has been dreamt. The dream may be of corruption, but the dream is not corrupt, nor is the dreamer.

In fact the dream, which comes very close to being the film itself, is something to be preserved and celebrated for its purity, its otherworldliness, its candour, its lack of guilt.

I think that, among other things, what is being remem­ bered by the young man in L ’agenzia matrimoniale is not so much the threat to the innocence of the young girl, his concocted deception, but rather his own lost innocence. If he dreams a story of his past, part of that past and that dream concerns, in the innocence he recognizes, the innocence that is no longer his.

In all of Fellini’s films there is this nostal­ gia for a lost innocence from a former time curiously regained in the telling of the story of that loss, by means of a film, a fantasy, a fiction, which by its very nature is out of this world, beyond the bounds of any morality and hence any evil.

Fellini does not present the world as an object for judgment in his films —in fact the world has nothing to with it, it is a dream, a vision, a fantasy of the world —but rather as an object for pleasure, almost as if the spectacle world of the cinema becomes co-existent with, or a complete substitute for, the real world; or, and this probably more exact, reality itself is obliterated and with it any morality that may adhere to it. The real is only a splendid dream, male, provincial, vulgar, fascinated, guiltless: the great, incredible, big, blownout doll of Anita Ekberg defying gravity and our imagination, a woman who could only be dreamt.

Two final points about Fellini and about La dolce vita.

The film is very episodic. There is a plot of sorts, but essen­ tially, what is seen are fragments of Marcello’s views and hence dreams of the world. It is difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle in the film any clear distinctions between what is objective and thus may be termed ‘real’ and substantial, from what is subjective, projected by Marcello. The boundaries between reality and artifice, reality and the consciousness or imagination of it, no longer hold.

The fact that reality is only dreamt is not only a realistic alibi for the undoubted experimentation of the film, its departure from the realistic narrative conventions of most films then, and now, for example, its lack of any clear narrative logic, but it is also an opportunity for a liberation of forms. If, in effect, the uncertain world of La dolce vita, despite the moral indigna­ tion which runs through it, is freed from morality precisely because the hold of the real upon it is so tenuous as no longer to matter, the film’s embrace of artifice and fantasy allows it to play in the pleas­ ure of invention, unbounded by the morality of narrative forms, the morality of conventional de­ pictions which has held in the cinema for so long.

One of the pleasures of the film - and the Vatican was perhaps right to be outraged by it - was its freedom from convention, the outrageousness of dreaming and making public what the Vatican hoped, at best, would not be dreamt, and at the very least, if dreamt, not spoken. It is in the form of the Fellinian dream, of the inclusion of a subject ever seeking not only to make sense of the world, but to enjoy it, and to enjoy above all the ability to invent and to look upon his inventions that the loveliness, the sweetness of La dolce vita perhaps resides. In any case, how can you be mean about anyone as open and playfully sophisticated and ingenuous in equal degrees as Fellini? It wouldn’t do at all to stand in the wings grumbling and grimacing at all those figures in crazy costume, in masquerade, singing, dancing and cavorting, in­ venting and making love... better to smile...and join the party.

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LADOLCEVITA

FELLINI IN ROME CIRCA 1960

*This article is a version of the lecture delivered by Sam Rohdie for the opening of a season of the new print of at the Kino Cinema, Melbourne, 20 January 1989.

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I think Dickens would be in his element i f he lived and wrote now... He would surely have made films and done thingsfor television - he might well have accomplished something like Heimat... But there is one way I think he would have been different. He would never have wanted to seduce people as we do now by diluting his messagefor the benefit of a wider public. He would have gone straight for the jugular... and i f you look at Little Dorrit and its comments on the industrialized society of its day, you would have to think he would have found even more to object to now.

C H R IS T IN E E D Z A R D 1

Little D orrit s Christine Edzard’s comments suggest, Char­ les Dickens has never seemed more like Our Contemporary. What would he have made of ^ the traumatic last decade in Britain, which has seen the Tory government’s open es­ pousal o f Victorian values? What howl o f eloquent outrage would he have directed at the present dismantling o f social welfare in favour o f self-help and the current Gradgrindian attitude to education that stresses utilitarianism over imagination? We know what he would have made o f the ‘loadsamoney’ values in British society because he made his judgment clear in H ard Times, it was an attitude, he said scornfully, that would have viewed the Good Samaritan as a Bad Economist.

In the arts o f the 1980s in Britain, Dickens has re-emerged as a national hero. In the theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s famous production o f Nicholas Nickleby blazed Dickens back into the modern consciousness. On television, a remarkable BBC adaptation o f Bleak House in 1985, with its fe­ rocious indictment o f the cruelty' and complacency, poverty and hypocrisy o f the Victorian age, seemed to gain its force through a burning anger at the simi­ lar direction in which our present society was moving. Meanwhile the British cinema was attempting to come to terms with this modern Dickens phenome­ non in two ways: either by adapting his work in a manner that stresses his relevance to modern times; or by making a film about modern times that in temperament, theme and technique might be called ‘Dickensian’. Christine Edzard’s Little D orrit (1 9 8 7 ) is the obvious and supreme example o f the first and, as I shall argue, Stephen Frears’ My B eautiful Laundrette (1985) is the not-so-obvious but still most potent example o f the second.

Christine Edzard’s film o f Little D orrit is something o f a rarity o f modern cinema, owing little to anything that has preceded it. Possibly influenced by the success o f the RSC ’s Nicholas Nickleby, it is a two-part film totalling six hours, with nearly 250 speaking parts. Yet it cost less than £ 5 million to make

CHRISTINE EDZARD'S LITTLE DORRIT IS THE MOST

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RECENT ADAPTATION OF A CHARLES DICKENS NOVEL AND IT HAS BEEN HAILED AS A TRULY DICKENSIAN' WORK. CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S FAVOURITE AUTHOR IS STILL AN IMPORTANT INFLUENCE IN BRITISH CIN­ EMA: NOT ONLY DOES LITTLE DORRIT HAVE MUCH TO SAY ABOUT PRESENT-DAY BRITAIN, BUT A FILM LIKE M Y BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE SHARES A GREAT MANY DICKENSIAN TRAITS. and has a peculiar air o f modesty about it - it is a sort o f self-effacing epic.

B efore Little Dorrit, Christine Edzard was best known for her work on two period pieces: as scriptwriter on the film o f The Tales o f B eatrix Potter (1981); and as director o f a little-seen independent film, Biddy (1 982) a quietly subversive portrait o f the life and drudgery o f a Victorian nanny. Although thematically one can see anticipations o f Little D orrit in her past work, noth­ ing quite prepared one for the film’s cinematic mastery.

At a recent film festival, I met Ms Edzard’s personal assistant and editor o f Little Dorrit, Olivier Stockman, who proffered some interesting back­ ground information about some o f the concepts behind the film. The idea had been proposed as early as 1982. The form o f the film was mainly determined by those elements in the novel that had particularly attracted them. Specifically, it was not the plot o f Little D orrit that grabbed them most but the mosaic P

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o f characters; and it was not the colourful nature o f the characters that excited them but their reality. Because the film was not plot-oriented, they felt they could cut the character o f Rigaud without diminishing the theme. They also felt that, if character and not story was the essence, they could, like Dickens, afford to take their time. Hence the idea o f doing Little D orrit in two parts.

Originally they had played with the idea o f doing lots o f little films about each character; and then with the idea o f doing three films from different points o f view, those o f Little Dorrit, Arthur Clennam and John Chivery (the young man who loves Litde Dorrit). Finally they decided on two, which in turn simplified the problem o f adaptation. The main principle o f selection became what Arthur Clennam or Little Dorrit actually see or go through. The novel is also divided into two large sections, but whereas its two sections are entitled ‘Poverty’ and ‘Riches’, the film’s are called ‘Nobody’s Fault’ (one o f the novel’s most ironic refrains) and ‘Litde Dorrit’s Story’.

Part One (‘Nobody’s Fault’) is mainly the story o f Arthur Clennam (Derek Jacobi) who has returned from China after 20 years and who is plainly discom­ forted by his family home, ruled by his invalided but autocratic mother(Joan Greenwood) and disorientated by a maze-like and materialisdc London. Clen­ nam becomes involved with a risky financial endeavour, and also becomes interested in the fate o f his mother’s helper, Litde Dorrit (Sarah Pickering), whose father (Alec Guinness) is imprisoned in the Marshalsea for debt. By a quirk o f fate, Clennam will change places with Dorrit; and Part Two (‘Litde

are brighter. These are not continuity errors but things which Edzard and Stockman designed very carefully, to reflect the contrasting visions o f the two main characters. Clennam feels cramped and oppressed in the presence o f Dorrit in his room, whereas the daughter has become accustomed to this environment and, moreover, has a more naturally optimistic temperament.

What unites the two parts o f Little D orrit is the fact that the main char­ acters, Arthur Clennam and Little Dorrit, are both studies in selfless generos­ ity. The difference between them is that one is much more effective than the other. Clennam tries to start things but they fall apart, which is why the momentum o f Part One seems halting, fragmented, uneven. Little Dorrit is, in a sense, blinkered but she is also determined and direct, so Part Two seems correspondingly more linear and incisive.

What struck most critical commentators, though, was the film’s topicality.

The Marshalsea prison seemed a remarkable forecast o f a modern Social Security system that is constructed as a series o f poverty traps from which there is no escape. The Circumlocution Office was at once an astonishing anticipa­ tion o f suffocating modern bureaucracy, and an audacious symbol o f Estab­ lishment paranoia, where official outrage at Clennam’s insistence on his right to know was more than a little reminiscent o f the British Government’s posture over the Spycatcher allegations.Writing the novel in 1857, Dickens was grumbling about the “black cloud o f poverty” in every town, the “ineffective­ ness” o f Parliament, the “insolence” o f the Prime Minister. No one aware o f that could miss its application to a modern-day Britain where poverty has sharply increased over the last decade and where, with less than a numerical majority o f popular electoral support, a dictatorial PM nevertheless ruthlessly wields power over an impotent and demoralized Opposition.

Needless to say, the specific events and characters also quickly suggested modern equivalents. William Dorrit’s air of melancholy resignation in the Marshalsea reminded Christine Edzard o f a prevalent attitude among the present-day unem­ ployed who seem prepared to put up with their predicament rather than get angry and fight back. The debt collector Pancks (Roshan Seth) reminded some critics o f a yuppie. The description by Flintwinch (Max Wall) o f Mrs. Clennam as a ‘female Lucifer with an appetite for power’ could have sprung straight from the lips o f the Labour Party’s most radical MP, Tony Benn, on the subject o f Margaret Thatcher. The rough tycoon Merdle (Michael Elphick), who has his hands in every financial pie and who is pointedly described in the film as “the spirit o f the age”, could hardly fail to evoke the spectre o f Rupert Murdoch, just as the financial collapse that precipi­ tates the central crisis in the film seemed an uncanny parallel to the 1987 Stock Market crash, whose impact was still being felt at the time the film opened in London. Stir in a few other Dickensian ingredients o f alarming topicality - slum land­ lords, seedy speculators, a yawning divide between the haves and have-nots - and the film o f Little D orrit, far from appearing a respectful rendering of a classic, looked as if it had been torn from today’s headlines. One was similarly torn between two responses: awe at Dickens’s prophetic insight; and despair at how little things have changed.

Nevertheless the fascination with the modernity o f Little D orrit might have obscured other aspects o f the interpreta­ tion which were also important. Some o f these were raised in a detailed attack on the film that the Marxist historian Ra­ phael Samuel launched in The G u ardian (19 February 1988) - an attack that was not only designed to throw doubt on several areas (e.g. the performances) most other critics had singled out for special praise but was also to question the film’s supposed radicalism. Samuel’s scepticism about Little D orrit is so far a minority view on the film, but his argument is wide-ranging and compelling enough to warrant some dis­ cussion here.

Although he did not pose the issue in quite these terms, implicit in much o f what Samuel says is the feeling that the film might be inspired by Dickens but it is not very Dicken­ sian. Its emotional temperature might be said to be closer to George Eliot than to Dickens - melancholy more than angry, rational more than radical. Samuel felt an authentic Dickensian fervour in only two o f the performances - Amelda Brown’s fiery Fanny, Little Dorrit’s sister, and Miriam Margoyles’s fussy Flora, Clennam’s former love. In contrast with every other critic, he found fault with Alec Guinness’s Dorrit whom he thought too regal - “a figure o f dignity rather than pathos...he looks positively majestic and serene... even his breakdown is played as a kind o f triumph”. This seems to me overstated, since Dorrit has to have some dignity for he is the father o f the Marshalsea and does inspire a certain respect; and I sense not majesty in Guinness’s performance but rather an insecure pomposity, precisely observed. Also, far from seeming triumphant, the breakdown scene is posi­ tively skin-crawling, largely because the careful build-up to the event - an extraordinary orchestration o f surreal conversation, off-centre compositions, weird looks, peculiarly choreographed movements - is one o f the most suspenseful and best-edited sequences I have seen in a film for years. Similarly,

Dorrit’s Story’) will concentrate on the impact on her o f the discovery o f her father’s unexpected inheritance and o f Clennam’s descent into poverty.

Some o f the immediate fascination o f the film for the critics was this twopart structure. It highlights the novel’s dual themes (two nations,poverty and riches, morality versus money, etc.) but essentially it seems a very interesting cinematic exercise in its own right. Dickens is brought into the realms o f Rashomon as the same events are viewed from different perspectives. For example, when Little Dorrit visits Clennam in his rooms in Covent Garden, the scene plays quite differently in the two versions. In Part One, the emphasis is on Clennam’s embarrassment at his lowly living quarters, so that the reason for her visit is barely grasped. In Part Two, because we see the scene from her point o f view, the purpose o f the visit (to express gratitude to Clennam for helping her brother) is quite clear. Similarly, William Dorrit’s room in the Marshalsea is bigger in Part Two than Part One and the colours o f his clothes 22

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I cannot share Samuel’s view o f Joan Greenwood’s Mrs Clennam as “more queen than witch” - she seems to me the epitome o f Dickens’s withered crone groping belatedly for compassion - nor can I endorse his opinion o f Eleanor Bron’s Mrs. Merdle (“a dazzling society lady, an object o f envy and admira­ tion, not scorn”) where he seems to me to miss the self-satire in the performance.

More generally, Samuel argues that the film is “tepid, tasteful and tradi­ tionalist’, in the manner o f a classic serialization more than an imaginative re­ interpretation. It spring-cleans the novel’s background and even improves its weather, and the soundtrack inappropriately substitutes mild romanticism in place o f pulsating melodrama. Again the film can be defended from these charges. There is nothing traditional about the way the film has been struc­ tured. With its snatches o f Verdi contending for attention over the noise of buzzing flies (suggesting London as a decaying carcass) and clinking coins (which sound like chains), the soundtrack seems unusually eloquent and evocative. Also it is surely permissible to replace Dickens’s extravagantly bad weather with a kind o f chilly daylight to reflect the film’s emotional bleakness.

When Samuel suggests that the film celebrates Victoriana and becomes itself a costume museum and contemporary theme park, he is guilty o f exaggeration.

Can he point to a single aspect o f Victoriana that the film holds up for admiration?

Yet, in some regards, I feel a niggling accuracy about Samuel’s more general reservations. In fact, the virtually unanimous acclaim for the film in this country only aggravates my doubts. After all, if the film is that withering by implication about modern Britain, why has it found universal favour amongst critics for the most Conservative newspapers in the country? Should it not have offended people more, and made them uncomfortable? Samuel quotes a critic who claimed that ‘you luxuriate in the recreation o f a past world’, and although this seems to me an insensitive response to the grim Victorian world the filmmakers have painstakingly recreated, it does spotlight a problem o f the historical film. When so much attention is paid to accurate period detail, is there not always a danger that an audience will simply wallow in the period charm? How do you make the characters’ attire look like clothes and not fancy dress? Perhaps colour only intensifies the problem by prettifying the world still further. When one thinks o f the look o f Victorian society on film, the most powerful images one brings to mind are all black-and-white - e.g. the grotesque world conjured up in David Lynch’s The Elephant M an (1980), and the evocation o f the Victorian past in David Lean’s still unsurpassed Dickens adaptations, G reat Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). Little D orrit remains a major achievement but it does not entirely shed some o f the limits o f the historical film and the limits o f verisimilitude over dramatic imagination.

Every British filmmaker who attempts to do Dickens on screen has had to do so from out o f the shadow o f the David Lean adaptations. One reason for this is that some o f the most vivid and frightening childhood memories of today’s British directors and filmmakers come from those two films - the encounter with Magwitch in the graveyard in G reat Expectations, and the in two chase sequences which rival Lang in their fearful dramatization o f mob murder o f Nancy in Oliver Twist (which David Puttnam, for example, has said morality, mindlessly baying for blood. As a film interpretation of Dickens, made an indelible impression on his young mind). Yet if Little D orrit can be however, Oliver Twist had two particularly notable features. It emphasized the seen as a distinguished continuation of the Lean tradition, it is so in a particular dark side o f Dickens’s genius, an aspect that literary critics were only just sense. It is not simply because o f its casting o f Alec Guinness in a leading role:2 beginning to acknowledge after seeing him for so long as a comic, melodramathe reason is that Lean’s films, like Little Dorrit, can also be seen as films for tist or Christmas card moralist: to paraphrase Lionel Trilling, a world that had and about their times. The theme o f social mobility in Great Expectations recently seen Hitler, Goering and Goebbels could no longer accuse Dickens would have had great resonance for a Welfare State Britain in 1946, with a of exaggerating humanity’s capacity for madness and malevolence. Also the newly elected Socialist government promising greater opportunities for a film’s style indelibly established the Victorian age as a dark age, o f slum wider range o f its people than ever before. The sympathy Lean has for Pip in housing, institutionalized cruelty and childhood terror - a nightmare from the film might not have had the same political significance as that felt by some which, in the late 1940s, we seemed to be at last emerging.3 o f his audience (it probably derives from Lean’s self-confessed feelings o f in­ Apart from adaptation, however, there was always another tradition of feriority to intellectuals and consequent understanding o f Pip’s awkwardness, dealing with Dickens in cinematic terms, and that fears and hopes in his was influence. This is a vast and complicated field strange, elevated world), that could include discussion o f filmmakers as di­ but it had the same ef­ WRUNG THE NOVEL IN 1857, DICKENS GRUMBLED ABOUT verse as Eisenstein, Disney and Hitchcock. How­ fect. Similarly with Ber­ THE 'BLACK CLOUD OF POVERTY' IN EVERY TOWN, THE 'INEFFEC­ ever, if one were to select just two major directors nard Miles’s perform­ who did not adapt Dickens for the screen but whose TIVENESS' OF PARLIAMENT, THE 'INSOLENCE' OF THE PRIME ance as Joe Gargery: work is deeply Dickensian, one would need to look M iles, a prom in ent MINISTER...NO ONE AWARE OF THIS CAN MISS THE PARALLELS no further than D.W. Griffith and Charles Chaplin. supporter o f the Labour “It is as if Dickens had spoken by means of WITH CONTEMPORARY BRITAIN... SPECIFIC EVENTS AND Party (openly parading the camera,” said a contemporary critic of Broken his partisanship in a Blossoms (1919 )4 , and there is, of course, EisenCHARACTERS QUICKLY SUGGEST MODERN EQUIVALENTS... w artim e propaganda stein’s famous essay in Film Form comparing Grif­ fith with Dickens, and Griffith’s own professed ad­ movie like Dawn Guard), miration of both the writer’s technique (he learnt crosscutting from Dickens, representing the dignity o f labour in a characterization that is the most sym­ he said) and themes (a shared compassion for the downtrodden and a flair for pathetic in the film. And however one interprets the film’s ending, its unabashed sentiment and melodrama). Re-viewing Broken Blossoms recently, triumphant tone, distinctly different from the novel’s rewritten hesitant opti­ I was more than ever struck by its Dickensian atmosphere: a fog-bound mism, has a clear message o f hope for the time: the vanquishing o f the dead London that reeks of Bleak House; a central child-woman character (‘a child hand o f the past, which is explicitly Miss Havisham and, implicitly, Victorianwith a tear-aged face’) and a theme o f domestic imprisonment that are so ism and all it stands for. closely akin to the world of Little Dorrit. Even the man from China who comes In a different way, Oliver Twist is also a film for its time, a stunning visual to the girl’s rescue is a reminder o f Arthur Clennam. reinterpretation o f the novel that brings recent holocaust history insistently to As for Chaplin, he is to the 20th century what Dickens was to the 19th mind (so much so that it was suppressed in America for three years for its a comic and poet o f near mythic popularity' who used slapstick and sentiment alleged anti-Semitism). Its workhouse images are evocative o f newsreel shots as unlikely but uncommonly effective weapons to attack the injustices o f his o f concentration camps, and its film noir style stirs memories o f the pre-war society'. His most Dickensian film was Modern Times which, like Dickens’s anti-Fascist dramas o f Fritz Lang like M { 1931) and Fury( 1936), particularly C

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H ard Times, is an indictment of a mechanistic and materialistic social philosophy. The kinship be­ tween the artists - in popularity, humanity, radi­ calism and even in appearance, temper and trau­ matic childhood - was something that Chaplin recognized and rejoiced in. Even in the last year o f his life, so David Robinson’s admirable biogra­ phy tells us, Chaplin was still reading and re­ reading his favourite novel, Oliver Twist. Prior to the 1980s, Griffith and Chaplin have been the two cinematic artists closest to the spirit o f Dick­ ens and who have most poignantly projected a modern Dickensian temperament on celluloid.

I f Little D orrit is*a continuation o f the great David Lean tradition o f a Dickens adaptation o f and for our times, is there a 1980s British film in the Griffith-Chaplin tradition - that is, a film that evokes the spirit o f Dickens in the manner in which it treats modern society? In a modern Britain in which Victorian values have made such a resounding come-back, there surely was such a film, but how would one identify it? I would isolate five key Dickensian ingredients. These are (not necessarily in order o f importance): (a) a spirit o f outrageousness and a willingness to offend delicate sensibilities in a pursuit ofits own truth; (b) a flair for baroque or for caricature, the ability to create an imaginative world that went beyond ordinary realism, would teem with strange characters and was not afraid o f accusations o f exaggeration and melodrama; (c) a sense o f social rage and didacticism, a conviction that society was rotten at the root and a fearlessness in expressing that conviction; (d) a vision that was bizarre and surreal, subtly criminal, yet also stood in some way as emblematic o f the Condition o f England; and (e) a gift for poetic symbolism and imagery, a Dickensian ability to invest the material world with all kinds o f mysterious overtones, like the fog in Bleak House or the multi-faceted use o f prison imagery in Little D orrit: There are a number o f films that might be fitted into one or more o f these categories. For example, Neil Jordan’s M ona Lisa (1986) and Steven Poliakoffs H idden City (1987) both have the requisite evocation o f London as an intricate network o f sinister, impenetrable communications: it might be worth noting that Dickens is to British film noir what Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are to the American variety, with a similarly individual, stylized and influential view o f city streets as ‘dark with something more than night’. Yet there was only one film that fitted absolutely all the above criteria, and that was writer Hanif Kureishi’s and director Stephen Frears’s My B eau ­ tifu l Laundrette.

Outrageousness? Willingness to offend? Most certainly: Kureishi had ' some o f the Asian community up in arms over his hard-hitting depiction o f his upwardly mobile fellow-Pakistanis in Britain, and his portrayal o f the homo­ sexual love affair o f the film might well have fallen foul o f Clause 28 as ‘promoting’ homosexuality if it had occurred three years later. Baroque?

Strangeness? Here the dash o f Frears’s direction and Oliver Stapleton’s photography come into their own, creating a world not o f pallid realism but o f highly charged melodrama. Social rage and didacticism? Indeed: an astonishing picture o f the values o f 1980s’ Britain - its corruption, its materialism, its racism. “I ’ve been reading Orwell on how Britain is a very tolerant society, very decent,” said Kureishi at the time, “but that’s not so if you’re Asian.”5 A bizarre and surreal London: o f course, and o f a particular London community that has rarely found its way so vividly on the screen.

The clinching point, though, was the poetic image o f the Laundrette itself, Kureishi’s old curiosity shop and a complex and playful symbol that I am sure Dickens would have loved because it works completely naturalistically and yet so many things can be read into it. It is a metaphor and focal point o f Pakistani economic enterprise which alone gives them status in their adopted country.

It is an image o f modern Britain itself, as it attempts to transform derelict drabness into money-making fun-palace. It could symbolize the British endeavour to wash the country white, most o f all its immigrants, who must become more British than the British if they are to get on. It is a wicked take­ off o f The M an in the White Suit, complete with gurgling music and with an inventive hero whose creation is to be wrecked by an envious and vengeful mob. Or, o f course, it is simply a laundrette, and beautiful because it is mine.

In addition to all these My B eautifu l Laundrette had other Dickensian traits: a fear and hatred o f the mob, and a gift for comedy, fantasy and playfulness (like the hiding o f drugs in a false beard, or the casting o f spells to infect the Pakistani businessman’s mistress). It is a fanfare for the common man, like many o f Dickens’s works. And although a number o f the themes are peculiar to the immigrant situation in Thatcher’s Britain, where survival and assimilation are dependent more on money than education, the determination to dramatize them in terms o f satire and irony rather than strict social realism is a very Dickensian ploy.

In fact, it is possible to say that the Dickensian qualities o f My Beautiful Laundrette are more specific than these general characteristics. What it offers - in a concealed underlying structure that might not have been entirely conscious or intentional - is .a G reat Expectations for the 1980s. Like Great Expectations, it is about a hero determined to rise out o f his own situation and 24

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background and whose passage is eased by crimi­ nal money. I f this seems like an odd comparison it could be argued that, when Pip has arrived in London in G reat Expectations, he has come as a kind o f Victorian immigrant, confronting a strange land he has dreamed o f but never thought he would inhabit. Like someone in a foreign country, he too has to learn its rules from the bottom up - from how to hold your fork to how money and justice operate in high places - and the further he advances, the more he becomes aware o f its more sinister side. Although it is to the great credit o f My B eautifu l Laundrette that it does not try consciously to imitate G reat Expectations - it uses it as a temporary hook rather than as a consistent source - Omar (Gor­ don Warnecke) is nevertheless a close parallel to Pip, wanting to get on and rid himself o f the tainted associations, as he sees them, o f his lowly background.

His father (Roshan Seth) is the equivalent o f Dickens’s Joe Gargery: a thoroughly decent, dignified and principled man but also ineffectual and with a streak o f weakness. He does turn up to see the laundrette eventually but it is a bit like Joe Gargery’s visit to Pip in his surroundings in London: it is a belated and anti-climactic visit and he clearly does not belong in that world, nor want to belong in it.

Omar’s friend, Johnny (Daniel Day Lewis) is the film’s equivalent o f Herbert Pocket. Like Pip and Pocket in G reat Expectations, Omar and Johnny have started out fighting but end up as great friends and go into business together. Also as in G reat Expectations, their positions gradually are reversed.

In the novel, Pip as a boy could knock Pocket down but, as an adult, he is at Pocket’s service and winds up as his clerk. In My Beautiful Laundrette, Omar has been kicked around by Johnny at school but, now the two are adults, it is Johnny who is cleaning Omar’s floor.

There is also a neat variation on the character o f Estella in the scene when Omar, visiting the house o f his benefactor, is tempted and taunted by a provocative, snooty, intelligent young lady who is the benefactor’s daughter.

As the relationship develops, it is the lady who becomes more like Pip - keen to develop the relationship but ending up in despair - and Omar who becomes more like Estella, being stand-offish and, for his own reasons, clinging to his bachelor status.

The key question is: who is Kureishi’s Miss Havisham, the hero’s supposed benefactress who is actually contaminating his soul? Why o f course, it is a lady who never appears but whose name is much mentioned and whose presence is powerfully felt: Margaret Thatcher. “Here’s to Mrs Thatcher and your beautiful laundrette,” Omar is told, to which there is the response: “Do they go together?” Indeed they do.

Needless to say, in picking out Dickensian motifs in My B eautiful Laundrette, I am only concentrating on one aspect o f a complex movie. Clearly there are major differences between Dickens and Kureishi (the latter does not have Dickens’s narrative flair and structural ingenuity, for example - but then, who does?). Also I do not want the parallel to be seen as cultural or colonial appropriation - Kureishi is good perse, not because, in some respects, he is like Dickens.

Yet I am reminded that Dickens’s description o f G reat Expectations was “a grotesque tragi-comedy” and, although that description does not seem applicable to David Lean’s film adaptation, it does fit the tone o f My Beautiful Laundrette. Also (to return finally to Christine Edzard’s idea that prefaced this article) if Dickens were around today and looking at British cinema o f the 1980s, I am convinced the film he would like best, feel most at home with, would be My B eautiful Laundrette. In it, he would recognize something o f his own cheek, panache, passion, weird imagination, social indignation. He would not necessarily recognize another Charles Dickens: he would acknowl­ edge a kindred spirit.

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FO O TN O TES 1. The G uardian, 2 7 N ovem ber 1 9 8 7 .

2 . Because o f his performances in G reat Expectations, Oliver Twist and now Little Dorrit, Alec Guinness has become the screen’s most distinguished Dickensian actor. Indeed, when he crops up in the jungle towards the end o f Charles Sturridge’s film version o f Evelyn W augh’s A H a n d fu l o f Dust ( 1 9 8 8 ) and prevents the hero from leaving because at last he has found somebody who can read Dickens to him, it seems almost like an in-joke.”W e will not have any Dickens today,” Guinness says in his final speech, “ but tom orrow , and the day after that, and the day after t h a t ... L e t’s read Little D o rrit again. There are passages in that book I can never hear without the temptation to w eep.” Incidentally, Raphael Samuel’s strictures about the period film, where an obsession with historical detail can overwhelm drama and induce an inappropriate nostalgia, seems absolutely applicable to the film o f A H a n d fu l o f Dust, if not to Little Dorrit.

3. Interestingly Carol Reed’s Oliver ( 1 9 6 8 ) could also be read as a film o f its time, a celebration o f Cockney vitality and Swingin’ London but, significandy, as a thing o f the past, for, by the late 1 9 6 0 s, the image did seem to belong to a bygone era.

4 . The New York M orning Telegraph, as quoted in Lewis Jacobs, The Rise o f the A m erican Film , Teachers College Press, 1 9 6 7 ,p .3 8 9 .

5. Monthly Film Bulletin, Decem ber 1 9 8 5 .

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IN H IS REFLECTIONS ON THE NAME OF THE ROSE , U M BE R TO EC O CO M M EN TS TH A T “T H E A U T H O R M U ST N O T IN T ER -

IMA V I G A T O R PR ET B U T H E MAY T E L L WHY H E W RO TE H IS B O O K ” . ON T H E A SSU M PTIO N TH A T TH E SAME R IG H T EXTEN D S TO FILM M AK­ ERS T H IS A R TIC LE IS BASED ON D ISC U SSIO N S W ITH V IN C EN T WARD AND JO H N MAYNARD (D IR E C T O R -W R IT E R AND P R O ­ D U C E R RESPEC TIV ELY OF THE NAVIGATOR) A BO U T T H E O RIG IN S OF TH A T FILM

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WM H E F IL M had a number o f origins. One was a series o f mental images which occurred to Vincent Ward: the childhood notion o f tunnelling through the earth to the other side; the attempt to cross a busy motorway while hitch-hiking through Europe. Another origin was in A D istant M irror: The Calam itous Fourteenth Century by Barbara Tuchman, while a third was the survey released to the press a few years ago which indicated that teenagers were fearful and depressed about the future, and their major fear was nuclear annihilation.

Tuchman points to a number o f parallels between the period o f the 14 th century and our own period. The early 14th century was the period o f the “Black Death” which she argues led to a major upset in the frame o f mind o f the population. She argues that our age is much the same and that modern people can readily identify with the period of the Black Death. “We have a greater fellow feeling for a distraught age whose rules were breaking down under pressure of adverse and violent events. We recognize with a painful twinge the marks o f a period o f anguish when there is no sense o f an assured future.” (p. xvi) Vincent Ward argues that the plague o f our period is the “nuclear plague”, a plague which deprives our time o f a sense o f an assured future. An article in The Lancet o f June 6, 1981 by Dr Martin Eastwood argued that there are a number o f parallels between the Black Death and the effects o f nuclear war. The primary similarity he suggests is that medicine would be as incapable o f coping with the aftermath o f nuclear war as it was o f coping with the Black Death, and that the prospect o f nuclear war is capable of inducing a similar state o f mind to that o f the Black Death — one o f overwhelming fear and apathy in the popula­ tion. He argues that we are quite correct in seeing nuclear war as the plague o f our age.

Writing on the Black Death, Philip Ziegler says: “I f one were to seek to establish one generalization, one

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cliché perhaps, to catch the mood o f the Europeans in the second half o f the 14th century, it would be that they were enduring a crisis o f faith. Assumptions which had been taken for granted for centuries were now in question, the very framework for men’s reasoning seemed to be break­ ing up.” ( The Black Death, p. 287) “The Europeans o f this period lived in constant anticipation o f disaster. The ap­ parition o f the anti-Christ was announced many times and in many places.” (ibid p. 283) The survey o f secondary students indicates that they feel a similar constant anticipation o f disaster, and there are suggestions in the popular media o f a similar interest in millennialism today as was evident in the 14th century.

Millennialism (or millenarianism) is the belief in a future 1,000-year period o f rule on earth by Jesus Christ; and historically this belief has tended to increase in times o f political and social stress. A 1971 work by Norman Cohn, The Pursuit o f the M illennium, examined millennial move­ ments in the middle ages, but millennialism is alive and well today. As evidence for this, witness the growth in fun­ damentalist, millenarianist sects. The pastor o f one such church in Brisbane suggests the following reason for the increasing popularity o f groups such as his own Assem­ blies o f God: “Not only are we living in a state o f war, we are also in a state o f confusion, people don’t know what’s happening, and why it’s happening. We are adrift on a sea o f doubt and uncertainty.” (Pastor Reg Klimionok, on “One God, One Way, One Vote,” Background Briefing, Radio National, 26/ 10/ 86) These groups range from relatively mainstream churches such as those which clus­ ter around American tele-evangelists to more obscure groups such as Centre o f Knowledge and Supremacy.

What unites these disparate groups is a belief in the imminent end o f the earth in an apocalyptic battle be­ tween good and evil. 88 Reasons Why The R aptu re Will Be In 1988, by Edgar C Wisenant, argued that the world 7 2

DIGGING... TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD

This persistence o f belief in astrology suggests that ranges from the research undertaken into medieval would end in 1988 and cited as evidence such modern people have no reason to judge the charac­ mining methods to the use o f medieval notions of events as fires and famines, plagues and sickness the world. (There are three world views mentioned ters in the film on these grounds. In fact the men do such as AIDS. Wisenant was simply arguing in a in the film: the notion o f the antipodes; the notion not feel uncomfortable in modern Auckland at all. tradition which extends back to the period o f the They expect it to be different from Cumbria - after of the underworld; and the idea that the world was plague, but his writing is part o f a mood which all their cosmology tells them the other side o f the flat.) It includes superstitions such as the belief that forms the background to the lives o f many people the contagion o f the Black Death was carried by the earth will be different - yet it conforms to expecta­ today as it did in the Middle Ages. tions based on their own attitudes and beliefs. moon (see Tuchmanpp. 102-103 for similar ideas) One American tele-evangelist has even argued and the placing o f spikes on the roof o f the house that “any teaching o f peace prior to [Christ’s] Umberto Eco has pointed out that there are a number o f ways o f narrating the past. In Reflections to prevent witches landing on the roof. The placing return is heresy. I t’s against the word o f God. It’s o f a spike on the roof o f the Cathedral of course was anti-Christ.” It was reported in the media a number On The N am e O f The Rose he discusses three ways also to ward off evil spirits as well as o f years ago that Ronald Reagan being a “Tribute to God”. agreed with these views. With views I BELIEVE FAITH AND HOPE ARE PRE-REQUISITES FOR ACTION AND like this being treated seriously by The visual style o f The N aviga­ tor also seeks to refer to both histori­ public figures is it any wonder that CHANGE, REGARDLESS OF THE ODDS. NOT IN THE SENSE OF RELIGIOUS surveys find teenagers to be con­ cal periods. Vincent Ward based the HOPE AND FAITH, BUT IN THE SENSE OF FAITH IN THE POTENTIAL OF blues which predominate in many of cerned about nuclear annihilation?

HUMAN CREATIVITY. - VINCENT WARD the contemporary sequences on the These parallels between the blues in the illustrations to the Due mood o f the late 20th and the early de Berry’s Book o f Hours, and those found in o f narrating the past, and in Travels in Hyperreality 14th century suggest reasons why the film was set Chartres Cathedral. he characterizes a number o f ways o f conceptualiz­ in both o f these periods, and the reasons for the ref­ ing the middle ages. The three main ways of In attempting to use the Middle Ages to make erences to the nuclear threat in the film. One o f the narrating the past are: Romance (where the past is writers o f the film, Geoff Chappie, is a well known a statement about the contemporary world Vincent just an excuse for adventures - as in Dungeons and Ward sought to make a positive comment as an and respected anti-nuclear activist in New Zealand.

Dragons games, for example; the swashbuckling antidote to the constant anticipation o f disaster. “I The program “One God, OneWay, One Vote” believe faith and hope are pre-requisites for action novel (or presumably film) where “real” people and examined the process by which religious funda­ imaginary characters share a number o f adventures and change, regardless of the odds. Not in the sense mentalism has been appropriated by the secular which could occur in any age; and the historical o f religious hope and faith, but in the sense o f faith right in America, and how this movement was in the potential o f human creativity.” novel where imaginary characters are inserted into gaining influence in Australia, pointing to the a “real” period in order to say something about that Barbara Tuchman explained her writing o f A political significance o f the growth o f end-of-theperiod. Such a narrative may also seek to say some­ D istant M irror by saying, “If our last decade or two world movements. thing about the period in which it was constructed o f collapsing assumptions has been a period o f un­ John Maynard has also discussed his interest in as Eco’s The N am e O f The Rose does, or as The usual discomfort, it is reassuring to know that the the persistence o f superstition in the modern world N avigator seeks to do. human species has lived through worse before.” (p. and points out that the film does not judge or The N avigator is not a Romance because o f the xv). Perhaps much the same sentiment underlays belittle the superstitions o f the Cumbrian miners, care taken over historical specificity in the film. This because modern people are equally superstitious.

The Navigator.

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WHEN IS A SERIES NOT A SERIES? WHEN IT'S THE LAST RESORT. WHY CAN ACT OF BETRAYAL BE CONSIDERED AS THE MOST 'HISTORICAL' MINI-SERIES OF 1988?

INA BERTRAND

EXAMINES THE VARIETY OF

AUSTRALIAN TELEVISION PRODUCTION IN 1988 AND EXPLODES SOME OF THE CATEGORIES.

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In all developed broadcasting systems the characteristic organization, and therefore the characteristic experi­ ence, is one of sequence or flow . 1

There has also been considerable discussion o f some o f the divisions within , f o r R a y m o n d w i l l i a m s , ‘flow’ was the defining charthe ‘series’ form, notably the situation comedy and the detective series, but acteristic o f television - both as a technology and as a cultural form there has beep litde attention to the form as such. For instance, at least two - most viewers experience television rather as a series o f ‘segments’.2 modes o f the.series form can be distinguished: either a continuing cast o f Both on the screen and in ancillary markets (press reviews, television I characters endlessly re-enacts variants o f the same situation in the same program magazines, etc), television promotion invites viewers to location (c.g.H ey D ad or the US series Fam ily Ties), or a single character or select segments from the flow to suit their needs, accustoming us to define small group o f characters comes into contact with new characters and moves what we may expect to see under generic headings - new s, game shows, sports, through hew situations (e.g.Patrol B oat or the US series The Equalizer). In sitcoms, etc. Each o f these is then further segmented - items within'each new order to maintain the series structure, however, in both cases the narrative o f bulletin, scenes within each drama, the performance ot individual contestants each unit o f the scries must be conservative and circular, returning to the same within each game. In addition, the advertised programs are interspersed with point at the end o f each episode, ready to start again in the next. Unlike the other segments, equally identifiable by an experienced viewer, but not soap opera, in which the action overflows from one episode to the next, each signalled in advance - advertising for consumer products and services, channel episode o f a series is-closed and discrete, with theoretically no limit to the identifications and promotions for future programs, community service a n -. nouncements. The relationship between the flow o f television and the genres number o f episodes or necessary logical sequence among them.

Serial form has had less theoretical consideration than the series. Like the recognizable to audiences is constantly changing, producing problems o f latter, it has a continuing cast o f characters, but that is all it shares with the definition for those cultural commentators who need to pin'down their object series. Like the soap opera it offers narrative continuity across episodes, but o f study. unlike the soaps it is designed to reach complete closure, so it has fewer In the area o f television drama, for instance, some types o f programming storylines and offers audiences more limited opportunities for identification, format are more easily identifiable than others. O ne-off dramas are either usually concentrating on the point o f view o f one or a small group o f ‘films’, when they have been first released in cinemas and come to television characters. at the end o f their useful life on the cinema circuit, or ‘teleriiovies, or T o sum up the difference, the series has been described as “a complex ‘teleplays’3 when they have been initially produced specifically for television. discourse with a recurring structure, made up o f autonomous discursive units The majority o f television drama, however, is produced in packages (often o f o f a narrative character which are broadcast periodically and which are 13 or 26 episodes at a time), suitable for programming in regular daily or weekly timeslots. /‘V~" % „• * : interchangeable,”6 while the serial is “a narrative discourse (with a non­ Among these, the ‘soap opera’ has attracted considerable critical atten- I recurring structure) made up o f only partially autonomous units which are not : interchangeable. ”7 tion.4 Starting on the model o f the long-running radio serials, the television soap opera began as a segment o f daytime programming, aimed primarily at These distinctions provide a good starting-point for discussing the articulation o f the flow o f television. But, like many terms widely used in film women working in the home. Low budgets were not a problem as the and television analysis (‘docu­ narratives concentrated on per­ n mentary’ is another), the dis­ sonal relationships, often within crete notional categories they a limited number o f interiors.

THE SERIES HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS A COMPLEX DISCOURSE WITH A RECUR­ construct often prove inadequate Though daytime serials like Days RING STRUCTURE MADE UP OF AUTONOMOUS DISCURSIVE UNITS OF A in practice.

O f Our Lives continue to have a From the above discussion, loyal following, the soap opera NARRATIVE CHARACTER WHICH ÂRE BROADCAST PERIODICALLY AND WHICH it should, for instance, be obvi­ format has now also migrated ARE INTERCHANGEABLE... WHILE THE SERIAL IS A NARRATIVE DISCOURSE ous that the soap opera is actu­ to evening timeslots ( D allas, ally a ‘special case’ o f the serial Neighbours, Richm ond H ill), at­ (WITH A NON-RECURRING STRUCTURE) MADE UP OF ONLY PARTIALLY AU­ form. That becomes clearer still tracting higher budgets and TONOMOUS UNITS WHICH ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE... in those cases where the writers therefore able to expand the ■ have been given sufficient notice range o f characters and events o f the demise o f their (originally intended to be) ‘endless’ program to convert to appeal to the expected wider range o f viewers in the evening. ^ „ f J| it into a serial ‘proper’, and provide narrative closure - the winding up o f the Both daytime and evening soaps have a regular cast o f characters, involved multiple storylines in a satisfying and dramatic final episode (e.g. Carson’s Law in interwoven storylines which allow characters to be written in or out virtually or Prisoner). at will. These stories provide the possibility o f multiple identifications for audiences, and never reach more than temporary narrative closure. As other THE 'MINI-SERIES' writers have pointed out5, a wedding in a film usually functions., both as Others have already pointed out that the term ‘mini-series’ is a misnomer.8 dramatic climax and narrative resolution, while in a soap opera it is at most a Logically, it should be confined to those programs which present a limited pause on the road to further complications. / h o u g h

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number o f discrete, autonomous nar­ rative units, and there are certainly examples o f such a format - Scales o f Justice, Singles, Women O f The Sun. The term had been applied to these programs, but more commonly it is used to refer to what would be better described as a short (or ‘mini-’) serial - a narrative leading to closure across a limited number o f episodes. But even this would not solve the problem o f definition. For a start, how many episodes (or television hours) may be considered to disdnguish between a short serial (a ‘mini-series’) and a long serial (a ‘serial’ proper)? The answer can only be arbitrary and would inevi­ tably lead to anomalies.9 Some have tried to use program­ ming patterns as the distinguishing feature - calling a program a ‘serial’ if presented in weekly episodes, and a ‘mini-series’ if programmed in longer blocks on successive evenings. But these distinctions have become less and less useful: even the benchmark example o f the American program Roots was later rebroadcast ipweekly episodes.

Hybrid forms are also increasingly popular. An example is The Flying D octo h f which combines serial (storylines concerning the regular characters overflowing from one weekly episode to the next) and series (storylines, often involving transient characters, completed in a single episode). Perhaps the most complete hybridization occurs in A Country Practice, which is pro­ grammed as a series (each week’s episodes discrete and autonomous, based on medici-arid^oryeterinary crises in the ‘practices’ o f the tide), but has elements o f the serial form in the spread o f each story over two episodes broadcast on successive'evenings*, and in the ongoing soap opera o f the apparendy endless interwoven.personal stories o f the inhabitants o f the township o f Wandin Bailey. It appears to be a series o f mini-series inside ,^ soap opera! good case could be made that the most useful approach to the ^^Culatiohipf the fi(6w o f television might rather be through postmodernist ihpncepts o f repetition and pastiche, rather than through attempts to construct -discrete categories like the ‘mini-series’. | The term, however, continues to have popular currency, and, like ‘docu­ mentary’; is now unlikely to be dislodged. So, in the rest o f this article it will be used to refer to those examples o f television drama presented in serial form over more than one episode, with closure achieved by the final episode though the maximum length must remain unspecified. Rather than make generalizations about such an unstable construct, however, it might be more useful to look at individual examples and ways o f grouping these. And, in this

exercise, I do not find the concept of the ‘historical mini-series’ particu­ larly helpful.

HISTORICAL MINI-SERIES There is a parallel here with the wide­ spread faith in the myth o f the domi­ nance of nostalgia in Australian movies. In numerical terms, there has never been a time in the whole his­ tory o f Australian feature film pro­ duction when movies set in the past outnumbered those dealing with con­ temporary subject-matter. Rather, certain benchmark films - basically the most successful o f those desig­ nated ‘AFC-genre’ by Dermody and Jacka10- dominated critical discourse, establishing a public perception o f the industry that has persisted, no matter how erroneously.

Similarly, though the connection between the ‘mini-series’ format and the past is substantial, to assume that it is a necessary connection is to go much too far. When the term was coined in relation to the American program Roots, it seemed to apply both to the programming format (in blocks over successive nights) and to the content (a quintessential ‘chronicle o f origin’).

But since then, the term has been applied so much more widely that neither o f these criteria, and not even their presence in combination, is enough to cover the field adequately.

Not only is it misleading to assume that all television mini-series represent the past, whether fictional or historically specific and ‘factual’, but to separate those that do and label them ‘historical mini-series’ is to imply that the rest are somehow outside history. I prefer to think of all fictional narrative (particularly in a popular culture form like television) as encapsulating the ‘history’ o f its moment o f production, regardless o f the historical period which it ostensibly represents/recreates, or the accuracy or otherwise o f those representations/ recreations.

Nevertheless, it is not surprising that serial form is the favoured fictional form for the representation on television o f the past: not only are there good practical reasons (in the spreading o f costs for period reconstructions over more hours o f saleable program time), but the form itself produces a history and so is eminently suitable for the re-production o f historical narrative. We are used, in western culture, to reading our written history packaged in (se­ quential, motivated, and therefore explanatory and ultimately closed) narra­ tives: the television mini-series operates in a similar fashion, the major difference being in the (much more limited) truth claims that it makes. It is also understandable that professional historians, and some sections o f the viewing

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political scandal), opened up many others. Because o f poor response to the mini-series, the soap opera was delayed to the non-ratings period in late November, and then the first episodes were presented in what is now typical mini-series format - two two-hour episodes on successive nights.

Stringer (starting May, Channel 2, eight episodes, eight hours) combined elements o f the series and the serial, with an open ending untypical o f a series/serial as short as this. House Aw/e/started June, Channel 2) was advertised as comprising 30 one-hour episodes, implying serial form and ultimate closure, though episodes broadcast so far appear to be rather in the series format.

The most confused (and confusing) o f all is The Last Resort (started April, Channel 2), which was also advertised as com­ prising 30 hourly episodes: this time, however, the producers could not make up their minds what format they were aiming for. It started as a series, with each episode centring on one o f the continuing characters or one o f the transient guests at the Hotel Isis. After a few episodes, the continuing storylines became so complex that the program, could contain no more, and shifted gears into a full-blown soap opera. As the last o f the 30 episodes drew nearer, the mind boggled at how satisfactory closure might be found for all o f these complexities: given the cataclysmic events already suggested, if not actually depicted, a nuclear explosion on the Bondi seafront seemed not altogether outside the bounds o f possibility...

These anomalous cases do tend to confirm my reservations about attempting to define the ‘mini-series’ as an autonomous form. However, the rest of the programmes listed provide a sufficiently cohesive body o f texts to continue the discussion.

First, in comparison with the output of previous years, there is a clear shift away from the ‘blockbuster’ of eight tolO hours presented in two- to three-hour blocks on successive nights, and towards the two-episode format (still presented on successive nights): in fact, half o f the mini-series listed and a majority o f those first broadcast in 1988 take this form. This seems to be an attempt at compromise between the interests o f the producers (who find the blockbuster format useful in establishing their product as a special event) and those o f audiences (who, even after home video allowed timeshifting o f broadcast programs, have often expressed resentment o f the time swallowed in a single week by a blockbuster presentation like D irtwater Dynasty).

This industrial decision - the trend towards the ‘two-episode four-hour’ mini-series - may well also have aesthetic consequences: the sprawling, multi­ layered narratives o f the blockbusters cannot easily be contained within such a limited time frame. For the producer who prefers a larger canvas, or for the subject which requires it, one response is to produce a sequel, a second series, like Fields O f Fire in 1988. Another is to shift towards the model o f the BBC serial, screened weekly in one (or occasionally two) hour episodes: during 1988, The True Believers was a good example.

This model goes back to almost the beginning o f television, long before the term ‘mini-series’ appeared. In Britain, the one-off television drama was rhetorically constructed as ‘art television’, by its association (through shared authors and/or actors) with socially-valued literature and ‘serious theatre’.13 This construction was then extended to what have been called ‘classic serials’, a term initially reserved for the adaptation for television in serial form o f classic works o f literature, but later including more recent socially-valued literary texts, and also reconstructions o f history and/or biography. “Thus several historical/biographical serials have been aired which, while not originating in a novel from within the Great Tradition, share the settings, style, period and heroic personae o f their literary predecessors.” 14

public, unused to the intricacies of the arguments o f the competing truth claims o f different visual forms, find this confusing.

A closer look at those locally-produced programs presented during 1988 as ‘’mini-series’ might make some of these points clearer.

AUSTRALIAN MINI-SERIES IN 1988 There has been a general perception, both within the industry and among cultural commentators, that the format is threatened by the changes to the tax laws, specifically the demise o f 10BA funding. Regardless o f whether this is true in the long run, there is as yet no evidence o f it for the casual observer.11 The following locally-produced ‘mini-series’ were broadcast in Melbourne (and presumably nationally) to mid-November:12 M O N TH

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D irtw ater Dynasty Always Afternoon M elba The A lien Tears A ll The Way Fields o f Fire 2 Spit Macphee G reat Bookie Robbery (R) I C an Jum p Puddles (R) The Shiralee The True Believers Bodyline (R) The Four-minute Mile Glass Babies (R) Barlow & Chambers: A Long Way fro m H om e ' Act o f Betrayal Shout! Johnny O’Keefe story (R) A Fortunate Life (R) Rainbow W arrior Conspiracy Cash an d Co (R) The Body Business (R) Em m a, Queen o f the South Seas A Dangerous Life The Henderson K ids (R)

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THE CLASSIC SERIALS' OF 1988 Literature, history and biography are, then, the stuff o f the ‘classic serial’, and all these are well represented in Australian mini-series broadcast during 1988.

In the past, Australian literature has been mercilessly plundered for adaptation to film and television. During 1988, however, only two literary fictions were serialized for television: The Shiralee and Spit Macphee. The repeat screening o f the adaptation o f Bert Facey’s autobiography, A Fortunate Life, links these literary texts with the other biographical presentations M elba, The FourM inute Mile, Barlow a n d Chambers: A Long Way From H om e, and the repeat o f Shout! The Story O f Johnny O’Keefe. Historical events were the primary subject-matter o f The True Believers, The Rainbow W arrior Conspiracy, Emm a, Queen o f the South Seas and A Dangerous L ife, and provided an authenticating background for the fiction o f Fields O f Fire 2, The A lien Tears, Always Afternoon, and even to some extent A ll The Way and The D irtwater Dynasty. In formal terms, these can all be understood within the definition o f ‘classic serial’.

The link proposed within this definition between literature and history, through biography, suggests a view o f history as narrative, the past retold in the interests o f the present, and through one or other o f its available ideological positions. So, as productions o f Australia’s Bicentennial year, our mini-series may be able to tell us something about how the Australian public sees Australia’s past.

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In addition, A Country Practice continued throughout the year; the American mini-series set in Australia, The Thorn Birds, was repeated in September; and there were several programs difficult to accommodate even within the elastic definitions I am now blithely applying.

A ll The Way was advertised as a mini-series, but it was also intended as a pilot for a continuing soap opera, so the initial presentation, though it contained one complete storyline (concerning journalists on the trail o f 30

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is uncomfortably willing to compromise principles for expediency, is difficult to avoid.

There is no comparable realist reconstruction o f conservative politics,16 which is not surprising, given the association o f the larrikinism o f the left wing with traditional Australian mythic heroes.

There are, however, two related aspects o f these historical reconstructions that are more surprising: their treatment o f the contribution o f diverse cultures to Australian national history, and their depiction of moments o f history not specifically and narrowly ‘Australian’ at all.

Nineteen eighty-eight has been the occasion o f a revival o f popular interest in history, with pageants, re-enactments and other public performances, and commemorative activities from stamp issues to tree plantings. The popularity o f local mini-series is a part o f that phenomenon, and one that television programmers have taken full advantage of, with new productions spread throughout the year, and several o f the more popular earlier productions repeated.

Many o f the established Australian myths have been recycled in the process. A favourite is the ‘Aussie battler’. This can take the form o f the exceptional talent, fighting for recognition: Dame Nellie Melba overcoming the prejudice against ‘colonials’, or John Landy taking on all comers in the race to beat the four-minute mile barrier.

But, as well as depicting a ‘Great Man’ (and even occasionally woman), the Aussie battler stereotype can be constructed to appeal rather to the audience’s desire to see the ‘little man’ win: to watch Bert Facey overcome disastrous family and economic circumstances to finally announce that he has had a sat­ isfying and fulfilling (indeed a ‘fortunate’ ) life, or to share with Johnny O ’Keefe the conviction that he can somehow make the Australian and inter­ national public recognize the value o f local talent in the rock scene.15 It is from such ‘historical’ characters as these that the fictional battlers draw their authenticity: Spit Macphee taking on the bigotry o f the country town, Macaulay finding unexpected fulfilment in his relationship with his small daughter (his ‘Shiralee’) on the road. Though the emphasis is still on the males in this myth, there is a distinct role for women, as strong and independent characters, even if ultimately financially dependent: it is Buster who calls the tune in The Shiralee, despite the double handicap o f being both female and a child, and Macaulay’s chauvinism, though no more condemned in the mini­ series than in the novel, seems somehow more obvious and certainly more objectionable than in earlier versions o f the story.

In one sense, the Labor politicians o f The True Believers are also con­ structed within this myth. Menzies represents the classical establishment position - lack o f faith in indigenous endeavour, combined with a fawning on the metropolis, represented by the British crown. Against this position stands Chifley, who is given most screen-time and constructed as the hero o f the drama.

He battles forces both within and outside the Labor party, who would threaten his vision o f a just Australian nation, led by the party o f ‘the people’.

However, unlike the other sagas of battlers (except for Shout!), this one ends on a downbeat, with Chifley dead, Doc Evatt defeated in the battle for leadership and Calwell launched on the war with the Industrial Group and the Democratic Labor Party that was to keep the ALP out o f office for 20 years.

To some extent, the writers are constrained by the ‘facts’ o f history: it is, however, their choice to end at this particular, ideologically ambivalent, moment. Chifley’s idealism as a ‘true believer’ is never in doubt, but even he has been forced to compromise to keep the party in power, and his successors are depicted as lesser men, even more fallible: comparison with the present o f the program’s production and presentation, in which a Labor Prime Minister

AUSTRALIA IN THE PACIFIC REGION In a year o f nationalistic fervour like the Bicentennial, a restricted, even chauvinistic, definition o f ‘Australian history’ might have been expected.

But this has not occurred. Even those mini-series which celebrated the achievements o f national heroes, chose not to do so in an entirely parochial fashion. Dame Nellie Melba’s career within Australia was full o f drama and controversy: a dramatic reconstruction o f her life could well have concentrated on this. Though the decision to construct the narrative around her interna­ tional career may have been primarily for economic reasons17, it is not only that: it is also a recognition that Australia exists in a wider context. Similarly, The Four-Minute Mile might have been made as John Landy’s story alone, but it is presented rather as that o f an Australian among international competitors.

There are even three productions o f 1988 which have only marginal relation to Australia. The Rainbow W arrior Conspiracy tells a story that received wide coverage in the Australian media, and that, as the most dramatic international incident in the recent history o f our nearest neighbour, can be assumed to interest Australians in general. It also activates a comparison between New Zealand’s independent stance on the visit o f nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed vessels to its ports, with Australia’s compliance with American demands that they not be required to notify whether their vessels are nuclear-capable. However, in terms o f the narrative, and o f the allocation o f screen time, direct representation o f Australia occurs only marginally, when the fleeing terrorists take up temporary refuge on Australian territory at Norfolk Island. Similarly, Emm a, Queen o f the South Seas (the biography o f a remarkable Samoan-American woman who carved out an empire for herself in the Pacific islands) and A Dangerous Life (the story o f the fall o f the Marcos regime in the Philippines) draw on dramatic incidents in the Pacific region, without being directly concerned with narrowly Australian history. It is as if Australians were redefining their place in an international context, from one o f narrow introspection and dependence on ‘great and powerful friends’ to one o f extroverted recognition of a wider world about which our view is as valid as that o f anyone else.

There was a time in the history o f Australian feature films (back before the ‘drought’ brought on by World War II) which was characterized by a similar confident regionalism: filmmakers travelled regularly back and forth across the Tasman, and into the Pacific islands to make films like The Adventures ofAlgy (Beaumont Smith 1925) or The Jun gle Woman (Frank Hurley 1926). In the revived feature film industry we have had occasional ventures into the Pacific like Ear East (John Duigan 1982) or Ih e T ear o f Living Dangerously (Peter Weir 1982), and the transTasman co-production, The N avigator (Vincent Ward) in 1988. But it has not previously been a feature of television drama production.

When the mini-series Tusitala was produced in 1986, several Australian reviewers expressed puzzle­ ment at any local producer wishing to make a program with such a marginal Australian narrative component as a brief visit o f Robert Louis Stevenson to Sydney.

No such comments have greeted the 1988 crop - at least, not within Australia.18 It would be possible to take a narrowly economic determinist line in all this: in today’s financial climate, it is certainly easier to raise capital or arrange pre-sales for international projects than for narrowly nationalist ones. But this would be to underestimate other influ­ ences on producers, including the recognition that Australian audiences are now much more willing than they were even a few years ago to accept such pro­ grams.

AUSTRALIA'S MULTICULTURAL HERITAGE I f the shift towards a regional perspective has been largely unselfconscious, the recognition o f the contri­ bution o f diverse cultures to Australian national life has not! Rather, it has been an area o f public and widespread debate, and the Bicentennial has itself provoked much o f this controversy.

Early in the year, the most heated arguments centred on the ethics of ‘celebrating’ any anniversary o f the conquest o f one people by another: black boycotts o f official Bicentennial ‘celebrations’ and their conduct o f competing events as occasions for mourning have produced considerable discomfort C

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• characterized as allowing personal ambition to override natural justice, for instance, in his treatment o f the blacks on his property. Again, this is the quintessential conservative position, representing the blacks as loyal servants, who will remain loyal as long as their rightful masters perform the duties o f ste­ wardship that the master-servant relationship entails. And, in typical melodra­ matic fashion, it is Tarbox who meets a grisly end (electrocuted when a lightning bolt catches the metal rabbit trap he is spinning round his head to ward off attack by infuriated aboriginal tribesmen): by contrast, Eastwick is allowed to die in his bed, frustrated only in his desire to establish a continuing dynastic line.

Gender representations are equally conventional and conservative. De­ spite the titillating suggestion o f potential incest in the relationship between Kate (Eastwick’s first wife) and her father, there is never any doubt about the role women may (or perhaps even must) play - as supporters and helpmeets o f men. In the long run, however, the Dirtwater empire is created just as much by women as by men, and the female characters provide more interesting and stronger resistance to Eastwick’s arrogance than do any o f the males, even if it is ultimately (a male) God who defeats his grand dynastic plans.

I f there were ever an example o f history being constructed to meet the needs o f the present, this is it. Its ideological position is even less ambiguous than that o f The True Believers, with which it can in many ways be contrasted.

among the white community. It is perhaps the degree o f this discomfort among whites, combined with the lack o f finance among blacks, that has inhibited this aspect o f Australian history from being depicted in television drama during 1988. There have been a number o f documentaries and plenty o f news reports round the issue, but the only ones o f the listed mini-series to even mention blacks are The D irtw ater Dynasty (discussed below) and A Fortunate L ife, and these do so only incidentally.

Black pressure (and white guilt) has been maintained throughout the year, fuelled particularly by the continuing Royal Commission into black deaths in custody. At the same time, the debate on national immigration policy has revived, specifically on whether a preferred racial mix in current and fiiture immigration should be specified. Three 1988 mini-series have depicted the relations between white Australians several generations removed from their immigrant roots, and newer (particularly non-British) immigrants: Always Afternoon, The A lien Tears and Fields O f Fire 2. All three, in varying degrees, provide expression for liberal guilt at the continued intolerance within the general Australian community to national/ racial/ language difference. In each case, war acts as a catalyst, polarizing attitudes and forcing individuals to take sides. The first two concern attitudes during World War I towards civilians o f German descent, the third concerns the rivalry between Italians and British in the Queensland cane fields after World War II. Two earlier revisionist exposes o f actual historical incidents were The Cowra B reakout (1985) and The D unera Boys (1985). The A lien Tears and Always Afternoon continue in that revisionist tradition, but use the historical facts o f the internment camps established under the Aliens Restrictions Act as a background to a fictional story. The stories, therefore, have greater freedom, but in both cases the result is an emphasis on the romantic elements o f the nar­ rative, presented in the mode o f melodrama:19 political differences which led to bitter and lethal social conflicts have been personalized to become simple stories o f star-crossed lovers. If there is a message here for viewers in the Bicentennial year, it is perhaps one that favours the compromises o f multiculturalism over the absolutes o f the earlier policies o f assimilation or integra­ tion.

CONTEMPORARY MINI-SERIES AND "ACT OF BETRAYAL" One o f the problems not so far addressed is just when history ends and the present begins. For their ‘factual’ basis, it is easy to classify A Dangerous Life, The Rainbow W arrior Conspiracy and Barlow an d Chambers. A Long Way From H om e as classic serials, and natural, then, to assume that they also represent ‘history’. But this is history almost contemporary with its re-creation for television.

Glass Babies and The Body Business also represent a contemporary world, without any pretence to being ‘classic serials’ and with no claim on history at all. In most earlier discussions o f the mini-series as a form, such programs have been largely overlooked. They do represent a minority of current mini-series productions (the above examples had to be taken from the repeats as no comparable programs were first broadcast during 1988), but they also are numerous enough to undermine any easy equation between the mini-series and the representation o f the past.

The program o f 1988 which best illustrates the interaction o f past and present and so bridges the historical and contemporary mini-series is A ct O f Betrayal.

In a taut thriller, the audience is introduced to a cast o f characters who have all been constructed by their pasts, so that their paths cross in the present.

Michael McGurk is a committed Irish nationalist, who over a period o f time has become disillusioned with violence as a strategy to achieve national unity.

Events in his personal life (his daughter still-born and his wife unable to bear further children) influence his effectiveness as a terrorist, compelling him to attempt to save the life o f a woman and child caught up inadvertently in a trap set for a male victim. He is relieved when the nationalist movement swings to­ wards more peaceful strategies, but when violence is once again invoked, and particularly when a boy about the age o f his own son is killed by a bomb blast

"THE DIRTWATER DYNASTY"

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The world o f the D irtw ater Dynasty operates without such compromises.

Geoff Mayer has already described how the program functions as melo­ drama:20 my concern is with its relation to ‘history’, less in terms o f how accurately it might have portrayed a past time, than with how it reflects the values o f the time o f its production.

Through the hero, Richard Eastwick, the narrative provides the quintes­ sential expression o f the liberal (in Australian political terms conservative) ethic o f individualism, which is also, as Colin Macarthur has pointed out, one o f the major ideologies informing western historiography. There are parallels between the fictional Richard Eastwick and the real-life Stanley Kidman, notably in their acquisition o f a string o f cattle stations that enabled them to overland animals from the far north o f Australia to the southern cities without leaving their own property, and less significantly in the Scottish origins and forceful personalities o f their wives.22 But the program is important, not so much for such parallels (or for its failure to construct an ‘accurate’ portrait o f a ‘real’ person) but rather for its choice, in 1988, o f such a protagonist. In the wake of the 1987 financial crash, and in the context o f the growth o f the New Right, and the ‘Joh for Prime Minister’ campaign, it can be seen as a forceful expression o f rural conserva­ tism.

Richard Eastwick’s behaviour, despite his lack o f moral scruples, is presented as not merely acceptable, but even necessary in the struggle to wrest human progress from an antagonistic nature. As Australia’s real wealth is in the land, the people who work it must be the most important in the country, usually gravely underestimated by the city people who ride on their coat-tails.

As he builds his fortune, Richard Eastwick has, within acceptable melodra­ matic conventions, strokes o f incredible good fortune. But, ultimately, he is a self-made man, and other men (and, o f course, women too) are eventually forced to give way before him. His final defeat can only be at the hands o f the one greater power - God himself. There is no doubt in either Richard’s or the audience’s mind that this God is very much male - Richard’s last words are ‘He got me: the old bastard got me’.

Eastwick’s survival o f an earlier depression is an object lesson to those who may be smarting under the effects o f the 1987 disaster: it suggests that for those who work hard and refuse to give in, luck will eventually turn. Those who were really wiped out in the crash may not find that particularly comforting, but those for whom it was only a frightening rumour may well be convinced, and in the process reassured that there is nothing basically wrong with the capitalist system, despite its occasional hiccups.

Eastwick’s insistence on the letter o f the law is constructed as sometimes counter-productive (for instance, in driving away friends like Lonely), but is still never entirely condemned. The program upholds his right at least to establish his own priorities, even if that means placing dynasty-building and property acquisition above those humanist values which turn Josh and Lonely into sentimental fools, unable to make the most o f their opportunities.

Hasky Tarbox, on the other hand, personifies evil. He is represented iconically as leering and ugly against Eastwick’s charm and good looks, and

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in a London street, he defects and gives evidence against former colleagues.

This brings him, and his wife and son, as the ‘Nolan’ family, to Australia, under the protection o f a British policeman.

Callaghan, the professional gunman hired from USA by the nationalists in Ireland to trace and execute McGurk, also carries history (both personal and public) within him. He was trained in Vietnam to kill, and found that after the war was over there was no other task that he could perform so effectively. But he is now old enough to look forward to retirement. On what he has promised himself will be his last ‘jo b ’, he finds himself drawn into the kind o f personal relationship which he had long ago decided was not possible for him, and so into a re-assessment o f his values.

Quin, the leader o f the Old Erin Club in Sydney, is a product o f an earlier migration from Ireland. His grandmother arrived in Australia with his father as a babe in arms, after her husband had been killed in ‘the Troubles’ in 1916.

She has brought up Quin with a passionate Irish nationalism that is all the stronger for his never having even visited Ireland. As Callaghan becomes more human, Quin becomes more fanatical, and, so the sad history o f Ireland is re­ enacted on Australian soil, leaving McGurk/Nolan with no hope o f escaping the consequences o f his rejection o f violence.

In the process o f this contemporary story, history has become the major focus. For each o f the major characters the personal is very much the political, and so major historical issues are opened up: the contribution o f immigrants to Australian culture and the competing philosophies which would insist that they either retain or deny their national origins, the role o f violence in the settlement o f political disputes, gender issues including the appropriateness of gender-based role divisions particularly within marriage, and ultimately the place o f Australia within an international community in which national boundaries have become at the same time more insistent and less enforceable.

This contemporary story could make out a good claim to being one o f the most ‘historical’ o f all the Australian mini-series broadcast so far this year.

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CONCLUSION As the Australian community has become embroiled in the debate over whether and if so, how, to ‘celebrate’ the Bicentennial o f white settlement o f Australia, they have enthusiastically welcomed locally-produced mini-series that have epitomized those national sentiments o f pride and guilt increasingly entangled in our representations o f history.

Despite the time lag caused by the production process, these programs, broadcast in 1988, speak to Australian viewers through their preconceptions and prejudices, their beliefs and myths. Historians o f the future will find them a rich source o f data on the values o f Australian society and the conflicting ideologies operating within it after 200 years o f white settlement.

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FO O TN O TES 1 Raymond Williams, Television: technology a nd cultural form , Fontana 1 9 7 4 , p .8 6 2 . John Ellis, Visible Fictions: cinema, television, video, Roudedge and Kegan Paul 1 9 8 2 , p. 1 1 2 3. The status o f the film released only on video cassette is ambivalent: there are signs that it is developing an institutional identity and perhaps also a distinct narrative econom y, but there has been little critical attention to such issues.

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10. Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka, The Screening o f A ustralia, Currency Press, Vol. 1 1 9 8 7 , Vol. 2 1 9 8 8 1 1 . Peak year was 1 9 8 6 with 2 2 , but 1 9 8 8 is the second-biggest year.

1 2 . I believe the list o f new productions to be comprehensive, but the repeats, signified (R ), are selective.

1 3 . ‘Rhetoric, Pleasure A n d A r t Television’, Screen, Vol. 2 2 , N o .4 , p.9 1 4 . ‘ Classic Serials - To Be Continued’, Screen, Vol. 2 3 , N o .l , p .15 1 5 . Melba and Shout! have already been discussed in this series o f articles (Filmviews Flo. 1 3 6 , and C inem a Papers7\)\ the repeat o f the latter program during 1 9 8 8 seems m ore than mere coincidence, providing as it does a popular counterpoint to the high culture re-presented in the former.

1 6 . See, however, discussion o f Dirtw ater Dynasty, below.

1 7 . Cunningham, op. cit., p .3 6 1 8 . Apparently R oger Bannister found the prospect o f ‘his’ story being told by an Australian potentially disturbing. It may also be significant that Em m a, Q ueen O fThe South Seas was advertised as a US production in the A ge Green G uide (1 0 Nov. 1 9 8 8 ): perhaps the subject-m atter identified it for local reviewers rather than its production origins.

1 9 . G eoff M ayer, ‘Family M elodrama: The D irtw ater Dynasty a n d The A lien Tears’ Filmviews, N o. 1 3 7 , pp. 4 0 -4 3 2 0 . ibid.

2 1 . Colin M acarthur, Television A n d History, B FI 1 9 7 8 , p .1 6 2 2 . During 1 9 8 8 , Bill Bennett’s part-dramatized documentary Cattle Kingv/as broadcast: its recreation o f Kidman’s fife story served to emphasize the differences between Kidman and ‘Richard Eastwick’ .

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5. Sandy Flitterm an-Lew is, ‘A ll’s Well That Doesn’t E n d : Soap Opera A n d The M arriage M o t i f , C am era Obscura , N o. 1 6 , 1 9 8 8 , p p .1 1 9 - 1 2 7 6 . Jesus G. Requena, Screen, Vol. 2 2 N o. 4 , 1 9 8 1 , p .3 9 7 . ibid., p p .4 1 -2 8 . Stuart Cunningham , ‘A ustralian Miniseries: Style, Form a nd History’, Filmviews, N o 1 3 6 , W inter 1 9 8 8 p. 31 9 . Stuart Cunningham (ibid) suggests 1 3 , but this definition would exclude Power Without Glory, in 2 6 hour-lo n g episodes, though this has been repeatedly listed and discussed as a miniseries.

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4 . Am ong the vast literature on soap opera, Ien Ang ( Watching Dallas: soap opera a n d the melodramatic im agination, M ethuen 1 9 8 5 ) is one o f the few who demonstrates an interest in both textual and contextual analysis.

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THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES, FROM A LAWYER’S POINT OF VIEW, TH E ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT, PRODUCTION AND MARKET­ ING OF FILM AND TELEVISION PROGRAMS THAT SHOULD BE BORNE IN MIND WHEN NEGOTIATING “A DEAL”, W H ETH ER YOU ARE A WRITER, A PRODUCER, A DISTRIBUTOR OR A MEM­ BER OF TH E CAST AND CREW OF A PRODUCTION. NLIKE MANY ACTIVITIES in the arts, At the same time producers reasonably expect assignment o f the screen­ film and television productions involve play rights to their production companies. It is often argued by the writing the participation o f a large number of community that this is unfair and that an exclusive licence is sufficient. The people and companies with differing problem is, that while certain protections are embodied in the Copyright Act, financial interests. All have a common purpose, however - a successful end the total force that assignment provides. The an exclusive licence does not have product. It is only by understanding the various needs and motivations o f difference between a licence and an assignment is similar to the difference those between a lease and a conveyance o f land. While tenants have certain specific different parties that you will be able to negotiate successfully to achieve rights e.g. quiet enjoyment, etc, land ownership is the best position ifyou need the best result for yourself. The recurring theme o f good negotiators is that you to mortgage that land to raise monies to build a house. The analogy follows must recognize the reasonable expectations o f the other side if you expect to and it is for this reason the producers expect to own a script rather than to win concessions. merely have a right to use it. It is certainly the expectation o f the financiers and It often appears to writers, directors and other creative personnel that indeed often the distributors too! producers require oppressive controls over creative work, insisting on as­ Going up the line we have the differing positions o f the producer and signment o f all rights, refusing to allow artistic veto on subse­ the financier. It should be appreciated that financiers most usually quent drafts or screenplays etc. It needs to be appreciated raise monies from their own client base. The financiers in however that the producer, in turn, is subject to the turn are responsible to their clients for adequate and demands o f the financiers/distributors who insist trouble-free return upon such investments. It is for that the producer is able to deliver a particular this reason that financiers expect producers to film at a particular time and will not recognize guarantee delivery o f a film in a certain format the delays that may be brought about by sub­ based upon a certain script at a specified time. jective vetoes from a third party such as a Delivery times and requirements are often writer. This illustrates the truth o f the solinked with presale agreements where dis­ called “golden rule” - those with the gold tributors have made plans for the release make the rules. o f a picture at a certain time, and pay­ This doesn’t mean, however, that ment o f presale monies depend upon creative personnel have to lose all their specified delivery taking place. The pro­ rights. Indeed the historically recognized ducer’s credibility and future produc­ importance o f a director has created a tion capability will always depend upon precedent which some writers are start­ his or her carrying out o f these obliga­ ing to follow. The concept o f a director’s tions satisfactorily. first cut provides the model for “the Prior to any negotiation it is essen­ writer’s draft”. The standard arrangement tial that you are well briefed and know has the producer effectively employing the the minimum position that you are pre­ writer to produce the screenplay in stages pared to accept on any particular contrac­ with the ability to cut off the writer’s engage­ tual point. Never go into a negotiation not ment at any time and to further develop or knowing the industry norms. Always have a throw away the work using another writer. It is reasonable idea o f a best and worst position on possible, providing good sense prevails in the docu­ a particular point. If you are at the bargaining table mentation, to have a situation where a writer is given and faced with the proposition that you really have not a proper opportunity to present his or her work in a “pol­ thought out then your ability to respond quickly and to ished form” before the producer can reject the work: say at “make a deal” will be severely compromised. Similarly, it is im­ least after the first draft stage. There should also be provision during portant to always make your agreements conditional upon your hav­ the pre-production and production for the writer to be given adequate con­ ing received appropriate professional advice. I f “a deal” that seemed attractive sultation (to view rushes etc) and be given due consideration o f his or her point at the time turns out not in fact to be what you need, you will have left the door o f view. O f course, writers o f stature already have such rights in their contracts. open for further negotiation without the other side feeling that you are Specific rights o f consultation, ability to attend sets, rehearsals etc are quite reneging on your original agreement. Thesame thing can happen to you, of reasonable expectations o f writers/creative personnel and most producers will course, and it is for this very reason you should always avoid handing over readily agree to theserights. The difference between a right o f consultation and valuable work, monies, etc, until satisfactory contractual documentation has a right o f approval is o f course basic from a legal and practical point o f view. been finalized and signed.

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» THE END OF THE WORLD MOVIES «

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HE ONLY MEMORABLE REMARK about Australian science fiction films is attrib­

uted to Ava Gardner. Imported in 1959 to star in O n T he B en ch , she was said to have commented tartly that producer/director Stanley Kramer chose the perfect place to film the end of the world. Even Melbourne critic Neil Jillett’s admission that he invented the line doesn’t blunt its aptness. Sooner or later, one way or another, someone had to say it.

■ | n EMPHASIZING O U R ISO LATIO N , the Gardner/ ■ ji l l e t t quip localizes Australia’s appeal to the science ficH tion audience. Distance lends enchantment: it also frees ■ speculation. For three centuries, visionaries o f other countries have used Australia as a background for satires o f their own society. Even in this century, the.most popular Australian-based writers o f scientific fantasy were foreigners. American diplomat Paul Linebarger spent much o f his time in Canberra during the Seventies writing (as ‘Cordwainer Smith’) tales about ‘Old North Australia’, a planet where fabulously rich ‘Owners’ lived off gigantic sheep whose fleece produced a life-extending drug. A. Bertram Chandler, a British Merchant Marine officer working the London/Sydney run, created a, series about spacefarers on the galaxy rim. “Reality gets a bit thin out here,” one ‘Rimgunner’ commented. Many took this as Chandler’s judgment on his adopted home.

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Few literary or artistic visitors see beyond the perceived thinness o f Australian reality, as only a handful penetrate the conventional assessment o f our landscape as ‘M oon-’ or ‘Mars-like’. Asked what it was like ‘over there’ in the United States, Gertrude Stein decreed, “There is no ‘there’ there.” Most artists who visit Australia are Steinian in their failure o f perception. To them, the continent is like a set, waiting to be animated by their imagination. Russell Hoban (T u rtle D iary, P ilgerm a n n ) claims he discovered in northern Tasmania the only setting remotely appropriate to a film o f his post-Holocaust fantasy Riddley Walker and, in George Miller, the best director to make it. A British screenplay o f J.G . Ballard’s H ig h Rise , set in a decaying apartment block in suburban London, is presently going the rounds o f Australian producers. (Does Ballard think Australia a suitable setting? One wonders.)

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film, o f which there has been a good deal in the last two decades, has little pre-history. The waves o f fantasy film that powered the sf tradition else­ where were barely a ripple when they reached Australia, though Prehistoric Hayseeds may have its roots in Griffith’s M an ’s Genesis and Kea­ ton’s parody The Three Ages and George Wallace’s Thirties eccentric comedies clearly derive from Joe E. Brown’s Warner Brothers fantasy farces.

The Seventies brought a succession o f sf films, most o f them imitations o f foreign successes. George Miller’s M ad M ax trilogy displayed an original vision, but the projects that rolled in its wake moved on retreads o f old ideas.

Some are rolling still.

S f screenplays suffer an ironic double drawback in Australia. Initially novel enough to attract development funding, they are ditched, as special effects designer Lewis Morley points out (see Box), when producers grasp the enormous cost o f make-up, model work and optical effects.

Once placed in the system, however, scripts circulate in a grotesque par­ ody o f a Monopoly game. Periodically passing ‘Go’, they collect the ‘$ 2 0 0 ’ o f a script development grant, accumulate buildings and houses - option payments, commitments from actors, an occasional pre-sale or negative pick­ up deal - only to find no finance and so commence mother abortive swing.

Certain projects are legendary for their longevity. Michael Thornhill has promoted Cosmic Greaser for almost a decade. R ed A lert West has gone through a dozen incarnations, the most improbable involving its transplan­ tation from the Australian outback to Mexico, where it was mooted as a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger, to be directed by A n n ie’s Coming Out’s Gil Brealey. The production in 1988 o f one such veteran script, Mark Rosenberg and Rolf de Heer’s Incident A t R aven ’s Gate (formerly The Bronte In v ad ers), shows that projects can survive this process, but the odds are stacked severely against them.

In his ill-fated attempt to set up production in Queensland, Dino di Laurentiis acquired two sf screenplays dog-eared from years on the interna­ tional circuit. Leviathan, based on a John Varley story succinctly described as “A lien under water” was dropped at an early stage. (It’s since been produced in Varley’s native Canada.) TotalR ecall, aD a n O ’Bannon/Ronald Shusett script from Philip K. Dick’s I Can D ream It For Tou Wholesale, was picked up (for what A m erican Film magazine estimated to be the fourteenth time) as a project for Bruce Beresford. Set-building and model work were well advanced when the 1987 stock market crash (inevitably?) intervened. (It is now to be shot in Mexico, with Paul Verhoeven directing and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead.)

Production can be the beginning o f difficulty rather than its end. Roger Christian’s 2084 was released only on video. D ead End Drive -In ran a week in Australian cinemas. Richard Franklin’s Lin k, featuring Terence Stamp as a scientist experimenting with intelligent apes, has yet to be seen in Austra­ lia. (See Box) Australian screenwriters show little knowledge o f or aptitude for science fiction: the successful one in this field, Everett de Roche (Long Weekend, P a ­ trick, H arlequin, R azorback), is American. Many local producers miscon­ ceive sf as an adolescent interest, and choose writers for their skill with teen­ age themes. The result is too often unimaginative work, which makes little use o f science fiction’s capacity to evoke wonder.

Australia has some notable science fiction writers, but it’s most often the work o f conventional literary talents that producers buy. The (admittedly ex­ cellent) fantasy short stories o f Peter Carey are extensively optioned. One was the basis o f D ead End D rive-In and Carey is now writing an original sf screen play with German director Wim Wenders, the controversial Till the End o f the World.

Yet notwithstanding their international reputations, professional sf writers like Damien Broderick and Lee Harding (See Box) have seldom been approached by producers, either to film their work or to involve them in the preparation o f scripts.

Had they been, the catalogue o f Austra­ lian science fiction films might make less dismal reading.

1960. Produced a n d directed

by Stanley K ram er.

It’s an index to the topicality and power o f this adaptation o f Nevil Shute’s novel about a handful o f nuclear war survivors awaiting the inevitable arrival o f a radiation cloud from the north that, as Kennedy and Khruschev went eyeball-to-eyeball over missiles in Cuba, Americans who had seen the film poured into Australia, convinced it was their last refuge.

Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire and a mostly imported crew squeezed Australians out o f the production, though actors like John Meillon had small'roles and Film Australia producer Eric Th­ ompson, who had worked for MGM in Hollywood during the Thirties, designed some submarine interiors. With its musical variations on Waltzing M atilda and the resolutely English tone o f its Australia, On The Beach can seem comic today, but its message retains the ability to disturb.

THE LAST WAVE 1977. Directed by Peter Weir.

Lawyer Richard Chamberlain, investigating an Aboriginal murder, discov­ ers remnants o f an earlier civilization in catacombs under Sydney - a revela­ tion that coincides with the fulfilment o f Aboriginal prophecies that a giant wave will engulf the world.

Weir’s mysticism had full rein in this psychic thriller. Early versions o f the script (finally credited to Weir, Tony Morphett and Petru Popescu) begin with ancient races dragging rafts over the Australian desert, scenes that hint at a scope the completed film lacks. Unable to afford special effects, produc­ ers Hal and Jim McElroy used surfing movie footage for the final disappoint­ ing image. But muddled plot and fudged climax don’t impair the film’s eerie power.

PATRICK 1978. Directed by R ichard Franklin.

Franklin’s debt to Hitchcock is obvious in this skilful version o f an Everett de Roche ESP thriller about a supermind lurking in the body o f an apparently catatonic patient in a small country hospital. Working mostly in a single set, Franklin cleverly builds tension, discreetly employing special effects but using claustrophobia and eccentrically weird playing (eg Robert Helpmann’s dotty doctor) to win the audience.

MAD MAX 1979. Directed by George Miller.

George Miller claimed M ad M ax was a cautionary comment on unsafe driving, the victims of which he had too often been required as an MD to treat. But early short films, in particular Violence in the C inem a Pt. 1, reveal a continuing preoccupation with and relish for cinematic violence, rooted in a childhood o f Saturday matinee film-going - a heritage shared with producer/collaborator Byron Kennedy.

Miller’s script (with James McCausland) for M ad M ax is a compendium o f biker/revenge themes from the films o f Roger Corman graduates like Jonathan Demme and Dennis Hopper. Perceived by professional film­ makers o f the time as an amiable hobbyist, Miller lost even more credibility with his decision to shoot M ad M ax in wide-screen and six-track sound, and to fund it himself with money earned as a locum (with Kennedy driving the ambulance). Richard Franklin (Patrick, R o ad G am es) was among the first to glimpse the film’s power. Invited into Miller’s cutting room over a Melbourne pizza parlour, he watched one sequence, then told Miller,” You’re going to be very rich one day.” Few prophecies in science fiction history have proved so accurate.

THE CHAIN REACTION 1981.

FACING PAGE: A VA GARDNER AND DIRECTOR STANLEY KRAMER AT FRANKSTON DURING THE FILMING OF ON THE BEACH. RIGHT: MAD M AX II.

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Directed by la n Barry.

In this modestly effective environmental thriller, Steve Bisley and Arna Maria Winchester stumble on a rural nuclear accident and are imprisoned by sinister government operatives. Barry makes skilful use of an abandoned shale oil plant for backgrounds and employs the white radiation suits o f the clean-up men to some effect - corner-cutting P

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BOX

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LEE HARDING is one of Australia’s leading writers of science fiction.

His novel D isplaced Person won the Children’s Book of the Year Award in 1980.

HARDING

several years later, the French director Bertrand Tavernier did in fact film The C ontinuous K a th erin e Mortenhoe as Deathwatch.

Later, I was involved for an inordinate amount of time in a project to film one of my own novels, Displaced Person. It went through two script development deals with the New South Wales Film Corporation.

In both instances a professional script-writer was called in. In neither case was I consulted on the adaptation. Both scripts were dreadful, because neither writer was sympathetic to the fantastic medium. They were both realistic writers. I remember vividly that the second screen­ writer had just completed a relatively successful film to do with a se­ verely handicapped person. And for some reason he introduced into his script a deaf mute, who had nothing to do with the story and of course wasn’t in the original novel.

The producer who optioned D isplaced Person wasn’t anywhere near as interested in my subsequent novel, W a itin g F o r The E n d O f The World, a pre-Apocalypse story set in the Dandenongs. She found it very depressing. But she was aware it was a ‘property’, and so perhaps she should stake some claim. So we took another lunch, and she suggested there was an aspect of filming the book which I perhaps hadn’t considered. This was the period of Street H ero and Starstruck. Had I ever thought, she asked, of doing it as a musical?

In the m id-1970s, I had a call from Alan Finney at Hexagon Produc­ tions in Melbourne, the upshot of which was that Hexagon was inter­ ested in doing a science fiction project. So we ‘took a lunch’ - (director) Tim Burstall, (Hexagon and Village Roadshow executive) Alan Finney and myself. They wanted to make a rattling good sf adventure film and invited me to put up some projects.

I suggested three ideas to them. One was Eric Frank Russell’s novel Three To C on qu er, about Earth’s lone telepathic detective hunting down three alien invaders. Another was John Christopher’s The Posses­ sors which took place in an alpine chalet and would have filmed very well up in the Snowy Mountains. The third was a more existential novel of character, The C ontinuous K a th erin e Mortenhoe, by a British writer I admire called D.G. Compton. I thought it would adapt very well as a quality sf movie rather than an outright thriller. Susannah York was in Australia at the time and I thought the role of Katherine Mortenhoe would be particularly good for her. And of course Tim had already directed her in E liza Fraser.

We had some follow-up meetings. I prepared an outline of each of the novels. Nothing ever came of them. *Though I was pleased when,

FUTURE SCHLOCK

* Contacted recendy, Tim Burstall said a version of contemplated but was rejected ‘at board level’.

Three to Conquer had been

heroism and tribalism (learned by Miller initially from George Lucas) recur constantly in the narrative.

Largely uncredited but o f supreme importance is the contribution o f pro­ ducer Kennedy, Miller’s gadgeteering partner who hand-crafted the film’s marketing. As The R o ad Warrior, M ad M ax I I swept America, creating a sub­ genre o f tribal car fantasies that flourishes still.

RAZORBACK 1984. Directed by Russell Mulcahy.

It must have seemed a good idea to lure rock clip director Mulcahy back to Australia for his first feature, a Jaw s with pigs adapted by Everett de Roche from Peter Brennan’s novel and set in the Australian outback. Unfortunately Mulcahy’s florid visual style, ideal for Elton John’s Sad Songs clip and later Duran Duran concert feature, can’t carry narrative. T V actor Gregory Harri­ son ( Trapper John, MD) is ineffectual, the giant pig fails to convince, and honours go mainly to cinematographer Dean Semler ( M ad M ax I I ) whose taste for dust and smoke imposes much-needed atmosphere.

MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME 1985. Directed by George M iller a n d George Ogilvie.

The least successful o f the M ad M ax trilogy lacks the spaciousness and violence o f M ad M ax II, and betrays the uncertainty that followed Byron Kennedy’s premature death. Stage director Ogilvie handled performances, leaving Miller to concentrate on the story o f a tribe o f feral children, a left-over from the pre­ liminary Kennedy/Miller treatment for M ad M ax II. M ad M ax Beyond Thunderdom e prefigures The Witches o f Eastwick, showing Miller moving away from the comic book action o f Lucas towards Steven Spielberg baroque.

Scenes in Bartertown (ruled by the extravagant Tina Turner) and the Thunderdome, a bird­ cage batdefield where gladiators fight while suspended in mid­ air, lie somewhere between rock clip and circus sideshow, though the final chase shows Miller at his most electric.

exercises familiar from scores o f low-budget sf films. Dr. George Miller directed the second unit, and is responsible (with stunt co-ordinator Max Aspin) for the spectacular car chases.

MAD M AX II

TURKEY SHOOT 1982. D irected by B rian Trenchard-Smith.

This mildly futuristic film with imported stars Steven Railsback and Olivia Hussey is conceived by critics o f Australian commercial filmmaking as the nadir o f Australian exploitation cinema. In the Jon George/Neil Hicks script, the dissident elements o f 1995 are confined to concentration camps, tortured, then hunted for sport. Reminiscent o f Peter Watkins’ P unishment Park but lacking its political or social overtones, Turkey Shoot is marginally redeemed by the direction o f action specialist Trenchard-Smith.

FUTURE SCHLOCK 1983. Produced, directed a n d written by Barry Peak.

A principal o f the Valhalla repertory cinema group, Peak has twice invested in low-budget sf films. A mating o f M adM ax and The Rocky H orror Picture Show, Future Schlock postulates ‘Class Wars’ which hand control o f Australia to a repressive power elite and its ruthless law enforcement arm, The Squad.

Rebels, mostly young and fashionably punk, live in inner city ghettos, subdued by a drugged water supply and exhausting their remaining frustrations in gang warfare. Lumberingly satirical (the night-club where the hero and heroine perform is called Alvin’s Hole), Future Schlock dates badly.

STARSHIP 1985. Directed by R oger Christian.

The mining planet/penal col­ ony setting o f this Christian/ Matthew Jacobs script, origi­ nally called 2 084, no doubt sug­ gested Australia as a location for the debut feature o f Star Wars set dresser and A lien set designer. Clearly short o f money, Christian was reduced to shooting his story o f rebel­ lion on the desert colony in an

MAD MAX II 1983. D irected by George Miller.

The most successful o f all Australian sf films, solidly built on the twin pillars o f Mel Gibson’s box office appeal and Miller’s gleeful taste for screen violence.

Max, outsider and insider both, is a maimed shaman-figure lifted almost intact from the work o f anthropologist Joseph Campbell, whose theories about 38

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abandoned suburban iron foundry, the dry-docked ore carrier Iron Duke and bleak areas around Mt. Newman in Western Australia.

Star Wars’ influence shows in the desert setting and the main characters, a renegade escapee from military dictatorship and his midget android sidekick.

(The latter, a combination o f R 2D 2 and M ad M ax’ s Feral Kid played by one Deep Roy, lacked the appeal o f either.) Never given a cinema release in Australia, 2084 in its catch-penny retitling (the film’s only starship is a wreck which flies briefly at the end) has had a lively reincarnation in video.

THE TIME GUARDIAN 1987. Directed by B rian H a n n a n t.

Man-from-the-future Tom Burlinson and off-sider Carrie Fisher join local girl Nikki Coghill to prepare the way for a time- travelling city captained by an ex­ tremely puzzled Dean Stockwell. Pursuing them are a tribe o f cyborgs (half human robots) called the Jen-Diki. The most expensive Australian sf feature to date, and one o f the most disappointing. (See Box) time o f his birth. Harried by a pathological grazier and his hired heavies, Needles finally meets Gillies, whose vehicle resembles a forties cocktail bar the low budget prevents it from imitating C asablan ca’s Rick’s, clearly Peak’s ambition - and who communicates mostly in quotes from old movies. As Time Goes By collapses under those coincidences and improbabilities which, though acceptable - even demanded - in time travel fiction, are death to cinema.

DEAD END DRIVE-IN

1987. D irected by B rian Trenchard-Smith.

Sub- M ad M ax action adventure adapted from Peter Carey’s short story Crabs, D ead End D rive-In is memorable mainly for its climactic car jump, in which the hero escapes from the drive-in cinema where he and his future punk rebel friends are imprisoned by blasting a four-wheel drive over the fence to freedom. The jump was a world record; the film made less o f a mark.

INCIDENT AT RAVEN’S GATE AS TIME GOES BY

1988. Directed andco-written by R o lf de Heer.

1988. Produced, written a n d directed by Barry Peak.

A supernatural thriller written by director de Heer and producer Mark Rosen­ berg. It went directly to video, despite a public campaign by the filmmakers to try to persuade distributors to give it the theatrical release some re­ viewers thought it deserved.

Peak’s second feature is a major improvement on Future Schlock. A facetious exercise in the gymnastics of time travel, it sends hero Nique Needles to central Australia to keep an. appointment with time jumper Max Gillies made at the

BO X T WO : L E W I S

sequences where they got exploded.

I’ve just finished working on two American-financed pilots for projected TV series. One is Badlands 2005, a futuristic western that includes a number of robots, and the other one is In v a d er which is New York-Cop-Meets- rthe thing’. These were Hoyts/Tri-Star proj­ ects. I suspect they were viable because Australian labour costs make it cheaper to build sets here than in America. On In v a d er especially, the sets were extremely elaborate - the most complicated sets I ’ve seen anywhere on an Australian production.

B ad lan ds2 0 0 5 was set on Earth but in a futuristic society, so there were a lot of M ad M ax-type vehicles, especially water tankers. The heroes drove around in a car that was capable of splitting into two, so it was actually made in the form of two tricycles which were joined together until they hit a release button.

The T im e G u a rd ia n was very interesting. I did a lot of free-lance work and one of the companies I work for is an effects company (Mirage) which was hired to provide both the robot suits and the special effects once the picture had been shot. So I was quite heavily involved in some of the design work for the Jen-Diki power suits.

We had a talk to the director and the production designers and they said, “Basically, this is how we see it.” We took those ideas and went away and came back with our sketches. They had a look at them and said, “That’s very nice, but we prefer the design we were given two years ago” (by comic book artist Brendan McCarthy). So we basically took that and modified it enough to incorporate a few new ideas and make it workable as an actual suit an actor would wear.

About the only piece of my design that made it into the final suit was a periscope that extended from the back packs of the robots with a high-intensity strobe on top that would blind the enemy. Unfortu­ nately, they made the suits out of a flexible polyurethane plastic that allowed the stunt men to fall about without injuring themselves, and these periscopes waggled like an aerial on a dune buggy. So they very quickly found their way onto the scrap heap.

Special Effects technician LEWIS MORLEY has built models and de­ signed creatures for among other films Razorback, Bliss, The Tim e G u a rd ia n and Crocodile D u n d ee I I

I got into movies through commercials. Giant toasters and things like that. I graduated into special props on movies and helped on the construction of the pig on Razorback , which was my first major movie.

I spent about six months on that and ended up being on the set to help operate it.

I ’ve worked on a number of quasi-science fiction films, which is rather surprising in the sense that sf really isn’t touched by Australian producers - 1 suspect for reasons of budget. There’s been this line of the big bucks ever since S t a r Wars. But when they realize they have to spend money to get it back, their enthusiasm dies off a bit.

A few years ago, I was asked to contribute concept designs for a film to be called A lie n H u n t e r , a fairly interesting story about a female hunter in the future who went around different planets hunting the animals. I designed various space vehicles and creatures, and built a couple of models to give an idea of what they would look like, and to look nice in the prospectus.

The further in we got, the more important Japanese money became to the production. Finally, the producers got some funding, and came back to us, very excited. The Japanese would put in half the budget if a lesbian sex sequence included in the draft script went on for 15 minutes. So we threw up our hands and bowed out. Quite unsurpris­ ingly, nothing more’s been heard of that project.

Almost all the sf films I’ve been involved with have been co­ productions with overseas companies. I worked on 2 0 8 4 (now Starship).

I was basically involved in special props on that, making hand props for the various robots and a lot of exploded dead body robots for

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JOHN BAXTER has published a number of science fiction stories and two sf novels. He edited the first two anthologies of Australian science fiction and wrote Science Fiction in the C inem a.

In 1982, Brian Hannant and I started writing an original science fiction screenplay called T im e R id er.

Our main character was a female geologist investigating magnetic anomalies around Wilpena Pound in South Australia. (Scouting locations for M ad M ax I I Hannant had noted this natural ring valley as an ideal background for a film.) There she encountered a man from the future, a scout sent back to prepare the way for his friends, the survivors of a polluted future earth who travelled to and fro in time, pursued by a piratical tribe called the Jen-Diki. (An early visualization of these half ro b o t/ half human cyborgs was prepared by comic book artist Brendan McCarthy.)

T im e R id e r ’s early scripts contrasted present and future lifestyles, and involved, in addition to the love story, an elegiac relationship between the girl and Prenzler, an old man in the nearby town who held the key to certain incidents in her future. There were elements of satire: conceived as descendants of contemporary polluters, our Jen-Diki were variously the remnants of a mining conglomerate or of a labour

BOX

FOUR

In L in k , animal behaviourist Terence Stamp tells his new assistant Elisabeth Shue a story to illustrate that the lovable chimps with whom he works have a more sinister side. A collector of animals, he explains, kept a pet chimp on an island at his estate. Seeing its master approach across the moat, the animal grabbed a length of steel scaffolding from a construction site on the island and pole-vaulted into his boat. “In about a minute,” Stamp says mildly, “it had the guy’s eye out, nose off, ears off, right arm off to the shoulder, a leg off to the knee. And his testicles.” “What had he done to the chimp?” asks a quavering Shue.

“Nothing,” Stamp says. “It was just pleased to see him.”

It’s long been an open secret that movie chimps are less than lovable. Successive Tarzans have complained of their competitiveness and appalling strength - up to 10 times that of a man. “It doesn’t come from viciousness,” says Franklin. “In the wild, the strongest chimp becomes the ‘Alpha Male’ - in effect the chief. As an older male gets weaker, the younger males challenge him, until one overthrows him.

So their tribal infrastructure and battling within the tribe is always to decide who is the strongest.”

If it’s hard for Tarzan, it’s even worse for Jane. Male chimps respond sexually much like any human: those raised in captivity even become aroused by Playboy centrefolds. In L in k ’s most controversial scene, an adult ape, bizarrely dressed in human clothing, intrudes on Elisabeth Shue while she’s taking a bath.

“That scene to me was the centrepiece of the picture,” says Franklin. “As Desmond Morris pointed out, we are the naked ape. The only way I could show this visually was to have a naked human juxtaposed with an ape in human clothing.”

Stamp plays Steven Phillip, a British scientist who has managed to elevate the intelligence of his experimental chimps to its highest potential level - IQ .85: well within the human range.

His star student is Link, a 4 5 -year-old retiree from the circus ring.

He wears human clothing, and functions as a servant at Stamp’s lonely house on the Scottish coast. But Link is getting old and crotchety, and Stamp decides to dispose of him - a rash decision, which leaves the mansion and its surrounding heather sporran-deep in victims and Shue fighting for her life.

Chimps had long interested Franklin as a subject. “Back in 1 9 7 9 ,” he said, “I optioned a two- or three-page storyline - a sort of Jaw s with chimps. But I didn’t do anything with it until Everett de Roche brought to my attention an article in N atio na l Geographic by Jane Goodall. She’s spent almost twenty years living with chimpanzees in Tanzania, and in 1979 she discovered for the first time that chimps were capable of all sorts of violence.

“She even found evidence that chimps indulge in intertribal warfare - which overturned the idea of Man as the only animal to make war on its own kind.”

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union. The modest action climax used a minimum of special effects.

Six years later, after attracting two Australian Film Commission script development grants, options from two local production compa­ nies and 60 per cent pre-sale offers from both New World and the final financiers, Hemdale, T im e R id e r was filmed as the $8 million The T im e G u a rd ia n , directed by Hannant. The film bore little relationship to the original script. There was a minimal love story, no contrast in life styles. Prenzler had disappeared. The main role, in which we’d envis­ aged a mature international actor with a reputation in science fiction and action films (the prospectus specified “Scott Glenn or equiva­ lent”), was taken by boyish local lad Tom Burlinson. The Jen-Diki were monsters, ravening and impersonal. At the behest of Hemdale, the film began and ended in a fire-fight (explaining to my satisfaction the awkward opening of The T erm in ator). Most of the film was shot indoors, at the South Australian Film Corporation’s Hendon studios.

Wilpena Pound appears once, in a wobbly aerial shot.

Relations between the writers collapsed six weeks before shooting.

Those between director and producers apparently broke down soon after: Hannant claims he resigned one step ahead of being fired. Ad­ ditional shooting was directed by the editor. The film flopped on its Australian release. At the time of writing, Hemdale has declined to accept it for showing elsewhere.

: RICHARD

In 1986 Australian director RICHARD FRANKLIN completed his ‘an­ thropological mystery’ Link in the UK. It has yet to be released in Australia.

N E M A

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FRANKLIN & LINK

But Franklin was most struck by the magazine’s editorial, which asked whether these animals were acting like Man - or whether Man has always acted like an animal.

“We came into the Eighties with all this Sixties guilt,” Franklin says, “and the notion that Man is a cancer about to destroy the planet.

But if our closest relatives behave in similar ways, maybe we’re not as bad as we thought.”

He filed the idea until he could shoot it in Britain. “The English setting to me was essential. I wanted to contrast the primitivism of jungle animals with Old World values, high culture, and ‘civilization’ - which is one of the subjects of the picture.”

The strength and unreliability of chimps forced one major com­ promise: Link is played not by a chimp but by an orang-utan.

“There was no adult male chimp that could safely be used to make the picture,” Franklin explains. “For most animal films they extract their teeth, and use females, which are also strong but not so aggressive. Male chimps are just too dangerous. We had a female and a small male on L in k and on one occasion we had to give the small one an injection. Even with six of us, it was impossible to hold him. He was throwing grown men six feet in the air with one arm! It was incredible!

“That story Terence tells Elisabeth at the dinner table was true.

Except that it wasn’t a boat but a Land Rover, and it took place in the safari park at Longleat. The man was paid over a million pounds in compensation.

“I had to decide whether that was the kind of animal I wanted to have holding hands with my leading lady. So I decided it was safer to go with an orang-utan. They’re just as powerful as chimps, but with a longer fuse. They live in families rather than tribes, so they aren’t as competitive. I think ours is the best trained ape in the world. Even so, he’s far from a pet. One of his handlers on the picture had a run-in with him just after shooting, and refuses to work with him again. He was quite badly beaten up.”

The last half of L in k doesn’t lack graphic illustration of a crazed chimp’s strength and fury. Faced, however, by the rage of a mentally deteriorating Link, Elisabeth Shue shows remarkable calm. Perhaps too much calm? Franklin confirms that the release version of L in k 13 minutes shorter than his original cut, lacks scenes that spell out her character in more detail. “She’s a sort o f‘animal humanist’, if you like.

She wants to treat animals as human beings. She believes that humans are bad and animals are good. There’s a little of that left, but not as much as we shot.”

L ink took out the prestigious Jury Prize at the Avoriaz Film Festival - the same prize that set M ad M ax on its road to fame. It was bought for American release by Universal, who cut eight minutes - the first of many frustrations for Franklin. When EMI, the company for whom it was made, was purchased by Alan Bond and sold to the Cannon group, the new owners asked for five more minutes to be removed. In this form L in k got its US theatrical and video showing.

In Australia, after being passed around three distributors in the Cannon debacle, the film now belongs to Hoyts.

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Antony Ginnane, Stanley Hawes, Jeremy Thom as, Andrew Sards, sponsored documentaries, Blue Fin.

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NUMBER 41 (DECEMBER 1 9 8 2 )

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NUMBER 1 (JANUARY 1974): David Williamson, Ray Harryhausen, Peter Weir, Antony Ginnane, Gillian Arm strong, Ken G. Hall, The C ars that

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NUMBER 1 3 2 WINTER 1 9 8 7 Censorship in Australia, Rosalind Rrauss, Troy Kennedy M artin, New Zealand Cinema, David Chesworth,

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NUMBER 135 AUTUMN 198 8 Out o f H itchcock’s Filing Cabinet, Martha Ansara, New Chinese Cinema, Lindsay Anderson, Sequence Magazine, Cinema Italia, New Japanese Cinema,

F atal Attraction

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B 1. 1987/88 FILMVIEWS CATALOGUE OF NEW FILMS AND VIDEOS IB IN AUSTRALIAN DISTRIBUTION. m In one volume Australia’s most m comprehensive Listing o f Films a ¡a and Videos in Australian Distri­ m bution. a Filmviews Catalogue o f New a Films andVideos in Australian Dis­ B tribution is the only comprehen­ B sive listing o f all currently released IS films and videos available in Aus­ @ a tralia each financial year. Included a are all imported and Australian m produced titles, listed alphabeti­ a cally under category' headings. The a Catalogue enables anyone seek­ n ing a particular title to quickly a check its availability and distribu­ a tor. The Catalogue includes all 35mm and 16mm features, shorts, documentaries and home video releases, as well as educational, man­ agement training, health and safety', and how-to programmes. Also listed are all new acquisitions available for free borrowing from Government film libraries. a Each Catalogue entry' includes the following: 1. programme title 2. n director 3. country' of origin. 4 y'ear of completion 5. running time 6. a censorship classification 7. format/gauge 8. synopsis 9. distributor/ m a government film library' (including address, telephone and fax no.) a In addition there are separate Title, Director and Personality' Indexes to facilitate quick and easy cross-referencing. O f particular use a to video retailers and librarians are the censorship classifications; an m essential guide and cost effective hedge against stocking unclassified m a programmes or programmes refused classification. a N O T E : The Catalogue is regularly updated with a 48 page insert m available by subscription (see below). a PRICE: 1987/88 Catalogue (published August 1988) si Institutions $35.00 Individuals $25.00 Prices include postage m 2. CATALOGUE UPDATES The Filmviews updates to the Catalogue o f New Films and in Australian Distribution are published three times a year. An Update consists o f a 48 page A4 booklet with the information presented in the same manner as it appears in the catalogue.

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ENTRIES NOW OPEN Entries are now open for the International Short Film competi­ tion of the 3 8th Melbourne Film Festival, June 9 - 24,1989. As the only International Film Awards in Australia, the competition, now in its 27th year, offers Australian filmmakers the rare oppor­ tunity to have their films judged on an international level. The competition awards cash prizes in seven categories as follows:

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Entries are open for films less than 60 minutes in length. Entry forms now available from the Festival Office, AFC Offices in Sydney and Melbourne, Sydney Film Festival Office, AFI Offices in Sydney and Melbourne, or write to: Melbourne Film Festival, GPO Box 2760EE, Melbourne Victoria 3001 Enquiries: Phone (03) 663 2954 Telex: 152613 Fifest

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DEADLINE FOR EN TRIES: 31 MARCH 1989

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THE W ESTER N HAS BEEN D O M IN A TED B Y M ALE IM A G ES: H O W H A VE W O M EN BEEN REPRESEN TED

A M O N G THE S IX -G U N S , THE S A L O O N S A N D THE S A G E B R U S H ?

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R IT IN G A B O U T W O M E N IN W E S T E R N

films is a little like writing about women in Moby D ick; at first it seems a relatively pointless exercise o f pointing out ab­ sences and omissions until one recog­ nizes that those absences and omissions actually expose the informing framework o f the filmic or literary texts’ prevailing ideology or, as Althusser describes it, “the imaginary re­ lationship o f individuals to their real conditions o f existence”. Becoming aware o f the ideo­ logical trends in any text serves to subvert the inculcation o f those value systems and expectations placed upon behaviour: thus to “read back across the grain” o f the Western as a film genre is to recognize the presence o f values such as bourgeois capitalism, colonial confrontationalism, the American Dream o f pioneering success, racism and sexism.

As in the Western genre in general, the belief structures implicit in these films say more about the social organization o f America at the time o f their production than they do about the historical period o f colonizing the West. The sexism and gender stereotypes portrayed therefore reflect the structuring o f m id-20th century American society, and indeed suggest patterns o f gender relations which underpin wider “Western” culture. These stereotypes are in fact silencing and debilitating for both sexes; for example, male protagonists are gener-

ABOVE: JANE FONDA IN A PUBLICITY SHOT FOR CAT BALLOU. RIGHT: KATE JURADO (HELEN) AND GRACE KELLY (AMY) IN HIGH N OON.

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ally as unable to cry or articulate emotion as the female characters are seemingly unable to fire a gun or “clean up the streets”, thereby creating significant imbalances in the construction o f “whole” or complete personalities. How­ ever, these stereotypes are more oppressive and repressive o f the female characters in Western films, and o f women in Western society, because it is they who are forced into the primarily passive and reactive role.

The Western genre depicts a patriarchal structure which is essentially pa­ triarchal, or one where power is seen as a male prerogative which is passed in a patrilinear or oedipal fashion from father to son, or from male to male; women are objects o f exchange or signs o f male status, but their access to power is mediated through their relation to a man. The French feminist Hélène Cixous describes patriarchal thought - and, by extrapolation, ideology - as being characterized by binary and hierarchized oppositions. Thus, in a list such as the following: white/black active/passive, sun/moon, culture/ nature, head/heart, external political arena/domestic sphere, subject/object, one element o f the pair is always associated with the male. To put it bluntly, the.“male” element is always trying to assert power over the corresponding female “aspect”, in a movement which is not reciprocal but is paradoxically an­ tithetical to the binary opposition itself. Cixous writes:

0 my America! M y new-found-land, M y kingdom e, safeliest when with one man m an’d, My Myne o f precious stones, M y Em perie, H ow blest am I in this discovering thee!

T o enter in these bonds, is to be free; Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.

As in the complex ideological configurations at the end o f The M an Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) the Woman o f the Wilderness, Hallie (Vera Miles) - or she who has been an object o f desire to the civilizing hero largely because o f her untapped potential, her uneducated state and her receptivity to the values o f Ranse Stoddard (James Stewart) - has now, like the frontier itself, become “civilized”, and a “cultivated” garden. The nostalgia and regret which both Hallie and Ranse feel at this recognition suggest the ambivalence at the core o f the Western’s, and of patriarchal society’s, view o f women: like the wild landscape, she is frightening yet also appealing and exciting in her challenge to the frontier hero. The art o f “civilizing” the land or possessing the female is, however, an anti-climax, both because the “wildness” has been drawn into the realm o f the known and thus the “not-wild” and because, despite the successes o f conquering or colonizing either the land or the female body, possession is never complete - there must always be new frontiers, as Hatton instinctively recognizes as he and Abbie ride off together into the sunset.

Reinforcing female passivity through an association with “nature” rather than “culture”, also leaves women vulnerable to the personality o f the particular male who comes to “mine their riches” or “plough their fields” .

Thus in the Reaganite conservatism o f Clint Eastwood’s P ale R id er (1985), women, like the landscape, can either be “raped” as is suggested by the violence o f LaHood’s corporate hydraulic mining operations, or they can be “mined” more “gently” and “appropriately”, as we see occurring in the “small man” tin-pan miner’s community; fundamentally, however, women are passive objects to be possessed (mined) by the first, or highest bidder. The arbitrariness o f the female’s fate is seen when the virginal Megan (Sydney Penney) strays defiantly into LaHood’s territory; although she is saved from rape by the super-hero o f the film, the Preacher (Clint Eastwood), it’s clear that she doesn’t have control over her own life and sexuality, but is totally

the m ovem ent by which each opposition is set up to produce meaning is the m ovem ent by which the couple is destroyed. A universal batdefield. Each time a war breaks out. D eath is always at work ... The hierarchization subjects the entire conceptual organization to man. A male privilege which can be seen in the opposition ... between activity and passivity.

In the Western film the camera eye and the frame o f the shot identifies women as objects o f a male gaze - irrespective o f whether the eye o f the camera is synonymous with a male gaze which depicts women as objects o f potential desire or disgust, or whether they are objectified simply because they are peripheral to the core narrative. In both instances, women are defined in relation to a central male identity and are not seen as, or accorded the status of, autonomous subjects. They are looked a t and defined by others; they themselves don’t do the looking - or the controlling naming which is the prerogative o f the bearer o f the look.

With this ideological framework represented by the active/passive oppo­ sition, the narrative o f the Western is always one o f the action, or activity, o f m ankind. However, while female characters are always passive and reactive rather than initiatory, they are neverthe­ less defined, or made to signify symbolically, in a variety o f ways.

In perhaps one o f the oldest stories o f patri­ archal ideology, women are associated with the “nature” aspect o f the culture/nature opposi­ tion; that is, there is an equation made between the possession and civilizing cultivation o f the virgin soil o f the American frontier and the pos­ session o f the female body. Thus, as is clear in an early Western such as Dodge City (1 9 3 9 ), Wade Hatton’s (Errol Flynn) “cleaningup ofthe town”, his removal ofits lawless (male) elements, makes it a “fit place for women and children”; most sig­ nificantly, this “ordering” and “civilizing” activ­ ity is both emphasized and rewarded by his acqui­ sition ofAbbie (Olivia De Havilland). Hatton, as Western hero, has not only tamed the land, making it fit and serviceable for his and his com­ munity’s needs, but he has also tamed the woman, whose tempering bounty and fertility he now adopts as a talisman in the ongoing quest for ever new frontiers.

On the one hand, this link between the great expanses o f land in the American West and the female body does seem to align woman with the positives o f fertility and creativity. For example, when we first see Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) in M y.D arling Clem entine (1 9 4 6 ), dwarfed by the vastness o f Ford’s Monument Valley, if we are to associate that landscape with the presence o f Clementine (Cathy Downs) whose embodiment o f sexuality and domesticity represents that which is beyond the narrow horizons o f Earp as gun-slinging Marshal, yet is also potentially “civilizable” by him - then it might seem that Woman, as Mother Earth herself, is a force to be reckoned with in the Western. However, perhaps precisely because the Otherness o f female biology does present such a threat to a male subject seeking to possess and dominate, Woman’s association with the land actually reinforces her passive position and her vulnerability to exploita­ tion and violation, whilst seeming to elevate her to the status o f the magnifi­ cent wilderness o f the West. Although it comes from an earlier period, John Donne’s poem “T o His Mistris Going to Bed” implicitly reveals how the potential strength and threat presented by the female body is defused in patriarchy through images o f sexual possession and domination in which the female is not a subject with a voice but an objectified body; it also makes clear the shared rhetoric o f sexuality and colonialism: C

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dependent for her well-being upon the character o f whichever male wins the struggle for her possession.

Women in Western films are also used to embody and clarify various aspects o f their corresponding male characters. Thus in The M an Who Shot Liberty Valance Hallie, as the “common ground”, functions to show the overlaps and contrasts between the two “heroes”. Stoddard and Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), and, by extrapolation, Liberty Valance’s failure to be associated with any woman reveals him to be “beyond the pale” o f even Western community values. In Fred Zinnemann’s H igh Noon (1 9 5 2 ), Amy/Aimee (Grace Kelly), the virginal and pacifist bride - the kind o f girl one marries - is juxtaposed with Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado) who, like her namesake Helen o f Troy, is both an object o f desire and scorn to the males in her community; Helen, whose sexuality is foregrounded by her dark hair, black dress and plunging neckline, is also seen as racially marginalized and thus doubly peripheral to the patriarchally organized power structure. The juxtaposition P

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o f Amy and Helen exists in the film to show the opposing aspects o f the central male char­ acter Will Kane (Gary Cooper); the women function as a kind o f shorthand to reveal the “wild” as well as the civilizing “law and order” sides o f Kane, delineating the tensions within the Western hero who is both o f the civilizing East and o f the Wild West. Because Helen Ramirez has also been the lover o f Kane and his opposing villain Frank Miller, she also serves to reinforce those contradictory elements in Kane himself. The film is only very fleetingly inter­ ested in Amy and Helen as individuals; Amy’s final capitulation to the laws o f violence, which asserts her allegiance to her “man” over that to her principles, shows how their token individu­ ality collapses in the film narrative to give way to the centrality o f male action.

This device o f “splitting” the female char­ acter into the “good” and “bad” girl, the virginal and the sexual, functions to comple­ THE MAN WHO SHOT ment the law-bringer/law-breaker split in the male character but, significantly, it can also be seen as patriarchy’s way o f dealing with its fear o f autonomous female sexuality.

The woman who actively pursues her desires - even if those desires are defined for her by male society - has defied the role o f passivity and submissiveness assigned to her. Her punishment is to be labelled as “bad”, the temptress, and to be made even more marginal to the story o f male action than is the “good” girl - this may actually seem like a small price to pay, as no woman in patriarchal society has unmediated access to power. Thus Ruby, literally the “scarlet woman” in Dodge City, Chihuahua, the half-breed “saloon” girl o f Clementine who will share her sexual favours with whoever will show her kindness, and Helen Ramirez, who consciously uses sex for power and position as well as for passion, may all be seen as attempts to contain and therefore to curtail the threat o f outlawed female sexuality. Constructing the characters o f these “fallen” women also creates their opposites at the other end o f the ideological spectrum - the sexually sanitized and therefore marriageable characters of Abbie, Clementine and Amy. Winning the girl and settling down with her is tangible evidence o f the success o f the grand process o f civilizing the Wild West; as the hitherto wild and potentially threatening landscape is made a “safe” place for the colonizers, so too is the female character drawn into marriage as the orbit o f male control.

Western heroes who fail to make or be rewarded with this association with a woman, such as Tom Doniphon in Liberty Valance or Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, are finally seen as sterile and unable to exercise their control and power into the realms o f the future. This might also be said o f Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) in My D arling Clementine, whose failure to meet the challenge posed by Clementine is paralleled by the consumption which eats him away from Within, leading to inevitable self-destructiveness and death.

Paradoxically, no matter how peripheral Western ideology wishes to make women, if they are equated with the propagation o f culture and society, then they can never be entirely written out o f the story.

It is also significant to note that, although Clementine seems to stand for the civilizing, educating influence o f the East and o f the “culture” associated with the Eastern seaboard as the origin ofWest^rn colonization, her possession o f that “culture” seems only to be relevant in terms o f the good it can do for the male hero, be it Doc Holliday or Wyatt Earp. While women like Clementine and Hallie become school teachers, and thus are theoretically placed on the active side o f the culture/nature opposition, they are still seen in the role o f nurturer; they become the mother-provider or earth mother whose fruits are the values o f a male-dominated education system to be passed onto other males and children. Once again, they are not independent initiators o f action or possessors o f culture for their own benefit.

Although, winning the girl and settling down with her is primarily seen as the hero’s “reward” for his power and dominance over the wilderness, such a conclusion to the narrative also exposes the essential contradictions and

ambivalences inherent in the concept o f the Western hero. Working parallel to the notion o f the girl as “trophy” is the more subversive sense in which women in Westerns are actually represented as embodying the civilizing in­ stinct itself. In this scenario, Woman is the Domesticator who will actively draw her man out o f the Wilderness - and the male-to-male homoerotic bonds which constitute that wil­ derness - and into the town o f heterosexual union and domesticity. On the one hand, the hero has constructed his identity and is re­ spected because he «part o f the wilderness and can therefore do combat with and defeat it on its own terms. In the male arena o f the frontier, the free-wheeling phallic icon o f the gun does constant battle with other phallic icons to establish dominance and identity. On the other hand the reward o f such dominance is the girl, and while settling with her means the continuation o f “civilization” it also means the loss o f some, if not all, o f his wildness; in the world o f the phallic gun, he is potentially

LIBERTY VALANCE

emasculated.

Robert Altman’s M cCabe an d Mrs M iller (1970), subverts so many o f the Western genre’s conventions o f linear narrative, hero status, gender stereotyp­ ing and the value o f the colonizing impulse itself that it might be seen as an “anti-Western”. Despite its innovation in so many respects - and despite the formidable performance o f Julie Christie as Mrs Miller - there are ways in which the representation o f women surprisingly owes more to the conventions o f Western and patriarchal ideology than would at first appear obvious.

Mrs Miller is an initiator; she is in fact the colonizing wave that follows and incorporates McCabe’s own “civilizing” business ventures in Presbyterian Church; although she does ultimately fail to prevent McCabe’s destruction, this is more indicative o f the oppression o f small business by corporate muscle than it is a failure o f her strength o f purpose as a woman. However, Mrs Miller is a survivor in this bleak, amoral world primarily because she has internalized the patriarchal values which view women as a commodity and the female body as the currency o f financial and cultural success. As the Madam in the new and classier brothel in Presbyterian Church, she has merely “got on top” and reversed the binary power opposition to her own advantage; by aligning herself with the exploiters o f women she has certainly managed to survive and indeed to thrive in a ruthless world, yet, when one sees her inability to fully emotionally engage with McCabe (Warren Beatty) or her resort to the mindnumbing haze o f the opium den while he dies alone in the snow, one senses that the cost o f her survival has been significant. Also, by reversing rather than deconstructing the opposition o f exploiter/exploited, her character leaves intact the machinery o f oppression.

I f the Western as a film genre is America’s attempt to understand and rationalize its past and its cultural origins, then it becomes clear across a number o f examples, that it considers women to be essentially peripheral to the construction o f that identity. Women are used, not as individuals - and, with the exception o f Mrs Miller, almost never as subjects in their own right - but rather as vehicles to carry the symbolic weight o f what is Other to the male subject. As the “virgin soil”, or, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, as the “fresh, green breast o f the new world” individual women are subsumed into the generic category o f Woman, and, according to the ideology o f the Western, she has no voice in either her own fate or her national history.

FOOTNOTES 1. Louis Althusser, Lenin a nd Philosophy a n d Other Essays trans. Ben Brewster, (London: New Left Books, 1 9 7 1 ) , p. 1 5 3 .

2 . Hélène Cixous, from “Sorties” in L a jo u m e née, cited New French Feminisms, ed. Marks and de Courtivron (N .Y .: Schocken Books, 1 9 8 1 ) , p. 9 2 .

3. John D onne, “T o His Mistris Going to Bed” , John D onne ed. John Hayward (H arm ondsw orth: Penguin, 1 9 5 0 ) , p. 8 9 .

4 . F . Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. (H arm ondsw orth:Penguin, 1 9 5 0 ) , p. 1 7 1 .

LYNDON SAYER-JONES IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE FORMATION OF A COMMERCIAL LEGAL PRACTICE

LYNDON SAYER-JONES AND ASSOCIATES • SOLICITORS •

TAKING INSTRUCTIONS IN ENTERTAINMENT/MEDIA LAW SUITE 216 2ND LEVEL MIRVAC TRUST BUILDING 185 ELIZABETH STREET SYDNEY AUSTRALIA 2000 TELEPHONE (02) 283 1211 FASCIMILE (02) 283 1227

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The Film Editing Bench 0 0 !

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by A m b e r Technology as p a rt o f our c o m m itm e n t to quality, professional e q u ip m e n t for th e Film a n d Television Industries, For S tee n b e c k a n d all your film a n d television e q u ip m e n t needs, talk to Am ber. Unit B< Sky|ine P|a c e / Frenchs Forest N.S.W 2086, Teleph one (02) 9 7 5 1 2 1 1 .

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CALL FO R EXPERIM EN TAL/A VA N T GARDE/ART FILMS AN D VID EO S In April, Modern Image M akers Association w ill be holding a Preview Screening for all curators involved in the 1989 Exhibition Program. The purpose of this screening is to m ake the MIMA Exhibition Program as open as possible to

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For 5 y e a r s t h e AFI has b e e n b r in g in g to S y d n e y a d iu e r s e an d c h a lle n g in g b r a n d o f c in e m a t ic e x h i b i tio n . A lth o u g h t h e n a m e has c h a n g e d , t h e q u a l i t y h a s n 't. J u s t to p r o u e it, w e a r e p le a s e d to a n ­ n o u n ce t h e n e w 1989 A u t u m n C a le n d a r . H ig h lig h ts inc lude t h e r e t u r n o f t h e CINEMATHEQUE - e n t i t l e d SACRED CIN EMA , t h e t h e m e th is c a l e n d a r is R e lig ­ ion in C in e m a an d c o m p r is e s a w i d e r a n g e o f f a s ­ c in a t in g an d e n t e r t a i n i n g film . W e w ill also be p r e s e n t in g t h e b e s t , n e w e s t a n d m o s t i n n o u a t iu e o f f i r s t r e le a s e s an d s e a s o n s o f a i l d e s c r i p ­ t i o n s . C a l l in a t t h e c i n e m a t o p i c k u p a c a l ­ e n d a r o r p h o n e 3 3 2 21 î 1 f o r o n e t o b e s e n t .

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"SM ELLS ARE SURER THAN SO U N D TO M AKE MELL is the most pgffunderstood anjjlinder rated o f our sensjJf We live in a soc|ffy full o f scent-killers an^Scent-maskers. V 0 think o f smelling as something primitive. O nlyjh the spe­ cialized areas o f wine-tasting and perfume manu­ facture is there any attempt to educatcjprhc modern nose to develop its full potential. In ,me history of filmmaking, there have been several attempts to harness this potential, ranging from the relative simplicity o f scratch-and-smell cards to complex, electronically-triggered devices. The first experi­ ments, however, were in the theatre.

In 1868, for example, in the London produc­ tion o f The Fairy Acorn Tree at the Alhambra Theatre, scents were dispensed through ‘vapourizers’. Alexander Scriabin experimented with odours in his operas, and Oscar Wilde’s original stage di­ rections for Salome indicated that “braziers o f per­ fume should take the place o f an orchestra - a new perfume for each emotion”. The Music Box Revue o f 1923 used a special chemical compound squirted from the orchestra pit into the audience as John Steel and Grace Moore sang “Am Orange Grove in California”.

The first recorded incidence o f smell in the movies was in 1906. S.L. ‘Roxy’ Rothafel, at his silent film theatre in Forest City, Pennsylvania, dipped cotton in a rose essence and put it in front o f an electric fan. Newsreel footage o f the Pasad­ ena' Rose Bowl Game was accompanied by the scent o f roses. Lilac perfume was released through the ventilation system during the screening o f Lilac Time in Boston at the Fenway Theatre in 1929, and during M GM ’s Hollywood Revue o f 1928 an orange aroma drifted into the theatre as Charles King sang “Orange Blossom Time” .

In the 1950s, Charles Earnes invented a mul­ tiple-screen projection system for slides which con­ tained a device that co-ordinated visual images with

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sm e l® This was devel<3fkd into the Septorama ProceJ||vhich was shownlijyhe American Ex­ h ib itio n s Moscow in 1959i%p 1958 a British THE HEART­ inventor,William Rose, developed a device for releasing artknas from a TV receiver by means o f an electria|mpulse from the transmitter.

STR IN G S But it was4not until the end o f the 1950s that the two most ambitious systems for re­ cording and replaying smell in the cinema had CRA CK' their premieres only a month apart. The press dubbed it “The Battle o f the Smellies”, but were unable to declare a winner.

RUDYARD The G reat Wall, a documentary on China directed by Leonardo Bonzi, had been screened without smells at the Brussels Film Exposition, K IP LIN G where it won two awards. For its American debut, the film was tricked out with a process called AromaRama The process had three main components: scents compounded on a flat operating base that were released with predetermined intensity into the theatre’s air distribu­ tion system; a timing and triggering device connected to the projector, which automatically cued the release o f scents; and ‘deodorisers’, electronic precipitators introduced into the baffles and filters o f the theatre’s air control system. The sup­ plier o f scents for AromaRama said it had “a library o f some 2,000 standard odours” which could be mixed in various combinations. It was claimed that a 600-seat theatre could be equipped with AromaRama in two weeks, for between $4,500 and $7,500.

The documentary itself was well received, but AromaRama was thought by most critics to be a gimmick, and not a very successful one. Bosley Crowther, in the New York Times, commented: “In between the suffusions o f odours, the air in the theatre is cleaned by a purifying treatment that itself leaves a sticky sweet smell, which tends to become upsetting before the film has run its full two hours. When this viewer emerged from the theatre, he happily filled his lungs with that lovely fume-laden New York air, It has never smelled so good.” Henry Hart, in Film Re­ views, speculated: “Some day, I suppose, an avant gardist will ineigh against the cliche o f the pleasant smell and write an odor-score for a film that will be equivalent to

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gale winds or gentle breezes, exudes pleas­ ant smells and shakes with dreadful vibra­ tions. Demonstrations consisted o f a simu­ lated motorcycle ride complete with ex­ haust fumes, and a reproduction o f the ex­ perience o f being in the same room with a belly dancer as perfume wafts from the ‘feely machine’.

Helig thought the simulator had a range o f functions: it could be used as a pro­ motion device for travel agents who could simulate the beach at Acapulco complete with local smells and bird noises; it could provide experiences for “old ladies and cripples, people that never go anywhere”; it could be o f use to “astronauts enduring long flights in space ... They could sit in the machine and see wheat fields in Kansas, smell the hay, walk down the main street o f their home town, see and hear their wives talking to them.” The simulator could also be employed as a psychotherapeutic device, enabling car accident victims to regain their confidence.

In 1971 there was a rumoured revival Do not scratch until you receive instructions from the film. o f a refined AromaRama process from pro­ ducer Charles Weiss. The project was to be titled “Focus” and was to deal with a frag­ mented young man trying to liberate him­ self in a world dominated by women. The picture was to be shot for $ 2 5 0 ,0 0 0 in New York and Australia. Weiss said the ‘scent aspects would be played down in advertis­ ing, and the process would be used spar­ ingly as an important additive, like music’. today’s unhappy ending, cacophony and psychopathic protagonist.”

In 1981 John Waters, in his film Polyester:, introduced his “Odorama Smell-o-vision was the rival process, used in Scent o f Mystery, a Mike Todd process”. This process consists simply o f a numbered “scratch and smell card”.

Jr production directed by Jack Cardiff. Cardiff, cinematographer on Black The audience scratches the relevant number when that number appears on the Narcissus, The R ed Shoes, The A frican Queen and Conan the B arbarian , has screen. There were only 10 smells, ranging from fart to roses, but basically also directed Sons a n d Lovers, The Long Ships and G irl on a Motorcycle, among distinguishable only as sweet or sour. The storyline featured Franclne Fishpaw, others. a typical American housewife distinguished only by her acute sensitivity to He was enthusiastic about shooting “a picture for the third sense”. Scent odours. o f Mystery was written specifically to be smelt; a mystery woman, played by Two years later “Scentaround” arrived, marketed by Environmental Fra­ Elizabeth Taylor, could be recognized by her perfume. The film also featured grance Technologies Ltd. Scentaround was based on a technique that used Leo McKern, Diana Dors and the scent o f roses, peaches, bread, garlic, boot heat and pressure to circulate a scent. Although theatrical use was definitely on polish, oil paint, wood shavings and lavender.

E F T ’s agenda, the company’s primary thrust was TV. The company came up While Cardiff was excited by the prospect o f Smell-o-vision, he started with a prototype o f a device which when loaded with the proper “aroma-disc” shooting the film without actually testing it out, he recalled recently: “About would release a succession o f scents into a room, signalled by cues on a TV halfway through I said to Michael Todd Jr, ‘I suppose you have smelt some of soundtrack. the samples?’ The answer was in the negative. When we finished the picture, The company also handled Aromance, an audio cassette-sized player I was a bit worried, and I think Mike Todd was too, that what we’d smelt so which played a selection o f 40 different fragrance discs. These included ocean far was just very cheap perfumes with no difference breeze, after-dinner mints, Christmas Time, and between them .. .We shot it in wide film. As well as Movie Time (the scent o f buttered popcorn), all the soundtrack on the side o f the film, there was o f which were available in long playing (five-hour) FROM ROSES TO CHEAP PERFUME a special narrow track which was like a cue guide or short playing (one-hour) versions. for when a smell was expected on the screen. And Professor Susan Schiffman, a biochemist and TO BACON TO TERIYAKI TO BOOT POLISH it was quite an extraordinary set-up. We went for clinical psychologist in the Department o f Psy­ a first running to a big cinema in Chicago. They TO WOOD SHAVINGS TO GARLIC chiatry at Duke University in South Carolina has had fixed a vat, or series o f vats, with various smells developed about 40 artificial flavours for obese TO PEACHES TO PAINT TO... TO... TO... in them underneath the theatre, and there were patients to ingest and smell as food substitutes. small pipes running to every seat in the audience.

These include vanilla, bacon, teriyaki, cream and The pipes would be run up the back o f each seat chocolate. so that the person behind you would get the whiff o f a smell as it was injected As well as a treatment for obesity, Professor Schiffman employs the odours into the pipes, as the smell track gave off a cue. The technical part was excel­ as a treatment for mental illness. In order to “open up the sense” o f depressed lent, but when we ran the film in Chicago for the press and everything, they patients, odours such as apricot and peach are floated into the room, all said the same thing: there is no particular smell. It was all a kind o f cheap unbeknownst to the occupants. eau de cologne. This was a disaster. And then later on we ran it in New York, If, as Jack Cardiff argues, the main stumbling block to the success of Smelland that was the end o f that; it had terrible notices because it was not a genu­ o-vision was the authenticity o f the odours, the current research could lead to ine Smell-o-vision at all. It was a very interesting story with a marvellous pho­ an advance in smell technology which could be adapted for use in the cinema. tographic background o f Spain, but the smell, for which it was made, didn’t The other main area o f concern is the lack o f public awareness about the exist.” potential o f smell in the cinema. Until the public understands the power o f Other experimenters were not easily deterred. In 1963, Morton L. Helig smell to elicit emotional responses other than disinterest, disdain and disgust, o f Long Beach, Long Island invented the Sensorama simulator. The simulator filmmakers exploring the full aromatic potential o f cinema are fighting an shows a three-dimensional film, broadcasts stereophonic sound, manufactures uphill batde.

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Four days of the best of Aus­ tralian shorts, docos and experimental work. Don't miss this big get together.

Plus Sunday 30th Super 8 / video/and mixed media at TheatreWorks.

WANTED RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT O FFICER for

FRAMES: FESTIVAL OF AUSTRALIAN FILM & VIDEO

mm.

Frames 1990 will be the fourth festival of Australian Film and Video held in Adelaide during alternate years. Initiated in 1984 it was known as Fringe Film Festival until 1987, when it came under the auspices of the Media Resource Centre Inc.

KILDA FILM ENQUIRES: Lee Holmes: 536 1333, and S S M 1989« m m É Æ a Nigel Buesst: 347 5525.

Frames now requires the services of a suitably qualified Research and Development Officer to: • research and develop the notion of an Australian film festival with an international component.

• research the costs and availability of overseas independent product • research possible content and programming strategies for such a festival • research the feasibility of an annual festival • establish an appropriate network of international contacts • prepare a sponsorship proposal for the 1990 festival • Seek out, approach and secure sponsors for the 1990 festival

• NATIONAL THEATRE « 2 6 - 29 APRIL «

TO LET

The appointee will have a strong interest in and knowledge of film culture, especially Australian plus strong administrative, entrepre­ neurial and communication skills. S/he must be a highly motivated in­ dividual able to organize time efficiently without supervision. Spon­ sorship raising skills would be an advantage.

OFFICESPACE

Initially this is a part time contract position. The salary and the time commitment will be negotiated with the successful applicant.

Applications in writing by March 24 to: The Director Media Resource Centre Inc. P.O. Box 33 Rundle Mall ADELAIDE SA 5000

FO R DETAILS SEE AD ON PAGE 70

Art & Technology of Make-Up incorp oratin g T hree Arts m ake-up Centre Pty Ltd • Film • T elevision • T heatre One or two year full time courses in Theatrical Arts

T h ree A rts M ake-Up C entre P ty Ltd (E st. 1966) Cnr. Shepherd & M yrtle Streets, C hippendale, N SW 2008 Tel. (02) 698 1070

Year One: All aspects of make-up Art class/design layout presentation Sculpture class/special effects Theatrical hair styling

Congratulations to all our past and present students who are continuing with excellence the high standard in Make-up and Special Effects fo r our Film, Television, Theatre, High Fash­ ion and Art/Sculpture, plus other related areas o f employment fo r make-up artists.

Year Two: Prosthesis work/special effects Theatrical hair styling (advanced) Basic wig knotting

Special courses also available

• Special classes with SMILKA

Australia’s own international make-up artist, will hold classes in glamour, high fashion, video and photography and B ert Charles international high fashion make-up artist.

Tuesday night 6.00-8.00 p.m. (career course)

Facepainting

• Six week course to learn the art of face­ painting or as a revision course.

Wednesday night 6.00 - 8 .00 p.m. (career course) •

Workshop classes in Special Effects

• Holiday Hobby Course: F o r schools, amateur theatre or people think­ ing of a career in make-up.

Monday - Friday (Every school holiday) !

Week only. (Except Easter)

Theatrical Arts Shop: • Make-up • Body Washes • Masks • Material for Mask Making and Sculpture • Professional Make-Up Brushes • New • Dawn Range of Cosmetics

Lecture Demonstration

• All aspects of make-up for schools, amateur theatre and interested groups.

Private appointment only ; Facial prosthetic and skin camouflage; Remedial Techniques; Direct Likeness: Head sculpture’s created in bronze, resin and plaster.

For further information write or telephone Dawn Swane RADA, ASMA, Principal and Founder

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The Computer Video Link-up with the current and phrases,

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE ARE GATHERED HERE

duction, the users o f these colourful glowing boxes felt that there was an in­ TODAY FOR THAT MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS, COM ­ evitability to the dream.

Technicalities'mvestigatcs the In its widest form, desktop video PUTER AND VIDEO. SO WITHOUT DIGITAL DELAY, DO state o f play in desktop video. It is a de­ returns control o f the process o f video velopment that computer firms hope production to the individual. At the YO U , VIDEO, TAKE THIS COMPUTER SIGNAL, TO HAVE will be as successful as desktop pub­ moment the term is mostly applied to lishing, the process of using a com­ computer-generated or manipulated AND TO VERTICAL HOLD AS LONG AS YOU BOTH SHALL puter screen to lay out text that elimi­ images, and there has been a trade-off nates the intermediate stages o f type­ between this freedom, and quality and SYN C? YOU DO? IS THERE ANYONE PRESENT HERE setting and cut-and-paste layout for image resolution. This is not exactly publication. At its best, this has meant ‘poor man’s video’ because the costs W HO CAN GIVE JUST CAUSE W HY THESE TWO MEDIA cost savings for publications such as are still quite high, but the images are C inem a P ap ers- this issue and the last more at home on videocassette than SHOULD NOT BE JOINED TOGETHER? were designed on an Apple Macin­ broadcast. With video-cassette record­ tosh. At its worst, desktop publishing ers and computers in a lot of homes, the has placed the power o f print in the outlay for extra accessories and software to combine the two can be as little as hands o f what a friend calls the Ransom Note School o f Layout: ‘publishers’ $3,000. The acceptance o f the VHS cassette has, in fact, provided the universal with no concept o f page design or typography, and who use as many different format that has fuelled the development of this more personal video. typefaces as they can on each page.

There is still a long way to go before the potential is realized, as most of Are we naive to hope that with desktop video offering us the power o f the users are aping broadcast TV, but I ’ve chosen two examples o f the creative making cheaper television there will be a greater appreciation o f art and style? use o f cheap computers that have been seen widely in recent months, and some There are even more V C R users than computer users - Australia has one of high - and medium-cost applications that give a picture o f the growth of the highest ownerships o f VCRs in the world - and because most people desktop video. equate computer screens with TV screens ( “it’s all just images behind glass isn’t it? And my son’s Commodore 64 actually uses my T V !” ) then someone DOMESTIC HARMONY is going to make money by suggesting that those computer images be recorded The two best alternative showcases we have had for video for some time were onto videotape. The result may be as liberating as the changes wrought by the 3rd Australian Video Festival, held in August-September 1988 in Sydney, desktop publishing (reflecting the adage that the power o f the press is and Experimenta, held in November 1988 in Melbourne. controlled by those that own the press). Or we could end up with the M TV And Donkey Kong School o f Video.

SALLY PRYOR I f that sounds cynical it’s because I ’ve watched the process from the inside.

An illustration that “Art will win Out” no matter what the resolution, is the As a producer I have often worked on video. Over the years in these work o f Sally Pryor. Sally was one o f the first graduates from the Swinburne Technicalities articles I ’ve reported on the growing use o f microcomputers for Computer Graphics course and, along with fellow student Andrew Quinn, was scriptwriting, budgeting, storyboarding, scheduling and accounting. In pro­ offered work at Cranston-Csuri, one o f the top US computer graphics com­ duction we’ve seen plug-in boards for the PC that turn them into good quality panies at the time. I worked with Sally when she returned to Australia at The character generators, plug-in boards and software that read and generate timeVideo Paint Brush Co. in Sydney. There (like most of the 3D graphics code and create edit decision lists, and the use o f small computers as accurate designers/operators/programmers I’ve met) she struggled to balance the computer controllers for editing. At the other end o f the scale we have looked pressures applied to computer graphics by art, technology and a commerce at the expensive video paint systems and the glossy minicomputer-generated that is dependent on time. Sally was producing the highest quality' images on 3D graphics, dreaming that someday we could be generating these high the best equipment: yet, faced with the diminishing chances for doing her quality images on our home computer. personal creative work at the “office”, she returned to her Amiga 500 home As cheaper home computers such as the Commodore Amiga and the Atari computer.Here, she used a Digi-View digitizer attached to a small video ST have offered increasingly sophisticated graphics, animation and sound pro­ E V E R LA T E

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camera to input images o f Barbie Dolls ( a symbol that she has always used, the unreal idealized view o f women, a visual joke with a sharp edge), and self portraits. These images were combined with graphic backgrounds produced with Deluxe Paint and the result, a two-minute video called Computers are Fun, was shown at the 1988 Australian Video Festival. As a computer installation called D igital Dolls, it was presented at Experimenta 88.

Sally chose to present D igital Dolls from the screen of the Amiga because o f the quality losses and subtle changes that take place with the transfer to tape.

The colourful saturated RGB images from the Amiga monitor were pro­ grammed to repeat continuously using Page Flipper software.

With fast hard disks and enough memory to buffer them, presentation from the actual computer monitor screen is a real alternative. There are also video projectors that take straight computer signals which will allow larger presentation to larger audiences. Instead o f the video cassette, artists and other communicators are looking towards the quality that floppy digital disks offer, adding programmed sound and animation to bring even the simplest presen­ tation to life. Small, cheap, easy to send by mail and easy to copy, the computer diskette makes a viable alternative graphic art distribution medium, only limited by the lack o f standardization of computers. It’s not impossible to imagine a network o f galleries or similar public areas with the same cheap computers showing the work of computer artists.

The Australian-developed and manufactured Fairlight CVI (Computer Video Instrument) has been mentioned often in these pages and the CVI Plus is the latest in a long line o f upgrades. Its limited resolution is especially noticeable with the graphics paint software, but it is still a real alternative device for enhancing live video. The built-in chroma key and real-time image manipu­ lation functions work well. It is the more subtle production effects that have stood the test o f time on the CVI, just as with broadcast effects: there is little demand any more for the multiple image, streak and trail stuff that we were all attracted to just a few years ago. The CVI isn’t broadcast resolution or intended to be: it again fits into the ‘industrial/educational’ area. Yet there are a steady band o f users who are pulling impressive images even from the paint software.

I f Pigs Could Fly ( The M edia Machine) was substantially created on the CVI paint software with hand-drawn images by Peter Callas. The bright simple colours and chunky graphic resolution are used cleverly by Callas, who then used the fact that the stability of the CVI images makes them easy to transfer up to broadcast formats. Callas then used the Abekas 53D digital effects unit to add the movement to the static images. The result, commis­ sioned by the Australian Bicentennial Authority as part o f the travelling exhibition, is a collection of symbols o f advertising art, icons and emblems of Australiana that Callas has transformed into an immediately distinct style.

Information Channel.

PETER CALLAS: LEFT: IF PIG S “As well as this,” Koetsveld adds, “we COULD FLY, AND RIGHT: N IG H T'S HIGH NOON ..CREATED use the Commodore digitizer to input colour client logos, feeding it off the cam­ ON CVI PAINT SOFTWARE era CCU. We have a decoder that takes composite in and gives us RGB out. We do use the built-in speech processor but it’s more as a joke because we get it to read the clapper (title) board!”

He has had a lot o f experience with genlock devices for the Amiga especially the two currently favoured here in Australia. The better-known one is the Neriki, which is manufactured in Sydney, while the one made by David Broadbent’s Industrial Support Systems (ISS) comes from Melbourne.

“The stumbling block for us with the two devices is that although the Neriki is about $1000 dearer and is very neatly made, it doesn’t perform any better,” he says. “Neither of the devices has any form of horizontal phase timing adjustment. The ISS has video phase which means that you can shift the picture but not the sync timing o f it. We have had to use all sorts o f cable delays to get the signal compatible enough to use our Ampex ADO with it, so they could barely be called broadcast standard devices.”

The reason, Koetsveld believes, is that “the ISS box uses a Motorola LSI chip and it has a rather unfortunate design characteristic which you can see on a waveform monitor. The same characteristic ‘glitch’ is in the Neriki signal so I presume they use the Motorola chip as well. I believe that this is a design fault that causes a lot o f the problems. Unfortunately there is also a faint vertical bar down the right hand side o f the image, another built-in fault. For most industrial and home applications the timing is not a problem but because we are trying to fit the equipment into a synchronous environment there are limitations.”

Koetsveld sees the Amiga’s main advantages as cost and the ability to do various tasks with a single computer. “Its quality is quite adequate for the small-budget corporate work and all industrial work. We still use standard character generators like the Aston for critical work but for most part the Amiga is fine. We use Aegis Titler: we’ve got lots o f fonts and a lot are in the public domain. Even the large 60 point and 72 point fonts are acceptable if you don’t get up close.”

Like any machine that was once NTSC there must be compromises, the Amiga sometimes defaults on a warm boot to the NTSC smaller screen size.

And depending on the software, there are various interpretations o f the necessary Overscan to enlarge the reduced size o f the computer image to full PAL 625 scan lines. Some of the programs that Rod Koetsveld has used ‘crash’ if the image is overscanned beyond ‘medium’.

The screen resolution depends on the number o f colours required but as text is usually limited to a few colours, they can work with a resolution o f 600 x 320 pixels. The new Amiga 2500 and 3000 models reportedly in testing in the US should mean even better resolution and speed.

GOOD TIMING

THE WEDDING FEAST

Macro Video is one o f the many companies servicing the corporate market. As Rod Koetsveld, one o f the directors o f the company, describes it, “We operate on the smaller industrial and corporate budgets. We run six days a week, 12 hours a day, just doing those $5,000 to $8,000 budget jobs and it’s terrific.”

One o f th e cost-effective tools Macro uses is an Amiga 2000, with the maximum amount o f memory available, and a hard drive. They use it primarily as a character generator and they have a number o f software applications that run on it. For titling they use Aegis Titler, Zuma Group’s TVEdit provides an electronic slide show, and Deluxe Paint generates computer art as back­ grounds to support the text. These graphics are mostly simple things like a frame o f dollar signs as a background to the day’s exchange rates, or the backgrounds for local and interstate weather for their company, the Tourist

Sitting in his office in South Melbourne, Peter Starr-Nolan looks more than happy at the response that the just-released PAL standard model Inovion PGS (Personal Graphic System) III is receiving. For Starr-Nolan it is the culmina­ tion o f five years’ work with the Utah-based company Inovion to develop what I believe is one o f the best low-cost video paint and manipulation tools available.

The PGS III has been purpose built as a high-performance video graphics system, but its development was not just for corporate and desktop video production, “In fact,” Starr-Nolan explains, “the major uses o f the product are in niche markets such as hair styling, cosmetic sales and plastic surgery, all o f which allow clients to visualize on the PGS III the final result o f the changes before spending the time and money”.

PETER CALLAS

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After developing the specialized software and hardware they realized how wide the market for desktop video imaging was. The response from trade show demonstrations came from expected areas such as education, video produc­ tion, business presentation graphics, advertising, landscape architecture, desktop publishing, and interior design; but the company was surprised at interest from applications in cosmetic dentistry, medicine (X-ray compari­ sons), embroidery, fashion, real estate and research (NASA used them for analysis o f videotapes o f the Shutde disaster).

Watching the Inovion at work is even more frustrating than sitting behind the operator o f a Quantel Paintbox or the Ampex AVA. Because the function selection has been designed for non-technical users, with easy to understand icons and pull down menus, you itch to get your hands on it yourself. This ease o f use and the speed (many functions happen much faster than either o f those six-figure top-end machines) is a result o f the fast 68010 microprocessor operating at 12.5m H z with zero wait states and Inovion’s shrewd choice o f a limited resolution and number o f displayed colours. This allows the device to be sold here for approximately $ 15,000, excellent value for money considering its other features.

The most impressive feature is the real time digitizing o f images coming in via the RGB or composite video inputs. Unlike some digitizers that take seconds to grab the images, the PGS III has a flash grab that is really instant.

As well as a full frame grab, there is the ability to mix the input video with an overlay o f graphics made on the Inovion. The 1.75 MBytes o f memory are divided into the video frame grab, a useful undo frame, and for the program memory. There is a single 3.5" floppy drive and an internal 44M b hard disk with a SCSI interface.

You use standard devices such as a digitizing tablet, mouse and keyboard to build the images, and there is a standard RS232 serial port for external control and data input.

Coming out o f the box there are the RGB and composite signals and Centronics parallel and SCSI ports. A second Centronics and an IEE 488 interface are optional. This allows a number o f printers to be used and the quality o f hard copy made on the current 300 DPI ( dot per inch ) printers is impressive. It is an important part o f the PGS’s ease o f use to output images to devices such as the Polaroid freeze frame film recorder and video printers and hold copies o f the images that were created seconds before.

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(ability to show detail) The detail capability of TV is lim­ ited by the need to fit channels into the limited space available on the airwaves (based on the technology of time). The separate colour (chrominance) sub-carrier and black-and-white (luminance) band widths are 4 .4 3 MHz and 5 MHz for PAL. We somehow don’t con­ sider it a compromise to watch a signal from a VHS cassette with a luminance bandwidth as low as 3MHz.

With no broadcast restrictions com­ puter video has a typical bandwidth of 20 to 100 MHz. The signal usually has to travel down a few feet of low-loss cable to a specially de­ signed monitor. Colour is usually fed as three separate signals, red green and blue, referred to as RGB. These usally have identical bandwidths, and the smaller screens al­ low the focused electron beam spot to be much smaller, hence sharper.

BLANKING

The blanking time for TV is strictly defined and is much longer than the time needed for the beam to retrace to the start of the next horizontal line. This covers all the other signals that occur in that time such as colourburst, vertical interval references and time code, teletext and closed captioning.

UNDERSCAN AND OVERSCAN

The picture on your TV set is usu­ ally adjusted to be up to 15 percent larger than the picture tube. This allows the old round corner tubes to have full information, hides the data lines being used at the top and bottom and the degree of overscan is the reason for the frustration of Safe Action and Safe Titles areas used in broadcast.

The advances in digital signal processing in VCRs, allowing perfect frame stills, picture within picture, etc, will mean that we will be passing images of increasing quality between the mediums. The acceptance o f Super-VHS in the US has been in part due to the availability o f simple editing controllers as much as the multi-generation capability o f the Super-VHS system. It is becoming feasible to make and record excellent quality images that approach broadcast quality and are perfect for low-cost program production for cassette release.

It is not overly fanciful to believe that within the next few years, the chance will be there for even the smallest business to communicate ideas visually, as simply as writing or drawing on paper. In this Post-Gutenberg world, whether we like it or not, we are becoming visually literate (there’s no precise word for the concept yet, a sure sign o f how text has dominated even the way we express our visions). Desktop video is just a beginning.

The bride and bridegroom cordially invite you to attend the silver anniversary in 25 years time. R.S.V.P. VHS. ■

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RESOLUTION

Horizontal and vertical rates for TV video are defined by rigid in­ dustry standards to ensure com­ patibility between broadcast and reception or to ensure that your video cassette can be replayed on anyone else’s VCR. The broadcast horizontal scan frequency is 15.62kHz and the vertical scan, 50 Hz, is reached by dividing that by the number of alternate lines in one of the two fields that make up a single frame of the picture displayed every 1 /2 5 of a second.

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Desktop video by definition suggests a video that is deskbound, imagery that is mostly generated rather than the produced by videotaping live action material. This is a useful way to point out the incompatibilities of the two systems and how they are now being combined.

Video is used mostly to show moving real-life objects and images and because of their development are basically medium-resolution black-andwhite images with a low-resolution colour channel overlaid. It is the movement, the concentration on the centre of the screen and the viewers experience of those real-life images that makes the system look better than it is. Computer displays are designed to present static images of detailed in­ formation such as a page of text or numbers.' The image is made up of pixels, the smallest points of light that make up a picture: if you look closely you can see them. Computer graphics usually show images that don’t exist in nature and the edges of the picture often have as much information as the centre. The main differences between the systems are....

The screen resolution, is 512 x 586 pixels with a palette o f 65,536 available colours. Frame grabs from video or via the RGB inputs show no sign o f colour limitations, and it is really only when creating graphics, when the familiar stair stepping on diagonal lines and curves shows up, that you notice the resolution limits. There is an upgrade to a 1000 x 1000 resolution available for the NTSC model and, depending on demand, it will be an option here.

This would bring the quality up to the current Vista and Targa plug-in PC graphics boards, but because o f its speed and ease o f use, I believe that people will use the RGB compatibility o f the PGS III to transfer their computer images made with these graphics boards onto the PGS for manipulation. I f they are finally outputting the result to video, the results are good and the advantages are many.

The PGS III offers a number o f ways to lessen the problem and uses complex ‘dithering’ functions to anti-alias. With a very variable averaging function, the operator can appear to soften the lines and edges by changing the pixels along the edges to an average o f the colours on both sides o f the edge.

This blurs the graphic slightly if selected as an overall function but it can be used accurately just where needed.

The same dithering approach gives the colour shade function the look of much more powerful graphic machines, graduated colour backgrounds look terrific on the PGS. In summary, the PGS III is the first practical device that delivers the promise o f desktop video as I understand it. It expands the application o f video and computers further than the limited production area that I intend to use it in ( we liked it so much we bought one!). Units like this one show how the lines between video images and digital manipulation are blurring. I f you can imagine it then you can now visualize it for others.

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SCAN RATES

With no scan rate requirements com­ puter displays vary between 15kHz and 75kHz, vertical scan rates be­ tween 40H z and 120H z. The rule for determining the amount of detail that can be displayed is: the higher the hoizontal scan rate and video bandwidth, the lower the vertical scan rate (for that given horizontal rate) the higher the detail capacity.

Computer monitors can use lower scan frequencies by using phosphors in their picture tubes that keep glowing after the beam has passed.

Vertical scan rates over 60 Hz don’t need long persistence phosphors and the designers up the horizontal rates to satisfy the demand for higher quality.

BLANKING

Computers don’t need that time and maximize the available picture area with short blanking times.

UNDERSCAN AND OVERSCAN

Computer video is underscanned.

The electron beam draws a picture smaller than the face of the picture tube.

HOW TH EY CONNECT

Because the signals from computers are not compatible with the video requirements, special interfaces are required or built into the equipment.

The separate RGB signals need to be timed to each other, and converted to a composite-sync that can be recorded or displayed on video monitors. Loss of signal in cables becomes a problem and there needs to be some kind of method for centring the picture and changing aspect sizes.

The devices that take the RGB signals and make a composite picture signal are called encoders. To go the other way into RGB or into a computer you need a decoder. These vary in price and quality from devices costing a few thousands to stand-alone devices, transcoders costing tens of thou­ sands.

The new systems such as Betacam and Super VHS ( S-VHS) are themselves component and yield the best images because there is no need to extensively alter the signals. It is these systems that will, I believe, realize the potential of desktop video.

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THIS ISSUE: GO RILLAS IN THE MIST, THE ACCUSED, AN D THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST

GORILLAS IN THE MIST

G O R IL L A S IN THE

THE ADVENTURE OF DIAN FOSSEY

M IS T i WHAT MAKES

THE FILM COME DOWN ON THE SIDE OF FOSSEY AND "HER" GORILLAS - TO THE DETRIMENT OF THE BATWA PEOPLE IS SIGOURNEY WEAVER'S ABILITY TO MIMIC BOTH THE MOVEMENTS AND THE VOCALISATIONS OF THE GORILLAS

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In 1966 Dian Fossey, a physical therapist from Ken­ tucky U.S.A., persuaded Dr Louis Leakey to send her to central Africa for six months to take a census o f the fast disappearing gorillas living in the Virunga Mountains. In 1985 Fossey was murdered after devoting almost 20 years to the study and protec­ tion o f the gorillas. Gorillas in the Mist was in the initial stages o f production at the time o f Fossey’s death. Its completion is in some sense an attempt to ensure the continuation o f her work and the survival o f the (gorilla) species.

In its dramatization o f “The Adventure o f Dian Fossey”, Gorillas in the Mist proposes that Fossey’s quest was initiated by a desire for knowledge which was rapidly transformed into a neo-colonialist struggle which pitted the Batwa people against Fos­ sey and the gorillas. The implication is that Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) was initially a two-bit researcher who was rapidly caught up in this knowledge-power nexus in the course o f playing out some primal scene o f her own.

The film opens in an American lecture theatre with a declaration by Dr Louis Leakey (Iain Cuthbertson) that there are two major frontiers left: the exploration o f space and the exploration o f the past.

Leakey believed that the African primates were the key to the past. Throughout the film the question o f Fossey’s motivation for embarking on her peril­ ous journey is left hanging in the shadow o f Leakey’s C

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explanation for why he does this work: “I want to know who I am and what it is that made me that way.” One o f the strengths o f the film is that it never fully subsumes Fossey’s quest into a male an­ thropologist’s search for m an ’s identity. She has her own agenda - one which ultimately eludes director, Michael Apted, ( C oal M iner’s Daughter, 28- Up, C ritical Condition) and screenwriter, Anna Hamilton (Mask).

The motif o f the woman alone in the heart o f Africa is, from the moment o f Fossey’s arrival in the Congo, pushed to the point where madness lurks as the last frontier. Intimations o f madness haunt almost every scene in the film. Yet even in its depiction o f Fossey’s most crazed confrontations with the Batwa tribe o f forest pygmies on the Rwanda side o f the mountain, the film maintains an uneasy balance between a critical distance from her white-witch excesses and the sense that these ruthless excesses are her only means to a justifiable end - the protection o f the gorillas from the souvenir markets and zoos o f the West. It is also implied that Fossey’s capacity for stepping over the limit is the very quality which enables her to break new ground in the anthropological incursion into Batwa/gorilla territory.

What makes the film come down on the side o f Fossey and “her” gorillas - to the detriment o f the Batwa people - is Sigourney Weaver’s ability to mimic both the movements and the vocalisations o f the gorillas. Weaver’s submissive courtship o f the male silverback runs rings around her love scenes with Bryan Brown (in the role o f Bob Campbell, N ation al Geographic photographer).

Likewise, her fiercely maternal protection o f the baby gorilla - captured for a Dutch zoo at the cost o f the horrific slaughter o f five gorillas, and her grief and rage at the beheading o f Digit, the male silverback, draw on our sympathy with Weaver’s Ripley persona doing battle with the Aliens. In this case the aliens happen to be the impoverished Batwa tribe, and Fossey’s scorched earth strategy towards them takes on a distinctly imperialist and genocidal stench.

Weaver’s portrayal o f Fossey as an American moralist abroad in a sphere whose forces she can combat, but barely comprehend, results in one overriding character trait: decisiveness. From be­ ginning to end Fossey knows only one truth: Na­ ture must be protected at all cost from the ravages o f Culture. The film skirts around the central image it constructs o f a one-woman campaign against the murderous brutality o f a post-colonial economy. In the end the issues are too hot for the worthy liberalism o f Gorillas in the Mist. It main­ tains an uneasy, journalistic objectivity towards the tale it tells, restricting our knowledge to those events which fit neatly into the rhythms o f a threeact narrative structure. The possibility o f exploiting the point-of-view o f Sembagare (John Omirah Miluwi) who worked with Fossey as a tracker, and Roz Carr (Julie Harris) who knew Fossey during most o f her time in Africa, remains dormant in the film.

Only Bob Campbell can be incorporated into the narrative, as the mandatory romantic interest, to provide some much needed relief from Fossey’s re­ stricted perspective.

Gorillas in the Mist never wavers from the

careful, judicious and above all anti-sensationalist course it set itself by taking up the cause o f Fossey’s gorillas. Its pace is measured, its tone is cool, its look at Fossey is detached, and in due course it ar­ rives at the moment o f her death, which in narrative terms answers and balances out the death o f Digit.

Although Gorillas in the Mist is undoubtedly .in the business o f mythmaking - in that it naturalizes the survival o f the gorillas as an unquestionably good thing - its strong ties to a Real Life Story robs it o f the fantastic possibilities suggested by the Tarzan/ King Kong myths. Ultimately, its realist mode is a profoundly repressive one which delivers little more than a scenic tour o f mythicized territory - in much the same way that coffee-table travelogues render depths into surfaces.

The surfaces o f Gorillas in the Mist do not provide the occasion for post-modern revelry.

Rather, following in the footsteps o f Out o f A frica the film cashes in on the Lives o f Extraordinary Women market. This potentially feminist enter­ prise is undercut by the commercial imperative to turn Fossey’s story into a romance, and the ideo­ logical imperative to reduce her relationship with the gorillas to a maternal/familial one. In the face o f her breathtaking defiance o f decorum in her dealings with anyone perceived as a threat to her gorillas, the film shuffles its feet and hangs its head, unable to enter the fray.

FELICITY COLLINS Gorillas in The Mist, directed by Michael Apted. Producers: Arnold Glimcher, Terence Clegg. Executive producers: Peter Guber, Jon Peters. Co-producers: R obert N ixon, Judy Kessler. Associate producer-special make-up effects: Rick Baker. Screenplay: Anne Ham ilton Phelan. Director o f photography: John Seale. Editor: Stuart Baird. Music: Maurice Jarre. Production designer: John Graysmark. Cast: Sigourney Weaver (Dian Fossey), Bryan Brown (Bob Campbell), Julie Harris (R oz C arr), John Omirah Miluwi (Sem bargare), Iain Cuthbertson (D r Louis Leakey), C onstantiil Alexandrov (Van V ecten), Waigwa Wachira (M ukara). Production company: W arner Bros/U niversal.

disturbing the crime o f rape is for the victim, a factor often forgotten by the legal system. Murphy is jolted into this awareness, and becomes Tobias’ ally, determining to take the men in the bar on the night o f the rape to trial, on a charge o f criminal solicitation.

From this point, a relationship develops be­ tween the two women, based on their fight for a common cause. Murphy has apparently had the blinkers o f class-conditioning removed, and can now see Tobias as a person first and foremost.

However, the system is still blinkered, and all the defence evidence presented in court is aimed to­ wards proving that Tobias wanted sex, so no rape occurred. The defence lawyer sets out to cast doubt on Tobias’ character, a task that is aided by her class and the fact that she is a woman. This attitude is re­ inforced by Tobias’ friend, Sally Fraser (Ann Hearn) who works at the bar, who hears the raucous yells and who walks a away, unaware that a rape is occurring, and seeing nothing abnormal in such rowdy carryings-on.

Athough the film is inspired by the events o f a rape case in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1983, the trial in The Accused is not based on a real case, but on research into the law, and the belief that the sin o f omission is becoming an increasingly impor­ tant legal issue.

Screenwriter Tom Topor says that he chose to write about the crime o f rape because “rape is the only crime I can think o f where the victim’s word is not accepted”. This aspect is crucial. Because The Accused deals with a rape it is not only a film about the law, but it sets up gender issues that are not primary in other crimes. Rape is most commonly violence against women by men. Topor claims that the moral questions raised in The Accused could have been achieved by examining a different violent crime - a suicide or a robbery are his examples.

However, without the issue o f gender differentia­ tion brought to the film by the crime o f rape, The Accused would be a very different film.

A key issue in the film is collusion: men sticking together against women. Only one male is witness to the crime without taking part; Kenneth Joyce (Bernie Coulson) who literally turns his back, but later calls the police. Joyce may decide not to testify on Tobias’ behalf because his best friend is one o f the rapists. The decision he must make: male collu­ sion or justice. The issue goes deeper than the strength o f friendship, but concerns the humanity o f women: do women deserve the treatment they get from men; are they victims or not? It brings up the age-old values o f rape as act o f manhood; rape as symbolic of ownership and superiority; rape as an act o f male solidarity; rape as a form o f social control, keeping women in line; the mythology of the rapist as hero.

In a film which portrays men in an extremely unfavourable way, Joyce is the one redeeming male. Interestingly, Joyce is also a class above most o f the other men in the bar that night; he is a college student, they are working class. Joyce is thus doubly removed from the other men, by class and by his failure to collude. It is possible to read into this an unsettling affirmation o f the morality and human­ ity o f the educated middle class over that o f the working class, although the film shows that one o f the rapists is a college student.

The Accused brings a frightening plausibility to' the issues it raises. It does not have a ‘sex goddess’ figure as a rape victim, nor does director Jonathan Kaplan eroticize the rape sequence. Jodie Foster portrays Tobias as a complete character, a woman o f average appearance, with a home, job, friends she is believable. Films like Extremities and Lipstick featured beautiful women - Farrah Fawcett and Margaux Hemingway - who connoted beauty, de-

DistributonVillage Roadshow. 35m m 129m ins. USA 1 9 8 8 .

THE ACCUSED The closing shot o f The Accused is a cliche seen in many films which include a trial: the victorious par­ ties leave the courthouse, sharing a smile oftriumph, and are besieged by the press. Although it is highly reassuring that truth and justice have prevailed, the plot and its resolution tend to be simplistic in The Accused: the strength o f the film lies in the issues that it raises during the course o f the narrative issues which are not, and can’t be, simply resolved.

In The Accused Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster) is gang-raped by three men in a bar situated under a bridge on the grim outskirts o f town: while the rape takes place, onlookers applaud. The setting imme­ diately establishes an awareness o f social status, o f class. Class is one o f the major issues raised by this film, and is an important factor in determining the course o f events. Two factors relating to the con­ cept o f class strongly emerge: expectations o f a person based on their class, and the class inequali­ ties o f our systems o f civilization.

Assigned to Tobias’ case is a lawyer from the District Attorney’s office, Katheryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis). Murphy epitomizes the successful Eight­ ies woman: educated, businesslike, well-dressed.

To Murphy, Tobias would not make a good wit­ ness, so she makes a plea-bargain with the rapists’ lawyers and the three men receive a minimal sen­ tence on the charge o f reckless endangerment.

The major turningpoint o f the film occurs THE ACCUSED-. when Tobias’ feeling o f A KEY ISSUE IS betrayal by a legal system which she cannot make COLLUSION/ MEN work for her drives her STICKING TOGETHER to taking her own re­ AGAINST WOMEN venge. Reminiscent o f Extremities, this scene raises awareness o f how

RIGHT: JODIE FOSTER AS VICTIM SARAH TOBIAS

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stability, the female as object. It is easy for an audience watching these films to stay removed from those women because they are special cases, exceptional. This is not so with The Accused. T o ­ bias’ normality does not allow for this distance. The effect is harrowing for the viewer who is forced to endure her ordeal with her, and realize how easily this could happen to any woman.

For the first two-thirds o f the film, the audience has only Tobias’ word and the courtroom evidence upon which to decided whether she was raped or not. This structure clearly demonstrates to the audience the problems associated with proving rape. When the rape sequence occurs, any doubts are swept away. Interestingly, we see Joyce’s ver­ sion o f the events, a slightly disturbing fact, indicat­ ing that a male is believed when a female is not, although he also represents the outside observer.

This long sequence is harrowing because its treatment is so brutal. Rape is in no way made heroic, glamourized or eroticized in The Accused.

At the 1988 Melbourne Film Festival, this became an important issue at a seminar on women in film, which tied in with a screening o f films that included Mady Sachs’ Iris. Like Lipstick, the rape sequence in this film verged on pornography. The lighting, angles and shots worked to eroticize the female body for the gaze of the male viewer. This does not occur in The Accused. The sequence exhibits conti­ nuity with the previous bar scenes as the rape develops, and its plausibility and brutality is fright­ ening. Kaplan makes no attempt to let the audience out o f this easily.

PM IUPPA BURNE The Accused'. Directed by Jonathan Kaplan. Producer: Stanley R. Jaffe and Sherry' Lansing. Screenplay: Tom T o p o r. Photography R alfB o d e. Editor: Jerry Greenberg and O. Nicholas Brown. Music: Brad Fiedel. Cast: Kelly M c Gillis (Katheryn M urphy), Jodie Foster (Sarah Tobias), Bei nie Coulson (Kenneth Joyce), Ann Hearn (Sally Frazer), Steve Antin (Bob Joiner), Leo Rossi (Clift' Albrecht), C arm en Argenziano (Paul Rudolph). Production C om ­ pany: Param ount Pictures. Distributor: U IP , 35m m , 110 m ins, USA 1 9 8 8 .

THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST “ In garages, rec. room s and living room s throughout Hollywood, W est Los Angeles, the beach cities and the San Fernando Valley, bulky, packing-crate size boxes sit silently awaiting use .E ig h t feet long, four feet high, and made o f sturdy particle board, they don’t remain silent long.

Inside these plain-looking boxes, the walls are co m ­ pletely padded with thick foam sheathed in red nylon.

A tiny light dangles from the ceiling: intake and outtake fans whir at either end. Crawling through small doors at the front, people enter the boxes - singly or in pairs - for 3 0 minutes or more (often much m ore; some stay for tw o-and-a-half hours). Their purpose, their only purpose, is to cry.”

JO H N L Y N C H , LA R eader, Ju n e 1 9 7 9 “Y ou’ve cried often during your Presidency. W hat were the m ost poignant m om ents for you?”

BERNARD SHAW C N N News anchorman to Ronald Reagan, January 1 9 8 9 .

Around the time these good, sad people o f Los Angeles were taking their tragedies to eight-foot boxes, Lawrence Kasdan was celebrating the enam­ elled surfaces and beguiling sexuality o f the “Me Decade” in Body H eat.

For audiences o f 1981, Body H ea t was the ultimate ‘date movie’. A baroque erotic fable shot in film noir style and set in Florida in the sweaty height o f summer, it depicted the ruin o f attorney Ned Racine (William Hurt), at the hands o f the re­ lentless Matty (Kathleen Turner). Audiences breathed heavily as Matty seduced Ned into mur­ dering her husband (Richard Crenna), then be­ trayed him to his friends on the local police force.

After this, they returned to their private red nylon hells, the cynicism and nihilism o f their lives which Kasdan had so skilfully graphed.

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Eight years after Body H eat, Kasdan has reu­ nited Turner and Hurt in an adaptation o f Anne Tyler’s novel, The A ccidental Tourist. The film won the New York Critics’ Award and is one o f the most praised o f the 1988-89 releases. Yet it would be hard to find two films as radically different as Body H eat and The A ccidental Tourist in everything but their principal performers.

The very ‘seventies’ message o f Body H eat is ar­ ticulated by Crenna when the illicit lovers and their potential victim meet in a restaurant. Self-made property developer Crenna deplores men who “don’t know the Bottom Line”, who aren’t pre­ pared to “do what it takes” to achieve their ends.

Hurt ruefully agrees. “I hate that. I ’m like that myself.”

“I f you want it, take it,” Crenna is saying, and Ned Racine, weak and dumb - (“You’re not very bright, are you?” says Matty on their first meeting.

“I like that in a man.) - is all too ready to follow his advice, right to the destruction o f both men.

The moral o f The A ccidental Tourist, a reverse o f Body H eat’s, sexual imperative, is also articulated in a husband’s speech. “Things just happen,” travel writer Macon Leary (Hurt) tells his wife, Sarah (Turner). “We have no control over them.” It is not a speech in Anne Tyler’s 1985 novel, but the fact that Kasdan and co-adapter Frank Galati felt the need to insert it says much about the film’s point.

Helplessness is a key concept in the American cinema o f the Eighties . The concept of free will has little intellectual credibility. We are all in the hands o f random forces and it’s as well to fall in with them, runs the conventional wisdom. The film successes o f 1988 often dealt with people thrust into uncon­ trollable situations. Good M orning Vietnam, Moon­ struck and Three Men an d A Baby were typical ex­ amples. So was Big, most successful o f a sub-genre of films in which consciousnesses migrated ran­ domly between bodies.

Psychic regression and ‘channelling’ are com­ mon topics o f dinner party conversation - Califor­ C

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nians swap the THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST: names o f psychics LESS LITERARY THAN the way they used TALKATIVE, LESS EROTIC to recom m end THAN SENTIMENTAL, OPTI­ hairdressers.

There have MISTIC ABOUT THE FUTURE also been radical BUT ACCEPTING THE changes in atti­ POSSIBILITY THAT WE LIVE tudes to the ex­ pression o f emo­ IN A WORLD OF RANDOM tion. When presi­ CHANGE, IT AFFIRMS THE dential hopeful VERITIES OF FAMILY AND Edmund Muskie HOME WHILE EMBRACING broke down in 1968 and cried on THE STATISTIC THAT 50% camera at assaults OF AMERICAN MARRIAGES made by the press END IN DIVORCE on his family, it ABO VE: WILUAM HURT signalled the end o f his W hite H ouse aspira­ tions. But a decade later Ronald Reagan can confess unashamedly on prime time TV to weeping over the deaths o f US Marines in Lebanon and win the approval o f a nation.

The A ccidental Tourist catches precisely the tone o f these trends. Less literary than talkative, less erotic than sentimental, optimistic about the future but accepting the possibility that we live in a world o f random change, it affirms the verities o f family and home while embracing the statistic that 50 per cent o f American marriages end in divorce. As such, it’s intensely symptomatic o f the late Eighties.

The election platform o f George Bush has signalled that to survive in the late Eighties is to be random - a matter o f timing.

Kasdan knows timing. His sensitivity to changes in the American moral climate is seismographic.

The Big Chill, once thought to be an epitaph for the Sixties, today seems more like a full-length family portrait o f the self-seeking, celebrity-obsessed early Eighties - and a better one than W all Street.

Vietnam vet/dope-dealer Hurt, mini-mogul (and insider trader) Kevin Kline, media hero Tom Berenger, Je ff Goldblum, journalist for the enormously successful People magazine ( “Write nothing that takes longer to read than the average crap”), frus­ trated housewife JoBeth Williams and equally re­ pressed professional woman Glenn Close make up a classic catalogue o f 1983 types.

However, the most arresting o f The Big C hill’s parodies is the frustrated woman lawyer (Mary Kay Place). Afflicted by the madness for motherhood which one suspects the perspective o f history will render as unsavoury a medical fad as liposuction, she may single-handedly be responsible for relegat­ ing the term “biological clock” to its rightful place in the cultural attic.

Kasdan’s ability to resonate with his times makes any new film by him acutely interesting even misfires like Silverado and his Indiana Jones potboilers. But the thoughtfulness o f The A cciden­ ta l Tourist offers an insistent argument for this film above all o f his work to be taken seriously.

The “accidental tourist” o f Anne Tyler’s novel is the American businessman, often forced to travel fast and far when he would rather be home. Macon Leary (Hurt), at his publisher’s suggestion, writes a series o f guidebooks for such people.

Leary, a stodgy failed journalist from provincial Baltimore, hates to travel. His two fortyish broth­ ers, Charles and Porter, still live with their sister Rose in their grandfather’s house, filing their gro­ ceries alphabetically and playing a card game of their own invention called Vaccination, o f which only they know the rules. They run the family bottle-top factory, a career, Charles tells the pub­ lisher solemnly, “that’s not as interesting as it sounds”.

Macon’s books aren’t travel guides but survival manuals, giving specific and useful information on how to travel as if you never left home. (The series’ emblem, an armchair with wings, doesn’t signal comfortable travel but reassures readers that, even in Montreal or Belgrade, they can delude them­ selves that they are safe by their own firesides.)

Always take a large book on planes, Leary counsels, to scare off strangers who want to talk.

Only carry one small suitcase: that way you avoid baggage handling. Do your own washing in your room, saving yourself from potential foreign entan­ glements. He offers restaurant guides - mostly to American-style restaurants. Avoid the tyranny of the p rix ftx e, he counsels. Why submit to all those courses you don’t want? With only a little effort, the business visitor to London can dine on the steaks and burgers he’d enjoy back home.

Macon has carried the family obsession with order into his marriage with Sarah (Turner), though it is ameliorated by their son Ethan and the family dog Edward, a lugubrious mutt strongly attached to the boy. When Ethan, an innocent bystander at a robbery, is randomly killed, the mental states of Macon, Sarah and Edward deteriorate. Sarah, ac­ cusing Macon o f living a muffled life which admits o f no feeling, even for their dead son, leaves house, husband and dog to live on her own.

Outside his cocoon o f routine, Macon is lost.

Edward becomes comically uncontrollable and causes Macon to break his leg. The instrument of his salvation, and Edward’s as well, is a gawky dog trainer, Muriel (Geena Davis), who takes both under her wing. She tames Edward and, to some extent, opens Macon up to his feelings. When Sarah suggests a reconciliation, Macon is faced with a difficult choice.

The central role played by Edward in The A cci­ den tal Tourist reprises that o f a dog in Silverado, which Kevin Kline decides to adopt in the middle of a bank robbery, and thereafter keeps as an insepa­ rable pet. (Unseen, the dog’s role parallels that of the suicide Alex in The Bitj Chill, glimpsed only as a pair o f slashed wrists - Kevin Costner’s shortest and least rewarding performance.) One o f the more memorable scenes in Silverado has gambler Jeff Goldblum, white with prison pallor, enquire sneeringly, “Where’s the dog?” - a question asked o f Kline by almost everyone in this underrated film.

In Silverado, as in The A ccidental Tourist, it’s not the dog which interests Kasdan, but the respon­

sibility taken for it. And in adopting embattled saloon manager Linda Hunt, Kline again takes on a crucial responsibility he’s prepared to stake his life on. Responsibility is Kasdan’s key theme. Who is responsible for the suicide o f Alex? Does Ned Racine have a responsibility to uphold the law, or should he obey the promptings o f Matty, the monster from his Id. When Crenna articulates the moral dilemma o f Body H ea t in his restaurant speech, the lawyer is forced to reassess his life and to accept res ; jnsibility for his actions - no matter how mean the motives or disastrous the outcome. But The A ccidental Tourist represents a radical reassessment o f that message. Be faithful to your values, and miserable, Kasdan appears to say, or sell out and be happy.

He is set to pursue his interest in the random nature o f relationships and our helplessness in the face o f them for at least one more film. I Love Tou To D eath is due out later this year. Based on a true story, it stars Tracy Ullman as a wife so infuriated by husband Kevin Kline’s extra-marital affairs that she makes repeated attempts to murder him, She’s jailed - and the two fall in love again while she’s doing time. Tyler foreshadowed even this in The A ccidental Tourist. “Did I tell you my new idea?” the publisher asks Macon. “Doctor friend o f mine is looking into it. A ccidental Tourist In Poor Health.

A list o f American-trained doctors and dentists in every foreign capital... “ And what is I Love Tou To D eath but A ccidental Tourist Insane?

JOHN BAXTER The Accidental Tourist. D irected by Lawrence Kasdan.

Producers: Lawrence Kasdan, Charles Okun, Michael Grillo.

Executive producers: Phyllis Carlyle, John Malkovich.

Screenplay: Frank Galati, Lawrence Kasdan, based on the novel by Anne Tyler. D irector ofphotography: John Bailey.

Editor: Carole Littleton. Music: John Williams. Produc­ tion design: Bo W elch. Cast: William H urt (M acon), Kathleen .Turner (Sarah), Geena Davis (M uriel), Amy W right (R ose), Bill Pullman (Julian), R obert Gorman (Alexander) David Ogden Stiers (P o rter), Ed Begley Jr (Charles). Production company: Warners. Distributor: Village Roadshow. 35m m . 121 minutes. U S A .1 9 8 8

1987/88 Filmviews Catalogue of New Films and Videos in Australian Distribution.

Each Catalogue entry includes the following: 1. programme title 2. director 3. country of origin. 4 year of completion 5. running time 6. censorship classification 7. format/gauge 8. synopsis 9. distributor/government film library (including address telephone and fax number).

In addition there is a separate Title, Director and Personality Indexes to facilitate quick and easy cross referencing. Of particular use to video retailers and librarians are the censorship classifications; an essential guide and cost effective hedge against stocking unclassified programmes or programmes refused classification.

In one volume Australia's most comprehensive Listing of Films and Videos in Australian Distribution.

Filmviews/ Cinema Papers Catalogue of New Films and Videos in Australian Distribution is the only comprehensive listing of all currently released films and videos available in Australia each financial year. Included are all imported and Australian produced titles, listed alphabetically under category headings. The Catalogue enables anyone seeking a particular title to quickly check its availability and distributor. The Catalogue includes all 35mm and 16mm features, shorts, documentaries and home video releases, as well as educa­ tional, management training, health and safety, and howto programmes. Also listed are all new acquisitions available for free borrowing from Government film libraries.

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1987/88 Catalogue (published August 1988) •Institutions $35.00 • Individuals $25.00 Prices include postage See the subscription form in the centre of this issue of Cinema Papers to subscribe.

Note: The Catalogue is regularly updated with a 48 page insert available by subscription.

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THIS ISSU E: THE IM A G IN A RY INDUSTRY, NUCLEAR M O VIES, TA K IN G CARE OF BUSIN ESS AND BACK OF BEYO ND.

analysis, but as a naif I found it a clear, lucid and informative untangling o f many complex facts and factors. The thumbnail film analyses in Part II occur within the same framework erected in Screening: a gaggle o f not-entirely-useful generic categories arrange a series o f uncontroversially excellent and helpful annotations and observations. Only at a few points in the text did I lift my head to wonder about, for instance, the strange omission o f Salt, Saliva, Sperm a n d Sweat at the exact moment (p.48, a mention o f ‘cult’ films and their untapped market) when a discussion o f its peculiar success story would have been apposite; and (more seri­ ously) about Jacka’s claim that “the European art movie, in its classic guise, is a dying form” (p. 74), and the implications o f this ‘fact’ for Australia’s own art-house pretensions.

This reads like wishful thinking to me (I share the wish!). Jacka gestures to the “vital postmoder­ nism” o f recent mainstream and independent American cinema, from Wayne Wang to John Hughes. This is undeniable; yet who in the powerinfrastructures o f Australian film culture (beyond a few enlightened film critics) is actually aware o f this, and wants to explore the terrain? Art cinema is far THE IMAGINARY INDUSTRY from dead. Not only will culture-brokers like Phil­ AUSTRALIAN FILM IN THE LATE '8 0 S lip Adams way up there in the AFC be champion­ Edited by Susan Dermody an d Elizabeth Jacka, ing the ideal o f art cinema unto their last breath; the AFTRS Publications, 204 pp., $19.95 rrp. actual art-house circuit (and hence its sphere of cultural influence) is currently growing bigger than As fortune would have it, immediately after I ever. Many present and future Oz filmmakers and administrators will surely (alas) keep aspiring to­ handed in my review o f Susan Dermody’s and Elizabeth Jacka’s The Screening o f A ustralia Vol­ wards this particular model o f culture. ume 2 ( see C inem a Papers 71), its unofficial My only other complaint about Jacka’s text (and this extends also to Dermody’s chapter) re­ ‘sequel’ appeared: The Im aginary Industry, edited lates to another legacy from Screening: the lack o f

by Dermody and Jacka, published this time not by Currency Press but the Australian Film, Television decent documentation. There is only very selective referencing o f previous writing within the pieces; and Radio School. Two-thirds o f the text is by Jacka; the remainder comprises individual chapters and no bibliography whatsoever at the book’s end.

I find this particularly

by Dermody, Tom offensive when it O ’ Regan and NOT ONLY WILL CULTURE-BROKERS LIKE PHILLIP comes to films that Stuart Cunning­ have already received ham. Masquerad­ ADAMS WAY UP THERE IN THE AFC BE CHAMPION­ fuller and more posi­ ing as a special is­ ING THE IDEAL OF ART CINEMA UNTO THEIR LAST tive local critical ap­ sue o f M ed ia preciations than the Inform ation Aus­ BREATH; THE ACTUAL ART-HOUSE CIRCUIT (AND authors can muster tralia, it is in fact a HENCE ITS SPHERE OF CULTURAL INFLUENCE) IS here - why no men­ substantial book in tion o f Raffaele its own right, and a CURRENTLY GROWING BIGGER THAN EVER. Caputo on F rog richly useful one.

D rea m in g , Diane This brief review Basile on Playing Beatie Bow, Tim Rowse on The less than the book deserves - is a postscript to my re­ Fringe Dwellers, John Flaus on The Pursuit o f marks on The Screening o f Australia.

Happiness (to cite only a few)? A properly system­ The Im aginary Industry is a welcome achieve­ atic bibliography o f critical writing on Australian ment which rectifies, in one swoop, most of the de­ cinema is by now sorely needed; Dermody and ficiencies o f Screening as it was published: no longer Jacka obviously suffer from its lack. (Besides local do the ‘industrial’ and ‘aesthetic’ analyses sit sepa­ writing, who knows for instance about the atten­ rately; no longer does the reader have to strain to tion that the French magazine P ositif has lavished cast his or her mind back virtually four years to deal on Backlash and A Song o f A ir ?) with the awesome lag between the time o f writing Volume 2 o f Screening began with a sketch of and the time o f release. Industry is virtually up-tothe way a ‘psychoanalytic history’ o f Australian the-minute - completed in late 1988, with only a culture might proceed in relation to its movies. handful o f curious omissions. The very different That was a bold move, taking off from Thomas situation o f Australian filmmaking post 1984 - the Elsaesser overseas, and Stuart Cunningham locally. rise and fall o f lOBA, the startling emergence o f the But whereas, four years on, Elsaesser continues TV mini-series, the Crocodile Dundee phenome­ with this project (most recently in a brilliant Monthly non - is vividly recounted, and accounted for.

Film Bulletin essay on Peter Greenaway), The Jacka’s contribution is the essential part o f this Im aginary Industry (a very Elsaesserian title!) drops book. Her interrelating o f ‘the industry’ and ‘the the idea altogether, without any methodological films’ is completely coherent and integrated. I do explanation..In its place is something which Jacka not have the expertise to evaluate her industrial 56

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perhaps considers more fertile, or perhaps more to the point: a survey and critique (in the chapter “Australian Cinema: An Anachronism in the ’80s?”) o f the various meanings o f ‘nation’, ‘national’ and ‘local’ in the Australian cultural and economic context. This chapter, which synthesizes many di­ verse positions and arguments, is the single most significant and innovative part o f the book; it is essential reading for all students o f Australian film.

I will only mention here the other contribu­ tions. Susan Dermody’s essay “The Company o f Eccentrics” is a fine, if sometimes too whimsical, tour o f the tough, tender and experimental fringes o f the Australian feature industry. T o her credit, she canvasses a few titles that are unlikely to receive much future attention, such as John Laurie’s Stroker.

I disagree violently with her too-generous catego­ rization o f Richard Lowenstein and the Kiely/Peak team as ‘cinephile’ filmmakers (it’s an impover­ ished cinephilia indeed that scarcely gets further than Alex Cox or Double Take Meet the Astrozombiesl); but generally there is much to learn from and enjoy in her essay. Tom O ’Regan on both Crocodile Dundee films is useful and workmanlike, if hardly staggering. Stuart Cunningham’s piece on Ken­ nedy Miller continues his uniformly magnificent work on Australian TV mini-series. Cunningham’s final invocation apropos D irtw ater Dynasty — that we understand and experience its ‘hyperreal pleas­ ures’ not as spirited kitsch but as part o f a serious and vital cultural dialectic - is one o f the most insightful and inspirational arguments I have en­ countered in any Australian criticism. Overall, The Im aginary Industry has its fair share o f moments that approach this level o f intellectual intensity.

ADRIAN MARTIN

liU C L E M ovies 4 A Filmography Mick Broderick ,

NUCLEAR MOVIES: A FILMOGRAPHY Mick Broderick, Northcote, Vic. Post-Modem, 1988, 135pp. rrp $12.95 To the researcher, stumbling onto a halfway decent filmography in one’s area o f interest is a bit like striking gold - or, in this case, uranium perhaps. It can save, to continue the analogy, much spade­ work, making textual fact-grubbing somewhat less

intensive.When well-written, logically arranged and thoughtfully presented, it can also be a pleasure to read or delve into. Mick Broderick’s filmography o f ‘nuclear movies’ is all o f these things and one hopes there is a market for it, and works o f a similar kind.

Produced with assistance from the Australian Film Commission’s Cultural Activities Unit and desktop published in Melbourne, N uclear Movies: A Filmography is also, it is to be hoped, an indicator o f Things To Come. Cheaply produced and mod­ erately priced, it is the sort o f concise and eminently practical reference tool that is destined to be thumbed until it falls apart or is replaced by an updated version. Such publications have little status in the pantheon o f Great Film Books, but to re­ searchers they are worth their weight in ....

Mick Broderick’s coverage o f his chosen field is comprehensive, if not exhaustive. He has limited his study to that o f feature-length dramas which in some way touch upon nuclear issues, considering rightly - that on this subject at least the documen­ tary area has been better served. But, more than this, Broderick contends that: Unlike the ‘serious’ , ‘well-intentioned’ parables o f the nuclear age, it is my contention that the bulk o f movies which have been relegated and condescendingly de­ scribed as ‘illogical visions: hooded, deformed villains, giant insects and other m onsters” etc, remain the most influential treatments o f nuclear themes, largely by­ passing a priori audience predispositions precisely by using m etaphor and allegory to depict the ‘unthink­ able’ - often drawing from and reinterpreting prevail­ ing mythologies to frame their dramatic depictions.

(p6) To support this view, Broderick has located and annotated around 500 titles from a surprising number o f countries (but predominantly from the US) which draw on nuclear themes. These films are

listed alphabetically within a given year, with en­ tries ranging from By R ad iu m Rays (1914) to such recent works as Martha Ansara’s The Pursuit o f Happiness and the R ainbow W arrior Conspiracy mini-series. The annual alphabetical groupings are then divided into decade chapters (pre-1950s, Fif­ ties, Sixties, etc), each o f which the author has prefaced with a timeline o f “scientific, technologi­ cal and/or geopolitical events relevant to the evo­ lution o f global nuclearism”. By such.means, Brod­ erick illustrates how some o f these movies have “Pre-empted - indeed reified through concrete representations o f the unthinkable - technological /political developments.” This arrangement o f material also lends itself to more systematic analysis o f the relationships between ideology and mass culture entertainment.

Broderick provides a further continuity be­ tween films by cross-referencing the majority of titles with similar or radically divergent references within the action/exploitation ‘nuclear genre’. In­ dividual entries consist o f title, year o f production/ release, production company (or distributor), col­ our/ B&W , running time, principal cast and crew and, where necessary, foreign language or alterna­ tive titles. Synopses reflect nuclear rather than narrative content but in most cases are more than adequate descriptions o f the films. One could quibble and suggest that this catalogue carries no distribution source details to assist users wanting access to any o f the titles listed, but the author has at least managed to indicate which films have had a video release.

The book is enhanced by Helen Caldicott’s foreword in which the good doctor lends weight to the author’s view that nuclear movies have “an almost creepy quality o f premonition about them” (StarWars, genetic mutation, meltdowns, et al).

Mick Broderick’s own critical essay, “From Atoms to Apocalypse” precedes the decade chapters, trac­ ing and reflecting upon the evolution o f the nuclear film and TV genre over more than 70 years. The volume concludes with a select bibliography (not annotated but with the author’s recommenda­ tions) and an alphabetical title and director name index to allow reasonably simple locations o f par­ ticular entries.

Genre buffs might also like to dabble in the index to come up with titles Broderick might have missed (the author invites reader feedback in this area) or to haggle over the validity o f what has been included. Would viewers automatically have in­ cluded the Doris Day film My D ream is Tours (1949), Cagney’s White H ea t or Presley’s Kissin’ Cousins in relation to nuclear issues? My disap­ pointment, given the author’s obvious fondness for his subject, is only that he has chosen to limit his selection to cinema or television features. It means that landmark films like Chris Marker’s L a Jetee are by-passed because o f their length.

More importantly, potentially useful compari­ sons between fiction and documentary treatments o f nuclear themes cannot be made within the one volume. An expanded treatment, o f course, would have altered the thrust o f Broderick’s desire to highlight popular film representations o f nuclearrelated subjects, but in terms o f consistency, how does one differentiate between, say, Atom ic C afe and No Nukes (which are included) and H a l f Life and Back to the Blast (which aren’t). This is not to discredit the magnitude ofMick Broderick’s achieve­ ment: he has created a big bang for the undervalued art o f filmography. More power to him - and to the AFC for supporting him.

KEN BERRYMAN

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This is the second publication o f a series entitled Taking C are o f Business, produced conjointly by the Australian Film Television and Radio School and the Australian Film Commission. The first Production Budgeting and Accounting - was a relatively straightforward guide to the intricacies o f film and video budgeting and production account­ ing, as the title suggests. This companion volume, as David Rapsey neatly puts it (in a recent In the Picture review) “...presents the heart and mind that the cold facts o f film production are supposed to serve” . Other handbooks to assist independent film and video producers are also planned.

Editor John Cruthers acknowledges the com­ mitment o f Claire Dobbin, Megan McMurchy (AFC) and Jenny Sabine (AFTRS) to the genesis and development o f this series, although one sus­ pects he is playing down his own contribution.

Whatever, all deserve commendation for recogniz­ ing the need for “ ... an alternative map o f the terrain o f independent production”, and for doing some­ thing about it. The ‘independent’ side o f the coin has been comparatively neglected in terms o f post1970 publications dealing with the local industry: one thinks o f books by Albie Thoms, Nick Herd, chapters in D on’t Shoot D arling and not much else.

It is heartening to see the funding/training organi­ zations themselves endeavouring to redress this im­ balance.

Despite the case-study approach, this volume also contains useful tips for both experienced and would-be independent film and video producers.

But it is as a motivational tool that the book’s principal value lies; (either that or the collective tale o f struggle which emerges from the case histories will act as a disincentive for prospective newcomers to the independent ranks). There is some fairly in­ spirational stuff here, and the case history approach reminded me o f the vast amount o f spirited and largely untapped writing - filmmakers’ submis­ sions, progress reports, assessors’ comments, etc which exists in official files. I f filmmakers are pas­ sionate about their craft, it shines through on the printed page. The work o f a number o f well-known independent practitioners is examined through a series o f interviews, the substance o f which also reminded me o f the sort o f largely unedited inter­ views C inem a Papers ran in the days when its readers finished up with newsprint on the fingers, but which seem to have fallen from journalistic favour.

The interviews were conducted and written up by other film and video producers familiar with the work o f the interviewees concerned. The individual case studies tend therefore to be sympathetic rather than critical in treatment but insightful at the same time, given the specialist knowledge o f writers. The pieces cover the gamut o f ‘independent’ produc­ tion: Super 8, 16 and 35mm, low- and high-band video; shorts, features, docos and video artwork.

No real attempt is made to grapple with the concept o f what constitutes an ‘independent’ production, but the editor suggests that by focusing on produc­ tion practices, fruitful analysis o f the independent sector may ensue.

But if Case Studies is short on semantics, it does toss around the dilemmas, prejudices, etc, which one might suggest are prototypical o f this broad production area. My favourite is the love/hate thing with the bureaucracies, principally the AFC o f course. The Film Commission and its predeces­ sors have now been with us for more than 15 years, earning over that period a case study or two o f their own (Dermody & Jacka, et al). While Philip Brophy’s view: “I t’s as if you’ve got to get up each morning and constantly remind yourself that the AFC, to take one example, is not responsible for film culture in Australia. There are other ways that film can possibly exist here, (p 73) is probably not representative o f all the attitudes to officialdom in this volume, there is a sense in which funding organizations appear to represent “... merely an obstruction between the individual and his/her ‘cultural production’”, as Adrienne Parr notes (in a recent Filmnews review o f Case Studies).

Consequently, whether individual project offi­ cers are supportive or unhelpful, dealing with the AFC (or one o f the State bodies) through one or more o f their assistance schemes is a game that almost all independent producers have to play ... and all have a story (or stories) to tell. That the AFC is traditionally cast as the villain has always bemused me in that the positions o f project officer and/or assessor - the key ones in terms o f who gets what and why - are almost invariably filled from the ranks o f those who at other times have been, or will again be, themselves applicants for funding. With this in mind, one wonders just how much bona fide agenda-setting such,a ‘bureaucracy’ manages. This organization, after all, in the best spirit o f selfflagellation, was one o f the co-producers o f this publication.

Another persistent theme in Case Studies is that o f cost vs vision: how much creative control are filmmakers willing to concede, how many compro­ mises are they prepared to make in order to achieve their ends. The producers o f the industrial documentary, R un ning Out o f Patience, for ex­ ample, discovered that moving from VHS to highband video for quality reasons resulted in the loss o f much o f the “... passion for the issues ... the gutsy stuff about where nursing should go. “ As Andrew Scollo remarks:”It was an irony that using the medium that most closely resembled television meant that the content was less likely to be informa­ tive or new (p. 47) By contrast, video artist Jill Scott’s work points up the need for collaborative endeavours with gov­ ernment, corporate bodies, etc, in order to gain access to the latest in technology. For the mostly self-financed Super 8 productions, on the other hand, “... the gap between inspiration and finished film is the shortest o f all the gauges”.

For the non-aligned reader, however, the question that perhaps is most likely to arise from Case Studies is why independent film and video makers persist in the face o f constant and often insoluble financial, technical and bureaucratic dif­ ficulties? It certainly can’t be for the money: defer­ ral o f wages, out-of-pocket expenses, hefty repay­ ments, etc, seem to be the norm, if these case histories are indicative o f the field. Even critical success is no guarantee o f lucrative distribution or career enhancement, if Laurie M clnnes’ experience

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with her 35 mm experimental short Palisade is anything to go by. The changing nature o f the independent scene in the 1980s - well summarized in Adrienne Parr’s review - also suggests that pro­ ducers will need to be even more versatile if they are to maintain any sort o f profile in this sphere.

And yet that is precisely what several o f the people interviewed in Case Studies have managed to do. Chris Oliver’s remarkable gymnastic feats in producing the low-budget feature Tender Hooks are well documented by Anna Grieve; Chris Warner and Kim Dalton have moved from the $1 million dollar SBS mini-series In Between to the $6 million internationally co-produced mini-series The M agis­ trate - and still believe they can maintain their ‘independent’ status and outlook; and James Clayden has shown what can be achieved with a ‘no-budget’ production. As John Nicoll writes in relation to Clayden’s video feature, With Tim e to K ill: Its com pletion says som ething about his approach, an approach that was more intuitive than calculated, driven by quiet persistence rather than pig-headed­ ness, and fuelled by a kind o f relaxed attitude that does not readily understand the notion that there is a certain time to admit defeat (o r maybe does not even ac­ knowledge imposters like defeat and victory), (p .3 4 )

Perhaps these qualities are a better guide to what fuels the independent sector, and despite the many changes why it has retained its impetus over the years.

KEN BERRYMAN

BACK OF BEYOND: DISCOVERING AUSTRALIAN FILM AND TELEVISION E dited by Scott M urray f o r the A u stralian Film Commission a n d the UCLA Film a n d Television Archive, in association with the A ustralian Bicentennial Authority, 1988.

This book is a catalogue to accompany the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s “multi-dimensional exploration o f a national cinema” and as such is a curious object for review. Its first four pages are taken up, perhaps not surprisingly, by a good deal o f trans-Pacific back-patting. Phillip Adams, on behalf o f the AFC, thanks UCLA Archive for its ^commitment to, and beliefin, this project”; Robert Rosen, director o f the Archive, pays tribute to “the energy, imagination and commitment” o f the AFC and the “generous support” o f the Bicentennial Authority; and Peter Broderick, the UCLA Festival Curator, reports how thrilled [he was] to discover a film culture o f such exceptional diversity, richness and significance”.

After this fulsome introduction, inevitable in a catalogue, off-putting in a book, what follows is a mixed bag o f essays and interviews. One major overall impression is how different Australian cin­ ema feels in early 1989, at least in this representa­ tion, from how it felt as recently as the midEighties. Partly, this is a matter o f the dominance o f

the television mini-series, especially as it has been honed by the Kennedy-Miller organization, at the expense o f the feature film; partly, there is now and here - a general undercurrent o f disdain for the kinds o f Australian cinema that made the revival famous.

Certainly, the most interesting part o f the book is the central section on Kennedy Miller, the major phenomenon o f 1980s filmmaJdng in Australia.

There are interviews with George Miller (director, producer) and Terry Hayes (co-writer, producer), both conducted by Scott Murray; Debi Enker’s essay, “Cross-over and Collaboration”, which anatomizes the organization’s success; and, though it ranges more widely, Graeme Turner’s “Mixing Fact and Fiction”, which draws heavily on the Ken­ nedy Miller propensity for doing just that.

There is a liveliness in this section not always to be found elsewhere in the book. The interviews make clear the “comprehensivist” approach es­ poused first by Miller and the late Byron Kennedy and later by Terry Hayes. There is much stress on the collaborative, “organic” generalist attitudes which Miller and Hayes both see as having been crucial to the success o f their films and mini-series; those who have not been able to function in this cli­ mate (e.g. writer Ron Blair) have been edged out.

What Debi Enker’s essay suggests, and the interviews seem to bear it out, is that Kennedy Miller has achieved a kind o f collective auteurism.

Its sources have often been in recent Australian history; there is a recurring anti-authority theme running through ventures as diverse as the Mad Max films and The Dismissals and there is at work a multi-perspectivism which precludes simple judg­ mental o f protagonists or situations. As Enker points out, this last may well be a peculiarly apt response to the challenge o f the mini-series which thrives on - possibly requires - “more than one narrative thread o f viewer interest is to be sustained, sometimes on four consecutive nights”.

Graeme Turner’s piece provides a footnote on the Kennedy Miller discussion when he refers to its having “consistently experimented with documen­ tary and fictional conventions”.Elsewhere he ex­ plores ways in which documentaries have “exploited] fictionalising methods” (e.g. Cane

Toads) and a fictional film such as Newsfront made lively and intelligent use o f newsreel footage. He concludes that documentary styles have increas­ ingly characterized Australian film and television fictions, though, as he notes, such influences can be detected in certain realist films as early as The F J H olden in 1977. Turner’s formulation are not al­ ways carefully substantiated, but there is value in the way he charts a move away from “quasi-official cultural products” o f the first stage o f the Austra­ lian film revival.

In other essays, Ross Gibson’s “Formative Landscapes” argues a case about the role o f land­ scape in Australian films and its importance in the 1970s revival; Michael Leigh, in “Curiouser and Curiouser” investigates the marginal representa­ tion o f Aborigines in Australian cinema; Kate Sands, in “Women o f the Wave”, claims (unoriginally) that mainstream Australian cinema marginalizes women and women’s filmmaking; and Adrian Martin in “Nurturing the New Wave” argues that the real excitement o f Australian filmmaking is located on its margins. In all o f these, either implic­ itly or spelt out, is a mixture o f resentment, conde­ scension and even contempt for the mainstream.

Gibson’s is the best argued o f these as he looks for answers to the questions he raises: “Why this preoccupation with the natural environment? what can the cinematic rendition o f the land tell us about Australian culture in general?” He makes percep­ tive comparisons with English culture, which “does not define itself with legends o f arrival or choice in an environmental setting,” and he traces the way in which the idea o f the intractable Australian land­ scape has woven itself centrally into the national ethos. The “generically Australian films o f the late Seventies and early Eighties seem to Gibson to offer statements about Australia’s “difference” and its “singularity o f constitution”. He goes on to query the unproblematic acceptance o f the “trustworth­ iness o f photography”, insisting that those films which make much o f landscape are representing a cultural construct, not an innocent recording o f the ‘real’ world.

It seems odd to talk about “marginal” repre­ sentation o f Aborigines in the light o f Leigh’s statement that “to date, a staggering 6,000 or more

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films have been made about Aborigines”. How­ ever, mere numbers, as Leigh’s essay suggests, do not guarantee a complex, sympathetic representa­ tion nor centrality. From the earliest Australian films, the Aborigines were either “part o f the enter­ tainment freak show”, or part o f the depiction o f the landscape as “exotic”, or as Noble Savages “standing one-legged as the sun sets, blood-red, on the forbidding land”. Leigh gives detailed accounts o f recent Australian film's (e.g. Wrong Side o f the R o ad , Two Laws) “about Aborigines”, but in gen­ eral he talks about these films wholly in terms o f “content” as if ideology were not at least as much a matter o f form.

The marginal role o f women’s and/or feminist filmmaking in Australia is not well served by Kate Sands’ discussion o f problems o f distribution and release or its challenge to prevailing patriarchal narrative structures. The essay founders on ill-con­ sidered generalizations, on a way o f making the films sound either dull or absurd, and on a solemn, pretentious diction that suggests a lack o f engage­ ment with either feminist theory or the films them­ selves. Sample sentence: “The film [Bingo, Brides­ m aids a n d Braces] is a comment on class, and the self-image, aspirations, opportunities and the lack o f thereof associated with reduced economic cir­ cumstances.”

The last essay in the book, Adrian Martin’s delivers swinging blows at realism, mainstream filmmaking, official culture, and the film schools ( inter alia). Preferring the “zestful vulgarities o f popular culture” to “the deadly trap o f naturalism” (can such a preference be as iconoclastic as he implies?), he argues a lively, opinionated case for “a few o f the hard edges and lost worlds o f Australian cinema”.

A compilation work is almost axiomatically likely to be uneven, and this is no exception. At its best, though, it highlights important forces at work in Australian film culture, brings neglected ele­ ments into a spotlight which may help to deter­ mine how undeserved or not that neglect is, and ar­ ticulates some key shifts in the evolution of new Australian cinema.

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“TENDER” TENDERS CLOSE 30TH APRIL 1 9 8 9

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P erfect Spy

T h e Shiralee

Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier David Sly Louise Stephenson Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

8 9 9 8 8 7 8 7 9 9 8

F ortunes of War

Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier David Sly Louise Stephenson Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

TV Scanners will appear in every second issue of Cin­ ema Papers. TV Critics were given eight programs to rate between 0 —10 (10 being the optimum rating) and they could also nominate and rate two titles of their

Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier David Sly Louise Stephenson Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

7 7 6 7 8 10 6 3 8 8

E choes in the Darkness

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Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier David Sly Louise Stephenson Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

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own choice.The critics are: Pamela Casellas (The West T h e L ast R esort

R iddle of th e Stinson

Australian), Brian Courtis (Melbourne Herald), Mike Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier David Sly Louise Stephenson Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

Harris (The Bulletin), Barbara Hooks (The Age), Karen Lateo (The Sunday Telegraph), Robin Oliver (Sydney Morning Herald), Dennis Pryor (The Age), Kevin Sad­ lier (The Sun-Herald), David Sly (The Advertiser), Louise Stephenson (Daily Telegraph), Gerri Sutton

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Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier David Sly Louise Stephenson Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

6 6 -

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(Daily Mirror), and Paul Wicks (The Courier Mail).

T rue B elievers

Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier David Sly Louise Stephenson Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

F resno

7 6 3 10 6 6 8 8 8 6 7

Pamela Casellas Brian Courtis Mike Harris Karen Lateo Robin Oliver Dennis Pryor Kevin Sadlier David Sly Louise Stephenson Gerri Sutton Paul Wicks

C ritics C hoices : Pamela Casellas: The Oz Game-4:, House Rules- 6. Brien Courtis: BabyM - 6,14 Days in M ay-9. Mike Harris: Women in J a z z - 8, Murrow - 7. Karen Lateo: Nature of Australia - 9, Just for the Record - 5. Robin Oliver: The Tear - 9, Floodtide - 7. Kevin Sadlier: Silas M arner- 8. David Sly: Graham Kennedy’s News Show - 7, The Comedy Company -5.

Louise Stephenson: 16 Days of Glory- 9 .

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30. INT. RODOLPH MEATWORKS. DAY M rs Rudolph looks at the other women, T IN A , R ITA , S H IR L , PA TTI - w ho’ve drifted up. They’re still grinning - but the grins disappear fast now ...

D U L C IE : Yes, Mrs Rodolph. The rest o f yous - back to work - didn’t you hear me?

R IT A helps PE N N Y get ROSS up. The two o f them vir­ tually carry him toward the loading bay steps. MRS R O ­ D O L P H moves off", gesturing for A N D R EW to precede her. H e ’s still clutching his face - and now there’s a thin trickle o f blood from his nose. But he looks at his m other with sullen defiance. D U L C E shepherds the other W O M EN back to work. S H IR L , grinning, nudges TIN A .

S H IR L : ‘Ey - wish I ’d done that. Only harder.

T IN A : Y ou’d just get the sack, Shirk S H IR L : Yeah, but. . . it’d be worth it.

T IN A is still looking out at where ASTA went, stunned and impressed at the same time ...

31. EXT ROAD FROM RODOLPH MEATWORKS. DAY ASTA pedals the old bicycle along the dust road, her face set. Behind her, the rumble o f ROSS’s truck. ASTA stops and the truck, driven now by P E N N Y , goes by raising a cloud o f dust. R O SSis slumped against the window. Nei­ ther he nor P E N N Y looks at ASTA. ASTA watches it pass her and away, then m utters to herself.

ASTA: W hy don’t you mind your own business, Cadell?

She pedals on.

SCENE 3 2 DELETED 33. INT CURTIS PLACE. SLEEPOUT. EV EN IN G / NIGHT E C U : T he nib o f an expensive fountain pen scratches its way across good quality writing paper. Apart from the crickets, the scratch o f the pen is the only sound. The pen stops. The shot widens a little. W e see ASTA’s hands and a leather letter folder. Tucked into the envelope pouch, a black and white photo o f a good-looking fellow about ASTA’s age - “ Peter” .

ASTA looks at the photo - and with an affection­ ate smile, touches “Peter” ’s nose with the tip o f her finger.

W e see that ASTA wears glasses, which som ehow give her a scholarly yet girlish appearance. She goes to write again, doesn’t. She reaches out for the last piece o f what was a large block o f chocolate on the table beside the bed. The chocolate’s gone gooey in the heat: ASTA licks it off her fingers. She looks at her watch, shuts the letter folder, puts it aside, swings her legs o ff the bed. She sits there another second, staring at nothing. Then abruptly, she gets up, takes offher glasses and puts them in the top pocket o f her shirt and walks out.

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SCENE 34 DELETED 35. INT. CURTIS PLACE. TH E WORKSHOP. EVEN IN G /N IG H T ASTA enters the workshop. One side o f the double doors is open, but the place is in darkness except for a single worklight hanging over the disembowelled m otorcycle and a desk lamp in T IM ’s little office. As soon as ASTA walks in, intending to head toward her m otorcycle, she sees that T IM and T IN A are in the office, and hears: T IM : She had that other bloke when she was fifteen and ...

In the office, T IN A gets up, knocking her chair over, and walks out o f the office. T IM com es after her, goes to her with: T IM (P L A IN T IV E ): Tina ...

T IN A :D on’t com e near m e, m ate. (S U D D E N L Y T U R N S O N ASTA) Why don’t you talk some sense into him seems to think you’re bloody Christmas!

ASTA, dumbfounded by this, stares at T IN A then looks to T IM . H e drops his eyes before ASTA can see what’s in them . T hen, shaking his head and m uttering a curse about “w om en” , he jumps into the towtruck and backs out fast. All as: TIN A : Yeah, that’d be r ig h t... Yeah, go on. Go out. Go have a few beers ... Have a whinge to your mates ... Y o u ’re pathetic!

And she stands watching as he backs out and is gone. T IN A stands in the open doorway, hands on hips and looks after him. W e hear the truck roar away. ASTA shrugs, turns her bike and hears: T IN A (M U T T E R S T O H E R S E L F ): Have to bloody walk hom e now ... Shit!

ASTA bites back a smile, puts on her glasses and opens the workshop manual. T IN A wanders about a m om ent, then comes over and stands, arms folded, looking down at ASTA. H er dander is still well and truly up.

T IN A (S U D D E N L Y ): H ow much that bike cost you?

The hostile tone is unmistakable. ASTA gathers herself.

W hat’s she done to deserve this?

ASTA (C A LM L Y ): I don’t know. It was a present.

TIN A : T hat’d be right. (PA U SE ) And now you’re pissfartin’ around the countryside on (T O F F E E V O IC E ) “holiday” ?

ASTA: U h-huh. Seeing how the other half lives. You know.

TIN A : N o , I don’t.

Silence.

T IN A (IN T R IG U E D D E S P IT E H E R S E L F ): You gonna fix that yourself?

ASTA: Yep. TIN A : W here’d you learn to do all that?

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ASTA stands, tips her glasses to the end o f her nose and looks over them to TIN A .

ASTA: A m otorcycle engine is completely logical. I find it makes a nice change from people.

T IN A and ASTA look at each other. T IN A knows exactly what ASTA means - she just hasn’t heard it put that way before ... ASTA pushes her glasses back up her nose and sits with the workshop manual again, but with her back decidedly to T IN A . T IN A looks at ASTA, her head on one side. She half smiles. She’s almost starting to like this smart-arse bitch ... She considers a second, then: T IN A : ‘Ey. ASTA turns just her head to give T IN A an enquir­ ing look - ”Yes?” - back over her shoulder.

T IN A : W hy’d you stick your nose into all that today? Out at the works?

B ut before ASTA can answer, she sees T IN A look past her to the connecting door to the house: L IZ Z IE stands there - and it’s hard to tell how long she has been there. L IZ Z IE wears that shapeless cardigan again, over baggy overalls. In the m ore powerful lights o f the work­ shop, she looks pale and her eyes are red. W ith a just per­ ceptible m ovem ent o f her head, T IN A signals, “N o t now ,” to ASTA and: T IN A (A S M IL E , C A R E F U L L Y ): H i, Liz ...

L IZ Z IE : ’Lo. ASTA (W IT H A SM IL E ): Hello.

L IZ Z IE doesn’t m eet either o f their eyes. She wanders past both o f them , hugging the baggy cardigan around her.

L IZ Z IE : W here’ s Dad? T IN A : W ent out, love.

L IZ Z IE (SIG H S): Yeah.

L IZ Z IE keeps going, right across to the work­ shop’s rear door, where she leans against the door jamb, looking out, hugging herself, her back to the others. After an anxious glance at L I Z Z I E , T IN A moves around and closer to ASTA. She keeps her voice low at first - not much above a whisper.

TIN A : Well? - That was the boss, you know. And her precious bloody ...

T IN A stops herself with another anxious glance at L IZ Z IE ,B u t L IZ Z IE has heard what went on and, unnoticed by T IN A and ASTA, she half turns her head and listens as T IN A resumes: TIN A : Yeah - all right. H e had it com ing, but listen - you can just get on your fancy motorbike and piss off! You don’t have to work out there.

ASTA: So you let them walk all over you?

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T IN A :It’s that or you d on’t work, Smartie - ’cept maybe on your back.

ASTA: Sounds like the same thing to me.

T IN A : Yeah? Well, it’s none o f your worry, is it?

ASTA: N o - you can all rot for all I care.

T IN A : Huh! ASTA turns her back on TIN A again, wishing she’d never got into this conversation. W ho needs all this aggravation? Then: L IZ Z IE (T O ASTA): Did you really... really punch...

Andrew Rodolph?

This asked with scarcely repressed vehemence, L I Z Z I E ’S fists unconsciously clenching.

ASTA:It was more ofa slap, actually... (LO O K S A T W RISTW A T C H ) Ahm? Can you tell me where the railway station is?

TIN A : It’s near my place ...

L IZ Z IE : I’ll show you.

T IN A (D U B IO U S ): Liz - d ’you think ... ?

ASTA: Might do you good to get out o f the house, eh, Lizzie?

T IN A : S’pose we’ll be right with three o f us ...

36 EXT CURTIS PLACE. FRONT & STREET. NIGHT N O R M A at the top o f the front verandah steps. She watches anxiously as ASTA, T IN A and L IZ Z IE start out on their walk, L IZ Z IE walking between ASTA and TIN A .

Tighter on the three. We track in front o f them.

The Curtis house is still visible behind them , N O R M A still watching on the verandah, a light behind her.

L IZ Z IE is glad to be out o f the house. She looks from T IN A to ASTA as they talk. ASTA pulls a chocolate bar out o f her pocket, rips open the wrapper.

ASTA: Bit o f chocky? Anyone?

T IN A shakes her head, but L IZ Z IE snaps offa bit with a grin.

ASTA: Gone a bit gooey ... (TAKES A B IT E ) TIN A : How do you keep your figure eating that stuff?

ASTA (M O U T H F U L L ): ’ “Figure”? Think I’ve gained about five kilos on this trip. (R U E F U L L Y SLAPS H E R OW N B U M ).

L IZ Z IE ( ALSO M O U T H F U L L ) Looks all right to me ...

ASTA: Thanks.

T IN A : How could you get fat bouncing round on that bloody bike?

ASTA: D on’t k n o w - but 1do. And, wearing trousers all the

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ASTA too is looking after L IZ Z IE . T IN A sees a look o f sheer sympathy for L IZ Z IE on ASTA’s face.

ASTA: Yeah. (PA U SE ) H ow many o f them were there?

TIN A (BLA N K , AS IF S H E D O E S N ’T K N O W W H A T ASTA M EA N S): Which?

ASTA (S L IG H T EX A SPE R A T IO N ): Well it’s not too hard to work out what happened.

TIN A : Yeah? Well, I ’d just mind my own business if I was you. (SM ILE S, “ N O O F F E N C E ” ) Okay?

And T IN A walks on ahead a few steps, arms folded across her breast. ASTA looks after her, shrugs, then catches up to her. T IN A glances round at her and gives her another smile - almost as if nothing had happened. ASTA shrugs once again and the two walk on together.

37. EXT RESIDENTIAL STREET NIGHT A wide, still, residential street a few streets back from the main drag. A few lights on in houses, a few dim street lights, but quite deserted. The sound o f laughter - and then ASTA and .TINA come round a corner into this street.

T I N A :.. .1 know - we do. Like cats and dogs. Ah, you know ..Tim and me - it’s on again, off again. H e ’s wary, see? His wife pissed off on him about seven years ago. He thinks he got the rough end o f the stick ...

ASTA (IN T E R R U P T S ): And did he?

TIN A:Yeah. I reckon. She run off with some bloke she reckoned had (IR O N IC ) “more get up and g o ” . Get the idea?

ASTA: Yes. And I suppose - he’s been hurting ever since.

TIN A : Right. (G R IN S) You know how it is with men they just need one thing - one woman - to go wrong, and then they got an excuse.

ASTA: I think it’s their mothers.

They both laugh ironically. A car goes past slowly.

A wolf whistle comes from it. Involuntarily, T IN A swallows hard and moves closer to ASTA. She quickens her pace and tries to keep her voice calm.

TIN A: Yeah, well, anyway we’ll see. (G LA N CES BACK O V E R H E R S H O U L D E R ) Oh, god ...

ASTA looks back also. The car is doing a U-turn and heading back towards them.

ASTA: Here we go ...

And now the car has come right up behind them and idles along keeping pace with them, the occupants invisible behind the glare o f the headlights. Sud­ denly there’s a blast o f noise as the car horn plays the ‘Tally H o ’ hunting call at high volume.

TIN A jumps and grabs ASTA’s arm. Laughter from the car.

ASTA takes a deep breath and stops. Behind them , the car stops also. ASTA steps off the pave­ m ent and up to the car window.

N ow she can see inside: there are four BOYS in there, none o f them older than 15. The driver is L IT T L E ST EV E. Now face to face with one o f their victims w ho’s looking them right in the eye - they glare at her sullenly

for a million bucks.

ASTA’s about to reply when a car goes past on the road beside them , travelling fast; it doesn’t slow down, but gives a “dah-dah, dah-dah” blast o f its horn.

L IZ Z IE freezes. ASTA and TIN A walk on another step, then see L I Z Z I E ’S stopped and stands there shaking, breathing rapidly.

TIN A : Liz? L IZ Z IE (H A N D O V E R H E R M O U T H ) Going home ...

And she turns and runs as fast as she can back toward N O R M A and the light o f home.

TIN A (S O F T L Y ): Poor little bitch ...

and squirm defiantly.

ASTA: You want something?

L IT T L E S T E V E (M R T O U G H ): Yeah. You want to give it to us, honey?

ASTA: You couldn’t cope with me, boys. (PA U SE ) So why don’t you just piss off?

She turns from the car. T o cover their sense o f being put down, the BOYS yell with sarcastic obedience and courtesy: “Yes m a’am ” , “Anything you say ... “ ASTA and T IN A walk on. The car just sits there, its lights blazing, its engine idling.

ASTA: Just kids.

TIN A : You didn’t know that.

Despite T IN A ’s relief, there’s a suppressed fury in her voice. They keep walking. Behind them , the car moves off, accelerating rapidly and is gone SFX: TR A IN IN T H E D ISTAN CE? A B O U T A H A L F K IL O M E T R E AWAY. TIN A : There’s your bloody train.

38 EXT TINA’S HOUSE FRONT GARDEN NIGHT T IN A ’s house is the last in her street: a neat little place with an overgrown but still pretty garden.ASTA and T IN A com e up to the front gate. T IN A pushes it open. W e sense that there has been a period o f silence between the two.

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time, in this heat ...

T IN A : Thrush?

ASTA: Yes. Then there’s the cricked neck, sunburn, insects L IZ Z IE : So why d ’you do it?

ASTA: It’s a lot o f fun. (LA U G H S) L IZ Z IE laughs too. T IN A shakes her head.

T IN A : Jeez - you wouldn’t get me on one o f them bikes

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Then: ASTA: U m - nice little place.

T IN A : Reckon? Yeah? -used to be me M um ’s till she died. (P A U S E , T H E N A S M IL E ) You want to com e in for a bit?

ASTA hesitates: she senses the loneliness behind T IN A ’s casual invitation - and she likes her too.

T IN A : You got time for a cuppa. Station’s just over that way.

ASTA: Look - thanks, Tina, but I gotta go and pick up my spare parts ...

T IN A : Jeez - tell you what - 1 wouldn’t mind a few spare parts m ’self.

ASTA: Know what you mean.

They both laugh. The laughter dies.

T IN A W ell-pleaseyourself.Justbecareful- ’kay? (PA U SE) Anyway. See ya.

T IN A turns and walks up her little front path to her door.

She’s closed off from ASTA and doesn’t look back. ASTA watches T IN A let herself in with a key and then, even before a light is switched on, ASTA hears clearly the sound o f two heavy bolts being shot home inside the front door. ASTA shrugs and turns to go.

39 EX T GINBORAK RAILWAY STATION STREET OUTSIDE NIGHT ASTA approaches the Railway Station from the service road, along the tracks. I t’s a small, old wooden structure, tired and neglected. Long paspalum grass, silvery in the m oonlight, grows right up to the walls, waving in the wind.

The railway tracks curve away onto the night. A single light swings back and forth over the platform, creaking.

ASTA pauses: the place has an eerie look. It seems deserted. But she makes herself go on. She climbs the side steps to the platform. In W ID E S H O T we see her, a small figure, on the platform. In the foreground, a m ovem ent; fleeting, almost imperceptible.

4 0 EXT GINBORAK RAILWAY STATION PLATFORM OFFICE NIGHT The ticket office is completely locked up. ASTA shivers.

She peers down the platform and makes out at the other end, a trolley with parcels under a dim light. N o one is there.

ASTA walks towards the trolley. The camera tracks with her. ASTA looks through a crack in the window blind o f the Parcels Office. She tries the door: it’s open. Several boxes and parcels lie on the floor. As ASTA rummages in the pile, a shadow crosses the window behind her. ASTA finds her parcel. She exhales with relief. She exits the office, closing the door behind her. In foreground, a BO Y clambers up onto the platform from the tracks. ASTA looks around: the SE C O N D and T H IR D BOYS appear from the shadows behind her. At the same m om ent headlights snap on. ASTA blinks momentarily. On the far side o f the tracks, on a wide gravel stretch, is L IT T L E S T E V E ’s car.

The FIR ST B O Y, closest to her, grins. H e makes a move towards her. ASTA looks around. The SE C O N D and T H IR D BOYS approach.W ithout warning, ASTA pushes the FIR ST B O Y so that he topples backward onto the tracks. She jumps off the platform onto the tracks and runs toward the service road pursued by the SE C O N D and T H IR D BOYS. At the same time the car roars into life and halts only briefly to pick up the FIR ST B O Y before following.

41 EXT GINBORAK RAILWAY STATION STREET OUTSIDE NIGHT ASTA loops the long string o f the parcel over her arm as she runs toward the dimly lighted street.The two boys are gaining although the car has had to detour along the road before it crosses at the level crossing.

4 2 EXT STREET NEAR RAILWAY STATION NIGHT ASTA runs along the pavement and turns into another side street. F or a m om ent she has lost the car but the boys are still close behind her. Suddenly, ahead o f her, the car bursts from a side street and heads toward her .ASTA gets to the next corner and turns into: 43 EXT DEAD END STREET WAREHOUSE BUILDINGS NIGHT ASTA realizes it’s a dead end street o f warehouse buildings.

She hesitates. The T W O BOYS halt and advance slowly toward her. The car too rounds the corner and swerves up onto the pavement, blocking her way. ASTA backs up against a crumbling brick fence. The BOYS advance, puff­ ing, but grinning with triumph.

T H IR D BO Y: Playing hard to get, eh?

S E C O N D B O Y : N ow your friend isn’t here - you g ot us all to yourself.

The passenger door swings open and the FIR ST BO Y gets out, grimly clutching his shoulder.

T H IR D BO Y: T onight’s the night, sw eetheart...

ASTA: Yeah?

L IT T L E ST E V E (F R O M T H E CAR) Bloody grab her.

W hat’re you doing? F o r Christ’s sake ...

On the pavement, the T H IR D B O Y circles round ASTA, while the SE C O N D walks right up to her. H e smiles

and suddenly lunges, grabbing at her crotch. ASTA swings her parcel and hits him with all her force on the side o f the head. She hurts him.

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The T H IR D BO Y makes a grab at her, but she dodges him and jumps forward between them and up onto the bonnet o f the car. The FIR ST and T H IR D grab at ASTA’s legs. She kicks at them and raises her arms: she has a brick from the old fence in her hands. She brings it down hard on the windscreen and smashes it.

ASTA: And that’s it? A little chat?

C U D D Y : N o - I m ight have to kick a few bums as well.

ASTA: U h-huh. Okay. L e t’s talk about you. Failure to act on a legitimate complaint, dereliction o f duty... W here’s your superior? Kalgoorlie?

A howl o f pain from inside the car. The FIR ST C U D D Y : All right, all right - Miss Barrister. You - uh BO Y tries to grab her. ASTA kicks at his head. She leaps off want to lay charges? I see. the other side o f the car. She lands badly and hurts her She and C U D D Y regard each other steadily. The ankle, but she keeps going. The T H IR D BO Y runs after C R O W D watches - some W O M E N plainly wanting ASTA her, but seeing he’s alone, stops. to press the point. A pause. Then: ASTA disappears.

ASTA: N o . Forget it. I couldn’t be bothered.

4 4 I N T GINBORAK POLICE STATION NIGHT ASTA turns and walks out, swinging her parcel by C O N S T A B L E GAVIN on night duty: feet up, cup o f its string. C U D D Y looks as thoughtful as several beers will coffee beside him, reading the sports section o f a newspa­ let him. Several o f the W O M E N - especially R ITA - look per. A small transistor plays music softly. Suddenly GAVIN disappointed. looks up. H e can hear som eone com ing fast up the steps 46 INT CURTIS PLACE SLEEPOUT/LAUN D RY NIGHT outside. Before he can even get his feet off the desk, the N O R M A and ASTA at the sink, N O R M A washing, then door bursts open with a crash and ASTA stands there, still bandaging ASTA’s cut fingers and grazed knuckles. L I Z ­ with her parcel and in a blazing fury. She’s cut the fingers Z IE , now in nightie and dressing gown, sits up on the and grazed her knuckles o f her right hand. In an instant she counter, watching and listening. She holds ASTA’s glasses: sees that only GAV IN’s there and we cut straight to: one lens is smashed.

45 INT GINBORAK R.S.L. CLUB NIGHT 45 N O R M A (C H U C K L IN G ): Fifteen stitches... Fifteen...

SER G E A N T C U D D Y is backed up-against-the-barx)fthe— "Y eah /tharlobks clean now. Right - give your hand here...

R .S.L. Club. H e ’s out o f uniform, had a few drinks and is Now , com e on... Be a brave girl... rapidly getting very angry. ASTA stands in front o f him, N O R M A takes ASTA’s hand and dabs the cuts much angrier than he. H er voice is hoarse with anger and and grazes with a peroxide-soaked piece o f cotton wool. her cut hand, wrapped in a handkerchief, is stinging. A ASTA snatches her hand away, wincing, waving the hand C R O W D is rapidly gathering round them , W O M E N push­ about. ing their way to the front as: ASTA: Shit! That really hurts... O ooohhh...

C U D D Y : W hat the hell were you doing down there any­ L IZ Z IE watches ASTA, never taking her eyes off her. way?

47 INT CURTIS PLACE TH E WORKSHOP NIGHT ASTA: W hat’s that got to do with it?

ASTA on her knees beside her bike, reassembling the C U D D Y : W hat were you doing? alternator cover with the new parts, constantly referring to ASTA: Picking up a parcel! the manual, peering through her broken glasses. She works C U D D Y : Lord above? Couldn’t it’ve waited till morning? with an almost ferocious vigour. She pushes some hair back ASTA:N o! I am a citizen... I have ever)' right... off her face and smears grease across her cheek. She stands, C U D D Y rolls his eyes, as if to say, ‘O h, here we goes across to the workbench for g o .” The W O M E N in the C RO W D are hanging on every a larger socket for a socket span­ word o f this now. We see R ITA , FAY, B E R Y L , E IL E E N , ner. The move takes the camera S H IR L and a number o f the women M EA TW O R K ER S, past L IZ Z IE , sitting watching some more ‘respectable’ looking T O W N SW O M E N , as intently, arms wrapped round her knees. ASTA comes back well as a number o f neady dressed ABO R IG IN A LS at the . back. C U D D Y ’s wife stands nervously beside him. with the socket. She glances at R ITA can’t help herself and buys in satirically: L I Z Z IE , giving her a smile for a R ITA (H EA V ILY SA R C A S T IC ): I reckonyou m ust’ve led half-second, then crouches back ‘em on girl. Look at those sexy clothes she’s wearing ... to her work. T IM enters from C U D D Y : Shut up y ou. Am I supposed to be running round the house. He too is in pyjamas and dressing gown. H e carries these streets day and night? Nursemaiding bloody fools like two cups o f tea. H e sees L I Z ­ her?

Z IE . She looks round at him.

ASTA: (Overlapping) Oh? I’m the fool.

C U D D Y : W e’re talking about four boys. Boys. Just having T IM raises an eyebrow at her presence at this hour. After a a bit o f fun ... m om ent, L IZ Z IE gets up and ASTA (T O T H E W O M E N ): Hey, girls - W hat do you do slinks out. T IM watches her go, for a bit o f fun? a pained expression on his face.

C U D D Y (T O T A L EXA SPE R A T IO N ) D on’t try to be Then he moves closer to ASTA smart with m e, girlie. Just stay off the street. and puts one o f the cups o f tea RITA: And get yourself some steel panties ... down on an oil drum near her.

M ost o f the W O M E N laugh at this, while the ASTA glances up, first at the cup M EN are exchanging uncomfortable looks. But in the midst o f the laughter, young Constable GAVIN appears. o f tea, then at him. H e stands there, rather stupidly holding his H e looks very grave. cup. ASTA glares at him briefly, GAVIN: They’re down at the hospital. Little Steve H em then, going on with her work, mingway’s had fifteen stitches in his arm and face. turns her back on him. On a C U D D Y turns to ASTA - but she just looks back at him, W .S. we see the whole work­ quite unrepentant. The laughter dies at the news o f the shop, ASTA working. T IM standing. Then he sits where fifteen stitches and amid head shaking and disapproving L IZ Z IE was. Silence except for the sound o f metal on metal murmurs, mainly from the M EN : and a grunt from ASTA as she tightens a nut, totally M AN #1: O h, that’s going a bit far ... ignoring TIM . T IM exhales heavily audibly. N o response.

SH IR L: Serve the little bastard right, I reckon ...

After another m om ent, T IM C U D D Y (SHAKES A F IN G E R A T ASTA) I could charge gives up. He stands and, taking his tea with him, goes out. you...

ASTA (IN C R E D U L O U S , T H E N F U R Y ): Charge me> ASTA alone. She works a m om ent, then looks round.

And when will you start on the fun-loving boys? Driving T IM ’s gone. She goes to the oil drum and drinks the tea. under age, driving with blood-alcohol above the prescribed But her face gives nothing away. She goes back to work.

48 EXT CURTIS PLACE PETROL PUMPS FRONT DAY limit, negligent driving, conspiracy, attempted abduction, Bright, hard, early morning sunlight. Only one o f the work­ assault... shop double doors is open, but GARRY is already at work.

RITA: G ood on you, love!

ASTA is by the petrol pumps, filling the tank. She is filthy C U D D Y : Well, well. Bit o f a bush lawyer, are we? dirty and tired - she’s worked all night to get the bike fixed.

ASTA: (A F T E R A S L IG H T PA U SE, R E L U C T A N T ): A But now, bouncing o ff the road to sweep in by the pumps, barrister, as a m atter o f fact.

D AN N Y’s Fairlane. D AN N Y is at the wheel, B O BBY M ixed reactions round the C R O W D ; m ost are beside him, and A N D R EW in the back seat, half-obscured impressed. But C U D D Y only seems fazed for a half second. behind a newspaper. GARRY comes out o f the workshop Then he smiles the same old com placent, avuncular smile. and comes across. D AN N Y and B O B B Y get out o f the car C U D D Y : G o o n ...P retty funny bloody barrister... and com e over toward ASTA. (C H U C K L E S ) Yeah?

GARRY: Gas’n’ check the lot, Danny-mate?

ASTA (P R E P A R E D T O P U SH IT N O W , U N S M IL ­ D ANNY: Yeah. (A smile for ASTA). Morning. G ot her all IN G ): Yes. Sergeant. fixed, eh? M ust’ve worked all night C U D D Y (S E R IO U S ): All right. You can rest assured I ’ll ASTA just looks at him, then back to what she’s be talking to these boys’ fathers, first thing in the morning.

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doing. D AN N Y and B O B B Y exchange a look.

D AN N Y: Why you in such a big hurry - uh ASTA? You know - I ’ll be real sorry to see you just... disappear...

ASTA is meant to ask “W hy?” - but she doesn’t.

Meanwhile, B O B B Y has crouched down and spins the rear wheel on the motorcycle.

ASTA (SN APS):Leave my bike alone, please.

B O B B Y springs from the m otorcycle, making gestures o f innocence. D AN N Y flicks his eyes at him and B O B B Y wanders away a little. ASTA and D A N N Y ’s eyes meet. D AN N Y smiles his nice smile. ASTA’s eyes go past him to A N D R EW still seated in the back o f the Fairlane, then back to DAN N Y. D A N N Y ’s charming smile wears thin. H e gets edgy.

Just before this m om ent can develop - ifit’s going to - L IZ Z IE suddenly appears in the doorway o f the workshop, blinking in the bright sunlight. She’s barefoot and wears only her nightie and dressing gown. As if oblivi­ ous to all else, she steps out onto the concrete and begins to move towards the Fairlane.

B O B B Y gives a whistle and moves towards the car also. So does DAN N Y. GARRY slams the bonnet, jumps up onto it and settles down to watch the show.

And now N O R M A appears, panting in the d o o r­ way o f the workshop.

N O R M A: Lizzie ... !

But L IZ Z IE is at the car. She opens the rear passenger door and leans in. N O R M A freezes helplessly, her hands outstretched to L IZ Z IE . In the rear o f the Fairlane, A N D R EW backs into the corner, looking away.

H e can’t meet L I Z Z I E ’S eyes. L I Z Z I E ’s words com e out in a rush - she’s rehearsed this.

L IZ Z IE : Andrew. Andrew, please listen. You got to tell my dad what really happened...

By now GARRY is looking in the windscreen and D AN N Y and B O B B Y in the side window. L IZ Z IE ignores everyone but A N D R EW . She lays a hand on his arm L IZ Z IE : Andrew - how could you let them? You tell my dad that I didn’t know - that I never wanted what hap­

pened ...

A N D R EW : (SH AKES O F F L I Z Z I E ’S H A N D ) Lizzie...!

Look - come on , it’s all over.

ASTA stands transfixed by her bike. In the m orn­ ing stillness, everyone can hear every' word o f L I Z Z I E ’s pathetic pleading.

Then T IM is running from the front door o f the house for the car as: L IZ Z IE : N o, Andrew - no, no - tellm y dad I ’m not a slut ... Tell him... Please T IM (A RO A R ): You get out o f the car! By god!

L IZ Z IE scrambles backward out o f the car. T IM grabs her roughly by the arm. L IZ Z IE looks beseechingly at him, but he avoids her eye.

T IM : Get in the house! Go on - get inside!

D AN N Y and B O B B Y get into the car, D AN N Y shaking his head as if (again) bemused by the human comedy. H e starts the engine. GARRY slides off the bonnet to the ground as the Fairlane starts to move slowly out.

B O B B Y leans out the window with some advice: B O BBY: Hey, Curtis - I ’d keep an eye on that girl. She’s getting a name - a real little goer... (LA U G H S) T IM takes a step toward the car, but DANNY accelerates and it’s gone. N O R M A leads L IZ Z IE inside.

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ASTA stands still by her bike - the outsider, but utterly, almost personally humiliated by what she has just witnessed. And Tim walks away through the workshop, out the rear door into the courtyard - to stand a small, solitary figure.

Foreground: ASTA looks up and down the street, again still and empty. She begins to haul at the air hose, hardening her heart.

SCENE 49 DELETED 50 EXT CURTIS PLACE PETROL PUMPS DAY N O R M A is by D U L G IE ’s window, looking up at her and very distressed.

N O R M A : I just can’t go in today, D uk e - can’t...

D U L C IE : She’s told me to put som eone else on.

ASTA just walks across to her bike and clips on her panniers, straps on her sleeping bag. She has showered and changed. Minding her own business, nothing to do with her ...

N O R M A : Just today, D uke - I can’t!

The tow truck backs out o f the workshop, T IM stony-faced at the wheel D U L C IE : I can’t cover for you, love - you’ll lose your job N O R M A : Yeah. All right - wait o n ... (T U R N S AND Y E L L S ) Tim ! Tim! N O R M A runs to T IM in the tow truck. H e stops.

N O R M A : Som ebody’s g ot to stay with Lizzie, son. . .

T IM : Mum - if I don’t fix these two trucks, two shooters w on’t work tonight and I w on’t get any work at all from Mrs Almighty Rodolph. (PA U SE. H E T U R N S O F F T R U C K E N G IN E ) I am trying to earn a living, Mum. N O R M A (IN T EA R S): W hat do you think I’m doing?

N O R M A steps back from the tow truck. D U L ­ C IE is making frantic ‘C om e on!’ signals.

ASTA now with her helmet on, visor up. She touches the electric start. The engine purrs. She pulls down the mirrored visor. Then N O R M A stands in front o f her.

N O R M A can see her own distorted reflection in the visor.

N O R M A : Hey. Hey, will you listen? MissCadell? Please?

ASTA’s black-gloved hand reaches out for her ignition. The engine dies. A sigh seems to com e from inside the helmet. ASTA raises the visor and her eyes look out at N O R M A. N O R M A : L o o k -y o u seen everything - heard everything, eh? Y o u ’d ’ve had to ...

ASTA: Yes. N O R M A : Couldn’t you stay with little Liz? Just for today.

Could you?

ASTA looks away down the street, over the plain, the way out o f Ginborak.

D U L C IE : Go on, darlin’ - what’s another day to you?

But ASTA takes no notice - o f D U L C IE . She and N O R M A look at each other: the black-clad traveller and the weathered old girl in the faded dress. ASTA kicks out the bike’s side stand and lets the bike rest onto it. She pulls off her helmet.

N O R M A (S O F T L Y ): Bless you, love.

Then N O R M A runs and jumps straight into D U L C I E ’su te - which roars off. TIM looks to ASTA and gives the briefest nod o f thanks himself. ASTA appears not to see T IM . Then T IM drives off to o. ASTA swings off the m otorcycle. She throws her gloves down hard on the tank.

She shakes out her hair.

GARRY wanders out o f the workshop, smoking a cigarette. He looks at ASTA and shakes head slowly. Tsk, tsk - sucker.

51 INT CURTIS PLACE TH E HOUSE LIZZIE’S ROOM DAY A dim, cluttered hallway, the floor covered in cracked lino­ leum. ASTA is outside a door. She knocks. From inside the door: L IZ Z IE (O SV ): Go away.

ASTA opens the door and enters.

L I Z Z I E ’S bedroom is tricked out in real ‘little girl’ style-overlaid with L I Z Z I E ’sow n touches ofgrow ing up: pink and frills, a line ofdolls on a small bookcase, a dolls’ house on the floor, a few sports pennants, posters o f rock stars both clean-cut and ‘rebel’ . On the m irror over the make-up-littered dressing table, a Polaroid snap o f L IZ Z IE and A N D R EW at a pub or a barbie... L IZ Z IE lies on the rumpled bed, curled up, turned to the wall. She doesn’t look round as: L IZ Z IE : Go away, Gran. Just leave me alone.

ASTA stands just inside the doorway, taking in the room .

L IZ Z IE rolls over at: ASTA: It’s not your Gran. She had to go to work. (PA U SE ) Well - I’m here. O.K.?

L IZ Z IE takes this in and nods at ASTA. But then her face crumples and she turns back to the wall. ASTA just looks at her. She’s about to turn and g o, but she stops. She folds her arms and leans on the door.

ASTA: Lizzie?

L IZ Z IE (T U R N E D AWAY): What?

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ASTA: U h-huh. I’m getting on, you know. D o you think I should be careful and say ‘yes’, Lizzie?

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ASTA: F or what it’s w orth, I believe you.

L IZ Z IE turns round slowly and lifts her eyes to ASTA’s.

52 EXT ROAD OUTSIDE TOWN DAY The broken white line down the middle o f the road flashes by at great speed. The camera tilts up from the line to find the big m otorcycle purring along, ASTA revelling in the wind and speed, L IZ Z IE clinging on tightly behind.The m otorcycle is flashing through trees, in and out o f pools o f shade and shafts o f bright sunlight. They approach a curve in the road. ASTA changes down a gear and leans the m o ­ torcycle into the curve. Involuntarily, L IZ Z IE lets out a whoop o f delight. She relaxes and leans back and feels the breeze on her face. L IZ Z IE smiles.

53 EXT ROAD ACROSS OPEN PLAIN GRASSLAND DAY In a W ID E S H O T , the motorcycle emerges from the trees and onto an open plain. N ow L IZ Z IE hold out her arms like wings and the wind takes them.

54 EXT QUARRY DAY The edge o f the quarry - grassy with shady trees. Crystal water.

ASTA leans against the parked motorcycle.

L IZ Z IE has wandered toward the water. ASTA watches L IZ Z IE . It is as if with the cessation o f m otion, all L I Z ­ Z I E ’S pains and fears have again risen to the surface. ASTA breaks the silence.

ASTA: Enjoy that?

L IZ Z IE doesn’t answer: just nods without turn­ ing round. ASTA perches on the bike seat and rests her chin in her hands. Then: L I Z Z I E : I was real dumb, eh? I never did one thing to them - just I ’d sort o f say hello and talk and that. And Andrew he said...he said he loved m e...

ASTA: Lizzie. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t Lizzie Curtis. It was just... a woman. Anybody.

L IZ Z IE nods her head slowly, trying to under­ stand. And what she understands is opening up a vast black chasm before her. She leans on a tree overhanging the water and watches the river swirl around an old stump. She is very still.

ASTA: Yeah. Well - I think I might go for a swim.

L IZ Z IE doesn’t move - just stares at the water.

ASTA begins to take off her boots.

55 EXT QUARRY DAY ASTA comes up from under water and throws back the hair out ofher eyes. She’s swimming in her T-shirt. She feels the sun on her face and breaks into a smile. She looks back to the bank. L I Z Z IE , stripped down to her T-shirt and knick­ ers, is wading out into the water. ASTA is close enough to see the bruises on L I Z Z I E ’S arms and thighs. L IZ Z IE lifts her head and sees that ASTA is looking. ASTA quickly looks away, but L IZ Z IE drops her eyes as if ashamed. She swims slowly away from ASTA, hugging the bank. ASTA looks after her with a great sympathy which is mingled with pain and anger. She goes to say something, but stops herself and sinks underwater once more.

L IZ Z IE hooks her ams over an overhanging branch in a cave o f shade. She lets the water flow past, tugging at her. She seems lost in thought. Then she looks out to the sunlit centre o f the water and sees ASTA surface and then swim slowly, lazily about, rolling over on her back and letting the sunlight hit her full in the face.

ASTA sees L IZ Z IE - or feels L IZ Z IE watching her.

ASTA: All right? It’s lovely, isn’t it.

L IZ Z IE gives a half smile o f agreement.

ASTA swims over to her and grasps another branch, panting a little from swimming against the current.

L IZ Z IE studies her face.

L IZ Z IE : You must be rich.

ASTA: Why? L IZ Z IE : O h, the way you talk - and how you’re travelling round for no reason. (PA U SE ) And you’re not... careful.

L IZ Z IE chooses the very word with great care.

ASTA looks hard at her , suddenly seeing herself as L IZ Z IE must see her and, despite her sympathy and liking for the girl, sensing the real gap between them.

ASTA (SL O W LY ): N o. Maybe I ’ve never had to be.

L IZ Z IE (V ER Y C U R IO U S ): Have you g o t... well, a boyfriend?

ASTA (L A U G H S ): Yes - a long-suffering boyfriend.

L IZ Z IE : Then how com e you’re travelling on your own?

O h, sorry'...

ASTA: It’s all right. (SH R U G S) H e had to work and I... I wanted some time on my own.

L IZ Z IE (T H A T ’S H ARD T O G RASP): O h .B u t... he loves you? Does he w'ant to get married?

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L I Z Z IE : I dunno.

ASTA releases the branch she’s holding and lets the current take her to a sandbar some little distance away.

She sits on the sandbar, water up to her shoulders. After a pause: ASTA: Perhaps I will. Careful and very respectable.

L IZ Z IE is a little confused: there’s a touch o f bit­ terness under ASTA’s gaiety. B ut, fascinated, L IZ Z IE enters into the m ood. She lets the current take her to the sandbar. She looks at ASTA with a mock-serious expres­ sion.

L IZ Z IE : N o m ore m otorcycle...

ASTA: I’ll drive a tank!

As ASTA speaks, she punctuates her vision o fh er ‘careful’ future by rising up out o f the water and flinging her ams out, scattering water which catches the sun.

L IZ Z IE : Will you have a house?

ASTA: W ith curtains and bars on the windows!

L IZ Z IE : Y ou’ll have champagne on the terrace ...

ASTA: Drunk every night!

L IZ Z IE : Y ou’ll go to the hairdresser ...

ASTA: Get a face lift at forty!

L IZ Z IE : Gentlemen will kiss your hand.

ASTA (S U D D E N L Y A L M O ST S E R IO U S ): W hen I meet a gentleman, Lizzie, he can kiss me wherever he wants.

And with this, ASTA sinks below the surface o f the water, sending up bubbles. B ut when she surfaces, she finds L IZ Z IE no longer smiling, just looking at her, troub­ led.

56 INT GINBORAK SUPERMARKET DAY ASTA and L IZ Z IE going through the checkout at the supermarket. LO R N A is on the cash register .ASTA’s al­ ready eating a chocolate bar and has two or three others in her hand.There are a couple o f other W O M E N there and they sneak curious looks at L IZ Z IE . L I Z Z I E ’S em bar­ rassed and keeps her eyes down. As LO R N A punches up the items they’ve bought and ASTA puts some money down: LO R N A (S O F T L Y ): H i, Liz. L IZ Z IE : Hi. But ASTA’s looking out o f the window to the street.

57 EXT P.O.V. FROM SUPERMARKET TO STREET DAY A group o f D R IN K ER S from the pub across the street, some with glasses still in their hands, plus a number o f other BLO K ES with time to kill, have clustered round ASTA’s bike, parked outside the supermarket.

B O B B Y and B R U C E are actually sitting on the bike, pretending to ride it. B R U C E wears his clothes for working in the bank, neat long-sleeved white shirt and tie.

M uch hilarity and chiacking.

58 INT SUPERMARKET DAY ASTA, L IZ Z IE , LO R N A and a number o f other W O M E N have moved over to the window. N ow ASTAstarts to move toward the door and: ASTA: H aven’t they g ot anything better to do?

LO R N A : Nope.

But ASTA is already out the door and moving toward her bike.

58 EXT MAIN STREET, OUTSIDE S/M ARKET DAY ASTA moves gently through the C R O W D around her bike.There are shouts o f “ H ere she is,” “B etter watch it, B ruce... “ and so on. As ASTA gets to the bike: A B LO K E: Real nice bike.

ASTA: Thank you.

A B L O K E : W hat’ll she do?

ASTA: O h, around 190 k ...

A few impressed whistles from the C R O W D . So far B O B B Y and B R U C E have pretended to ignore her. B ut now: BO BBY:Like something big between your legs, eh?

ASTA: I f it does 190 k ...

Laughter: this seems to be judged a good answer.

B O B B Y scowls.

ASTA: ... and now, if you don’t mind ...

B O B B Y slides off the bike and just stands there, staring at ASTA. ASTA nods an extra-polite ‘thank y ou’ to him. But B R U C E still sits on the bike seat, gripping the handle bars and twisting the throttle.

ASTA: Y ou’re flooding my carbies, m ate.

B R U C E (PR O V O C A T IV E IN N O C E N C E ): Yeah?

ASTA: You want to go for a ride?

B R U C E : Yeah. (H O L D S O U T A H A N D ) Keys?

ASTA (P O L IT E , B U T F IR M ): Sorry. I only g o t it back together this m orning. Shift back.

B R U C E gets the idea. She’s going to take him for a ride. H e slides back along the seat, leaving room for ASTA to get on. She gets on and starts the engine. She lets it run.

ASTA (B A C K O V E R H E R S H O U L D E R ) Just letting it warm up.

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Behind her, B R U C E is leering, giving the V-sign and making suggestive movements at ASTA’s rear - all to the amusement o f the C R O W D .

B R U C E revels in the attention.

ASTA (S W E E T L Y , T O T H E C R O W D ): Could you stand back, please?

As the C R O W D co-operatively parts, ASTA squeezes the clutch lever. H er foot gently engages first gear. H er hand takes a firm grip on the throttle. Suddenly, without any warning, she lets the bike out - winding it up to around 100 kph in around three seconds and standing the bike on its rear wheel. B R U C E wasn’t prepared. H e feels himself losing his balance, sliding backward under his own inertia, an expression o f terror on his face.He tumbles off the back, rolling over and over in the dust in his nice white bank teller’s shirt. The bike’s front wheel com es down hard.

ASTA skids sideways, stops, turns tightly and com es back to where B R U C E is just getting up, rubbing himself down and utterly mortified. As B O B B Y and a few O T H ER S com e running up: ASTA (M IL D L Y ): Sorry - I thought you’d done this before.

And up on the footpath near the entrance to the supermarket, L IZ Z IE is helpless with laughter. So is LO R N A - and lots o f other W O M E N to o. Quite a few o f the D R IN K ER S and other BLO K ES are laughing, pointing at B R U C E . B R U C E isn’t laughing, nor is BO BBY. B ut with an apologetic shrug, ASTA’s turned the bike, gone back to the front o f the supermarket and squeaks to a stop by L IZ Z IE .

ASTA (W IT H O U T M O V IN G H E R L IP S ) Jump o n -a n d hang on real t i g h t ...

L IZ Z IE does that. ASTA takes off again: another wheel stand, a cheeky to o t o f the horn, and the big bike is gone.

B R U C E , limping a little, but only his pride really hurt, gets to the footpath. H e looks after the bike with hatred.

6 0 INT CURTIS PLACE WORKSHOP D A Y/ AFTERNOON The m otorcycle comes through the double doorway and squeaks to a stop. GARRY is at work under the bonnet o f a car. N o sign o f the tow-truck or TIM . The old mande radio is rocking away much louder than usual. As ASTA kills the m otorcycle engine, we realize the phone is ringing in the litde glass office. L IZ Z IE slides off the bike, still smiling, occasionally giggling.

L IZ Z IE : I’ll get it, Garry.

L IZ Z IE runs into the litde office and through the glass we see her answer the phone. ASTA puts her machine onto its stand and then goes out the rear door to the

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T IM : I don’t know w hat... I ’ve been thinking...

D o n ’t know what’s wrong with m e. I... I ’m sorry Liz.

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washtubs. Nqw GARRY straightens up and looks at L I Z ­ Z I E inside the office. H e glances toward the courtyard, then crosses to the doorway o f the office. L IZ Z IE has hung up and is scribbling a message for her father.

GARRY: Been riding on the big m achine, eh?

L IZ Z IE shrugs, not taking to o much norice o f him: she never has. GARRY steps into the doorway.

GARRY: Y o u ’ve com e on fast, Liz. They’re saying you’ll ride anything, eh? H o w ’s about a go with old Gazza sometime. Eh? L IZ Z IE stares at him, then starts to buckle at the knees. She turns away and sinks into the desk chair, her shoulders shaking. GARRY shakes his head, laughing softly - he’s watched cute litde L IZ Z IE for a long rime now ... H e turns to go back to work and finds ASTA standing there, her face still wet. GARRY sneers at her, as if to say, ‘so what if you heard that’, as he goes to push past her.

ASTA fetches him a stinging back-hander across his face. GARRY staggers back, m outh open: he can’t be­ lieve i t ... Then he lunges for ASTA, trying to hit or grab her.

GARRY: Y ou’re gonna go down, moll. . .

ASTA dodges and backs away, looking for a suitable weapon. From behind the glass partition o f the office L IZ Z IE watches, a hand to her m outh.

T IM drives in in the tow truck. H e jumps out and looks from ASTA to GARRY. H e jerks the plug o f the radio out o f the wall socket. Sudden silence.

TIM : Right. W hat’s going on?

N o answer from either GARRY or ASTA. T IM points a finger at GARRY. T IM : You put the new rings in that car? Well, get on with it, Gazza. (T U R N S T O ASTA) Well?

GARRY is ropeable. H e moves back to his work, hitting the palm o f his hand with a heavy spanner and muttering: GARRY: Yeah - ask her. Bitch. Okay. So maybe you’re aiming to get into her pants... Okay...

■TIM hears this - as he was meant to. His face goes hard and then he strides across to GARRY. T IM : Garry? You’re fired, mate. ( PU LLS R O L L O F N O TES O U T O F HIS T O P P O C K E T , C O U N T S SO M E O F F) You think I didn’t see you this morning? (TH R O W S M O N E Y O N T H E F L O O R ) There’s your dough. N ow get out.

GARRY: Wha - ?

T IM : You heard me. out!

T IM makes a move toward GARRY who retreats quickly.

GARRY (A T T H E D O O R ): Y ou’re an arsehole, Curtis and piss-weak as well ...

T IM attempts to ignore all this. H e looks at L I Z Z IE , who now stands in the doorway o f the office and then to ASTA. ASTA shrugs and turns to walk toward the rear door.

T IM (T O ASTA): Wait on.I want an answer !

But it’s L IZ Z IE who speaks.

L IZ Z IE (W IT H RISING E M O T IO N ): You want to know what happened, Dad? W asn’t m uch. B ut, yeah, you ask her - ‘cause you d on’t believe anythin’ I say, do you? Believe anybody ‘cept m e... N o t your little virgin daughter any more, am I? Course 1 said ‘yes’ to Jim m y ... wanted him - but never mind th a t... you don’t want to know - ask her, go on - you think I’m a little slut just ’cause...

She breaks down, sobbing helplessly.

T IM is stricken. He stands helpless a second, then takes a step toward L IZ Z IE , reaching out a hand... T IM tries to touch her. L IZ Z IE flinches away.

T IM retracts his hand as if burnt. L IZ Z IE slides down the wall to half sit on the floor, sobbing.TIM squats a

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H e stares at the ground. L IZ Z IE reaches out to him and lays just the tips o f her fingers on his arm. It is as if she is reaching across a chasm to him. H e lifts his eyes.

They look at each other. ASTA rolls her eyes up - but as if to say, ‘A t l a s t ... ‘ .

T IM (T O L IZ Z IE ): Reckon we might close up early today.

W hat d ’you say? (L IZ Z IE N O D S. T U R N S T O ASTA) Miss Cadell - why don’t you com e on into the house?

ASTA watches T IM and L IZ Z IE go through into the house, T IM slipping an arm around L I Z Z I E ’S shoulders.

61 INT CURTIS PLACE LO U N GE/DINING ROOM NIGHT The C U R T IS FA M ILY around the kitchen table with ASTA as their guest. ASTA has put on her other jeans, a clean shirt and some simple eye make-up. N O R M A bustles from the kitchen to the table smiling from ear to ear. T IM is more relaxed than we’ve ever seen him. ASTA regales them with a story from her past.

ASTA: You ever been attacked or threatened? (D E E P V O IC E ) “Only by you Miss Cadell! “ L IZ Z IE can’t take her eyes off the guest.

ASTA: You don’t even know you’re alive! Sitting there on your fat impartial bum!

They laugh.ASTA smiles ruefully.

ASTA:Yeah... well. The terrible thing is that if, say, any o f you had said that to a judge ...

T IM : (W H IST LE S) Reckon. Be in the slammer in a flash.

ASTA: But with m e... W ell, they don’t want a fuss ... ( E M ­ BARRASSED) And there’s family connections. Anyway, the Bar Association will m eet and decide that, after all, I am a woman - bad time o f the m onth or something ...

N O R M A chuckles. T IM is not sure where this conversation is heading.

ASTA: ...and they’ll give me a warning and let me off if I promise to be a good girl from now on...

T IM (A JO K E ): Well, if you ever want to chuck it in, I’m looking for a new m echanic...

L IZ Z IE : W hat do you mean, “Be a good girl” ?

ASTA (F L IP P A N T ): Oh you k n o w - get with the strength.

Join the winning circle. Stop worrying about ‘changing the world’ !

L IZ Z IE : Be “careful” .

ASTA (W IN KS): Right.

T IM isn’t really too sure what ASTA is talking about, but feeling her sadness and just to be pleasant and cheer her up: T IM : Ah, com e on ... The world’s not that bad a place er - most o f the time.

ASTA stares at him incredulously and is about to argue - but she decides to let it go.

ASTA: Yes, that’s right. Why not make the most o f it?

N O RM A: May as well, love - while you’re young.

N O R M A alone - with her years - understands ASTA but she means what she says as well. Everyone eats.

62 EXT CURTIS PLACE BACK STEPS, REAR COURTYARD NIGHT T IM and ASTA sit on the steps leading from the kitchen door down to the rear courtyard, enjoying the cool o f the night and sharing a bottle o f beer. Behind them , the house is in total darkness.

T IM : Things that happen in this town - you think they happen to other people. N o t your own family. You d on’t know till...Well, you find out things about yourself you don’t want to know ...

Suddenly L I Z Z I E ’Svoice comes from behind the screen door o f the darkened kitchen.

L IZ Z IE : You talking about me?

And she comes out the screen door to them.

T IM : Hullo - thought you were asleep.

L IZ Z IE : H ow could I be with you two raving under my window? (SITS W IT H T H E M . T O ASTA) You still going tomorrow?

ASTA: Yes - first thing in the morning.

L IZ Z IE (LO O K S AWAY, SIG H S): Yeah.

Suddenly a noise, as o f something metallic, seams to com e from the front o f the house.

T IM : W hat was that?

They all listen. Silence. T IM shakes his head must be hearing things.

L IZ Z IE : D ’you have to? (G O ) T IM : Asta’s got her own life, Liz ...

Another metallic noise from the front o f the house - then a giggle. T IM signals “Shhh” , and stands.

This time ASTA and L IZ Z IE heard it too.

And we cut to: 63 EXT CURTIS PLACE FRONT OF WORKSHOP NIGHT

65

ASTA and T IM , with L IZ Z IE just behind them , appear without a sound around the corner o f the workshop (having gone out the side gate and tip­ toed down the side lane). They see:GARRY, standing on a petrol drum , painting something with a spray can across the front ofth e workshop. B R U C E SU LLIV A N is with G ARRY, on the ground, supposedly keeping w a tch ,' but too interested in GARRY’s handiwork.

T IM and ASTA make a move. At the last second B R U C E sees them and takes off like a frightened rabbit.

GARRY isn’t quick enough. T IM and ASTA grab him and haul him down off the drum. He squirms like a beached fish. B R U C E ’s car roars away.

GARRY: Leave me alone... Let me g o ... you can’t do nothin’ to me.

But L IZ Z IE - and then T IM and ASTA - is looking up at what GARRY was painting across the work­ shop wall. Now we too see it for the first tim e, in yellow paint: B EW A R E O F SLU TS L IZ Z IE pounces on the dropped spray can.

GARRY can see the look on her face: he cowers, squirms even m ore, thinking she’s going to spray him in the eyes.

L IZ Z IE speaks in a tone not to be denied: L IZ Z IE : Turn him over! Turn him round!

GARRY: N o , n o ... W hat’re you gonna d o .., ?

ASTA and T IM turn GARRY around so that his back is toward L IZ Z IE . L IZ Z IE lifts the spray can and with great deliberation and malicious satisfaction, sprays a yel­ low stripe from the top o f GARRY’s head to the seat o f his

pants.To avoid getting sprayed themselves, ASTA and TIM stand a little away from GARRY and, as L IZ Z IE finishes, GARRY is able to twist free. He stumbles away whimper­ ing, then runs off as fast as he can.

L I Z Z I E ’Schest is heaving. She looks at T IM and ASTA and bursts out laughing. ASTA and T IM are thrown for a m om ent and then... join in.

6 4 E X T G IN B O R A K PU B

M A IN S T R E E T S H O P S AND

DAY

The Saturday morning main street is busy. N O R M A is backing the tow-truck into a parking space in front o f the supermarket. She looks pretty grim. ASTA and L IZ Z IE are with her. They all get out o f the truck.

Leaning against the shop awning posts, W AYN E and B O B B Y sec them enter the supermarket. Across the street, B R U C E and DANNY sit on the steps o f the hotel.

They too watch with interest.

6 5 IN T

G IN B O R A K

SU PERM A RK ET

DAY

N O R M A and LIZ Z IE move along the aisle, N O RM A pushing the trolley and selecting groceries carefully. About

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halfway along the aisle ahead, P E N N Y ROSS is doing her shopping to o. N O R M A gives her a brief, but not unfriendly smile, then moves on. But L IZ Z IE slows. H er and PE N N Y ’S eyes m eet for a half-second. Then P E N N Y drops her eyes and L IZ Z IE moves on.

Now ASTAis coming up the aisle behind PEN N Y, moving briskly, selecting a toothbrush, toothpaste and a box o f Tam pax. She gets to PEN N Y . They recognize each other. ASTA goes to move to , to catch up with N O R M A and L I Z Z IE , but PE N N Y speaks, so soft and shy that ASTA barely catches it.

PEN N Y: H ey... Thanks for what you done...

ASTA gives a self-deprecating shrug and visibly restrains herself from asking PE N N Y anything. She hurries on. N O R M A and L IZ Z IE round a corner and move into the next aisle. ASTA catches up with them.

Up ahead now, T IN A is talking to R ITA and FAY. The W O M E N nod and murmur their hellos. Then: T IN A (T O ASTA): Still here, eh?

ASTA makes a fatalistic gesture. Meanwhile, L IZ Z IE fidgets and looks at the ground as: R ITA (AW KW ARD , T E N T A T IV E ): G ood to see you, Lizzie. H ow you feeling, love?

L IZ Z IE (M U M B L E S ): All right.

FAY (ALSO AW KW ARD ): Com ing back to work, are you?

But L IZ Z IE is looking up the aisle toward the checkouts. There, two o f the other women from the meatworks, E IL E E N and B E R Y L , in their “ S a tu rd a y -g o -sh o p ping” outfits, are lean­ ing over their trollies.

From their manner and covert glances, they’re obviously talking about LIZ Z IE .

Instead o f answer­ ing F A Y ’s qu estion, L IZ Z IE breaks away and marches straight up to E IL E E N and. B ER Y L. L IZ Z IE has tears in her eyes and she almost shouts: L IZ Z IE : Having a good old gossip, are you?

Talking about me? Eh, what’s the story?

B E R Y L (B A C K IN G AW AY): What? N o one’s talking about you, Liz­ zie Curtis ...

N ow NORM A, FAY, ASTA and T IN A are hurrying up. RITA is in the lead: she’s heard B E R Y L and as other SH O P PER S, attracted by the noise, gather: RITA: Ahh - bullshit!

Course you’re talking about her ‘cause she’s the latest. And w ho’s gonna be next?

E IL E E N : Ah, give up, Rita - just ‘cause a few little sluts in this town get what they deserve, anyone’d think ...

But her friend B ER Y L is pulling her away towards the checkout; and ahead o f them , the M O T H ER S o f B R U C E and L IT T L E ST EV E join the queue - red in the face and looking firmly in the other direction... R ITA is muttering obscenities after E IL E E N and B ER Y L. N O RM A (U N D E R T O N E T O L IZ Z IE ): D on’t worry, sweetheart - we’re going straight hom e.You never should’ve... (C O M E D O W N H E R E ) But now L IZ Z IE shakes off N O R M A ’s restrain­ ing hand and advances on E IL E E N and B E R Y L again.

L IZ Z IE : “ Little sluts” , eh? That how you explain it? You thick, fat ...

NO RM A: Lizzie!

E IL E E N : I seen you at those footie club dances, Lizzie Curtis... G ot what was com ing to you!

MRS SU LLIV A N and MRS H EM M IN G W A Y stare while pretending they’re not staring. Meanwhile, the slanging match goes on without any interruption.

RITA: You dumb bitch, ‘Leen. . .

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And S H IR L nudges PA TTI to look at the expres­ sions on the faces o f MRS SU LLIV A N and MRS H EM M IN G W A Y .

S H IR L : W hat’re you two staring at?

M RS SU LLIV A N (F R IG H T E N E D ): What?

R ITA : (M O V IN G O N MRS S AN D MRS H ) Yeah - you two - you know all about it, d on’t you?

MRS H EM M IN G W A Y : D o n ’t even know what you’re talking about ...

T IN A (C A N ’T RESTR A IN H E R S E L F A N Y L O N G E R ): O h, shit! It’s your boys, your own sons... they’re animals!

MRS H EM M IN G W A Y (A T T A C K T H E B E S T D E ­ F E N C E ): D o n ’t talk to me about animals! (T U R N S O N N O R M A , PO IN T S T O ASTA) W hat kind o f woman is your bikie friend there? Roam ing the streets at night and getting my son fifteen stitches?!

ASTA (C O L D F U R Y ): Your son goes roam ing the streets at night molesting women. W hat kind o f m other are you?

MRS H EM M IN G W A Y : What? (T O N O R M A , P O IN T ­ IN G A T L IZ Z IE ): W hat’s she been saying, eh?

MRS SU LLIV A N : Lizzie ... ? (F R IG H T E N E D ) Lizzie you can’t say... these things. My B ruce’s never been in trouble in his life...

L IZ Z IE : Yeah? Well, he’s gonna be in trouble now! (AND T O MRS H . ) And so’s your Litde Steve!

Everything stops and all attention focuses on L IZ Z IE . She stands there crimson with embarrassment, re­ alizing along ,with everyone else the implications o f what she’s just said. M urmurs run through the C R O W D : reali­ zation and anticipation. H ere’s a g o ...! And LO R N A ’s heard every w ord: she’s staring at L I Z Z IE , as: MRS H EM M IN G W A Y : You lying little tart ...Slut!

And cut to: 66 EXT GINBORAK MAIN STREET SHOPS AND PUB DAY L IZ Z IE moving determinedly toward the tow truck, N O R M A and ASTA right with her. T IN A ’s there too, looking confused. Behind them , LO R N A pushes through the crowd at the supermarket door and runs up to L IZ Z IE .

LO R N A (F L U S H E D AN D PA N T IN G ): Will you really, Liz? Really get them all?

L IZ Z IE (BR A V A D O ): N o sense leaving any out.

LO R N A : I will too! I will if you will. W e’ll get ‘em , Liz! L IZ Z IE nods, biting her lip.

N O R M A (F R A N T IC ): F or g od ’s sake - get in the tru ck ...

As the tow truck and then T IN A ’s car reverse o u t, we go with MRS H EM M IN G W A Y as she half runs across to the pub.

67 INT CURTIS PLACE T H E WORKSHOP DAY T IM is beside the open bonnet o f a car (the one GARRY didn’t finish). H e’s grease-stained,sweaty andlooks stunned.

T IM : Y ou’ll have to spell it all out, Liz - tell Cuddy every bloody thing...

L IZ Z IE just nods stubbornly - she knows that.

T IM : And ... and they’re just gonna claim you’re making it all up. You already left it too long ...

L IZ Z IE : W e’re gonna ring the hospital, Dad - have medical evidence...

She glances round at ASTA now - because she’s quoting. The glance at ASTA is enough for T IM . H e shoots an accusing look at ASTA. ASTA, standing some metres away, just looks back at him calmly.

T IN A now moves up to stand with T IM .

And now N O R M A com es through from the house and stands listening as: T IM (G E N T L E R ): Lizzie, let someone else be brave.

(PA U SE ) W e got to put all that behind us. ’ T IN A : Look, Liz - you know Penny Ross? Hard as nails L IZ Z IE : Used to be.

T IN A : Yeah - but she tried laying charges ...

L IZ Z IE (SW A LLO W S, SC A R ED ): Jesus ... Yeah? So? T IM (PR ESSES T H E A D V A N TA G E): People wouldn’t talk to her in the street... She was a joke...

L IZ Z IE : Yeah, I remember you laughing...

T IM ’s stopped in his tracks for a m om ent: it’s true. H e looks down, ashamed, then goes on: T IM : It never even g ot to court, because... well, god love us, Lizzie, what makes you think?

L IZ Z IE : Dad. Tina - 1 know other girls ... w om en... lots o f them ... who should - who could do what I ’m gonna do. But everyone says, “ Remem ber Penny Ross” - or they just want to hide till the shame goes aw ay - and nothing hap­ pens.

T IM (PAST L IZ Z IE T O N O R M A ): M um ...

N O R M A (W O N ’T L O O K A T T IM ): I ’ve ironed your dress, Liz. T IM looks at the ground again, defeated. Then he nods, “All right ”

TO BE C O N T I N U E D NEXT I SS UE

FEATURES P R E PRODUCTION THE BACK STR EET GENERAL Prod, company Avalon Film Corporation Dist. company Overseas Film Group/PRO Producer Phillip Avalon Scriptwriter Denis Whitburn Based on the play by Phillip Avalon Editor Ted Otton Exec, producer Eric Jury Assoc, producer Michael Boon Unit manager Stephen McCagnan Location manager Stephen McCagnan Prod, secretary Susan Pickup Prod, accountant Michael Boon Casting.

Faith Martin 8c Associates Still photography Tony Nolan Bob King Studios Avalon Film Corporation Studios Budget $4 million Length 90 minutes Gauge ' 35mm Synopsis: An Australian country boy is captured by the Viet Cong and held prisoner for years after the end of the Vietnam War. He eventually escapes both from the Viet Cong and the Australian Army, who wish to debrief him and get information about other MIAs. He makes his way home to find many changes have taken place.

BEYOND MY REACH Executive producer Producer Writer Assoc, producer Publicity

Peter Boyle Frank Howson Frank Howson Barbi Taylor Lionel Midford

THE GOLDEN EAGLE Prod company

Soundstage Australia/ Bevanfield Films(London) Mar)' Swindale Tibor Meszaros Robert A. Cocks Director Timothy Forder Scriptwriters Warren Williams Timothy Forder Exec, producer Hannah Downie From an original idea by Hannah Downie Casting Angélique Malcolm Stunts coordinator Rob Greenough Laboratory Movielab Pty Ltd Budget $1,900,000 Length 35mm Shooting stock Eastman Colour Synopsis: A children’s film set in the West Austra­ lian goldfields. An English girl visits her cousins, and there is lots of adventure, animals and even a ghost.

Producers

HUNTING Executive producer Producer Director Writer Assoc, producer Publicity

Peter Boyle Frank Howson Frank Howson Frank Howson Barbi Taylor Lionel Midford

THE PHANTOM MOVIE Phantom Films Pty Ltd Prod, company Producer Peter Sjoquist Scriptwriter Ken Shadie Based on the comic strip by Lee Falk Prod, designer Grace Walker Exec, producer Bruce Sherlock Assoc, producer Mark Turnbull

YOUNG FLYNN Peter Boyle Frank Howson Frank Howson Alister Webb Barbi Taylor Lionel Midford

Executive producer Producer Scriptwriters Associate producer Publicity

PRODUCTION CIN D ERELLA’S S EC R ET Prod, company Producer Animation director Scriptwriter Assoc, producer Music Length Gauge

Yoram Gross Film Studio Yoram Gross Ray Nowland Leonard Lee Sandra Gross Guy Gross 80 minutes 35 mm

Cast: Robyn Moore, Keith Scott Synopsis: An enchanting story which borrows characters and events from popular fairy tales and weaves them into one charming and suspenseful tale o f love , mystery and mirth

Leo Sullivan Sound recordist Veronika Haussler Editor Prod, manager Patricia L’Huede Don Colantonio Asst. prod, manager Sam Thompson Prod, co-ordinator Prod/unit runner Christopher Gill Prod, accountant Reel Accountants LINDA SAFARI Mary-Joy Lu Prod, attachment FEATURES Prod, company Soundstage Australia Limited Trudi Billsberry Unit attachment Dist. company UAA POST PRODUCTION John Fretz 1st Asst, director Producer Tibor Meszaros Tina Andreef 2nd Asst, director Animation director LaszloUjvari DEPTH OF FEELING Continuity Lynn-Maree Danzey Scriptwriters Joan Ambrose Prod, company Phillip Emanuel Camera operator Jane Castle.

Tibor Meszaros Productions Limited Focus puller Felicity Surtees Peter Jeffrey Producer David C.J. Douglas Mike Kelly Camera assistant Script editor Joan Ambrose Director Arch Nicholson Phil Stainer Key grip Based on novel by Coper, Gat & Rozgoni Scriptwriters HenryTefay Richard Bladel Asst grip Photography SandorPolyak Kee Young Jamie Eagan Gaffer Sound recordist RicCurtinPhotography DanBurstall Sue Kerr Editor GezaPal Sound recordist TimLloyd Boom operator Peter Harris Art director Prod, designer SandorPolyakEditor RoseEvans Martin Say Asst, art directors Composers K.Peek Prod, designer LarryEastwood Jennifer Kernke R. Szikora Composer PeterKaldor Peter Munro Art dept runner C.S. Bogdan Exec, producer PhillipEmanuel Wendy Freeman Make-up/hair G. Berkes Assoc, producer David Douglas Asst make-up/hair Nicole Sorby M. Fenyo Prod, supervisor SallyAyre-Smith Amanda Lovejoy Wardrobe supervisor A. Bodnar Prod., coordinator Liz Hagan Melinda Trost Wardrobe asst G. Szentmihalyi Prod, accountant Reel Accountants Regis Lansac Still photography Exec, producer Hannah Downie Michele D’Arcey Michael Eagan Best boy Prod, supervisor David Downie 1st asst director BobDonaldson Peter Munro Art department runner Prod, managers EndreSik 2nd asst director DebbieAtkins Jane Cole Asst editor Janos Juhasz 3rd asst director ChristianRobinson Claire Corbett Editing attachment Prod, secretary AllieConley Continuity Linda Ray Tony Vaccher Dubbing editor Prod, accountants RobertSharpeCasting AlisonBarrett Pamela Dunne Asst dubbing editor Sandor Antalne LightingCameraperson DanBurstall Liz Goldfinch Dialogue editor 1st asst director MiklosKatalin Focus puller CameronMcFarlane Raj Oakley Asst dialogue editor Casting Watermelon Valley Productions Clapper/loeader MirianaMarusic Safety officer Bernie Ledger Storyboard • Janos Katona Key grip PaulThompson Barbara Sweeney Chaperone Character designer JanosKatona Asst grip DamonMerryman Nancy Wohlquist Catering Music performed by Kevin Peek Gaffer MattSlattery Shoot Through Catering Sound editors Ric Curtin Boom operator Mark Van Kool Laboratory Colorfilm S. Kalman Asst art director MarkAyre-Smith Lab. liaison Ann Ellingworth Mixers Ric Curtin Make-up BritaKingsbury Denise Wolfsohn S. Kalman Hairdresser BritaKingsbury Length 95 minutes Animation Hollo Laszlo Film Studio Wardrobe supervisor • MicheleLeonard Gauge 35mm Opticals Hungarian Film Laboratory Wardrobe asst NatashaHerbert Cast: Genevieve Lemon (Sweetie), Karen Col­ Studios Soundstage Australia Limited Props buyer JohnOsmond ston (Kay), Tom Lycos (Louis), Jon Darling Hollo Laszlo Film Studio Standby props JohnOsmond (Gordon), Dorothy Barry (Flo), Michael Lake Hangaroton Asst editor SimonSmithers (Bob), Andre Pataczek (Clayton).

Tracks Neg matching NegativeThinking Synopsis: An ironic look at modern relationships Laboratory Hungarian Film Laboratory Stunts coordinator ChrisAnderson - the confused, the sulking and the banal.

Length 90 mins Still photography Bliss Swift Gauge 35mm Best boy LancelotCoxhead Shooting stock Eastmancolor Publicity AnneWright DOCUMENTARIES Synopsis: A story of intrigue, adventure, mystery, Publicity coordinator GretchenCook action and romance, combining humour and Catering JohnnyFaithful! heroism with rock’n’roll music for all ages. The ANIMATED Laboratory Colorfilm heroine is Linda, a police officer with Interpol. She Prod, company Point Blank Films Length 90 mins is well known for her Tae Kwon Do and her Director Craig Monahan Gauge 35mm linguistic skills. Several stories operate simultane­ Synopsis: A history' of animation in Australia.

Shooting stock 5297 ously and the protagonist always wins against great Cast: Colin Friels (Richard), Catherine McCleodds, without guns, in her fight against organized ments (Kate), Jerome Ehlers (Jon Thorne), Helen THE BEAT GOES ON international crime and terrorism.

Mutkins (Carla), Kate Sheil ( Phoebe).

(AKA THE LOST GENERATION) Synopsis: Kate arranges an intimate weekend to Prod, company Peter Clifton Productions RETURN HOME patch up her marriage with Richard, an ambitious Producer PeterClifton Prod, company Musical Films Pry Ltd public relations executive.But her plans are sabo­ Director PeterClifton Producer CristinaPozzan taged when Richard arrives with rock superstar Scriptwriters Glenn A. Baker Director Ray Argali Jon Thorne in tow. While Richard is trying to keep Peter Clifton Scriptwriter Ray Argali his scheming mistress Carla on hold and the Based on the original idea by Ray Argali temperamental rock star entertained, Kate, lonely BECOMING A NURSE Photography MandyWalker and vulnerable, finds herself irresistibly attracted Prod, company Massive Media and Sound recordist Bronwyn Murphy to the sexy Jon Thorne.

Entertainment Editor Ken Sallows Producer CraigReardon DOT IN SP A CE Assoc, producer Daniel Scharf Director CraigReardon Prod, manager Elisa Argenzio Prod, company Yoram Gross Film Studio P/L CraigReardon Prod, accountant Monika Gehrt Producer YoramGrossScriptwriter CraigSchubert 1st asst director EuanKeddieDirector YoramGross Photography Editor CraigReardon 2nd asst director Paula Smith Scriptwriter JohnPalmer Rob Grant Casting consultant Greg Apps Associate producer SandraGross 1st asst director Michelle Rovai Camera assistant Jo Erskinc Animation director AtholHenryProduction assistant Gaffer LeifEricson Gaffer Andre Belitski Music Guy Cross AvrilNichol Prod, supervisor JeanetteTomsBoom Boom operator Stephen Vaughan Still photography MartinSaunders Art director Kerith Holmes Prod, manager Jacki Goodridge Gauge Video Wardrobe Lucinda Clutterbuck Asst, editor Stephen Hayes Presenters: Lcnore Smith, Brett Climo Length 80minutes Still photography J. Van Loendersloot Synopsis: Two well-known on-screen nurses take Gauge 35mm Mechanic Charlie Kiroff us on a tour of the career path of a real life nurse.

Runners Debra Annear Cast: Robyn Moore, Keith Scott.

A video for the Victorian Post-Secondary Educa­ Bruno Scocazzi Synopsis: Dot finds her way into an American tion Commission. spaceship which hnds her on a war torn planet of Mixed at Soundfirm Laboratory Cinevex Rounds and Squares.

Lab. liaison Ian Anderson CAJUN GUMBO SW EETIE Budget $347,000 Prod, company Ordinary Miracle Pictures Prod, company Arcnafilm Pry. Limited Length 80 mins Producers Brcnton Harris Producers John Maynard Gauge 16mm Bruce Ready Shooting stock Fuji Billy Mackinnon Director Brcnton Harris Director Jane C — pion Cast: Frank Holden (Steve), Dennis Coard (Noel), Scriptwriter Mike Sexton Scriptwriters Jane Campion & Gerard Lee Mickie Camilleri (Judy), Ben Mendelsohn (Gary).

Photography Bruce Ready Photography Sally Bongers Synopsis: The story of two brothers, Noel and Camera assts Chris Jones Jenny Howse

N E

M A

Steve. After a close childhood, they gradually drifted apart and now live in different cities. The film is an observation of the different environ­ ments that have shaped their lives, and the shared values which now, 10 years later, draw them back together.

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Editor Pat Emmett Mixer Eddie Vermeer Unit manager Bruce Ready Prod, accountant Robin Holmes Location manager Corola Ann Andrepont Technical Adviser Louisiana FilmCommission Laboratory Du Art (New York) Length 50 mins Gauge 16mm Shooting stock Eastmancolor Synopsis: A discovery o f the Cajun people from South-West Ixjuisiana and their unique, Frenchbased life style.

THE GREAT TAXI ADVENTURE Prod, company

Michael Dillon Film Enterprises Producer Michael Dillon Director Michael Dillon Scriptwriter Michael Dillon Photography Michael Dillon Sound recordist John Morgan Editor Rod Hibberd Exec, producers Edward Kelly John Morgan Prod, manager Edward Kelly Prod, secretary Sue Carter Neg. matching Kut the Kaper Mixer Alasdair Macfarlane Mixed at Palm Studios Laboratory Video Film Company Length 54 mins Gauge 16mm Shooting stock 7291, 7292 Synopsis: A lively, lighthearted account of the world’s longest and most exciting, most expen­ sive, most taxing taxi ride ever. From Buckingham Palace to the Sydney Opera House with the meter running the whole way

HANDMAIDENS AND BATTLEAXES Prod, company Silver Films Producer Rosalind Gillespie Director Rosalind Gillespie Scriptwriter Rosalind Gillespie Synopsis: A documentary with simple drama se­ quences which tell the story of how mursing, once seen as women’s work, is historically locked into a position o f paradox, with esteemed but poorly rewarded positions that lower its professional status.

HONOUR WITHOUT GLORY Prod, company

Powerhouse Productions/Film Victoria Dist. company Powerhouse Productions Producer Peter Corbett Director Peter Corbett Scriptwriter Douglas Mann Photography Reg Boulter Phillip Brown Sound recordist Editor Kate Uhe Composer Gerard Malseed Exec, producer Noel Blackburn Assoc, producers Kate Uhe Stephen Marriner Prod, secretary Laelea Smith Prod, assistant Karen Blackburn Camera operator Reg Boulter Camera assistant Ian Muir Neg Matching Meg König Music performed by Gerald Malseed Sound editor/mixer Ian McWilliams Nlarrator Frederick Parslow Computer graphics Lisa Keddie Peter Stott Title designer Kim McLaren Tech, adviser Jim Murrell Runner Steve King Studios The Edit Decision Company Mixed at Labsonics Laboratory VFL Lab. liaison Pamela Hammond Telecine Complete Post Videolab

Length Gauge Shooting stock

47 mins 16mm 4291

Editor DavidHalliday support teacher (learning difficulties) in secondary On-line editor JasonWhiting school, filmed on location at Canley Vale Composer Bill Wyatt High School.

Exec, producer John Macdonald Prod, manager Kym Adams IN LANDS OF ES C A P E THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH Prod, assistant Lauren Rose (working title) Prod, company Clockwork Films/ Music performed by David Thompson Soundstage Australia Producers John Cruthers Sound editor David Halliday Producer AndrewHutchis Philip Tyndall Mixer Grant Taylor Directors AndrewHutchis Director Philip Tyndall Narrator Mike Higgins Phil Baker Scriptwriter Philip Tyndall Title designer WendyKlaassen Scriptwriter AndrewHutchis Prod, manager Jo Bell Studios Crown Studios Photography Phil Baker Music performed by Gerald Murnane Mixed at Grevillia Recording Studios Sound recordist Jenny Suttcliffe Length 56 mins Hoyts Jumbuck Productions Editor Frank Zapa Gauge 16mm Research Network Pacific Exec, producer Robert Cocks Shooting stock Eastman Sponsors State Dept of Health (Qld) Prod, supervisor JohnMcGuck Synopsis: The real and imaginary world o f Austra­ FM 104 Prod, accountant Bob Sharp lian writer Gerald Murnane Brisbane Broncos Lighting cameraperson Phil Baker Length 1 hour Camera operator Phil Baker KEEN AS MUSTARD Gauge Sony Betacam/1" broadcast Mixed at Soundstage Australia Prod, company Yarra Bank Films Synopsis: This documentary explores the present Budget $100,000 Producers Trevor Graham and future o f over 4,000 ‘Street Kids’ living in Length 47.5 mins Sharon Connolly Brisbane.

It’s a growing, complex problem which Gauge Broadcast video and 16mm Director BridgetGoodwin will eventually touch all o f us. Although there are Synopsis: A documentary exploring the phenome­ Scriptwriter BridgetGoodwin people out there trying to repair the damage and non of dolphins.

The fact and mythology is ex­ Length 50 mins provide shelter for the homeless, we can’t expect plored and exposed as we see the animals them­ Gauge Beta them, the social workers and our politicians to save selves, and the humans who study, enjoy and Synopsis: An account of secret chemical warfare our children.We have to do that ourselves. And we worship them. Includes much exclusive and un­ experiments in Australia during World War II; of have to do it now, with more love and communi­ precedented footage of dolphins. international involvement in those tests and of cation. That way we may save our kids. their effects on service personnel, scientists and

THE TIGHTROPE DANCER

volunteers.

PROCEED WITH CAUTION II

Producer Ruth Cullen (Working Tide) Director Ruth Cullen LIVING WITHOUT A LEG Prod, company Massive Media and Screenwriter Ruth Cullen Prod, company Flinders Media, Flinders Entertainment Length 50 mins Medical Centre Producer Craig Reardon Gauge 16mm Producer Mike Davies Director ColinBudd Synopsis: Explores the life and work o f the artist Director Mike Davies Scriptwriter AndrewScott Vali Myers, who is unknown in Australia, but Scriptwriters Mike Davies Synopsis: Sequel to the medico monster smash, whose drawings fetch major pricesin North America Pam Kneller Proceed With Caution. and Europe. She lives in asecluded valley in South­ Based on the original idea by Mike Davies ern Italy accessible only by foot.

Sound recordist DougDiamond THE QUEST OF JIMMY PIKE Editor JanetTodd Prod, company Juniper Films TRANSPLANTS Composer RobertKrai Producers John Tristram Prod, company Flinders Media, Flinders Exec, producer Bronte Turner Ian James Wilson Medical Centre Assoc, producer Rod Larcombe Length 50 mins Producer Mike Davies Casting S.A. Casting 16mm Casting consultant AnnPetersGauge Director Mike Davies Scriptwriters Mike Davies Camera operators JanetTodd Synopsis: A documentary on the life and art of Aboriginal artist Jimmy Pike.

Karen Herbertt Mike Davies Art director IanBendy Based on original idea byDr GeorgeSkowronsky Make-up JanetTodd THE SUPPORT TEACHER - LEARNING Editor Janet Todd Set construction John Rainsbury Exec, producer Bronte Turner DIFFICULTIES Assoc, producer Rod Larcombe Music performed by RobertKrai (1) THE PRIMARY SCHOOL Tech, adviser Rod Larcombe 1st asst director Karen Herbertt Prod, company Silvergrass Communications Mixed at Medic Rainsbury Casting Spotlight Artists Distributor NSW Department of Education Music performed by RobertKrai Producer Casting consultants Lyn Pike Saadia Hall Tech, adviser Rod Larcombe Camera operator Janet Todd Director MichaelMundell Art director Alan Bendy Mixed at Medical Illustration Unit Scriptwriter MichaelMundell Make-up Janet Todd U-Tel Photography Phil Balsdon Budget $10,550 Musical director Robert Krai Sound recordist Chris von Schulenburg Length 20 mins Music performed by Robert Krai Editor JulieHickson Gauge 3/4"video PA/wardrobe Mixed at U-Tel JoMalcolm Cast: Dick Bland (patient), Rose Todd (wife), Budget $43,000 Make-up/hair Lesley Sayles Nikki Patterson (physiotherapist), Greg Eliott Length 3x20 mins Assistant camera Martin Haynes (vascular surgeon), Tom Barnes (brother-in -law) Gauge Betacam Cast: Fiona Paul Lucas Bramley, Scarlett Braithwaite (grandchil­ Cast: Jackqui White (organ donor), Celine Griffin Synopsis: A documentary explaining the role of dren). (mother of donor), Alan Gale (father of donor), the support teacher (learning difficulty) in primary Karen Inwood (transplant organ infuser), Ross Synopsis: The patient has severe and debilitating schools, shot on location at Fairfield Heights Lamb (minister). peripheral vascular disease which leads to amputa­ Primary School Synopsis: A teenage girl on a bicycle is run down tion of a leg. He is distressed but eventually by a car and fatally injured. Her family are invited rehabilitated. The program is presented in three (2) THE SECONDARY SCHOOL to consider offering parts of her body for organ versions for: (1) patients and their families (2) Prod, company Silvergrass Communications donation. The moral, legal, ethical, social and medical staff (3) allied health staff.

Distributor NSW Department of Education medical considerations are examined. The pro­ Producer Saadia Hall gram is intended to persuade people to consider P LEA SE DON’T CALL US Director Michael Mundell the issues in the hope that more transplant material Scriptwriter Michael Mundell STREET KIDS becomes available through increased donations.

Photography Phil Balsdon Prod, company Crown Studios Sound recordist Chris von Schulenburg Dist. company Channel 7 Brisbane Julie Hickson Producer GaryEdgarEditor Director GaryEdgarPA/wardrobe/ Jo Malcolm Scriptwriter GaryEdgarMake-up/hair Martin Haynes Based on the original idea by GaryEdgarAssistant camera Photography JackHardyCast: Tom Appleton Synopsis: A documentary on the role of the Sound recordist Paul Jones

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Prod, company AFTRS Producer ChristopherTuckfield THE BIG END Director ChristopherTuckfield Producer DavidCaesarScriptwriter ChristopherTuckfield Director DavidCaesarPhotography EmilNovak Scriptwriter DavidCaesar Sound recordist Michael Webster Based on original idea by DavidCaesarEditor Carmen Galan Johannes Ambrose Production designer Janet Merewether Photography Kriv Stenders Proudction manager FelicityNove Sound recordist Mark Ward Location manager GiselleMcHugh Editor Mark Perry 1st asst director Fran McGivern Prod, designer Sandra Marshall 2nd asst director SusanKowalski Prod, manager Pip Brown Camera operator EmilNovak 1st asst director Kate Stone Focus puller Roman Baska Casting Wendy Caesar Clapper/loader Linda Ljubicic Focus puller James Confos Key grip Stewart Green Clapper/loader JosieKeys Boom operator Christian Bass Gaffer Peter Rasmussen Art director DianaRiley Boom operator Victor Gentile Asst art director Stavros Ethymiou Neg. matching ChrisRowellCostume designer Janet Merewether Music performed by The Eden Monaros Make-up/hairdresser MelissaBroe Sound editor Counter Point Sound Wardrobe Petrina Carden Sound mixer Counter Point Sound Props Stavros Ethymiou Mixed at Counter Point Sound Props buyer DianaRiley Laboratory VFL Asst editor PaulSaunders Lab. liaison MarkFarrahComposer ScottSaunders Length 10mins Still photography StineBaska Gauge 16mm Mixer BenCheah Shooting stock Fuji64D Mixed at Gemini Sounds Cast; JohnPoison (Don), BenMendelsohn (Peter), Laboratory Colorfilm Rebecca Rigg (Tina), Russel Newman (Dad), Lab. liaison Richard Piorkowski Beth Child (Mum), Miles Buchanan (young man).

Length 14mins Synopsis: Don and Peter have grown up together.

Gauge 16mm For over a year, they have been planning to go to Shooting stock AgfaXt3-20 Queensland. But as the time approaches, Peter has Cast: Richard Moir (Robert Itvak), John Orcsik doubts and Don throws a spanner in the grass.

(Gordon Kolbe), Robert Davies (The Minister), Nicola Bartlett (Susie Itvak), Stephanie Nicholson (Max Itvak), Fiona Bales (Newsreader), Miranda CHANCES AND CH OICES Otto (The girl), J. Xiscox (The driver) Prod, company SoundstageAustralia/ Synopsis: The moral dilemma of a press officer who stumbles on unpleasant facts about his boss.

West Ed Media Dist. company West Ed Media I S E E , SAID THE BLIND MAN Producer Robert A. Cocks Prod, company D. Patience & R. Monk Director Ron Elliott Producer Denise Patience Scriptwriter HannahDownie Roger Monk Photography PhilipBakerDirector Scriptwriter Roger Monk Sound recordist John Van Rullen Based on the original idea by Roger Monk Editor Peter Pritchard Photography ReyCarlson Prod, designer Robert A. Cocks Sound recordist PeterClancy Composer David Downie Prod, designer PeterLong Exec, producer Howard Worth Prod, manager Lucy Maclaren Prod, manager Angélique Malcolm Camera assistant SoniaLeber Continuity Andrew Hutchison Boom operator SoniaLeber Casting Angélique Malcolm Boom operator Steven King Lighting cameraperson PhilipBaker Laboratory VFL Key grip RobGrenough Budget $78,903 Asst grip JohnMcGuckin Length 20mins Boom operator JennySutcliffe Gauge 16mm Make-up Marilyn Smits Cast: Julian Branagan (Stewart), Robert Lyons Props MichellePreshaw Set decorator GlenSuter (Greg), Judith Stratford (Janet), Nicki Wendt (Lucinda).

Set construction Steven Kyme

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Synopsis: A series of five videos on teenage sexu­ ality, targeted at 16-year-olds.

THE EMU AND THE SUN Prod, copmpany Producer Director Scriptwriters

Creative Animation Pty Ltd John Skibinski John Skibinski Maude Clarke Chris McGill Based on legend from Murray River area Editor John Skibinski Composer Greg Sneddon Casting consultant Maggie Jacques Musical director Greg Sneddon Music performed by Greg Sneddon Sound editor Steven Radic Narrator Warren Owens Animation John Skibinski Cell painting John Skibinski Susan Rendall Alison Martin Dialogue coach Maude Clarke Laboratory VFL Length 7 mins 30 secs Gauge 16mm Shooting stock 7259 Cast: Ruby Hunter, Francis Williams, Janice Johnson (voices) Synopsis: An animated film based on an Aborigi­ nal legend which relates how emus becamewingless birds and how sunlight came into the world.

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Prod, company Aleksi Vellis 8c Fiona Cochrane Producer FionaCochrane Director AleksiVellis Contact Greg Chapman Scriptwriter AleksiVellis Tel Photography MarkLane Sound recordist MarkAtkin Fax (02) 437 5074 Prod, manager WendyClarke Unit manager IainMcKay Prod, assistant Margaret Eastgate 105/6-8 CLARKE ST., 1st asst director PeterJordan Continuity Victoria Sullivan CROWS NEST NSW 2065 Lighting cameraperson MarkLane Camera operator Paul Meulenberg Camera assistant Kathy Chambers Gaffer PeterScott Boom operator PhilipHealey Art director LisaThompson Asst art director AdeleFlere Lab. liaison BruceBraun Budget $135,000 ■ V s e r v i c e s ■ pty ltd.

Length 50minutes 110 W est Street. Craws Nest NSW 20 6 5 Australia Gauge 16mm Shooting stock Kodak Eastmancolour Phone: [ 0 2 ) 9 2 2 - 3 1 4 4 ] Fax ¡02) 957 5 0 0 1 ) M odem : [ 0 2 ) 9 2 2 7 6 4 2 Cast:Ben Mendelsohn (Luke), Mark Little (Boady), Sheila Florence (Molly), Effie James (Helen’s Mother), Tamara Saulwick (Penny), George Huxley (Smeg), Mary Coustas (Helen), Roberto Micale (Hector).

Synopsis: Luke 8c Boady O’Hagan hide out at Molly’s mansion after they are busted. A story about sleepwalking, waterbeds, blackmail andwogs.

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Editor Leanne Glasson Composer Robert Moss 1st asst director Charles Amsden Prod, manager Kristin Sanderson Cast: Phillip Dodd, Shane Connor, Lisa Cameron, Greg O ’Donovan, Belinda Chayko Synopsis: Mike is the producer of a TV current affairs program, badly in need of a good story.

Geoff is an amiable random killer who wants only to appear on TV singing a song by his hero, Tom Jones. Mile and Geoff need each other... does anyone else?

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RUTHVEN Prod, company Gillian Campbell & Bruce Myles Producer Gillian Campbell Director Bruce Myles Scriptwriter Barry Dickins Cast: Frank Gallagher (station assistant), Janet Andrewartha (Bride), John Murphy (Mr Apple), Tommy Dysart (John Ward), Alethea McGrath (Mrs Carp) Caroline Gillmer (Housing estate woman) Synopsis: A trip to death and fairyland all at once.

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THE 7.13 FROM FRANKSTON Joiimont Productions Prod, company Paul Brown Producer David Tiley Director David Tiley Scriptwriter Jaems Grant Photography Chris Thompson Sound recordist Peter Friedrichs Editor Felicity Provan Composer Trevor Graham Prod.manager Cinevex Laboratory' $100,000 Budget 50 minutes Length 16mm Gauge Synopsis: A study of the Melbourne Metropolitan rail system - the complexities, the nature of work, the industrial relations, the engineering culture.

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As If Productions Prod company Margot Nash Producer Margot Nash Director Margot Nash Scriptwriter Margot Nash Based on the original idea by Sava Pinney Sally Bongers Photography Liam Egan Sound recordist Diana Priest Editor Elizabeth Drake Composer Pip Brown Prod, manager Penny McDonald Prod, assistants Cathy Henkle Bella Quince Jo Erskine Camera assistant Steve Hardman Grip Greg Fitzgerald Gaffer Jan Mckay Art director Emily Owen Asst art director Amanda Hunt Make-up Amanda Hunt Wardrobe Jenny Clarke Tony Short Special effects Jonathan Clouston Set construction Cathy Henkle Asst editors Trish Forman Chris Rowell Neg matching Elizabeth Drake Music performed by Jeremy Cooke Craig Tidswell Counterpoint Sound editor Tim Freeman Stunts Corrie Ancone Still photography Roger Cowland Opticals Alan Morley Colorfilm Laboratolry' Denise Wolfsohn Lab. liaison $113,000 Budget 25 mins Length 16mm Gauge Eastmancolor Shooting stock Cast: Kaarin Fairfax (The Hothead), Robin Laurie (The Redhead), Rose Wangapeen (The Investiga­ tor), Elizabeth and Sandra Cook (The child), Bernard O’ Donoghue (The Thinman), Bobby Noble (The crim).

Synopsis: Three women, all strangers. Yet their lives seem inextricably bound up. It’s as if chance were at work, as they move synchronistically through the separate yet interconnecting worlds.

A film about external and internal states of emer­ gency, and also a film about memory and desire.

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Lis Andrews Scriptwriter Lis Andrews Based on the original idea by Matthew Kelley Photography Peter Pritchard Editor Deborah Copeland Prod, manager Colette McKenna Prod, assistant Carlo Buralli Camera operator Pennc West Art director $36,598 Budget 12 minutes Length 16mm Gauge Synopsis: A story of sexual obsession: an artist in Victorian times explores that obsession through a complex mosaic of past and present, reality and fantasy, the focus of which is her endlessly repeated series o f drawings.

GOVERNMENT FILM PRODUCTION FILM AUSTRALIA ABORIGINAL EMPLOYMENT DEVELOPMENT POLICY Film Australia Pty Ltd Prod, company Janet Bell Producer Martin Daley Director Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan Jane Benson Prod, secretary Waldemar Wawryziuk Prod, accountant Jane Glen Publicity 20 mins Length Video Gauge Synopsis:A tape to introduce Aboriginal commu­ nities to some of the enterprises they could be starting up in order to offer employment to members of the community.

AND A FUTURE FOR ALL Prod, company Dist. company Producer Director Scriptwriter Photography

Film Australia Pty Ltd Film Australia Pty Ltd Paul Humfress Ian Munro Con Anemogiannis Steve Windon David Knaus Greg Lowe Bronwyn Murphy Sound recordists Don Connolly Leo Sullivan Robin Archer Editors Denise Haslem Paul Humfress Exec, producer Ron Hannam Prod, manager Con Anemogiannis Unit manager Elizabeth Clarke Prod, accountant Helen Martin Editing assistants Harriet McKern Jane Glen Publicity Adab Australia Laboratory Kerri Jenkins Lab. liaison 6x30 mins Length Eastmancolor Shooting stock Synopsis: A scries of six programs that would raise issues, increase the audience’s anxiety and make viewers aware of the many welfare problems that exist and suggest alternative systems of dealing with the problems of the underprivileged both within Australia and overseas.

COLOURS Prod, company Dist. company Producer Director Scriptwriter

Film Australia Pty Ltd Film Australian Pty Ltd Paul Humfress John Michael Rogowski John Michael Rogowski Based original Placed on original idea by John M. Rogowski Guy Gross Composer Paul Humfress Exec, producer Ron Hannam Prod, manager Elizabeth Clarke Prod, accountant Victoria Taylor Choreography Stephen Page Jane Glen Publicity 25 mins Length Cast: Victoria Taylor, Stephen Page Synopsis: Man lives in aworld of light and colour.

This film will focus on the various human attrib­ utes of colour, using dance music, lighting & sets.

DOES YOUR JOB GIVE YOU PAIN? Prod, company Dist. company Producer Director Photography Sound recordist Editor Prod, manager Prod, secretary Prod, accountant Prod, assistant Narrator Publicity Length

Film Australia Pty Ltd Film Australia Pty Ltd Janet Bell Peter Livingstone-Horton Preston Clothier Grant Roberts Anton Horak Catriona Macmillan Amanda Etherington Waldemar Wawrziuk Neil Mansfield George Donikian Jane Glen 14 mins

Gauge Video Synopsis: A video for NSW Department ofHealth for migrant workers about the prevention ofworkrelated back problems and RSI.

Tristram Miall Producer Synopsis: This four-part series for television takes Sonia Humphrey Prod, coordinator Director Glenda Carpenter Richard Ryan arefreshingly new look at the dynamic interchange Prod, manager John Russell Scriptwriter Richard Ryan between Asia and Europe in the making of the Prod, secretary Kathy Grant Photography Martin McGrath modern world. In the process, the conventional Prod, accountant Simon Lenthen Jon Muir views about the relationship between science, Still photography x FITN ESS TESTING - A GUIDE Carmen Ky Major Pat Cullinan technology and society, which continue to shape Publicity Jane Glen Major Tony Delaney Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd our perceptions of progress, are scrutinized and re­ Marketing Martin Wood Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Stephen Best Sound recordists evaluated.

Laboratory Video Film Company Producer PaulHumfress Chisholm McTavish Length 50 mins Director John Michael Rogowski Robert Sullivan S P EC IA L EDUCATION MAGAZINE Gauge 16mm Editor Ron Taylor Scriptwriter John Michael Rogowski Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Based on the guide by Departmentof Synopsis: A documentary for television illustrat­ Exec, producer Paul Humfress Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd ing the Marionette Theatre o f Australia’s innova­ Arts, Sport, Environment, Prod, manager Ron Hannam Producer Paul Humfress tive puppet play, K a k a d u , from first draff to Prod, accountant Elizabeth Clarke Tourism and Territories Scriptwriter/research Jebby Phillips Robert Sullivan Photography RossKing opening night. Inspired by Bill Neidje’s book, Mixer Exec, producer Paul Humfress Sound recordist HowardSpry K a k a d u m a n , the puppet play, written by Aborigi­ Narrator Tim Webster Publicity Jane Glen Editor RonTaylornal playwright Vivian Walker, brings Bill Neidje’s Mixed at Film Australia Length 30 mins message to the stage in a lively production aimed Laboratory Vidcolab Geraldine Crown Gauge Video at a wide family audience.

Length 28 mins Exec, producer PaulHumfress Synopsis: A proposed 30-minute non-broadcast Prod, manager RonHannam Shooting stock Super 8, 35mm slides, Video 8 television magazine to be distributed to schools Prod, accountant ElizabethClarke Synopsis: A documentary on the Australian De­ MALPRACTICE for young people with conversational or intellec­ 1st asst director AlanWoodruff fence Force contribution to the 1988 conquest of Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd tual disabilities.

Everest.

Key grip . Peter Doig Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Gaffer Ian Bosman Producer Tristram Miall PALAU SUBMARINE Make-up MeganJohnston Director Bill Bennett Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Mixer Robert Sullivan Scriptwriter JenniferAingeProducer Janet Bell Producer Geoff Barnes Narrator GordonBray Photography Steve Arnold Scriptwriter Chris Lee Director Tony Wheeler Publicity JaneGlen Sound recordist MaxHensser Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan Exec, producer Janet Bell Studios Film Australia Pty Ltd Editor DeniseHunter Prod, secretary Jane Benson Assoc, producer June Henman Mixed at Film Australia Pty Ltd Exec, producer BruceMoir Prod, accountant Waldermar Wawryziuk Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan Length 25mins Assoc, producer JenniferAingePublicity Jane Glen Prod, secretary Jane Benson Gauge Video Prod, manager John Russell Synopsis: An anti-nuclear thriller set against re­ Prod, accountant Waldemar Wawryziuk Cast: Gordon Bray (presenter), Dianne Kitcher Prod, secretary Kathy Grant cent political events in Palau where the people of Publicity JaneGlen (Fitness tester), Anton Jessner, Helen Stephens Prod, accountant Simon Lenthen that tiny island state have stood up against the Length 60mins (fitness clients).

Prod, assistant Jo Ann McGowan might o f a superpower.

Synopsis: A documentary about the night Japa­ Synopsis: A video to accompany the booklet 1st asst director CarrieSoeterboek nese submarines attacked Sydney Harbour. Fifty produced by the Department of Arts, Sport, Envi­ Camera assistant AdrianSeffrin PARENTING years after the event the story takes on new signifi­ ronment, Tourism and Territories, aimed at stan­ Boom operator ChrisRoland Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd cance. dardizing fitness assessment procedures for those Make-up RuthBracegirdle Producer Janet Bell designing physical fitness programs.

Wardrobe RuthBracegirdle Prod, manager CatrionaMacmillan TO ABSENT FRIENDS Props RuthBracegirdle Prod, secretary JaneBenson Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Sound editor DanyCooper FRED WILLIAMS Prod, accountant WaldemarWawryziuk Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Editing assistant DanyCooper (working title) Publicity Jane Glen Producer Paul Humfress Publicity JaneGlen Length Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd 6x30 mins Director Peter McLean Marketing Martin Wood Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Gauge .

1" video Scriptwriter Paula Dawson Catering Gerry Billings Director Christina Wilcox Synopsis: An A to Z of parenting in Australia From an original Atlab Photography ErikaAddisLaboratory today. idea by Paula Dawson Length 94mins Sound recordists Mark Tarpey Photography RossKing Gauge 16mm Bronwyn Murphy PLAY M A KERS/M USIC MAKERS Sound recordist HowardSpry Cast: Caz Lederman, Bob Baines, Ian Gilmore, Robert Hayes Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Rodney Simmons Charles Little, Pat Thompson, Janet Stanley, Editor Denise Haslem Producer Janet Bell Noel Cunnington Exec, producers BruceMoir Rebecca Frith, Dorothy Alison, Nicole Smith, Researcher MaryColbert Exec, producer Paul Humfress Amanda Hughes, Bernadette Ryan, Earl Cross.

Aviva Ziegler Prod, manager CatrionaMacmillan Prod, managers Alison Wotherspoon Synopsis: A telemovie which uses actors, doctors Assoc, producer Lisa Noonan Prod, secretary JaneBenson Ron Hannam and members of the legal profession. The fiction­ Prod, manager John Russell Prod, accountant WaldemarWawryziuk Prod, accountant Neil Cousins alized storyline explores the forces that come into Unit manager Trish Fitzsimons Publicity Jane Glen Elizabeth Clarke Prod, secretary KathyGrantplay when something goes wrong in hospital.

Length 2 series of 4 x 20 mins Prod, assistant Michael Rogowski Prod, accountant AlbertWong Gauge Video/film Camera assistant Robyn Peterson Prod, assistant Marguerite Grey MONEY MASTERS Synopsis: Play M akersis a series for upper primary John Scott Sound editor Harriet McKern Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd school about the world o f the theatre from the Gaffer Jonathon Hughes Editing assistant Harriet McKern Producer Geoff Barnes point of view of the director, writer, designer and Publicity Jane Glen Publicity JaneGlen Scriptwriter Ian Reinecke performer. Music M akers is a series for primary Synopsis: To Absent Friends traces the concept Marketing/publicity coordinator Martin Wood Exec, producer Janet Bell school which explores the world of music-making and construction of Paula Dawson’s most recent Laboratory Colorfilm Prod, manager Catriona Macmillan through themes such as the composer, the instru­ work, a fully functional barroom. All reflective Length 50mins Prod, secretary Jane Benson ment-makers, the conductor and the orchestra. surfaces will be her holographic images, recon­ Gauge 16mm Prod, accountant Waldemar Wawryziuk structed from a past New Year’s Eve event. The Synopsis: A television documentary on the life Publicity JaneGlen final environment is an exploration o f memory at ROADS TO XANADU and work o f painter Fred Williams.

Length 6x 30 mins work and the infinite quality of time.

Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Synopsis: A series which shows how technology Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd and deregulation are transforming banking.

HOW’S YOUR FORM Producers John Merson FILM VICTORIA Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd David Roberts Producer JanetBell MY FATHER, MY COUNTRY Director DavidRoberts COMMUNITY ARTS Scriptwriter Lyn Broad Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Scriptwriter JohnMerson Prod, company Maggie Fooke Prod, manager CatrionaMacmillan Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Based on the original idea by John Merson Executive producer Sally Semmens Prod, accountant JaneGlen Producer PeterButt Photography Tony Gailey (China and Japan) Director Maggie Fooke Length 10mins Director PeterButt Greg Lowe (Europe) Scriptwriter Maggie Fooke Gauge Video Scriptwriter PeterButt Sound recordist RobStalder Editor Maggie Fooke Synopsis: An instructional videotape for Depart­ Photography PhillipBull Editors Les McLaren Photography Chris Knowles ment o f Veteran’sAffairs to inform applicants and Sound recordist PaulFinlay Ray Thomas Length 10-12 mins potential applicants forT & PI benefits, providing Editor Robin Archer Composers Nigel Westlake Gauge Betacam advice and instructions on filling in required forms.

Exec, producers Aviva Ziegler Michael Asldll Synopsis: A video designed to demonstrate the Tristram Miall Exec, producer Geoff Barnes positive benefits of Community Arts to local Prod, manager John Russell INTOLERANCE Prod, manager AnnFolland councils and their communities.

Prod, accountant AlbertWongProd, secretary Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd LoraineWallace Prod, assistant KathyGrantProd, accountants Producer Geoff Barnes JohnRussell CREDIT RIGHTS Sound recordist Robin Judge Research EmmaGordon Elizabeth Clarke Prod, company Video Projects Jim Downes Exec, producer JanetBell Narrators Mixer George Hart Executive producer Sally Semmens Neil Fitzpatrick Prod, manager CatrionaMacmillan Narrator John Merson Director Tony Wright Publicity JaneGlen Publicity Prod, secretary Jane Benson Jane Glen Scriptwriter Mark Georgiou Marketing/publicity Prod, accountant WaldermarWawryziuk Mixed at FilmAustralia Gauge Betacam Martin Wood Publicity JaneGlen coordinator Laboratory AtlabAustralia Scriptwriter Mark Georgiou Film Australia Length 4x1hour Mixed at Lab. liaison Kerry'Jenkins Gauge Betacam Laboratory Video Film Company Synopsis: An essay on blind prejudice and justifi­ Length 4x54minutes Synopsis: A short drama to teach people to be Colorfilm able fear.

Gauge 16mm completing on 1" video master careful and cautious about using credit systems.

Length 50 mins Shooting stock 7291 and 7292 Synopsis: A documentary tracing Jim Taylor’s Camera assistant Jane Castle KAKADU PUPPETS OPENING OF PARLIAMENT epic Hagen Sepik patrol of 1938 through the Asst editors TaniaNehme (working title) Prod, company Captain Video highlands of New Guinea.

Laura Zusters Prod, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Executive producer Sally Semmens Nigel McKenzie Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Photography Colin Christman ONE MORE STEP : Dani Cooper Director MichaelBalson John Belguc Neg. matching Negative Cutting Services Photography JohnHoskingTHE AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE FORCE ON Sound recordist Geoff Spurrell Musical directors NigelWestlake Sound recordist MaxHensser EVEREST 1988 Length 4 hours Michael Askill Editor MichaelBalsonProd, company Film Australia Pty Ltd Gauge O.B. Music performed by NigelWestlake Exec, producers BruceMoir Dist. company Film Australia Pty Ltd Synopsis: Opening of the 51st Parliament.

Michael Askill

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Director Peter Livingston-Horton Producer Ian Cross LEGAL AID Scriptwriter Director Peter Livingston-Horton Geoff Tanner Prod, company Media World Editor Exec, producer Kim Goodacre Peter Abbott Exec, producer Sally Semmens Camera Preston Clothier Assoc, producers Shayne Collier Director JohnTatoulis Post-production Promedia Pcta Newbold Scriptwriter Steve West Length 14 mins (M ethadone Program ) Eileen Tuohy Photography Peter Zakhorov . 14 mins (G etting I t Together) Geoff Fitzpatrick Editor Michael Collins Gauge Betacam Brigitte Zinsinger Sound recordist John Wilkinson Synopsis: In these two videos, produced for the Tim Warner Music KPM Mood Music NSW Department of Corrective Services, the Ian Bremner Length 18-20minutes options available to prisoners for getting off drugs Correspondents Gary Cubberley Gauge Bctacam are outlined. We hear success stories from several Jean Hill Synopsis: A video designed to illustrate the prisoners.

Susan Hunt services provided by the Legal Aid Commission.

Randy Meier These services include: telephone advice; advice in Richard Wiese PARTNERS AGAINST CRIM E an interview situation; legal assistance and duty Prod, manager Livia Hanich (Neighbourhood Watch) lawyers.

Prod, coordinator Vicki Agg Prod, company Piper Pictures Clementine Griffin Producer SusanWild Prod, secretary NEIGHBOURHOOD MEDIATION Barbara Brown Director MarkPiper Prod, accountant Prod, company MovingPictures Amanda Post-prod, coordinator Scriptwriter Harold Lander Exec, producer Russell Porter Hickey Prod, manager Lesia Hrubyj Director Ivan Hexter Post-prod, assistant Martin Williams Editor Philip Howe Scriptwriter Richard Keddie Ruth Parnell Sound PhilJudd Research coordinator Photography Rob Marden Anna Cater Researchers Narrator Bill McClurg Sound recordist Ian Wilson Victor Marsh Laboratory Colorfilm Length 10-12 minutes Frances Thompson Length 18mins Gauge Betacam Marsha Bennett Gauge 16mm Synopsis: A documentary which will explain the Studio producer Chris Hawkshaw Synopsis: Produced for the Community Rela­ working of neighbourhood mediation centres, Studio floor manager Ian White tions Burea, NSW Police Department, NSW Po­ and how local communities can benefit from them.

Composer Twilight Productions lice Department, this film outlines ‘Neighbour­ Murray Burns hood Watch’ and in dramatization shows how the PUBLIC ADVOCACY Colin Bayley program operates.

Prod, company John Ruane & Denise Patience Computer graphics Matthew Urmenyhazi Executive producer Sally Semmens Lighting camera Hans Heidrich POWERHOUSE PROMO Director JohnRuane Michael Oates Screenplays O’ Brien Scriptwriter RobertGrant Prod, company Michael Ewers Producer MartinGuiness Length 10-12 minutes David Collins David O’Brien Gauge ' BVU Barry West Director David O’Brien.

Synopsis: An informative video on the role of the Mixers Mark Tanner Scriptwriter DavidO’Brien Office of the Public Advocate in advocating the Julian Ellingsworth Prod, manager MartinGuiness rights of people with disabilities.

Offline editors Ray Neale Editor ZsoltKollanyi Nick Glover Camera Jerry Brookman RECYCLED WATER Andrew Barnes Sibeal Exec, producer RussellPorterMusic Peter Brichta Laboratory The Video Film Company Pty Ltd Scriptwriter Kathy Armstrong Calli Cerami Length 12 mins Length 12minutes Original music performed by Twilight Prod’ns Gauge 16mm Gauge Video Murray Burns Synopsis: A fantasy character, BcBop, shows us Synopsis: A documentary with the primary aim of Colin Bayley some of the exhibits of the Powerhouse. overcoming resistance within industry and agri­ Kevin Bayley culture to the idea o f recycling water.

Sound editor Cate Cahill PRODUCER MARKETING GROUPS Sound recordists Rowland McManis Prod, company The EVS group Bira Castro Producer Sam Van der Sluice NEW SOUTH W ALES FILM AND Graham Wyse Tony Coyte TELEVISION OFFICE Martin Harrington Director Peter Smith Robert Harie Scriptwriter Petre Mayrhofter MACARTHUR CMX editor Bruce Hancock Prod, manager Kevin Powell Studio lighting director Richard Curtis THE BETTER ALTERNATIVE Editor William Turner Studio make-up Madonna Melrose Prod, company Blackwell Creative Services Camera CraigWatkins Publicity Cheryl Conway Prdoucer AllanBlackwell Sound DarrenNeilson Scott Penza Director AllanBlackwell Presenter JimDownes Studio Pro-image Scriptwriter Stephen Bowlev Post-production The EVS Group Post-prod, video Videolab Prod, manager Bruce Burrell Length 25 mins Standards conversion VTC Los Angeles Editor John Bray Gauge Betacam Length 22x1 hour Camera AllanBlackwell Synopsis: Produced for the NSW o f Department Gauge 1" Dolby A video Sound Mark Frame of Agriculture & Fisheries, this video highlights Synopsis: Five American reporters travel the world Post-production Kookaburra Productions P/L the factors essential to the success of a group to monitor the latest developments in science and Narrator John Downs marketing manager, whether it is a company, a technology.

Length 14 mins 18 seconds cooperative or another form of corporate body.

Gauge Betacam Agricultural producers are encouraged to explore Synopsis: “ More people mean more business.”

ROUND THE TWIST group marketing opportunities, to become or to Produced for the Macarthur Development Cor­ Prod, company ACTF Productions remain in control of their destiny and not be poration, this video shows the quality of life, Limited subject to the pressures imposed by big ‘agribusi­ availability of workforce and sites that the area Producer Antonia Barnard ness firms’ . offers. Its audience is a wide variety of business Director Various people and organizations and the video encour­ Scriptwriter Paul Jennings SAFETY AT THE POLE TOP ages business to build at or relocate in Macarthur.

Based on the novels by Paul Jennings Prod, company The Production Group Exec, producer Patricia Edgar Producer Brian Pickering MEDIATION CAN CHANGE Supervising producer Ewan Burnett Director RicLarkins Script editor Esben Storm THE WORLD Prod, manager KarenWatkins Casting Liz Mullinar’s Casting (Melbourne) Prod, company McPhec Productions P/L Editor Steve Smith Casting consultants Greg Apps Producers Ian Adkins Camera CraigWatkins Tessie Hill Djuka Rapaic Sound David Bailment Laboratory VFL Director Karl McPhec Narrator Jim Pike Post-production AAV Scriptwriter Karl McPhee Post-production AAV/The Production Length 13 x 25 mins Prod, manager Michael Davis Group Gauge 16mm Editors Nick Pandoulis Stunts FrankLennon Synopsis: Based on the very successful short sto­ Alan Heslinc Length 13 mins 30 seconds ries by Paul Jennings, this series shows the weird, Lighting camera Andrew Fraser Gauge Betacam wacky and spooky world of the Twist family, who Post-production Edit Point PPS Synopsis: For an audience ranging from newly live in an old lighthouse.

Length 14 mins 30 seconds appointed employees to seasoned line workers, Gauge Betacam Synopsis: Community Justice Centres deal with any dispute between any parties in any ongoing relationship about almost any issue. This video dramatises disputes between neighbours; a sepa­ rated couple; a stepfather and his wife’s son.

Produced for the NSW Attorney General’sdepart­ ment for a wide-ranging audience which might har e no knowledge of the existence or role of Community Justice Centres.

METHADONE PROGRAM GETTING IT TOGETHER Prod, company Producer

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PLH Films Peter Livingston-Horton

this video produced for the NSW Department of Energy, teachers or reinforces safe working prac­ tices for thos eemploved by electricity supply suthorities (County Councils) in New South Wales.

The stunts highlight the dangers o f being fool­ hardy or careless.

TELEVISION PRE-PRODUCTION BEYOND TOMORROW Prod, company Dist company

Beyond Productions P/L Beyond International Group Inc.

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Synopsis: When two young Americans stumble on a rubber baron murdering his tappers en masse, they find it difficult to rally world opinion against South American rubber.

TELEVISION PRODUCTION ABOUT OUR PETS Prod, company Producers

Coral Films Richard Rooker Richard Hart Directors Richard Rooker Richard Hart Scriptwriters Richard Rooker Richard Hart Based on the original idea by Richard Hart Photography Chris Bewley Editor Chris Bewley Prod, designer Richard Rooker Composer Phil Manning Exec, producer Richard Rooker Tech, adviser Graham Weeks Length 26 x 30 minutes Gauge Video Synopsis: A very funny but informative series presenting a different pet every week.

ACROPOLIS NOW

Crawford Productions Peter Herbert Ted Emery Simon Palomares Nick Giannopoulos George Kapiniaris Off-line editor Jo Rosas Post-prod, supervisor Dee Liebenberg Exec, producers Ian Bradley Gary Fenton Prod, supervisor Vince Smits Prod, coordinator Kimanie Jones-Hameister Prod, accountant Jeff Shenker Assistant to producer Coyla Hegarty Script editor Peter Herbert Script consultant Jutta Goetze Director’s assistant Julie Bates Casting Jan Pontifex Camera Phil Bowler Steve Sloble Shane Grigg Hank Eykman Jack Degenkamp Technical directors Tek K. Beh Timothy Coulson Vison switcher Jonathan Olb Vision assistant Darren White Lighting Robbie Coia Frank Racina Greg Rawson Russell Howard Audio electrician John Budge Paul Indiamo Russell McAbee Boom operator Colin Swan Scott Finlay Art director Geòrgie Greenhill Floor managers Kevin Carlin Rebecca de Regi Make-up Barbara Cousins .

Katherine Archer Wardrobe Valerie Nelson Props Dane Clark Set decorator • Jill Eden Studio hands Ray Ackerley Lindsay Pugh Adam Pietrzak Sergio Adimari Daniel Brennan Video tape Rod Taylor Ken Hardie Vivien Turco Miranda Howlett Video post-prod.

John Barber Audio post-prod.

Paul Reeve Sound editor Anne Carter Network publicity Sally Flynn Unit publicist Susan Elizabeth Wood Studios HSV 7 Gauge 1" video RUBBER SLA V ES OF THE AMAZON Cast: Nick Giannopoulos (Jim), Simon Palomares Prod, company Batavia Massacre Pty Ltd (Rick) George Kapiniaris (Memo), Tracey CallenProducers Santhana Naidu dar (Liz), Simon Thorpe (Skip), George Vidalis Henri Bource (Manolis).

Russell Hurley Synopsis: Kostas leaves his son Jimin charge of the Director JohnRuane Acropolis Cafe, but you should see the Acropolis Scriptwriter RussellHurley Now. Editor RussellHurley Prod, manager BrendonLavelle ALL THE R IV ER S RUN II Art director Paul Amitzboll Prod, company Crawford Productions Laboratory VFL Producer Alan Hardy Budget $956,000 Director John Power Length 90 mins Scriptwriters Vince Moran Gauge 16mm

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Based on the novel by Photography Sound recordist Editor Prod, designer Exec, producer Assoc, producers Prod, supervisor Prod, coordinator Prod, manager Location manager Prod, accountant 1st asst director 2nd asst director 3rd asst director Continuity Producer’s assistant Casting Focus puller Clapper/loader Key grip Asst grip Gaffer Best boy Genny operator Boom operator Ast art director Costume designer Make-up Hairdresser Wardrobe supervisor Wardrobe standby Props buyer Standby props Special effects Set dressers Construction manager Construction foreman Musical director Stunts coordinator Stunts Still photography Dialogue coach Wrangler Runners Unit publicist Catering

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Barbara Bishop Nancy Cato Dan Burstall Lloyd Carrick Kerry Regan Robert Perkins Ian Bradley Vince Smits Helen Watts Vince Smits Bernadette O ’Mahony Helen Watts Leigh Ammitzboll Ron Sinni Brian Giddens Hamish McSporran Jo Friesan Sue Wiley Galia Hardy Jan Pontifex Harry Glynatsis Kathy Chambers Ken Connor Alistair Reilly Laurie Fish Jon Leaver Adam Williams Chris Goldsmith Steven Jones-Evans Clare Griffin Jose Perez Cheryl Williams Marion Boyce John Shea Rachel Nott Martin Perkins Graham Blackmore Brian Pearce Colin Robertson

Studios Crawfords Australia Mixed at VFL Budget $4 million Length 2x2 hours Gauge 16mm Shooting stock Kodak 7297 Cast: John Waters (Brenton), Nikki Coghill (Delie) Bud Tingwell (Uncle Charles) Synopsis: A sequel to the highly successful A ll The R ivers R u n. This story is of the loves and hardships Brenton and Philadelphia face as they struggle to stay together facing the adversities of a dying river trade.

BEYOND 2000 Prod, company Dist. company Producer Director Photography Sound recordists Editors

Beyond Productions P/L Beyond International Group Tim Clucas Judith John-Story various various Harley Oliver Robert Davidson Mark Verkerk Composer Twilight Productions Exec, producer Peter Abbott Prod, secretary Therese Hagerty Prod, accountant Ara Sahargian Camera operator various Boom operator various Make-up various Hairdresser Warren Hanrahan Props David King Props buyer David King Special effects Custom video Set designer Freddie Lawrence Set construction Up-Set Pty Ltd Musical directors Murray Burns Colin Bayley Music performed by Twilight Productions Sound editor Julian Ellingworth Mixer Julian Ellingworth Still photography various Tech adviser Charlie Busby Publicity Michael Shephard Georgina Harrop Studios ATN 7 Mixed at Beyond Facilities Length ] hour Gauge 1" video Cast: Ian Finlay, JefFWatson, Chris Ardill-Guinness, Simon Nasht, Amanda Keller, Simon Reeve,

Gordon White Peter McNee Bruce Rowland Chris Anderson New Generation Stunts Bill Bachman Peter Tulloch John Baird Sara Probyn Marcus Hunt Susan Elizabeth Wood Bande Aide Catering

Maxine Grey, Bryan Smith (presenters) Synopsis: Beyond 200 0 is a one-hour weekly tele­ vision program, exploring the progress of science and technolog)'. It features the latest scientific breakthroughs and ingenious technical innova­ tions which are shaping the world and preparing us for life beyond the year 2000.

CA SSID Y Prod, company Archive Films Pty Ltd/ABC Producer Bob Weis Line producer Tony Winley Director Carl Schultz Scriptwriter Joanna Murray-Smith Based on the novel by Morris West Photography Ellery Ryan Prod, designer Murray Picknett Exec, producer Sandra Levy Assoc, producer Wayne Barry Prod, manager Carol Chirlian Prod, co-ordinator Shuna Burdett Unit manager Val Windon Location manager Maude Heath Prod, secretary Kerrie Mainwaring 1st asst, director Scott Hartford-Davies 2nd asst, director Tony Tilse Continuity Rhonda McAvoy Producer’s asst.

Marion Kennedy Extras casting Sue Walsh Casting consultant Liz Mullinar Art director Graham Johnson Costume designer Jolanta Nejman Studios ABC Frenchs Forest Mixed at ABC Length 4x50 mins Gauge 16mm Synopsis: Cassidy is the Premier of New South Wales who, on his deathbed, nominates his es­ tranged daughter as executor of his estate. A story of corruption, murder and political intrigue against a background of Sydney, Hong Kong and Lon­ don.

A COUNTRY PRACTICE Prod, company Dist. company Producers Directors

Scriptwriters

JNP Films Pty. Ltd. Australian Television Network Denny Lawrence Bill Searle Robert Meillon Leigh Spence Peter Maxwell David Phillips

Judy Colquhoun Steve J. Spears Graeme Koetsveld Dave Marsh Sally Webb Based on original idea by James Davern Editor Graeme Andrews (Custom Video) Exec, producer James Davern Prod, coordinator.

Barbara Lucas Prod, manager David Watts Unit manager Margi Cremin Location manager Peter Warman Prod, secretary Toni Higginbotham Prod, accountant.

Lucy Vorst 1st asst directors Mark Moroney Ian Simmons Richard McGrath Andrew Turner 2nd asst directors Peter Dudkin Continui ty/D .A Karen Willing Stephanie Richards Karen Mansfield Producer’s assistants Justine Slater Pip Nacard Casting Shauna Crowley Lighting John Norton Paul Wootten Bob Fetcher Camera operators Glen Steer (OB) Peter Westlcy John DeRuvo Andrew Short Steven Fisher John Abbott Camera assistants Dietrich Bock (OB) Audio directors Graeme Hicks Howard Fricker Russell Thompson Boom operators Mark Mitchell Paul Lehmann Steven Marshall Trevor Buck Dave Masala Peter Hunter Colleen McNamara Art director Steve Muir Make-up Kit Moore Veyatie Hirst Joanne Stevens Wardrobe Therese Rendle Wardrobe assts Allan Burns Amanda Bloomfield

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Props

Wayne Pickard Malcolm Gregory Props buyer Jon-Paul (Lon) Lucini Set decorator Doug Kelly Scenic artist Peter Wengel Carpenters Max Rigg Glen Shapter Set construction ATN Seven workshop Asst editor Robert Hunter Music performed by Mike Perjanik Asst mixer Paul Blakeney Still photography Steven Brack Julia Morrell Michelle Day Geoff Clifford Publicity Kathy Campbell Catering Taste Buddies Studios ATN Seven Mixed at Custom Video Shooting stock 1"video Cast: Shane Porteous( Dr. Terence Elliott), Lorrae Desmond (Shirley Gilroy), John Tarrant (Matt Tyler), Brian Wenzel (Sgt. Frank Gilroy), Kate Raison (Cathy Hayden), Joyce Jacobs (Esme Watson), Joan Sydney (Matron Sloan), Syd Heylen (Cookie Lock) Gordon Piper (Bob Hatfield), Joan Sydney (Matron Sloan), Georgie Parker (Lucy Gardiner), Michael Muntz (Dr Chris Kouros), Georgina Fisher (Jessica Kouros).

Synopsis: Set in the small rural community of “Wandin Valley” , the series deals with medical and social issues, through the major characters and the local Bush Nursing Hospital. It also dramatises the lives o f the local vet and the National Park Ranger.

E STREET Prod, company Producer Directors

Westside Television Prod’ns Bruce Best Rod Hardy Geoffrey Nottage Bill Hughes Greg Shears Peter Andrikis Julian McSwincy Scriptwriters Forrest Redlich David Phillips Sally Webb Hugh Stuckey Mary Dagmar Davies Tom Galbraith Grant Fraster Nicholas Langton Exec, producer Forrest Redlich Assoc, producer Terric Vjncent Prod, manager Lesley Thompson Script editors Caroline Stanton Tim Pye Prod, designer Martin McAdoo Lighting directors David Scandol Bob Miller Length 52x1 hour Cast: Penny Cook, Brooke Andersen, Cecily Poison, Leslie Dayman, Catriona Sedgwick, Vic Roonie, Tony Martin, Warren Jones, Melanie Salomon.

Synopsis: A drama focusing on an inner city suburb and its residents

THE FLYING DOCTORS Prod, company Producer Directors

Scriptwriters

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Crawford Productions P/L Stanley Walsh Brendan Maher Catherine Millar Paul Moloney Mandy Smith Denise Morgan Tony Mornhctt Luis Bayonas

Shane Brennan Annie Beach Alan Hopgood Photography Barry Wilson Zenon ‘ Butch’ Sawko Sound recordists Philippe Dccrausaz John McKerrow Editors Bill Murphy Scott McLennan Exec, producer Ian Bradley Assoc, producer Ray Hennessy Prod, supervisor Vince Smits Post-prod, supervisor Sue Washington Prod, co-ordinator Gina Black Unit managers Tony Tynan Fran Lugt Location manager Greg Ellis Prod, secretary Wendy Walker Prod, accountant Kevin Plummer Post-prod, supervisor Sue Washington 1st asst directors Chris Page Kath Hayden Michael McIntyre 2nd asst directors, Arnie Custow Christian Robinson Continuity Carmel Torcasio Anne Went Story editor Andrew Kennedy Script editors Jan Harfield Neil Luxmore Jenny Sharp Matthew Lovering Casting Jan Pontifex Focus pullers Craig Barden Gary Bottomley Clapper/loadcrs Ian Phillips Brett Matthews Key grips Craig Dusting Kerry Boyle Colin McLean Asst grips Wayne Mitchell Gaffers Bill Jones Gary Plunkett Boom operator Craig Walmsley Simon Wilmot Art director Andrew Reese Asst art director Leigh Eichler Costume designer Claire Griffin Make-up Brad Smith Maggie Koley Hairdressers Lisa Jones Christine Miller Wardrobe supervisor Keely Ellis Wardrobe standby Sue Miles Robyn Bunting Props buyer Kate Murray Standby props Paul Kiely Richard Williamson Set decorators Brad King Souli Livaditis Scott Adcock Simon Price-McCutcheon Richie Dehne Set construction Gordon White Asst editor Lesley Forsyth Music editor John Clifford-White Sound editors Colin Swan Michael Carden Editing assistants George Parton Justin Hughes Mixer David Harrison Andrew Jobson Stunts coordinator Chris Anderson Stunts New Generation Stunts Best boy Con Mancuso Battista Remati Runner Travis Walker Unit publicist Susan Elizabeth Wood Catering Location One Catering

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Studios Crawford Productions/GTV 9 Mixed at Crawford Productions Laboratory Cinevex Length 26 x 47 mins Gauge 16mm Shooting stock Kodak 7291,7292 Cast: Robert Grubb (Dr Geoff Standish), Liz Burch (Dr Chris Randall), Lenore Smith (Kate Wellings), Peter O’Brien (Sam Patteson), Rebecca Gibney (Emma Patterson), Brett Climo (Dr David Ratcliffe), AndrewMcFarlane (DrTom Callaghan), George Kapiniaris (D.J.), Maurie Fields (Vic Buckley), Val Jellay (Nancy Buckley).

Synopsis: A Royal Flying Doctor Service islocated in the outback town of Coopers Crossing. The doctors not only contend with the medical chal­ lenges, bvut also with the small community in which they live.

G.P. Prod, company

Roadshow Coote 8c Carroll/ABC Exec, producers Matt Carroll Sandra Levy Supervising producer Sue Masters Directors Various Scriptwriters Various Script editors Betty Quinn Greg Millin Script co-ordinator Kris Wyld Story department Matt Ford Kristen Dunphy Medical consultants Dr Stephen Faux Dr David Whitten Snr prod, designer Marcus North Designers Leigh Tierney Colin Rudder Freya Hadley Kim Vecera Assoc, producers Judy Murphy Costume designer Michelle Milgate Composer Simon Walker Prod, co-ordinator Francoise Fombertaux Prod, manager Annette Gover Prod, secretary Irma Havlicek 1st asst directors Gary Stephens David Young Alan Parsons Mark Stanforth Maura Fay 8c Associates Casting consultants Irene Gaskell Extras casting Props buyers Rory Cronin Ian Andrewartha Unit publicist Virginia Sargent Studios ABC ABC Mixed at 1 hr weekly Length Gauge 1” video Prod, secretary Irma Havlicek 1st asst, director Gary Stephens Casting consultants Maura Fay 8c Associates Props buyers Rory Cronin Ian Andrewartha Unit publicist Virginia Sargent Studios ABC Mixed at ABC Length 1 hr weekly Gauge 1" video Synopsis: Drama series detailing the comings and goings of an inner city medical practice.

THE H EROES Prod, company Dist. company Producer Director Scriptwriter Based on the novel by Photography

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Syd Butterworth Wayne Le Clos Bernard Hides Peter Best Graham Benson Valerie Hardy Assoc, producer Glenn Darlington Prod, coordinator Barbara Ring Prod, manager Rosanne Andrews-Baxter Unit manager Richard Montgomery Location manager Kate Ingham Post-prod, supervisor Carol Hughes Prod, accountant Moneypenny 1st asst director Chris Webb 2nd asst director Henry Osborne 3rd asst director Nicholas Cole Continuity Nicky Moors Producer’s secretary Jenny Ward Casting Maizel 8c Assoc. (Suzie Maizel) Extras casting Bowen 8c Burgess Pty Ltd (Lesley Burgess) Camera operator David Williamson Focus puller John Platt Clapper/loader Daniel Ardilly Barry Idoine Key grip Geoff Full Asst grip Andrew Glaser 2nd unit photography Geoff Wharton Susie Stitt Gaffer Mick Morris Electricians John Lee Stephen Gray Boom operator Graham McKinney Art director Virginia Bieneman Asst art director/ Caroline Poline draughtperson John Pryce Jones Costume designer David Rowe (Utopia Road) Make-up/hair Jill Porter Asst make-up/hair Cassie Hanlon Wardrobe supervisor Kerry Thompson Wardrobe standby John Shea Wardrobe asst Heather Laurie Props buyer Mark Dawson Standby props James Cox Roy Plummer Special effects Brian Cox David Hardie Brian Pearce Peter Armstrong Jeff Little Buyer/set decorator Sue Maybury Glass artist Graham Galloway Scenic artist Billy Malcolm Art dept runner Chris Batson Construction manager Bill Howe Art dept administrator Nicky Rowntree Asst editor Wayne Hayes Storyboard artist Ty Bosco Unit nurse Catie Stephen Sound editor Gary O’Grady Still photography Vivian Zink Best boy Chris Fleet Runner Virginia Allan Publicity Write On Group Unit publicist Sherry Stumm Catering Kollage (Sydney) Kaos Katering (Qld) Laboratory Colorfilm Lab. liaison Denise Wolfson Budget $5.9 million Length 4x1 hour Gauge 16mm Shooting stock Kodak Cast: Paul Rhys (Ivan Lyon), John Bach (Donald Davidson), John Hargreaves (Ted Carse), Timo­ thy Lyn (Taffy Morris) Jason Donovan (Happy Huston), Cameron Daddo (Joe Jones), Bill Kerr (Paddy McDowell), Christopher Morsley (Bob Page), Wayne Scott Kermond (BoofMarsh), Mark McAskill (Poppa Falls).

Synopsis: One of the most extraordinary and profoundly moving stories o f the Pacific War - a secret war that no one ever heard about. A group of Englishmen and Australians launched from Australia an attack on Singapore Harbour which was to become one o f the greatest sea raids of World War II.

TELEVISION

Set dressers

POST PRODUCTION THE BO D YSURFERS

Prod, company John Sexton Productions/ABC Producer Ross Matthews Director Ian Barry HOME AND AWAY Scriptwriters Suzanne Hawley Prod, company ATN Channel 7 Chris Lee Dist. company ATN Channel 7 Denis Whitburn Producer Andrew Howie Based on short stories by Robert Drewe Directors various Sound recordist Guntis Sics Story editor David Worthington Photography Jeff Malouf Based on original idea by AlanBateman Editors Chris Spur Editor TraceyHawkins Mike Honey Exec, producer DesMonaghan Prod, manager John Winter Prod, co-ordinator Kate Delin Prod, designer Janet Patterson Prod, manager LisaFitzpatrick Prod, co ordinator Maureen Charlton Prod, accountant Therese Tran Exec, producer John Sexton Prod, assistant EdwinaSearle Assoc, producer Ray Brown 1st asst directors MichaelAilwood Unit manager John Downie Grant Brown Location manager Clint White Cathie Roden Prod, secretary Sandy Stevens 2nd asst directors Shane Gow Prod, accountant Jill Coverdale Alex Tinley 1st asst, director Russell Whiteaok Directors’ assistants FrancesSwan 2nd asst.director Lance Mellor Marcus Georgiades 3rd asst, director Caroline Grose Liz Perry Continuity Tracy Padula Script assistant SharonRosenburg Casting Liz Mullinar Casting coordinator IneseVogler Extras casting Irene Gaskell Casting consultants Maura Fay and Assoc.

Camera operator Jeff Malouf Lighting directors DavidMorgan Clapper Loader Sean McClory David Wood Focus pullers Gary Russell David Mutton Brendan Shaw Art director KenMcCann Key grip Gary Burdett Costume designer Lucinda White Asst grip Nick Hocking Make-up Mary Georgiou 2nd unit photography Geoff Manias David Jennings 2nd unit assistant Paul Doney Hairdressers GeorginaBush Gaffer Ken Pettigrew Paul Williams Electricians Pierre Drion Wardrobe RitaCrouch Tim Harris Francesca Bath Boom operators David Pearson Wardrobe supervisor LindyWylie Chris Nilsen Props buyers.

Philip Cumming Assistant designer Helen Baumann Kate Saunders Design assistants Karen Land Standby props GlennTurner Ian Usher Set decorator CarolDiFalco Costume designer Annie Marshall Musical director MikePerjanik Hair/make-up Christine Ehlert Runner PeterPearce Ron Bassi Studios.

ATN Channel 7 Chiara Tripodi Shooting stock Video Wardrobe Barry Lumley Cast: Roger Oakley (Tom), Vanessa Downing Wardrobe asst Lorraine Verheyen (Pippa), Alex Papps (Frank), Sharyn Hodgson Philippa Wooten (Carly), AdamWillits (Steven), Kate Ritchie (Sally), Props Roy Eagleton Nicolle Dickson (Bobby), Norman Coburn Props buyers Adrian Cannon (Fisher), Craig Thomson (Martin), Judy Nunn Mervyn Asher (Ailsa), Ray Meagher (Alf), Peter Vrom (Lance), Standby props John King Justine Clarke (Roo) Benn Hyde Synopsis: A warm and amusing family drama set Special effects The Australian Efex Company in the fictional seaside town of Summer Bay. Choreography Robyn Moase PRODUCTION STILL: THE HEROES

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Richard Kennett Sandra Carrington Leanne Bushby Brent Bonheur Scenic artist Paul Brocklebank Tom Slettum Carpenter Mark Newton Painter Steve Burns Set construction • Laurie Dorn Mai Healey Asst editors Martin Connor Elizabeth Villa Sound editora Roslyn Silvestrin Phillipa Byers Editing assistants Larissa Filipic Tania Brown Mixer Stephen Hope Stunts co-oridnator Bernie Ledger Still photography Gary Johnston Wrangler Evanna Chesson Runner Paul Eperjesi Publicity Geòrgie Brown Catering Reel Food Catering Studios ABC Frenchs Forest Mixed at ABC Laboratory Colorfilm Lab. liaison Martin Hoyle Length 4x50 minutes Gauge 16mm Shooting stock 7291,7292 Cast: Peter Kowitz (David), Linda Cropper (Anthea), Joy Smithers (Lydia), Penne HackforthJones (Angela), Patrick Ward (Parnell), Abigail (Mrs James), Felix Nobis (Paul Lang), Tim Robertson (Rex Lang), Mary Lou Stewart (Mrs Lang) Clayton Williamson (Young David).

Synopsis: A television adaptation of Robert Drewe’s short stories. Over roughly an 18-month period, searching beyond mid-life crisis, David finds the unanswered questions o f his childhood can lead him towards a state of maturity. He realises it is his last hope for reconstructing his fractured family.

Key grip Asst grip Gaffer Boom operator Studios

Rob Grecnough John Whitehead Brian Archer Stephen Kyme Soundstage Australia Limited Film Centre Australia Length 90 mins Gauge T ’ video Shooting stock Kodak Cast: Angelique Malcolm, Daniel Luxton, Alinta Carroll, Graeme Bell, Grant Malcolm, David Bermann Synopsis: A thriller based on astral travel and the attempt to change future events.

DOLPHIN COVE Prod, company

Paramount Pictures (Australia) Pty Ltd

Distrib. company Pres, network TV div.

Sr VP creative affairs Exec, in charge of prod.

Executive producers

John Pike Jeff Hayes Michael Lake Allan Marcil Dick Berg Directors Mel Damski (eps 1 and 3) Noel Black (eps 2 and 4) Marcus Cole (ep 5) Geoffrey Nottage (6 and 8) Brendan Maher (ep 7) Photography Nino Martinetti Sound recordist Ian Grant Composer Bruce Rowland Exec, script consultant Everett de Roche Script editor Keith Ridgeway Prod, manager Grant Hill Prod, co-ordinator Vicki Popplewell Prod, secretary Julie Burton Exec, prod’s secretary Hazel Whitehead M. Lake’s secretary Remona Deacon Exec, secretary Alison Clarke Location manager Murray Boyd Unit manager Michael Batchelor Prod, runner Alan Long DEATH RUN Rushes runners Shane Minslow Prod, company Death Run Productions/ Dean Marshall Soundstage Australia Post. prod, co-ordinator Meryl Jackson Producers Robert A. Cocks Post-prod, assistant Sandy Hill Michael T. Foster 1st asst directors Colin Fletcher Director Robert A. Cocks John Wild Scriptwriter Michael T. Foster 2nd asst director Jane Griffin Based on original idea by Michael T. Foster 3rd asst director Ross Bell Photography Philip Baker Casting Liz Mullinar Editor Paul Sullivan Continuity Sue Wiley Prod, manager John McGuckin Camera operator Warwick Field Prod, secretary Glenda Cocks Focus puller #1 Neil Cervin Prod, accountant Robert Sharpe Focus puller #2 David Lindsey 1st asst director Andrew Hutchison Underwater photography Walt Deas Casting AngeliqueMalcolm Underwater camera asst Lionel Aitken Lighting cameraperson Philip Baker Boom operator Bruce Wallace Camera operator Philip Baker Gaffer Peter O’ Brien Best boys John Bryden Brown Stephen Carter Electrician Tom Robinson Key grip Barry Brown Asst grip Simon Steward 3rd grip Mark Watson Production designer Sally Shepherd Art director Brian Dusting Art dept co-ordinator Gina Black Props buyer Rolland Pike Buyer/drcsser Andrew Reese Set dresser Simon CarteBuyer/drcsser Colin Robertson Standby props Chris James Asst standby props Scott Adcock Model operator Don Pennington Dolphin mechanic Anthony Cope Make-up/hairdresser Margaret Lingham Make-up/hairdresser Lecanne White Costume designer Phil Eagles Wardrobe supervisor Frances Hogan Standby wardrobe Rachel Nott Caterer Chris Smith Stunt co-ordinator Greg Skipper Stills photography Peter O’Halloran Publicity Francis Dakers Laboratory' Budget.

Length 8 x 60 mins Cast: Frank Converse (Michael Larson), Trey Ames ( David Larson), Virginia Hey (Alison Mitch­ ell), Ernie Dingo (Didge), Karron Graves (Katie Larson), Nick Tate ( Baron Trent), An tony Richards (Kevin Mitchell).

Synopsis: The adventures of a research scientist, Michael Larson, moves to Australia with his three children, David and Katie, after the sudden death of his wife. He continues his studies in dolphin communication, hoping that the dramatic change of environment will help the gricf-strickcn family to recover from its loss.

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Palm Beach Pictures (FOF) Pty Ltd Dist. company Zenith Productions Limited Producers David Elfick Irene Korol Director David Elfick Scriptwriter Patricia Johnson Photography Geoffrey Simpson Sound recordist Paul Brincat Editor Stuart Armstrong Prod, designer Ron Highfield Composers Mark Moffatt Wayne Goodwin Prod, coordinator Sharon Miller Prod, manager Elizabeth Symes Unit manager Phil Urquhart Location manager Marianne Witzig Prod, secretary Basia Plachecki Prod accountants Gemma Rawsthorne Juanita Parker (Moneypenny Services) 1st asst director Bob Howard 2nd asst director Ian Freeman 3rd asst director Guy Campbell 2nd unit director Robert Alcock Continuity Emma Peach Macpherson Producer’s assistant Catherine Phillips Knapman Casting Christine King Lawyer Nina Stevenson Sydney liaison Julie Mortenson Storyboard artist Robert Alcock Focus puller Sally Eccleston Clapper/loader Mark Zagar Key grip Ross Erickson Asst grips Darren Ballangarry 2nd unit photography Bob Hawkins Gaffer Trevor Toune Best boy Werner Gerlach Electrician Andrew Starkey Boom operator Jean Fontaine Art director Michael Bridges Asst art director Alky Avramides Costume designer Bruce Finlayson Make-up Violette Fontain Length 2x 2 hours Gauge 16mm Cast: Peta Toppano, John Jarratt, Kris McQuade, Michele Fawdcn, Harold Hopkins, Noni Hazlehurst.

Synopsis: Cane farming in Queensland in the Fifties - the continuing story

THE GREAT WALL OF IRON Prod, company Dist. company Producers Director

Beyond Co-production Beyond International Group Steven Arriezdroz Harold Weldon Scott Hicks

Scriptwriters

Michael Caulfield Scott Hicks Based on the original idea by Harold Weldon Photography Dieter de Vries Sound recordist Toivo Lember Editor Sarah Bennett Composers Colin Bayley Murray Burns Exec, producers Phil Gerlach Michael Caulfield Prod, supervisor Jenny Couston Prod, coordinator Jene McKeown 1st asst director Deuel Droogan Camera assistants Richard Bradshaw Andrew Berbera Key grip Dave Nichols 2nd unit photography John Brock 2nd unit camera asst Stuart Quinn Asst editor Simon James Sound editor Jo Cooke Stephen Barber Editing assistants Narrator Jack Thompson Laboratory Atlab Lab. liaison Kerry Jenkins Length 4x 1 hour Gauge 16mm/l" video Shooting stock Kodak Synopsis: T he G reat W all o f Iron is a four-part series on one of the world’s largest armed forces the People’s Liberation Army of China. The series looks at the remarkable history, the forces today, and its future path. Filmed throughout China, it explores the heart and sould of the PLA as well as the length and breadth of its power.

GRIM PICKINGS Prod, company South Australian Film Corp.

Producer Damien Parer Director Riccardo Pellizzeri Scriptwriter Graeme Koetsveld Story editor Peter Gawler Based on the novel by Jennifer Rowe Photography Roger Dowling Sound recordist Toivo Lember David Jaeger Editor Prod, designer George Liddlc Exec, producer Jock Blair Producer attachment Gus Howard Prod, co-ordinator Diane Stuart Prod, manager Ron Stigwood Miriam Ready Prod, mgr attachment Financial supervisor David Barnes Prod, accountant Sharon Jackson 1st asst director Soren Jensen 2nd asst director Monica Pearce Continuity Kristin Witcombe Casting Liz Mullinar Casting Consultants S. A. Casting Pty Ltd Lighting cameraperson RogerDowling Camera operator Roger Dowling 2nd camera operator David Jarvis

Jo Murphy Focus puller Michael Bambacas Clapper/loader 2nd camera asst Gerald Manouge Jon Goldney Key grip Graeme Shelton Gaffer Des Kenneally Boom operator Art director Ken James Art dept runner James Roberts Fiona Rees-Jones Make-up Hairdresser Sash Lamey Ruth de la Lande Wardrobe Wardrobe asst Ruth Munro Christopher Webster Props buyer Standby props John Santucci Special effects/action co-ordinator Vic Wilson Scenic artist Peter Collias Brush hands Guy Allain Penny Price Christine Wood Carpenters Brenton Grear Bernd Kohn Ken Gardner Danny Singer Darren Slaby Paul O’Reilly Crispin Joos Set construction Lips Studio (S.A.) Manager David Lightfoot Construction supervisors Michael Thomas Arthur Vette Still photography Christie Schulz Best boy Keith ‘Sooty’ Johnson Runner Melinda Paterson Publicity Mary Hennessy Catering John Kingston (Mexee’s) Studios Hendon Studios Judy Crombie Studio liaison Mixed at Hendon Studios NFP Budget Length 2x 120 mins Videotape (Betacam SP) Gauge Shooting Betacam Cast: Lorraine Bayly (Betsy), Liddy Clark (Birdie), Max Cullen (Toby), Catherine Wilkin (Kate), David Cameron (Jeremy), Neil Fitzpatrick (Wilf), Scott Higgins (Chris), Rosey Jones (Susie), Smart McCreery (Nick), Helen O’Connor (Jill).

Synopsis: Grim Pickings follows two lines: the strained relationships which surface in a large extended family during its annual gathering to pick their great-aunt sapple crop, and the mystery surrounding a seemingly accidental death, which is found to have been a murder. Naturally, the murder and the family relationships are connected.

INCREDIBLE CREATURES Soundstage Australia FilmFair (London) Tibor Meszaros Sandor Polyak Sam Leland

Prod, company Dist. company Producer Directors

Janos Katona David Downie Sam Leland Scriptwriter Janos Katona From an original idea by Sandor Polyak Photography Olga Polyakane Gyorgy Oroszcan Composer Trevor Spenser Exec, producer Hannah Downie Robert A. Cocks Assoc, producer Endre Sik Prod, supervisor David Downie Prod, manager Robert Sharpe Prod, accountant Kevin Peek Musical directors Gyorgy Oroszcan Ric Curtin Sound editor Sandor Polyak Animation Janos Katona Balojty Laszlo Gyapai Tamas Kurtej Marta Tamas Arra Iren Bartha Lestak Csilca Ramsey McLean Dialogue coach Studios Tracks Studio/TW7/Taimac SBS Tracks Studio Mixed at Laboratory Hungarian Film Lab & Filmlab Pty Ltd Gyorgy Erzsebet Lab. liaison $350,000 Budget.

16mm/l" video Gauge Cast: Joy Moore, Owen Stickels, Martyn Gittens, David Vallon.

Synopsis: Thirteen-part animated children’s se­ ries. The delightful stories of the Incredible Crea­ tures. Each story is full of humour and has an underlying pro-social theme.

REALMS OF GOLD (DARFYDD AUR) Kingcroft/Teliesyn/ ABC/S4C Dist. company J.C. Wiliiamson/S4C Producer Terry Ohlsson Director Paul Turner Scriptwriter Howard Griffiths Ross Dimsey Exec, producers Dilwyn Jones Assoc, producers Richard Meyrick Prod, co-ordinator Jenny Crowley Prod, manager Lorraine Alexander Studios Kingcroft Length 90 minutes Synopsis: a tale based on the real life story of a Welsh minister wheo travelled to Australia in the 1840s, preached the first sermon in Welsh in Australia, made a fortune out of property in the goldfields, and started a newspaper which eventu­ ally merged into the Ajfe group.

W IS H E S T O T H A N K T H E A U S T R A L IA N F IL M C O M M IS S IO N AND F IL M V IC T O R IA F O R T H E I R C O N T IN U IN G E N C O U R A G E M E N T

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Kansas: G. Litto, USA,110 mins, Hoyts, L (f-m-g) V (i-m-j) O (sexual allusions) Maniac:Thunderbird Films, USA, 51 mins, Urban Eye Film Releasing, O (adult concepts) Miles From Home: F. Zollo/P.Kurta, USA, 107 mins, Filmpac, L (f-m-g) V (i-m-g) Mr Possessed: Cosmopolitan Film Productions, Hong Kong, 95 mins, Vacole, L (i-m-g) V (i-m-g) O (horror) Naked Gun - From the Files o f Police Squad!, The: R.Weiss, USA, 84 mins, UIP, O (adult concepts) Raggedy Rawney, The: BWeis, UK, 103 mins, CEL, L (i-m-j) O (adult concepts) S (i-m-j) Reefer Madness: G. Hirliman, USA, 64 mins, Urban Eye Releasing, O (anti-drug theme) Some Girls: R. Stevenson, USA/Canada, 91 mins, UIP, L (i-m-g) O (adult concepts) Sweet Hearts Dance: J. Lurie, USA, 101 mins, Fox Columbia, L (i-m-j) O (adult concepts) Tender Hooks: C. Oliver, Australia, 95 mins, Ronin, O (adult concepts) L (f-m-g) To Kill A Priest: J. Alessandri, France, 114 Fox Columbia, L (i-m-g) V (i-m-j)

G (GENERAL E X H IB ITIO N ) Crowd, The: Metro Goldwyn Mayer, USA, 95 mins, Victorian Arts Centre Kaguya (Princess From the Moon): Toho Pictures, Japan,117 mins, Quality Films Les Portes To timantes: R. Marlo/F. Morin, Canada, 98 mins, Palace Entertainment . PG (PARE N TAL GUIDANCE) 1988 Australian Video Festival Selection I, Various, 60 mins, The Australian Video Festival, O (adult concepts) 1988 Australian Video Festival Selection II, Various, 60 mins, The Australian Video Festival, O (adult concepts) 1988 Australian Video Festival Selection III, Various, 56 mins, The Australian Video Festival, 0(adult concepts) 1988 Australian Video Festival Selection IV, Various, 53 mins, The Australian Video Festival, O (adult concepts) Actress: Tomoyuki Tanaka/Kon Ichikawa, Japan, 126 mins, Japan Information and Cultural Centre, O (adult concepts) Another Woman: R, Greenhut, USA, 79 mins, Village Roadshow, O (adult concepts) Belizaire the Cajun: A. Durand/G. Pitre, USA, 103 mins, Palace Entertainment, V (i-m-j) Carry on Dancing (main title not shown in English): D. Poon, Hong Kong, 89 mins, Chinatown Cinema, V(i-l-j) O (adult concepts) Clara’s Heart: M. Elfand, USA, 107 mins, Village Roadshow, OJadult concepts) Cocoon - The Return: R. Zanuck/D. Brown/ L. Zanuck, USA, 114 mins, Fox Columbia, L (i-l-g) O (adult concepts)

Lion With A White Mane: Barrandov Film Studios, Czechoslovakia, 138 mins, Multicultural Art Trust, SA. Scherzo del Destino: G. Giovannini, Italy, 113 mins, Ente Autonomo di Gestione per il Cinema Sotto ... Sotto Strapazzato da Anomala Passione: M. Cecchi Gori/V. Cecchi Gori, Italy, 112 mins, Ente Autonomo di Gestione per il Cinema Tutto a Posto e Niente in Ordine: R. Cardarelli, Italy, 105 mins, Ente Autonomo di Gestione per il Cinema

D E C E M B E R

G (FO R GENERAL EX H IBITIO N ) Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit Part 1 Nobody’s Fault: J. Brabourne/R. Goodwin, UK, 168 mins, Hoyts Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters: S. Green, USA, 78 mins, Village Roadshow Escape World Safari HI: A. Mangels, Austra­ lia, 104 mins, Adventure Bound Productions Land Before Time, The: D. Bluth/G. Goldman/J. Pommeroy, USA/Ireland, 68 mins, UIP, Ticket to Ride: S. Soderberg, USA, 82 mins,' Alan Rich Films

R (RESTRICTED EXH IBITIO N ) The Accused: S. Jaffe, S. Lansing, USA/ Canada, 107 mins, UIP, V (i-m-j) O (concept o f sexual violence) Brain Damage: E. levins, USA, 86 mins, Village Roadshow, V (i-m-g) O (horror, drug abuse) Dragon Family (main title not shown in English): Not shown, Hong Kong, 91 mins, Chinatown Cinema, V (i-m-g) Hero o f Tomorrow: Not shown, Hong Kong, 85 mins, Chinatown Cinema, V (f-m-g) Lair o f the White Worm: K. Russell, UK, 93 mins, Vestron, O (horror, adult concepts)

M (FO R MATURE AUDIENCES) Buster: N. Heyman, UK, 94 mins, Hoyts, L (i-m-j) Celia: T. White/G. Glenn, Australia, 103 mins, Hoyts, V (i-m-j) O (adult concepts) Courier, The: H. McLoughlin, Ireland, 85 mins, Village Roadshow, L (i-m-g) V (i-m-j) O (drug use) Damned Whores and Evil Bitches: R. Colosimo, Australia 86 mins, Rosa Colosimo, 0(adult theme) Dressmaker, The: R. Shedlow, UK, 91 mins, Hoyts, O (adult concepts) Full Moon in Blue Water: L. Turman/ D.Foster/J. Turman, USA, 94 mins, Hoyts, L (i-m-g) O (adult concepts) Heartbreak Hotel: L. Obst/D. Hill, USA, 100 mins, Village Roadshow, L (i-m-g) Hungry Heart: R. Colosimo/R.McLean, Australia, 93 mins, Rosa Colosimo, L (i-m-j) O (adult concepts)

1 9 8 8

PG (PARENTAL GUIDANCE RECOMMENDED) Bagdad Cafe: E. Adlon/P. Adlon, USA/West Germany, 91 mins, CEL, L(i-l-j) O (adult concepts) Barefoot Gen (main tide not shown in Eng­ lish): E. Nakazawa/T. Yoshimoto/Y. Iwase, Japan, 80 mins, Japan Information and Culture Centre, O (adult concepts) (a) Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: B. Williams, USA, 106 mins, Village Roadshow, L (i-l-g) O (adult concepts) Horse Thief: Southern Ganou, China/Tibet, 86 mins, Ronin, O (adult concepts).

Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, The: R. Steckler, USA, 79 mins, Urban Eye, V (i-l-g) O (mild horror) Madame Sousatzka: R. Dalton, UK, 120 mins, Village Roadshow, L (i-m-j) Shag: J. Chasman/S. Woolley, USA, 98 mins, Hoyts, O (sexual allusions) V (i:l-g) Shock Waves: B. Condon, USA, 78 mins, Alan Rich Films, O (nudity) L (i-l-g) V (i-l-j) (a) Barefoot Gen is registered subject to the condition that all advertising includes the words: “Warning - this film contains graphic animated depictions o f atomic warfare that may disturb some children.”

FILMS REFUSED REGISTRATION Dirty Harriet: P. Ross, USA, 78 mins, J. Maltman, S (f-h-g) Frisky Business: A. Berry, USA, 80 mins, J. Whittenbury, S (f-h-g) Little Bit O’Honey, A: J. Malibu, USA, 79 mins, J. Whittenbury, S (f-h-g) Naughty Girls Need Love Too: S. Winters, USA, 90 mins, J. Maltman S (f-h-g) Star Is Porn, A: M. Kaplan, USA, 87 mins, J. Maltman, S (f-h-g) Wizard o f Ahh’s: Electric Hollywood, USA, 77 mins, J. Whittenbury, S (f-h-g) Working It Out: J. Williams, USA, 77 mins, J. Whittenbury, S (f-h-g) SPECIAL CONDITIONS Devils Must Be Taken Seriously: Barrandov Film Studios, Czechoslovakia, 90 mins, Multicultural Art Trust, SA.

Films examined in terms of the Customs (Cinematograph Films) Regulations as States’ film censorship legislation are listed below.

An explanatory key to reasons for classifying non-" G" films appears hereunder: Frequency Infrequent

Frequent

Low

V (Violence)

i i

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1 1

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Producer

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Explicitness/Intensity Medium

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Reason for decision

M (FO R MATURE AUDIENCES) Accused, The (a) (b) : S.Jaffe/S. Lansing, USA/Canada, 107 mins, UIP,*** Anita Tanze des Lasters (Anita Dances of Vice): RVP/Road Movies & ZDF, West Germany, 86 mins, Richard Walderg, O (adult concepts, drug use) Burning Secret: N.Heyman/E. Junkersdorf/ C. Greene, UK/Czechoslovakia, 106 mins, Vestron, O (adult concepts) Good Mother, The: A. Glimcher, USA, 104 mins, Village Roadshow, L (i-m-j) O (adult concepts) Gorillas in the Mist - the Story o f Dian Fossey: A. Glimcher/T.Clegg, USA, 129 mins, Village Roadshow, L (i-m-g) O (adult concepts) Greatest Lover, The: Golden Harvest, Hong Kong, 120 mins, Chinatown Cinema, L (i-m-g) O (adult concepts) Lady in White: A. La Marca/F. La Loggia, USA, 113 mins, Newvision, V (i-m-j) People’s Hero (main title not shown in English): J.Sham, Hong Kong, 81mins, Chinatown Cinema, V (i-m-g) Tequila Sunrise: T. Mount, USA, 114 mins, Village Roadshow, L (f-m-g), O (drug references) Three Wishes (not shown): Hong Kong, 92mins, Chinatown Cinema, O (adult concepts) O (horror) War o f the Worlds Next Century, The: Zespoly Filmowe, Poland, 95 mins, Tip Top Travel, S (i-m-g) O (adult concepts) Wizard o f Loneliness: P. Porcella/T.Tyson, USA, 110 mins, Newvision, O (adult concepts) Working Girl: D. Wick, USA, 112 mins, Fox Columbia, L (i-m-j) O (sexual allusions, drug use) V (i-m-g) (a) The Accused is registered subject to the condition that all advertising include the words, “Censorship Warning: This film contains scenes of graphic sexual violence.” (b) See also under Films Board o f Review R (RESTRICTED E X H IBITIO N ) Edge o f Sanity: E. Simons/H. Towers, UK/ Hungary, 87 mins, Village Roadshow, S (i-m-g) V (i-m-g) Kiss, The: P. Densham/J. Watson, USA, 95 mins, Fox Columbia, V (i-m-g) O (horror) S (i-m-g) Pandemonium: A. Cutler/H. Keenan, Australia, 89 mins, Tra La La Films, S (i-m-g) O (adult concepts, drug use) FILMS REFUSED REGISTRATION Moon, Star 8c Sun (main title not shown in English) (b): Golden Harvest, Hong Kong, 100 mins, Chinatown Cinema, O (gratuitous sexual violence) FILMS BOARD OF REVIEW Accused, The (a): S.Jaffe/S. Lansing, USA/ Canada, 107 mins, UIP,*** Decision reviewed: Classify R by the Film Censorship Board.

Decision of the Board, Direct the Film Censorship Board to classify M subject to the condition that all advertising include the words, “ Censorship Warning: This film contains scenes of graphic sexual violence.” (a) See also under M (Mature Audiences

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O RD RIDDLE ME THIS: HOW IS A REFERENCE BOOK LIKE A USED-CAR SALESMAN? THEY BOTH START OUT WITH 'TRUST M E..."

E LEARN THE LITANY IN SCHOOL: DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER? LOOK IT UP! THE ONLY REAL ISSUE IS WHERE TO LOOK: THE DICTIONARY, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA, THE YELLOW PAGES, WHATEVER. THE INFORMATION

THE MOTION PICTURE GUIDE Jay Robert Nash a n d Stanley Ralph Ross Chicago: Cinebooks, 1985-1987, lOvols + index (2 volumes) [Vol X , Silent Film, 1910 - 1936, Robert Connelly] $ 7 5 0 set ($ 1 2 0 0 A ustralian)

THUS LOCATED IS ASSUMED TO BE CORRECT UNLESS IT RUNS HEAD-ON INTO THE SEARCHER’S OWN PRIOR KNOWLEDGE “REFERENCE BOOKS”

THE TERM FAIRLY DRIPS WITH AUTHORITY - AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE Since the beginning o f film scholarship as we know it, researchers have been hobbled by the paucity o f truly reliable reference sources, espe­ WRONG - FOR CHRISSAKES. THAT’S WHERE THE ‘’TRUST ME” COMES IN. cially the lack o f a single authoritative guide to screen credits. Imagine if, in place o f “The Dic­ tionary,” we had only hundreds o f individual glossaries: o f words derived from In a word, nope. Oh, it looks just grand: an A-Z reference to over 50,000 French names o f tour-footed mammals, terms used in the study o f molluscs, (primarily English-language) feature films, 1910-1984, including one volume etc. This is how it is with cinema history - lots o f very good specialized works, devoted to silents and two hefty index volumes. Ballyhooed as the Holy Grail but only a handful o f relatively comprehensive sources o f comparable quality. o f film books, it is in fact an electronic cut-and-paste job o f gargantuan Anybody who’s ever done a proper film reference book knows it’s no proportions, a sort o f Babe the Blue Ox, as designed by Dr Frankenstein and picnic. Logistical problems are one thing (just locating and getting access to constructed by an IBM computer (with the Litde Tramp at the keyboard). the necessary' primary source materials - studio records and the like - is a And “definitive”? I don’t mean to be pedantic, but let’s look that one up, for difficult and time- consuming chore), but there’s also something fundamen­ the record: “Most reliable or complete: providing a solution or final answer”. tally anomalous about the object o f the quest. “The facts” are afloat (or sub­ That’s what my dictionary says, and it seems to be what those screaming italics merged) in a sea o f mythology, individual and corporate self-aggrandizement, are all about, too. deliberate obfuscation (as exemplified by the cavalier assignation o f screen­ Now, these guys seem so damn sure o f themselves that it’s only natural to writing credits during the “Golden Age” ), and just plain sloppy record-keep­ wonder just how they’ve ascended to this pinnacle o f final authority. The ing. Unfortunately, relatively few compilers o f film factbooks are able to stay foreword states that “tens o f thousands o f sources [were] consulted, collected the course o f clarification, involving as it does such rarely-found niceties as and analyzed”, but doesn’t bother with specifics or even a bibliography. As diligence and good judgment. These bozos would rather take the bus, and the one. ploughs through the entries, however, the old déjà vu kicks in and once result is a kind o f reference inbreeding - sources compiled from other sources, you’ve pulled a few o f the old standards off the shelf (closer to 10 than to tens with a new set o f informational mutations popping up in each generation. o f thousands), it quickly becomes obvious that most o f the credit data in the No one, I think, would disagree that a single, massive, reliable factual Guide is derived from existing reference books. The idea seems to be to gather resource is a consummation devoutly to be wish’d. In the US, The A m erican up a whole bunch o f secondary sources (italics mine this time), and synthesize Film Institute (AFI) Catalogue, o f course, has long been the Great Red Hope (or cannibalize) them into an “authoritative” work And you thought alchemy in this area, but the API’s less-than-steadfast commitment to the project over went out with the Middle Ages. the years has caused most o f us to despair o f its eventual completion.

There’s nothing improper, per se, about building on past achievements; But hold on! Up in the sky... it’s a bird... it’s a plane... it’s “ the most it’s called “progress”. But in this case, it’s a path fraught with peril, and only important film encyclopedia ever written, compiled and published... the only a combination o f exquisite judgment and meticulous execution (neither o f definitive a n d all-encompassing film encyclopedia.in the world... an incompa­ which is anywhere in sight) would have even a snowball’s chance in hell o f rable reference work indispensable as the definitive reference work to motion success, certainly on the scale claimed for xheGuide. With this method, no pictures. Which is to say: Finally, someone has done it!” discrepancy or contradiction can possibly be resolved that hasn’t been resolved Done what? Done what??!! The Motion Picture Guide, that’s what. These already, a considerable number o f errors are simply going to be perpetuated, immodest claims are extracted, italics and all, from the foreword to this and, most insidiously, unless the transferral o f data is done carefully, an entirely SU S750 set o f big blue books - 12, count 'em, 12. “I f you have only one new body o f misinformation will be created for future generations to contend reference on the movies in your collection,” proclaims an ad flyer, it should be with. “Definitive” is such a rarefied concept that trying to get there through The Motion Picture Guide. Its authors, Jay Robert Nash and Stanley Ralph either consensus or educated guesswork - which are apparently the Guided Ross, have made a bold attempt to co-opt the field in one fell swoop, approaches to those pesky contradictions - is like trying to bicycle to the summit o f Mt. Everest. relentlessly and shamelessly promoting the Guide as the be-all and end-all o f film reference. Is it? Can it be?

Flawed methodology aside, it’s the authors’ attitude that really grates.

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WATCHING MOVIES WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!

Sure, it’s tough to pat yourself on the back while tooting your own bottom. We tolerate, even expect, horn, but even so, you might ex­ such attitudes in studies of, say, pect that they could pause long Monogram westerns or The Three enough to express at least token Stooges, but they seem shockingly Everything you always wanted to know about virtually every movie ever appreciation to the many chroni­ made—and m ore...Is in TheMotion Picture Guide.'" Available now, in a inappropriate in a work o f this monumental multi-volume set, it has become the ultimate treasure for film clers without whose prior (and nature. lovers everywhere. As a film encyclopedia, it is unsurpassed in its depth of j primary) research the Guide would There are also numerous in­ cast and credits. 53,000 films...virtually every English-language feature not have been possible. Wrong stances where the authors take criti­ film ever released is in The Motion Picture Guide. again: when Humility was being cal positions so extreme as to trash passed out, Jay and Stanley went FROM AN ADVERTISING BROCHURE FOR THE GUIDE any pretence o f “historical perspec­ back for seconds in the chutzpah tive”, or objectivity, or good taste. line. They devote several paragraphs O f Vanessa Redgrave in Isadora, o f their foreword to trashing (without naming names) some o f the very they observe that “her 6-foot frame lumbers and thunders about like an resources on which they have relied heavily. They refer to “sets o f old reviews elephant with the gout... showing thighs that should have been displayed in haphazardly compiled and without a clear cross-reference system”. Can they the Chicago stockyards. But this side o f beef is wholly unappetizing and oddly really be talking about The New Tork Times Film Reviews, which are meticu­ repulsive in every frame... Redgrave does nothing but make a fool o f herself, lously indexed by tide, personal name, and corporate name? Without men­ an unconvincing fool at that. This film was momentarily popular in the 1960s tioning it by name, they grouse that the A F I Catalogue “offers no evaluative when women’s libbers thought Redgrave and Isadora were one in [sic] the ratings or parental recommendations and lacks a point o f historical reference, same, little realizing that neither cared a hoot about their cause... both were as well as being utterly useless as a reference tool for the history o f film”. Are shamefully self-indulgent and had about as much talent as an empty tube o f they serious? lipstick.” Is this really necessary? Did John Simon ghostwrite for these guys?

The Guide, it’s claimed, will provide “endless hours o f entertainment,” “And your authors have seen the films.” This from the foreword is clearly and I ’m not saying that it doesn’t, or shouldn’t. In dozens o f books, from meant to imply that the opinions expressed in the Guide are, indeed, those o f Sarris’ The A m erican C inem a to McCarthy & Flynn’s Kings o f the Bs , the management. Now, I ’m sure that between them, Messrs Nash and Ross “reference,” “entertainment” and “opinion” values happily co-exist between have seen (and hold opinions on) thousands o f films. Me, too, and most o f my the same covers. But if you’re going to make such extravagant claims for your friends. But it seems unlikely, even if Shirley MacLaine is right, that they were work’s fa c tu a l content, you’d better “take care o f business” first. In a both Variety critics in a previous incarnation. Yet in hundreds o f cases, substantial number o f entries, for example, the promised “in-depth synopses” primarily with older films, especially pre-1950 British talkies, their opinion is are nothing o f the sort. They’re closer, in fact, to the two-or three-line uncannily similar to Variety's. Often, Your Authors even cite the same high­ summaries o f H alliwell's Film Guide (which is among the unnamed works they lights or performances as the Varié inscribes. No plagiarism, mind you - these guys aré the High Priests o f Paraphrasing - but nothing much in the way o f refer to and is criticized for its brevity). Overall, the book’s text is a sort of scruples, either. crazy-quilt hodgepodge o f biographical and “behind-the-scenes” titbits, most o f them traceable (if one cares to take the trouble) to the vast body of While I ’m on the subject o f reincarnation, it’s downright eerie how closely Hollywood histories, memoirs, and hack biographies. As Norman Mailer the Guide's synopses o f 1960s films resemble those in the A F I Catalogue might ask: fact or factoid? Our authors don’t seem to care much; they’re a lot (that’s the one that’s “utterly useless,” remember?) For that matter the credits more concerned with peppering the reader with their highly-subjective for many 1960s films seem to derive primarily from the same source. And as opinions. Lots o f opinions. Lots. long as I ’m in the vicinity o f the A F I Catalogue, let’s take a quick peek at Volume X o f the Guide (Silent Film, 1910 -1 9 3 6 ), shall we?

This is no place for an extended debate over the proper role o f personal opinion in a “reference” work, but the issue lies at the heart o f what’s Once again, “numerous historical sources” have been consulted for this fundamentally wrong with the Guide. It takes only a few minutes o f attentive “invaluable tool for interested laypersons and scholars alike”. What a joke! A browsing to observe that the ram­ random sampling o f dozens of paging “authors’ opinions” (the American films o f the 1920s re­ IN A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER OF ENTRIES THE PROMISED "IN-DEPTH quotation marks will be explained in veals only the slightest variations a moment) have been allowed to play from the corresponding entries in SYN OPSES" ARE... IN FACT TWO OR THREE LINE SUMMARIES OF H ALa major role in shaping (or misshap­ the A F I C atalogue for that dec­ ing) the entire work. The clearest L lW E L L 'S F ILM G U ID E ... OVERALL, THE BOOK'S TEXT IS A SORT OF ade. In virtually every case exam­ evidence o f this is the ‘’Miscellane­ ined, production and cast credits CRAZY-QUILT HODGEPODGE OF BIOGRAPHICAL AND "BEHIND-THEous Talkies” section at the back o f (including the order o f the latter) Volume IX. This is the graveyard - a are identical, the plot synopses SCENES" TITBITS, MOST OF THEM TRACEABLE (IF ONE CARES TO TAKE THE separate A-Z listing to which the have apparently been paraphrased TROUBLE) TO THE VAST BODY OF HOLLYWOOD HISTORIES, MEMOIRS, authors in their wisdom have ban­ and condensed from the C a ta ­ ished films “o f a minor nature,” logue and the opinions are directly AND HACK BIOGRAPHIES... OUR AUTHORS DON'T SEEM TO CARE attributable to Variety. A similar providing less information on each MUCH; THEY'RE A LOT MORE CONCERNED WITH PEPPERING THE READER survey o f entries for British films than Maltin’s erstwhile TV Movies. leaves no doubt that Denis Any such judgment calls are debat­ WITH THEIR HIGHLY-SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS. LOTS OF OPINIONS. LOTS. Gifford’s British Film Catalogue, able, o f course - why is B lazing the 1895 - 1985 has been ravaged in Western T rail (PRC 1945) in the much the same way. Toss in Lauritzen and Lundquist’s A m erican Film -Index supplement, while Border Badm en (ditto) appears in the main body? - but volumes (covering features and shorts, 1908 - 1920) and virtually all factual check out some o f the ‘’minor” films in this section: Russell’s The Devils, data, and much o f the “author’s opinion,”is easily traceable. And in this case, McBride’s Glen a n d R a n d a , Warhol’s H eat, Bakshi’s Heavy Traffic, Roeg and thousands o f films appear in the separate “Miscellaneous” section including Cammell’s Perform ance (with Roeg given sole directorial credit). Now flip Ford’s Three B ad Men, Stiller’s H otel Im perial, and Gance’s J'Accuse. Volume back to the main entries, where we find The Toung Cycle Girls (“trashy X, compiled by one Robert Connolly, is - to quote Woody Allen in B an an as odoriferous garbage”) and Weekend o f F ear (“rock-bottom product on all - a travesty o f a mockery o f two shams. counts” ). The “miscellaneous” section is not just an aberration: it’s the tip o f At the heart o f all this darkness is the index 3,170 pages in two massive volan anti-intellectual iceberg that threatens to send the whole thing to the I

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LET'S LEAVE IT AT THIS: THE M O T IO N P ICT U RE G U ID E IS THE A R O U N D film buff will presumably be loath umes - which provides the perfect sum­ THE W O R LD IN 8 0 D A Y S OF FILM REFERENCE BOOKS. LIKE THAT MIKE to shell out $750 for something mation o f the G uide’s failure, and its that might squash his TV set. underlying hypocrisy. What could possi­ TODD SPECTACULAR, THE G U ID E IS TOP-HEAVY WITH ERSATZ "EN­ Who’s left? Libraries, that’s who, bly be suspect about an index to every TERTAINMENT" VALUES, HYPED OUT OF ALL PROPORTION TO ITS and their poor unsuspecting pa­ name appearing in the credits of all the trons. (When all is said and done, film entries? I f executed responsibly and ACTUAL ACHIEVEMENT, EVEN "AWARD-WINNING" - IT TRIES TO BE this is not a victimless crime.) intelligently, nothing whatsoever - but ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE, AND SELLS THEM ALL SHORT. ITS Reference librarians are constantly this one is a nightmare. It’s not so much and conscientiously on the look­ computer-generated as computer-regur­ SHOWBIZ IN THE GUISE OF SCHOLARSHIP - NOT "DEFINITIVE", BUT out for the biggest and best gitated, and the human oversight ap­ sources. But they can’t be special­ pears to have been non-existent. In DERIVATIVE; NOT "INDISPENSABLE" BUT IRRESPONSIBLE. ists in every field, and the promo­ addition to errors o f fact and omission, tional blitz put on by the the Guide exhibits a Brobdingnagian Guidesters includes all the right stuff: not only testimonials from such notables propensity for typographical blunders; the index, which might have been used as Roger Ebert and Dick Cavett, but also complimentary comments from such to root these out, has instead enshrined them Every variant o f a name - mis­ reputable sources as The Jo u rn al o f A cadem ic Librarianship and Publishers spelling, added initial, lower/upper case discrepancy, even an extra blank space Weekly. One can perhaps disregard the whiff o f showbiz (we all know about - has resulted in a separate index entry! Carlo Di Palma’s credits are on page critical raves in movie ads), but it’s disturbing that the august American Library 705 - but don’t forget to check Carlo DiPalma on page 777. How about Association has appar- ently conferred an aw ard on the damned thing, naming Julien Duvivier, also listed as Julian Duvivier, Julien Duviver and, 61 pages ear­ it an “Outstanding Reference Source o f 1985". (Curiouser and curiouser... lier, as Julien Divivier? The flip side o f the problem is similar or identical names only Volume 1 was actually issued in 1985, and the complete set didn’t reach used by different people. The entry for “John Williams,” for example, includes the shelves o f any library until mid-1987 ).Within the library community, such credits for at least five individuals, with more credits for composer Williams citations carry a lot o f weight, and it’s depressing to contemplate how many listed under Johnny Williams and John T. Williams - the latter for Star Wars. institutions may have already used that single ALA recommendation as the The index still has some value, but “reference” has been supplanted by basis for spending $750 o f their meagre Reagan-era resources. “research.” The poor user is saddled with the burden o f checking every There’s more to say (particularly about the obfuscation created by illpossible variant spelling o f a name, or spending extra minutes or hours trying advised format choices) - but let’s leave it at this: the Motion Picture Guide is to figure out whether half the credits listed belong to two other guys. (And in the A round the World in 80 Days o f film reference books. Like that Mike Todd the Broken Promises Department: the indexing is not comprehensive, which spectacular, the Guide is top-heavy with ersatz “entertainment” values, hyped results in some oddly truncated filmographies - I mean, nine films for the out o f all proportion to its actual achievement, even “award-winning” - it tries prolific Harry Warren?) to be all things to all people, and sells them all short. Its showbiz in the guise Attempting to explain away these little quirks, the authors predictably take o f scholarship - not “definitive”, but derivative; not “indispensable” but irre­ the low road: “Slight variations in name forms have been preserved to reflect sponsible. different billing choices over the course o f a career” . Or: “Name variations Despite the foregoing, I do not regard The Motion Picture Guide as have occurred due to conflicting spellings in the wide variety o f source completely worthless. While any two-year-old knows that “big” is not the materials used to compile cast and credits.” Let’s be honest: the verification of same as “good”, there are certain undeniable advantages to having such a a ll these names would be immensely time-consuming, and might have added massive amount o f information all in one place (and indexed, too). Although unacceptable production time to a book whose hill publication had already seriously flawed, the Guide is in one sense exactly what it claims to be: an easy, been postponed by several years. But if the authors had had the slightest one-stop source for basic data on just about any English-language feature film respect for the “students, teachers, historians, critics,” etc , who they claim will that the average film buff might care to know about. But What Price flock to the Guide like the faithful to Mecca, they would have made at least a Convenience? What should the user and/or purchaser be asked to sacrifice in half-assed stab at cleaning up some o f the more egregious errors. Make no return? Objectivity, perhaps; accuracy, never! mistake about it: every single page o f the index is afflicted by this lack o f followPerhaps it’s a bit cynical, but after years o f wresding with inadequate film through. (By the way, the authors esti- mate that 180,000 names are indexed; reference works, I tend to judge new ones by a process o f negative cumulation: I ’d say that a good 15 per cent o f those are unnecessary “variants”. In fact, i.e., as the error count increases, the reliability factor sinks. On that basis, my come to think o f it, the real howlers in the index account for a lot o f the G uide’s experience with The Motion Picture Guide can be distilled into a simple piece ‘’entertainment” value!). o f advice: don’t trust it any further than you can throw it. And do your back Okay, okay... it’s a bad book, but let’s not kid ourselves: it’s here to stay, a favour - throw it one volume at a time.

■ and like the 2,000-pound gorilla, it can sit wherever it likes. The question really seems to be: who will let it in the door? A serious researcher will quickly see An earlier version o f this article was published in The Jo u rn a l o f Film a n d Video. through its pretences and use it cautiously, if at all, and your garden-variety

TA K E A D V A N TA G E O F C IN EM A PA PER S’ SP EC IA L O F F E R O F

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