Cinema Papers No.117 June 1997 by UOW Library

■ mi

94361844

LBOüRNE(03) 96463044 (075) 58! 6543 E(65) 2241827 M M (6221) 71) 6403KUALA LUMPUR |603) 6326202

»*> *«*!

ontents

RESTORATION It’s exciting, frustrating, expensive and painstaking, but someone has to do it. R obert A. H arris and J ames C. K atz talk to J ames S herlock about restoring the great classics and the hidden surprises of studio vaults, such as Kim Novak's famous dress from Vertigo 18

Bi-Cultural Visions by

M ary C o l b e r t

Not a ‘nice little socialrealist’: M onica Pelhzzan on converting her emotional and cultural baggage into a cathartic film canvas, and her first feature, A Fistful o f Flies 22

Aleka Doesn’t Live Here Anymore by

C h r i s t o s T s i ol k a

'Wogs and Aussies’, in and out. A trans-suburban express through the landscapes of recent Australian cinema 30

inbits

lost & foun

inreviei

inconference

The Man from Kangaroo

F I L M S : The Leading Man, Private Parts, True Love and Chaos, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

PAUL KALINA

Script guru Ken D ancyger Shooting Paradise Road. Cannes commercials. BA RR IE SMITH

KATHRYN MILLAR D

fe stiva ls

inpost

Hong Kong

The L ast o f the Ryans, Madness o f Two T E L E -FE A T U R E S:

G E O F F R E Y GARDNER

sim p ly in Paris Vidéothèque R O S S C O O PER

14 M ick Connolly Adam Benjamin Elliot

28 33

B O O K S : Janies Stewart, What I Really What to Do is Direct, Italianamerican: The Scorsese Family Cookbook-, books received

\ \ M edia 100.

BA RRIE SMITH

Inbits

FFC CHIEF EXECUTIVE STEPS DOWN

ohn Morris, Chief Executive of the

Australian Film Finance Corporation, has not renewed his contract, which expires in June 1997. Morris has been working with the FFC for eight years.

N E W S , V I E W S , A N D MOR E N E W S , ET C. PRE-SELECTION DITCHED he Australian Film Institute has announced a change in the selec tion process for feature films, after consulting with industry guilds, unions and associations, the AFC and the FFC. Since 1987, nominees for the AFI Awards have been chosen by pre selection committees representing the various professional and technical bodies (see Cinema Papers, no. 113, December 1996, SPAA supplement, p. 8), and from these choices accredited members have voted for the winner in each category. This year, the pre selection process has been dispensed with, and now all films entered into the AFI Awards will be shortlisted and judged by AFI members. This means a number of things. First, the Australian Rim Festival will screen all feature films entered, and all AFI mem bers will be eligible to both nominate the finalists, and vote for the Best Film Award. They do, however, have to see

all feature films entered, and declare if they have seen any of these outside the AFF, to be eligible to vote. Accredited AFI members who have feature film credits are allowed to vote in specialized categories, depending on their accreditation. For example, directors and producers are eligible to vote in all technical and professional categories; actors and screenwriters are eligible to vote for Best Film, Direc tion, all Acting and both Screenwriting awards; cinematographers are able to vote in Cinematography, Production Design and Costume Design; and so on. These categories have been deter mined in agreement with the relevant guilds, associations and unions. This also means that the AFF will start touring in August, rather than September as in previous years, with nominations announced in October, and the Awards presented in November. Pre-selection for non-feature films will remain the same as previous years.

THE CREATEST SHOW ON EARTH!?! V illa g e C o a im o OpectA he Village Casino cinema complex at the Crown Casino in Melbourne has opened, offering 24-hour screenings and 14 auditoriums, including 4 luxury Gold Class cinemas, and a foyer bigger and gaudier than the Jam Factory. Roadshow’s Director of Design, Tibor Hubay, who was responsible for the Jam Factory, has done the same for the new Casino complex, and features include a leatherclad sculpture of Cat Woman, Bugs Bunny and Superman sculptures, a bronze piece titled Film Director, a 5.5m polyurethane foam, fibreglass and resin sculpture, Future Man, and a Portrait Gallery of such notable (but predictable) stars as Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Rita Hayworth.

To commemorate such an auspicious occasion, Cinema Papers has compiled a list of 10 films that should be screening at this new complex, as soon as National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation has finished its run.

Atlantic City

The Gambler

Louis Ma lle , 1980

Ka r e l R e is z , 1974

La Bate de*Angc*

The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo

Ba y of A n gels , Ja cq u es D em y , 1962

Bob le Flambcur Bob

the Gam bler , J ean -

The Only Game in Town

P ie r r e Me lv ille , 1955

G eorg e S t e v e n s , 1970

C flM IM O

Shanghai Triad

Ma rtin S c o r s e s e , 1996

Z hang Y im ou , 1995

Dirty Money

Sqnixxy Taylor

ean -P ie r r e

S teph en Ro b e r t s , 1935

Me lv ille , 1972

K evin Do b so n , 1982

SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL SHORT FILM FINALISTS ANNOUNCED ydney Film Festival Director Paul Byrnes announced the finalists for this year’s Dendy Awards for Aus tralian Short Films. Three films have been selected in each category, and winners will be announced after the screenings on Friday 6 June at the State Theatre. Finalists are as follows:

D o c u m e n t a r y Ca t e g o r y

Hospital - an Unhealthy Business (Catherine Marciniak) An Imaginary Life (Don Featherstone) The Christmas Cake (Katey and David Grusovin) Fiction (Under 15 mins ) Category Soy (Glenn Fraser) Down, Rusty, Down (John Curran) Thump (Hayley Cloake) Fiction (Over 15 mins ) Category Cabbie of the Year (Mick Connolly) Skud (Donna Swan) Square One (Robert Herbert) G e n e r a l Ca t e g o r y

Five Hundred Acres (Lucy Lehmann) The Sapphire Room (Sean O’Brien) Uncle (Adam Benjamin Elliot) 1997 Yoram G ross Animation Award Uncle Heartbreak Motel (Greg Holfeld) Space (Warwick T. Bennett) 1997 Et h in ic A f f a ir s C o m m is s io n A w a r d

Acquiring a Taste for Rafaella (Sandra Lepore) The Butler (Anna Kannava) The Miniskirted Dynamo (Rivka Hartman)

, iu n e

19 9 7

n o :

117

116 Argyle St, Fitzroy, VIC, Australia 3065 PO Box 2221, Fitzroy MDC, VIC 3065 Tel: (03) 9416 2644 Fax: (03) 9416 4088 email: cp@parkhouse.com.au ’• Editor: Scott Murray Deputy Editor: Paul Kalina Editorial Assistance: Tim HunterAdvertising: Terry Haebich Subscriptions: Mina Carattoli Accounts: Tory Taouk Proofreading: Arthur Salton Office Cat: Oddspot Legal: Dan Pearce (Holding Redlich) MTV Board of Directors: Ross Dimsey (Chairman), Natalie Miller, Matthew Learmonth, Penny Attiwill, Michael Dolphin Founding Publishers: Peter Beilby, Scott Murray, Philippe Mora , Design & Production: Parkhouse Publishing Pty Ltd Tel: (03) 9347 8882 Printing: Printgraphics Pty Ltd Film: CondorijGroup Distribution: Network Distribution © COPYRIGHT 1997 MTV PUBgSHING LIMITED .S i^ e d articles represent the views of the authors and not necessan ly those of the editor and publisheritWhile every care is taken with m anuscripts and m aterials supplied to the magazine; neither the editor nor the publisher can accept liability for any loss or damage vyhich may ariseVfliisim agazin e m ay not be reproduced in whole or part without the express permission of the copyright owners. Cinema: Papers is publishedevery month by MTV Publishing Limited-,1 1 6 Argyle St, Rtzroy; VlG;.Australia 3065-

COMMISSION

CINEMA PAPERS IS PUBLISHED WITH FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FROM THE AUSTRALIAN FILM COMMISSION A nI.CINEMEDIA

contributors Mä r y Co l b e r t -is a-S y d n e y w riter ON FILM

Ross C o o p er js

a pa in te r and w riter

S o r r en to ; he co -a u th o r ed (w ith A ndrew Pike ) A ustralian Film 1900-1974 livin g in

Ge o ffrey Ga rdn er is a form er director Melb o u rn e Film Fe st iv a l -

of th e

B rian Mc Fa r la n e is an A s s o c ia t e P r o f e s s o r in th e E n g lish D epa rtm en t a t Mo nash Un iv e r s it y P e t e r Ma lo n e is d ir ecto r o f th e Ca th o lic Film O ffice K a th r yn Milla r d is th e w riter and DIRECTOR OF THE RECENT ONE-HOUR dram a , Pa rklan ds

CALL FOR ENTRIES

D ebo ra h Nis k i is a S y d n e y film m a ker

he Honolulu Underground Film Festival, which will run from 16 - 23 November 1997, is calling for entries for its third annual Festival. All genres are accepted in both short and feature-film formats, and entries, comprising a VHS-NTSC preview tape and press materials, must be for warded to the HUFF by 1 July. Entry forms are available from: The Honolulu Underground Film Festival, PO Box 240-120, Honolulu, HI 96824-0120, USA. Or ring Marco Corrado in Sydney, (61.2) 9365 2389.

{Hell , Texas and Home)

Ja m es S h e r lo c k is a Me lb o u r n e - b a sed FILM HISTORIAN Ba r r ie S m ith is a S y d n e y d ir e c t o r , WRITER AND PHOTOGRAPHER Ma r g a r e t S m ith is a S y d n e y w riter ^ * AND DIRECTOR C h r is t o s T s io l k a s is a w r ite r an d a CRITIC OF POPULAR CULTURE,L^O-AUTHOR o f JuMpCuf^if w ith S a s h a S o ldato w , AND THE.NOVEL LOAdED, BiElNGFILMED ^ a s Head -On b y A na K o k k in o s *'

CI NEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

T racks A ustralia So u n d Pr o d u c tio n Pty Ltd

46 A lbany Street , C rows N est NSW 2065 T el : (02) 9906 2960 Fa x : (02) 9906 4128

iii bits MANDOLIN CHANGES FOCUS ydney’s Mandolin Cinema has changed its focus, and will continue to support independent Australian film and screen culture. Along with the establishing of a weekly evening devoted to new

Australian short films and documentaries, it will also screen neglected features, as with Mr Reliable earlier this year.

OPEN CHANNEL COURSES pen Channel in Victoria is holding a number of courses in multimedia and animation over the winter months. Some of the courses offered are: Animating with Macromedia Director; Multimedia Authoring with Macromedia Director; Writing for Interactive

O bÜ M ary

BRIAN MAY

Multimedia; Sound for Interactive Multimedia; Animate!; Even more Multimedia and Animation!; Producing Interactive Multimedia. For dates, times, costs and application forms, contact Open Channel, (61.3) 9419 5111, or email openchannel@opehchannel.pJg.au.

(1987). For all his varied work, including his 13 years with the ABC Show Band, May will be best remem bered for his atmospheric and suspenseful scores for horror films and thrillers. As Simon Wincer writes in his liner notes for the CD release of the Harlequin score, “Once again Brian May has proved that he is a master in this genre.”

A L IA S in

f i l m

APPOINTMENTS

he Film and Television Institute (WA) Inc has

announced the appointment of Simon Ambrose as the new Chief Executive Officer. Ambrose had been involved at management level in arts and cultural events and festivals in Western Australia for some time before his recent appointment.

ALSTON’S REASSURANCE

n late April, a film industry delegation met with Federal Arts Minister Senator Richard Alston regarding the mooted funding cuts to the film industry, and was reassured that alleged cuts were incorrect. Comprising the delegation were director Gillian Armstrong, writer Geoffrey Atherden, producers Matt Carroll and Jan Chapman, actors Judy Davis and Deborra-Lee Furness, and Media Alliance Joint Federal secretary, Anne Britton. Alston allayed fears that the FFC and the AFC’s budgets would be cut by 10 percent, that funding programs such as the Commerical Television Produc tion Fund, SBS Independent and Film Australia’s National Interest Program would be reduced or abolished, and that tax concessions 10BA or their equivalent would be discontinued. Alston also guaranteed that the film and television industry would be quarantined from funding cuts for three years in the May budget.

THE FILM QUEENSLAND-PFTC MERGER rian May, one of Australia’s most successful and respected film composers, died on 25 April 1997. In a wide-ranging and multi-faceted career, May worked with many of Australia’s finest feature directors, including George Miller on Mad Max (1979) and Mad Max 2 (1981); Simon Wincer on Snapshot (1979), Harlequin (1980) and the miniseries The Last Frontier (1986); and Richard Franklin on The True Story of Eskimo Nell (1975), Patrick (1978), Roadgames (1981) and Cloak and Dagger (1984). May is also noted for such scores as for Thirst (1979), Nightmares (1980), The Survivor (1981), Race for the Yankee Zephyr (1981), Turkey Shoot (1982), Sky Pirates (1986), Frog Dreaming (1986), Dead Sleep (non-theatrical, 1989), Bloodmoon (1990) and Hurricane Smith (1991). His television credits include The Last Outlaw (1980), Return to Eden (1983), A Dangerous Life (1988) and Darlings o f the Gods (1989). May worked on many foreign films as well, including Death Before Dishonour (1987), Missing in Action 2 - The Beginning (1985) and Steel Dawn

F»AUL£OX'S.

he battle around the merging of Film Queens land with the Pacific Film and Television Commission continues to provoke concern in the state’s film industry, and a letter-writing campaign has been implemented by Chris Houghton, State of the Art Inc. The major concern is that PFTC is not interested in developing Queensland’s total film industry, but is more interested in attracting overseas business, and the money it brings. Also /Tearing concern is the allegation that JRobynyJamje§i CEO of PFTC, has already been -promised the same position with the new commis sion. With PFTC very clear in how it wants the merger to go, the recommendations expressed in a letter from Houghton to Philip Pike, Senior Policy Adviser for The Arts, are being reaffirmed. In late April, a letter of endorsement was sent to the Under-Treasurer, Doug McTaggart, from Ruth Jones, National Representative for the Australian Screen Culture Network and General Manager of the Australian Film Institute. This letter reinforced the recommendations to appoint a new CEO for the created commission, and for that position to be advertised nationally if not internationally, angjthe appointment of a new board that reflects the experi ence of the total Queensland film industry.

Even though the government has appointed Teena Roberts as head of an implementation team, which has established two core groups of film industry representatives to help inform the process, rumours that PFTC has substantial influence within the government have been plentiful.

irector Paul Cox, whose latest film is Lust & Revenge, talks about films that are important to him.

I saw some twenty-five, thirty years ago a film called SHADOWS OF OUR FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS [TeniZabytykh Predjov, Sergei Paradzhanov, 1964], and it was an amazing experi ence. I could not remember the name of the filmjik couldn’t remember the story very much. It’s only throughout the years that certain images started to reappear. Last year, the Toronto Film Festival invited a few people to come and show their favourite film. I started to do some research and finally rediscov ered Paradzhanov. I had never seen the film again, so I went to Toronto and they managed to find a print. I introduced the film, and then sat with an audience, watching this amazing, amazing film. It’s a very, very beautiful, marvellous-piece, and I was totally correct. I thought I may have been making a fool of myself, but it was.a very wonder ful experience. That is a great movie and I find it so extraordinary that Paradzhanov’s films are not known. Every now and then I do these tours through the States. I go to universities and film schools, and I mention Bergman or Fellini or Buhuel, and the students ask, “Who are they?” It’s like study ing English and never even hearing of Shakespeare. It’s quite extraordinary; it’s all Steven Spielberg and Jean-Claude Van Damme, and looking forward to the next Quentin Taran tino. I’m sorry, I just can’t take any of that shit. Quentin Tarantino has taught me nothing about life. After all, when you work in film, you want to expand your horizon a little, and I’m not looking forward to the next Quentin Tarantino. In fact, the next one is a heap of shit, which was expected, but the people get totally carried away with it. ; There’s nothing about the human condition in those kinds of films; it’s nonsense. I don’t mind that there’s room for all this, but the exaggeration and celebration of that gives me the horrors. But I find this a great pity for people who enter the cinema and want.to make films. Why don’t they know Paradzhanov? How many of them reallyfeow anything? 1think Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA (1966), for instance, is a very important film for me, because it exposes all these extra lay ers. That’s why film is such a great discovery and marvellous gift to all of us - the most abused and misused gift in the world.

G I N I M A f l ^ P E R S • JUNE 1997

NEW CineMinima

Ded°Hght 500

for 1998

7 -6 3 m m U 0 N

Canon

NEW

gear for better images

yncforKeylink

. ° L t v o /u t /o ,

M t O N CO D E

LEMAC FILM @ VIDEO EQUIPM ENT SYDNEY 14-16 Punch Street ^RTARMON NSW 2064 'hone +612 9438 4488 a x +612 9438 3399 ;mac@lemac.com.au

MELBOURNE 277 Highett Street RICHMOND VIC 3121 Phone +613 9429 8588 Fax +613 9428 3336 www.lemac.com.au/~lemac

vifSiaT effects ffo n tie r|fm f no precedents; only q u ilt achievers

N & fm

boundaries

To forge ahead into these unchartered plJ^p* ^kf^ds confidence and insight that only ex p er^^^^^^B ro vid e; emai l phone

info@photon.com.au

07 55 885 776%fa x : 07

jgOffnr-iIrasionists n^W®%roudly K s JI botot of crafting images*a ending imagination with light.**« Piasters of the art j j i ^ scie n ce of illu s io n , Photon Stockman centi M M s to lead in dramatic Film & effects fo» Ans-trWfeai

G. Hall, The Cars that Ate Pans Number 2 (April 1974) Censo

rch-April 1975)

Green, Ross Wood, Byron Haskin,

Albie Thoms on surf movies, Charles

Number 8 (March-April 1976)

Pat Lovell, Richard Zanuck, Sydney Pollack, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Phillip Adams, Don

Lemon, Miklos Jancso, Luchino Visconti, Caddie, The Devil's Playground Number 10 (Sept-Oct 1976) Nagisa Oshima, Philippe gay cinema Number 11 (January 1977) Emile De Antonio, Jill Robb, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Roman Polanski, Saul Bass, The Picture Show Donald Sutherland, Bert Deling, Piero Tosi, John Dankworth, John Scot, Days of Hope, The Getting of Wisdom Number 13 (July 1977) Seawell, Peter Sykes, Bernardo Bertolucci, In Search of Anna Number 14 (October 1977) Phil Noyce, Matt Carroll, Eric Rohmer, Terry Jackman, Cannes Mania

Wave, Blue Fire Lady Number 15 (January 1978) Tom Cowan, Truffaut, John Faulkner, Stephen Wallace, the Taviani brothers, Sri Lankan film, The C h a n t ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ M 16 (April-June 1978)

Gunnel Lindblom, John Duigan, Steven Spielberg, Tom Jeffrey, The Africa Project, Swedish cinema, Dawn!, Patrick Number 17 ( A u g - S e p ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ | Night the Prowler Number 18 (Oct-Nov 1978) John Lamond, Sonia Borg, Alain Tanner, Indian cinema, D

/ m

¿^Jeremy Thomas, Andrew Sarris, sponsored documentaries, Blue Fin Number 20 (March-April 1979) Ken May-June 1979)

Vietnam on Film, the Cantrills, French cinema, Mad Max, Snapshot, The Odd Angry S h o ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ M

¿horns, Stax, Alison's Birthday Number 23 SOLD OUT Number 24 (Dec-Jan 1980) Brian Tre n ch ard -Sm ^ ^^ H ib-March 1980)

David Puttnam, Janet Strickland, Everett de Roche, Peter Faiman, Chain R e a c tio i^ ^ U

alian nationalism, Japanese cinema, Peter Weir, Water Under the Bridge Number 27 (June-Ju^ ', Grendel Grendel Grendel Number 28 (Aug-Sept 1980) Bob Godfrey, Diane Kurys, Tim Burns, hmg, Roadga, TDec 1980-Jan 1981)

ri Windt, Edward Woodward, Lino Brocka, Stephen Wallace, Philippine cinema, Cruising,

Sam Fuller;

¿I Lester, Canada supplement, The Chain Reaction, Blood Money Number 31 (March-

vn, looking in on Dressed to Kill, The Last

¿an as villain, the new generation Number 32 (May-June 1981) Judy David, David

lid Rush, Swinburne, Cuban cinema, Public Enemy A/l

ber 33 (June-July 1976)

fez Alea, Edward Fox, Gallipoli, Roadgames Numbers 34 and

ary 1982)

Iter' Morant, Body Heat, The Man from Snowy River Number 37 (, ■38 (June 1982)

John Duigan, the new tax concessions, Robert Altman,

Kevin Dobson, Brian Kearney, Sonia Hofmann, Michael Rubbo, Blow

jJacki Weaver, Carlos Saura, Peter Ustinov, women in drama, Monkey Grip ms, law and insurance, Far East Number 39 (August 1982) Helen Morse,

Geoff Burrowes, George Miller, James Ivory, Phil Noyl

ITard Mason, Anja Breien, David Millilkan, Derek Granger, Norwegian cinema,

e Never Never Number 40 (October 1982) Henri Safran, Michael Ritchie,

Pauline Kael, Wendy Hughes, Ray Barrett, My Dinner with Andre, The Return ofCa]

cember1982)

Igor Auzins, Paul Schrader, Peter Tammer, Liliana Cavani,

Colin Higgins, The Year of Living Dangerously Number 42 (March 1983) Mel Gibso

es Varda, copyright, Strikebound, The Man from Snowy River Number

43 (May-June 1983) Sydney

v l He Might Hear You Number 44-45 (April 1984) David Stevens, Simon

Pollack, Denny Lawrence, Graeme Clifford, The Dismiss

Wincer, Susan Lambert, a personal history of Cinema Papers, Street Kids Nui

ssell Mulcahy, Alan J. Pakula, Robert Duvall, Jeremy Irons, Eureka

Stockade, Waterfront, The Boy in the Bush, A Woman Suffers, Street Hero Nj

iwenstein, Wim Wenders, David Bradbury, Sophia Turkiewicz, Hugh

Hudson, Robbery Under Arms Number 48 (Oct-Nov 1984) Ken Cameron, Mic

s, Bodyline, The Slim Dusty Movie Number 49 (December 1984) Alain

Resnais, Brian McKenzie, Angela Punch McGregor, Ennio Morricone, Jane

umber 50 (Feb-March 1985)

Borowczyk, Peter Schreck, Bill Conti, Brian May, The Last Bastion, Bliss Numbi

Stephen Wallace, Ian Pringle, Walerian

rarrison Ford, Noni Hazlehurst, Dusan Makavejev, Emoh Ruo, Winners,

Morris West's The Naked Country, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Robbery Under A

ohn Schlesinger, Gillian Armstrong, Alan Parker, soap operas, TV news,

film advertising, Don't Call Me Girlie, For Love Alone, Double Sculls Number 53 (Septei

Nicolas Roeg, Vincent Ward, Hector Crawford, Emir Kusturica, NZ film

and TV, Return to Eden Number 54 (November 1985) Graeme Clifford, Bob Weis, John Boom?

ran, rock videos, Wills and Burke, The Great Bookie Robbery, The Lancaster

Miller Affair Number 55 (January 1986) James Stewart, Debbie Byrne, Brian Thompson, Paul

rek Meddings, tie-in marketing. The Right Hand Man, Birdsville Number 56

(March 1986)

Fred Schepisi, Dennis O'Rourke, Brian Trenchard-Smith, John Hargreaves, Dead-end

58 (July 1986)

The More Things Change.... Kangaroo, Tracy Number 57 SOLD OUT Number Woody Allen, Reinhard Hauff, Orson Welles, the Cinémathègue Française, The Fringe Dwellers, Great Expectations: The Untold Story, The Last Frontier Number 59

(September 1986)

Robert Altman, Paul Cox, Lino Brocka, Agnes Varda, the AFI Awards, The Movers Number 60 (November 1986) Australian television, Franco Zeffirelli, Nadia Tass, Bill

Bennett, Dutch cinema, movies by microchip, Otello Number 61 (January 1987) Alex Cox, Roman Polanski, Philippe Mora, Martin Arminger, film in South Australia, Dogs in Space, Howling III Number 62 (March 1987)^|^^^iolence, David Lynch, Cary Grant, ASSA conference, production barometer, film finance, The Story of the Kelly Gang Number 63 (May 1987) Gillian Armstrong, Antony Ginjj vood, Elmore Leonard, Troy Kennedy Martin, The Sacrifice, Landslides, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Jilted Number 64 (July 1987) Nostalgia, Dennis Hopper, Mel I

¿¡an Trenchard Smith, chartbusters, Insatiable Number 65 (September 1987) Angela Carter, Wim Wenders, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Derek Jarman, j^s, Poor Man's Orange Number 66 (November 1987) Australian screenwriters, cinema and China, James Bond: part 1, James Clayden, Video, ¿p's That Girl Number 67 (January 1988) John Duigan, James Bond: part 2, George Miller, Jim Jarmusch, Soviet cinema, women in film, Iroke, Send A Gorilla Number 68 (March U l| ^ la rth a Ansara, Channel 4, Soviet cinema: part 2, Jim McBride, Glamour, Ghosts Of The ! 1988) Sex, death and family f ilm s ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ f c ^ m composers, Vincent Ward, David Parker, Ian Bradley, Pleasure Domes Number

Fred Schepisi, Wes Craven,

Shame screenplay part 1 Number 71 (January 1989) Yahoo Serious, David

nation of Christ, Philip B /lay 1989)

Dorrit, Australian sci-fi movies, 1988 mini-series, Aromarama, Celia,

Cannes '89, Q

Prisoner of St. Petersburg, Frank Pierson, Pay TV Number 74 (July

vood, Chinese cinema, P

enplay Number 75 (September 1989) Sally

Edens Lost, Pet Sematary,

Wincer,

Tes, Bangkok Hilton, John Duigan, Fj Dennis Whitburn, Brian Williams, Don McLennan, Breaki

Peter Greenaway Peter Weir

The Cook..., Michel Ciment, Bangkok Hilton, Barlow

SO (August 1990) C a n n e ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ k v i e w ,

Greencard, Pauline Chan, Gus Van Sant and Drugsti

icem ber 1990) Ian Pringle Isabelle E b e ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ L A t My Table, Martin •rt III, Barbet Schroeder, Reversal of Fortune,' Black Robe, Raymond Hollis Lo igford, Backsliding Nous, The Silence of the Lambs, Flynn, Dead to I 1World, Anthony Houkinï» tsi: d Number rrke, Good Woman of Bangkok, Susan Dermody, un"1 :-:T Number

Scorsese and Goodfellas, Presumed Innocent Ni Number 83 (May 1991) 84 (August 1991)

Australia at Cannes, Gil,

James Cameron and Termi,

85 (November 1991)

Down

monograph,

Jocelyn Moorhouse,

ouri: Thelma & Louise] independent exhibition

86 (January 1992)

Romper Stomper, The Nostradamus Kid,

iw, HDTV and Super 16 Number 87 (March 1 9 9 2 ) J ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ H b e r g , Hook, George

Negus and The Red Unknown, Richard

nema Number 88 (May-June 1992) Strictly B a U ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ E / d r e a m Believer, Wim

Wender's Until The End of the World,

nes '92, David Lynch, Vitali Kanievski, G ia m ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ K n e c t i o n s , teen movies

debate Number 90 (October 1992) 77rj

itephen Elliott: Frauds, Giorgio

John Frankenheimer's Year of the Gi

!) Cli

Beach, Australia's first films: part first films: part 2 Number 93 (May 3 Number 94 (August 1993) Cannei (October I993)

Lynn-Marie Milburi|

films: part 5 Number 96 (Decembi first films: part 6 Number 97-8 (Apr?

’eckle:■

in Australian Cinema,

nforgiven; Raul Ruiz, G e o r g e J J ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ V i c k 's Love in Limbo, On the orenzo’s

,d The Pit mo, Laurie]

Avid,

mi and Reset vir Dogs, Paul

Number

& Dreams, FranLIm on the sclenceoH^|news, The Custodian, documentary supplement, Tnm Zubricki, John Hughes, Australia's fiiM ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ B ; v ie w of film in Q u e e n s l a n d / e ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ B l^ n d Donald Crombie, Rough Diamonds, A u s t r ^ ^ | ersary ouble issue with New Zealand supplement, SimtHT VVincer and Lightning Jack, Richard Franklin on le a v in g J ^ ^ ^ H

Australia's first films: part 7 Number 99 (Jum

^ Js lo w s k i, Ken G. Hall Tribute, cinematography supplement, Geoffrey Burton, Pauline Chan and Traps, A u s t r a j ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ J Part 8 Number 100 (August 1994) Cannes '94, N S W lÙ f l^ ^ M Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddah, The Sum of Us, Spider & Rose, film and the digital world, A u s t r a li a j ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ l

9 Number 101 (October 1994) Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, 102 (December 1994)

torian supplement, P. J. Hogan and Muriels Wedding, Ben Lewin and Lucky Break, Australia's f i r s U j ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ H

Once Were Warriors, films we love, Back of Beyond, Cecil Holmes, Lindsay Anderson, Body Melt, AFC supplement, Spider & Rose,

Number 103 (March 1995)

Little Women, Gillian Armstrong, Queensland supplement, Geoffrey Simpson, Heavenly Creatures, Eternity, Australia's

Cannes Mania, Billy's Holiday, Angel Baby, Epsilon, Vacant Possession, Richard Franklin, Australia's First Films: Part 12 Number 105 (August McKenzie, Slawomir Idziak, Cannes Review, Gaumont Retrospective, Marie Craven, Dad & Dave Number 106 (October 1995) Gerard Lee Neil, The Small Man, Under the Gun, AFC low budget seminar Number 107 (December 1995) George Miller and Chris Noonan talk tigue cinema Number 108 (February 1996) Conjuring John Hughes' What I Have Written, Cthulu, The Top 100 Australian Films, Griffiths runs the gamut, Toni Collette and Cost, Sundance Film Festival, Michael Tolkin, Morals and the Mutoscope Number 110 (June 1996) Rolf de Heer travels to Cannes, Clara Law's ¡Lome,

Love liber

Number

Scott Hicks

112 (October 1996) Lawrence Johnston's Life, Return of the M averlcksJ^ensland Supplement Part 1, Sighting the Unseen, Richard Lowenstein Number 113 Erighteners, ber 115 (April 1997) John Seale and The English Patient, Noyce and The Saint, Heaven's Burning.

SUBSCRIPTION FORM* JUNE 1997

Subscribe now, receive Cinema Papers every month and save up to 20% off newsstand price, offer ends 1 J uly 1997.

Become a (© Subscriber I i ] L & \ )

1 1

ÌS S U 6 S

3 t

1 0 %

O f f !

$ 6 8 . 8 0

( n o r m a l l y $76.45)

2 2

i s s u e s

e t

1 5 %

O f f !

$ 1 2 9 . 9 5

( n o r m a l l y $ 152 .90)

3 3

i s s u e s

e t

2 0 %

O f f !

$ 1 8 3 . 4 5

( n o r m a l l y $ 229.35)

7 t 5 U

Renewal?

B a c k issues: $6.00 each Issue Nos required: Total no. of issues:

Total Cost $

N a m e ....

..... I ................................................

Enclosed is my cheque for $ .......................................... 'jgk..............

T it le .......

........................................................

or please debit my

Company

....................... ............ ...................

Card No..................................

Address .

........... .......... .................................

Expiry D a te ........................................................

Country ;

Post C o d e ...................

Tel (H )....

(W )...............................................

EDBankcard

D M astercard ,

DVisacard

......... ...............||....

Sig n a tu re ..................... ...................................... ..................... ...............

Cheques should be made payable to MTV Publishing Limited and mailed to P0 Box 2221 Fitzroy MDC Australia 3065. All overseas orders should be accompanied by Bank Drafts in Australian Dollars Only. Please allow 4-6 weeks for processing. Phone or fax Cinema Papers for all overseas rates.

inbits PO BOX 2221 FITZROY MDC VIC 3065

email: cp@parkhouse.com.au

NEW SFRO NT BACK ON THE FRONT PACE! Dear Editor , Ian Stocks’ article on Newsfront[Cinema Papers, no. 115, April 1997, pp. 20-5, 467.] gave the appearance, via copious footnotes, of being thoroughly researched. What a pity it is riddled with inaccuracies. Its credibility is further undermined by not seeking Philip [sic] Noyce’s opin ion on events. As he was the director, involved in the development, writing and editing of the screenplay, his view of events would seem essential. Perhaps another 20 years needs to lapse before Cinema Papers publishes the real sto ry-that is, if the silverfish haven’t got to the production company’s files first. Yours sincerely David Elfick, Producer, and Richard Brennan, Associate Producer

Ian S tocks r e p lie s : The note from David Elfick and Richard Brennan is a typical blanket rebuttal designed to raise doubts about all the facts contained in my article. This is because many of my conclusions cannot be accepted by Elfick. When I first con tacted Elfick, I told him the piece was to be about the notions of authorship of film, specifically from the scriptwriter’s viewpoint. I quoted him accurately in the article and sent a copy of it when it was still at draft stage. I had a number of anguished calls from him after this asking me not to mention Philippe [MoraJ’s involvement and to increase the amount of expertise he claimed for himself before starting pro duction of Newsfront, and to “talk to Phil about it all”. I was not able to do this because, despite a number of calls to Sydney to try and set up meetings, Phil was never available. I was forced to rely on previously published material. Elfick never offered me access to his “files” on the production and I had to source copies of the script elsewhere. These copies from the Ellis and Brooksbank archives prove conclusively that: one, Philippe did contribute to the concept and develop ment of Newsfront and was even listed in one draft document as director; two, by all

AUSTRALIAN FILMS AT CANNES hree Australian films travelled to Cannes this year, but only one was a feature in Compétition. Saman tha Lang’s début feature, The Well (see Cinema Papers, no. 116, May 1997), was selected for official Com pétition , while Stephan Elliott’s follow-up to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Wel come to Woop-Woop (formerly The Big Red) had a midnight screening out of competition. In the short film competi tion was Justin Case’s The Final Cut.

SHINE'S BAFTA SUCCESS ongratulations again to Geoffrey Rush for his performance as David Helfgott in Shine, and this time for winning the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Actor Award. Roger Savage, sound specialist extraordinaire and owner of the Mel bourne-based SoundFirm company, also won a BAFTA Award, for Best Achievement in Sound for Shine. Although he was pleased to be nomi nated, the win caught him by surprise.

ST KILDA FILM FESTIVAL RESULTS

accounts Noyce did not “write” the script of Newsfront but attempted another draft which was discarded completely. He may have edited the Ellis screenplay prior to, or in the process of, production but did not substantially change its content. Neverthe

losing night of the 14th St Kilda Film Festival in Melbourne saw awards presented to outstanding short films entered and screened over its four days. The awards presented are as follows:

less, he and Elfick agreed that Noyce should get the screen credit. What I tried to do in the article (and I do not claim it was a perfect process) was

Faces (Ben Ford)

to examine the trail of claims to authorship of Newsfront. A piece of industrial archaeology if you like. If there is a more plausible account of the process to be given then I am sure the pages of Cinema Papers are open to them - despite Elfick having said to me on the phone after the publication of the article, “You should never have given the piece to those Melbourne people because they would sup port Mora.” If Elfick and Brennan are serious about “the Truth” then I suggest they make their “files” accessible before they are devoured by silverfish.

Best S hort Film Film V ictoria Craft Award 500 Acres (Lucy Lehmann)

A udience Choice Award Stitched (Gregor Jordan)

Best Documentary The Needy and the Greedy (Liz Burke)

Best Directing Robert Herbert (Square One)

T he Editor a d d s :

Best Performance in a Leading Role

David Elfick, a fine producer and director, needs a long holiday if he seriously believes Cinema Papers has any interest in promoting a Melbourne-born

Teo Gebert (Square One)

scriptwriter over a Sydney one. Cinema Papers has no interest in preferencing any one version of history, and the pages of the magazine are as open to Elfick as they are to anyone with an

Mick Connolly (Cabbie of the Year)

interesting story to tell.

Best Editing

Dear Editor , I read with interest Ian Stocks’ article on the history of the development of Newsfront, but found the statement attributed to David Elfick that “Michael Thornhill and David Roe [at the New South Wales Film Corporation] were keen to tamper with the film” pretty strange, to say the least. I didn’t even join the Cor poration until the film was in post-production and, as for Mike Thornhill, to the best of my knowledge, other than expressing concern about the inordinate length of the screenplay, was an enthusiastic champion of the film and did a great deal to secure a commitment from the NSWFC to invest in the first place. I’m not aware of any attempt to intrude into the creative process whatsoever by any director or official of the NSWFC. Yours sincerely David Roe

C IN EM A P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

f you’re quick, you can get to Box Office Posters’ auction on Sunday, 1 June at the Manresa Function Centre, 331 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn, Victoria. On offer are original movie posters for the three James Dean features, East of Eden, itw Tint HAS COMEFOB Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. Amongst the 275 items up for auction are posters from Casablanca, The Ten Command ments, Funny Face, Star Wars and the Australian classics, Smiley and Jedda.

Best Original S creenplay

Highly Commended for Direction Herman Bornas (America)

Palm Door Award Meantime (Galea McGregor), Soliloquy of Dale Cunningham (Samuel McGeorge), Snag in Drag (Annastasia Zarnick)

CORRIGENDA

n the round-up of Australian films likely to be at Cannes in 1997, “Riviera Dreaming” (no. 116, May 1997, p. 30), producer David Hannay’s name was inexplicably left out of the credits for Love in Ambush. Cinema Papers apologizes for this error. The credits should have read: A Becker Films-Fit production. Director: Carl Schultz. Producers: JeanPierre Ramsay Levi, David Hannay. Executive producers: Richard Becker, Jean-Pierre Ramsay Levi. Co-producer: Rocky Bester. Line producer: Phil Warner. Scriptwriter: Carl Schultz. In Cinema Papers, no. 115, April 1997, the article, “A House is a Castle”, by Peter Malone (p. 10), may have been read as implying that Santo Cilauro was director of photography on The Castle. In fact, Miriana Marusic was the DOP, and Cilauro one of the camera operators, along with Marusic.

Best C inematography Dione Beebe (Down, Rusty Down) Ken Sallows (The Search for the Shell-Encrusted Toilet Seat)

Best S pecial Effects Franz and Kafka (Matthew Saville)

Best V ideo Production Making Out in Japan (Janet Merewether)

Best S ound Post Production Kuji Jenkins (Sleepers)

Most Original Direction Adam Benjamin Elliot (Uncle)

Director ’s Encouragement Award The Sapphire Room (Sean O’Brien)

Highly Commended for C inematography Tristan Milani (A Permanent End)

: Joh n Ferguson (Jam es Stewart) and Madeline (Kim Novak) in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo

c o v e r

inconference

Ken Dancyger - Writing the anti-formula by Kathryn M illard N AUSTRALIA RECENTLY-on a visit sponsored by the Australian Film Television 8t Radio School - was American screenwriter and academic Ken Dancyger. Dancyger has written a number of books about editing and screenwriting, including the influential Alternative Scriptwriting - Beyond the Rules. (Co-written with colleague Jeff Rush, Alternative Scriptwriting has recently been re-issued in an expanded and updated edition.) Introducing his one-day seminar at the AFTRS, Dancyger explained the genesis of their approach. In the late 1980s, he and Rush shared a frustra tion with the overly-formulaic models of screen storytelling favoured by so many agents and studio executives. They held a number of meetings with screenwriters and teachers of screen

world in which characters control their own fates and action is redeemable by motive. These stories don’t speak to a more ephemeral sense of experience [...] To express a more disjointed world, changing context is not enough - structure too must func tion in more ambiguous ways. At his seminar, Dancyger systemati cally discussed a number of screenplays/films that don’t conform to the prevailing formula, illustrating his points with lengthy video clips. The main areas considered were structure, genre, character, voice and tone. What happens if you don’t use three-act structure? For example, Spike Lee’s first feature, She’s Gotta Have It (1986), is structured around two acts. Forgoing the usual third-act resolution, the film becomes more open-ended

Stories cast in a restorative three-act form tend to be conservative, suggesting an orderly, clear-cut world in which characters control their own fates and action is redeemable by motive. writing. What do we value in storytelling, they asked? What makes screen stories fresh, compelling, involving? What about all the screen stories not accounted for by the domi nant screenplay formula? Dancyger describes this formula as a film structured in three acts, and driven by a premise and a main char acter who has a powerful goal and is easy to identify with. The film has both a foreground story or plot, and a background story that involves us in something deeper. It makes use of a recognizable story form or genre as a shorthand for communicating with the audience. For example, gangster sto ries are rise-and-fall stories, usually about a immigrant trying to get ahead despite the transgressive nature of the city. Police stories involve a crime, an investigation and a solution. Musicals are about wish fulfilment. The emphasis of Dancyger’s work is on how writers and directors have challenged these formulae. Dancyger and Rush emphasize, however, that the point of this challenge is to find an appropriate narrative strategy for the particular story to be told: Stories cast in a restorative threeact form tend to be conservative, suggesting an orderly, clear-cut

and unsettling. Or, in M o’ Better Blues (1990), Lee works with four acts, providing two alternative endings. An extreme example of chal lenge to traditional structure might be Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould (François Girard, 1993), a mosaic of 32 short films in pursuit of the elusive pianist Glenn Gould. What happens if the main character is passive, as in Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) and Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989)? Or if the main character is nega tive and his/her goals are not ones that we can easily identify with? The BBC tele-feature Paper Mask and Bertoluc ci’s II Conformista (1971) were cited as examples. The balance of characters and story elements is important, Dan cyger suggests. Sometimes screenwriters can compen sate for

passive central characters by sur rounding them with more energetic characters. Or, while we might not be able to empathize with goals that we see as negative or despicable, we can identify with the vigour with which characters pursue those goals. Dancyger suggests that ensemble films, like The Big Chill (Lawrence Kas dan, 1983), work through a group of characters sharing a main goal that drives the story rather than one char acter’s goal driving the story. What happens if you change the tone of a story? Storylines as sprawling as Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975) and Short Cuts (Altman, 1993) work as satire, which has a freer form than, say, melodrama or relationship films. While we expect war stories to be real istic, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) creates a nightmarish dream world far from realism. Dancyger is particularly interested in mixed-genre films. That is, working with more than one genre and pulling an audience into a story through tap ping into genre conventions but also making

the story fresh and involving, so that, as audiences, we don’t feel like we know everything that’s going to hap pen. For example, Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) skil fully interweaves two three-act stories: a melodrama about an eye doctor and a situation comedy about a documen tary filmmaker. The two stories share one character: a blind rabbi. John Sayles’ Lone Star (1996) is a more recent example. Lone Star com bines a police story - with the crime, investigation and resolution structure of this genre driving the film - with a meditation on race. The fact that the murder central to Lone Star took place twenty years ago enables the story to move around in time. Then there is Joel Coen’s Fargo (1996), which combines a police story with a satire on relationships and families. The current move towards mixedgenre stories can also be seen on television with programmes like TheX-Files mixing a police story with science fiction. Dancyger’s film literacy-across a range of genres and styles of screen writing and film m aking- is impressive. At his seminar, he was more than willing to respond to questions from a clearly-engaged audience. Towards the end of the session, writer Linda Aaronson sug gested that while stories of redemption seem to hold a special place in American culture (from Pilgrim’s Progress onwards), for Aus tralian writers the dominant formula was less of an issue. Yet advocates of formulaic storytelling always present their structures as universal. Dancyger agreed. Different cultures value different kinds of story telling. Every culture has its own E3* 44

I nf e r n o

s e r i o u s

Most of the best

But this is only the

Contact Future

of what you see on

beginning. Let's

Reality. Australia

television, in

talk about the

and New Zealand's

cinemas or even on

future of visual

leading distributor

the web, in games

media creation.

of Discreet Logic,

g m 40 t iTsiSSSSBSOBBSSi*

Â§

ÂŤ

and interactives has

AliasIWavefront,

been created with

USAnimation,

the seriously hot

Silicon Graphics

combo of

and Minerva MPEG

Sydney (02) 9906 5455

Discreet Logic

Compressionist.

Auckland (09) 294 9127

f u t u r e reality Melbourne (03) 9876 8355

software with

Email info@future.com.au

Silicon Graphics

www.future.com.au

hardware.

Hong Kong Film Festival

HE HONG KONG International Film Festival was held for the twenty-first time from 27

March to 11 April. This last Festival before the colony is returned to Chinese rule had, even before it commenced, created considerable curiosity from those attending for the first time, like me, and nostalgia for the many who had attended over the two decades as the Festival slowly developed into an internationally-rec ognized showcase of high repute. The primary focus remained on Asia and, by virtue of a mighty 45-film retrospective, on Hong Kong itself. The international element of the Festival served rather ironically to show why Asia should be taken even more seriously than it is. For every good film like Sergei Bodrov’s raw and challenging film about Chechnya, Prisoner of the Mountains, the Festival also managed to present some other piece of effete

The international element of the Festival served rather ironically to show why Asia should be taken even more seriously than it is.

by Geoffrey Gardner

China, however, proved to be somewhat of a sideshow when set against dazzling selections from South Korea and Taiwan, the Hong Kong retrospec tive, which culminated in a special final-night screening of a restored copy of King Hu’s master piece, The Valiant Ones, and retrospective screenings of several silent masterpieces made lus trous by the accompaniment of Ernie Corpus, whose Yamaha synthesizer filled the main hall with sounds and music to dream about. In a way, one of the films Corpus accompanied says much about Hong Kong’s confidence to present films at their best. The Festival had invited Olivier Assayas’ new French film, Irma Vep, to screen. Along side the Bodrov film mentioned earlier, it was one of the few European films able to stand comparison with the best from Asia. The story of Assayas’ film concerns the Asian actress Musidora (credited as Irma Vep, an anagram of “vampire”), who is visiting Paris to play the lead in Louis Feuillade’s now immor tal Les Vampires. Taking the next step, Hong Kong decided to screen Les Vampires, all seven hours and thirtyseven minutes of it, to accompany the new film and to have Corpus improvize a musical accompaniment. The result, the serendipitous congregation of all

three events, may well be the only way that each should be seen for maximum effect. Corpus also devised an accompaniment for Mau rice Tourneur’s Alias Jimmy Valentine (USA, 1915), retrieved from its obscurity by Australia’s National Film & Sound Archive and ‘premiered’ in Melbourne last year. The film, with its stunning tints, was even richer as a result and constitutes a major find. The western retrospectives were completed with a screening of Paul Fejos’s early talkie Lone some (Solitude, USA, 1928), which features some extraordinary expressionist camerawork by Gilbert Warrenton to complement its sweet-natured romance. Of the major Asian films, four caught my attention as likely to have careers beyond festivals specializing in such material. Tsai Ming-liang’s The River starts out grimly as the lives of a young man and his par ents are slowly established. The boy has an accident, the result perhaps of taking a bit part in a movie

and etiolated filmmaking like Paolo Benvenuti’s Tiburzi (Italy, 1996) or Christopher Munch’s Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day (USA, 1996), films so strangu lated in their storytelling as to drive audiences from cinemas, if not from the cinema, in droves. But the record crowds and the international jour nalists hadn’t come for this stuff anyway. The major reason was to support the Festival’s final edition before it has to face the wrath of a new Chinese authority which has made plain for years that it is not happy at the Festival’s propensity to give promi nence to work, always challenging and often subversive, made outside the strict controls of the authorities in Beijing. This year the problem was rela tively minor for only one mainland Chinese film had been invited, Zhang Ming’s Rainclouds in Wushan (Wushan Yunyu), a film, ironically enough, which had already amassed prizes and commendations at festi vals around the world, including Melbourne, since it premiered in Berlin in 1996. The accolades had, however, proved increasingly aggra vating to the China Film Bureau which finally demanded that the director withdraw the film from Hong Kong. The director, who had made the film independently of China’s rigid studio system, reluctantly agreed. Not to be outdone, the Festival quickly substi tuted into those screening times a late entry from China, Huang Jian Xin’s Signal Left, Turn Right, a hilarious satire of the new China replete with bungling officials, corruption at every turn, new-class millionaires able to buy themselves privileges from the back seats of Cadillacs and a police force reduced to renting out their fleet for driving lessons. Touché.

CI NEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

fe stiva ls

scene set in a sewer outlet. He injures his neck and the narrative of the film consists of his father’s efforts to find a cure. The mother is off having an affaire with a porn merchant and the father occasion ally slips away into gay saunas for some quick anonymous sex. Bleak? Maybe, but engrossing and not without some very precious humour, not the least that provoked by the grand tour of Chinese remedies the boy undertakes, all the way from chiro practic to Buddhist mantras, via acupuncture shown in gorgeous close-up. Tsai has won prizes in Europe and his reputation, after three features, seems assured. Not so Wu Nien-jen, despite having written more than a hundred scripts. Wu’s two films as a director seem to have passed unnoticed. His Buddha Bless America is a droll comedy about clashing cultures in Taiwan when the American military decides to have some military exercises in a remote village. South Korea sent four films, including the two I saw, Hong Sang-soo’s The Day a Pig Fell into the Well, and Jang Sun-woo’s A Petal. These are both films of

uncompromising rawness, films which reminded me most of the key films of the Italian New Wave of the 1960s in which Bellocchio, Bertolucci, Pasolini and de Seta, among others, confronted the politics and cultures of their society by making tough dramas of modern life. That may sound corny today, but the uncompromising focus on simple lives, the betrayal of friends and lovers, is mesmerizing. In the case of A Petal, the focus on a key event in modern Korean political history, the Kwangju inci dent, and the leap into madness it produced is quite shocking. You don’t need to know Korean history to know that these films and others like them are amongst the finest being made anywhere in the world today. Finally, hanging over the Festival was the retro spective of Hong Kong cinema. Forty-five films stretching back fifty years. Unfortunately, too few have been subtitled into English for them to be accessible, but when this happens then, just as Japan’s cinema was opened up to the West in the 1950s and ’60s, so shall Hong Kong’s be. It will come at a time when the new Chinese authorities will find it hard to resist pressure for the Film Festival, and presumably other cultural events, to maintain its cur rent liberal and quite unorthodox freedom to pursue Asian cultural interests and provide a telling window into Asian production. If this can’t be accommo dated, it will be a major loss, but perhaps one that might be picked up elsewhere on the continent. ©

CINEMA P AP E RS • JUNE 1997

Tony Rayns: The Asian Movie Man Tony Rayns, who wrote and prepared the profile of cameraman Chris Doyle in Cinema Papers No. in , is indeed a legend. t the Hong Kong Festival, Rayns spends his days buzzing into people’s ears about films: what has been made, is being made or likely to be made. Before going into production, directors in half a dozen countries in Asia will talk to him about casting or co-production funding. When their film is finished, they will want him to be the first Westerner to see their film. Producers seek him out to prepare subtitles and pressbooks, even the labels of their publicity photos. They will ask him about the title and whether it should be changed in the West. If Rayns likes the film, he will do all those things for them, thus at least ensuring that the subtitles are not plagued by ludi crous translations and typos. As well, Rayns will advise them, usually free of charge, where the film may best be played, what are the festivals to seek entry into, which are the distribu tors that should be courted, who are the European critics who may pay attention. It’s all in a day’s, and night’s, work for Rayns, perhaps the most influential figure in the West when it comes to bringing Asian films to new audiences in Europe and America. A tall, balding, bespectacled Englishman, now in his mid-forties, Rayns has spent much of the past twenty years tramping through Asia, knocking on the doors of producers big and small, all for the purpose of ensuring that no stone is unturned when there is a chance that there might be a good movie somewhere out there. In the process, he has also become a source of advice to distributors and critics, and a key resource for festival programmers in a dozen Euro pean countries, as well as Australia and the USA. The number of prizes being won in the West by new films from Taiwan, South Korea, China, Japan and Hong Kong is growing in leaps and bounds. In the past two years, for instance, the Rotterdam Festival, one of Europe’s most influential, has given four of its six main prizes to Asian work. Throughout the 1990s, major prizes have been regularly won by Asian film makers at the three most prestigious events: Cannes, Venice and Berlin. Its not an accident, and much of that reward can be traced to the pioneering efforts of Rayns, who has found film after film, even brought whole new national cinemas, most notably that of South Korea, into the international film orbit. Virtually every major festival in the West is now devoting a special section to Asian films. Rayns’ own event, the Vancouver Film Festival, has upwards of fifty titles each year from half-a-dozen countries in the East. It’s a far cry from the timid gestures toward Asian cin ema still being made by most Western festivals. Perhaps a quarter of Vancouver’s titles have their world premiere at the Hong Kong Film Festival, held each year around Easter, and it was there that I found Rayns, inevitably stooping down from his mighty 198 centimetres, engaged in earnest discussion with a filmmaker or a critic or a fan. His trademark near-per manent Marlboro cuts through the air to emphasize a point. He has just come from a screening of Wong KarWai’s new feature, Happy Together, and spent the previous day editing the filmmaking diaries of the

Australian-born Hong Kong-based DOP Chris Doyle. Doyle is the preferred cinematographer of such lumi naries as Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), Stanley Kwan {Full Moon in New York) and the afore mentioned Wong Kar-Wai. Happy Together, a gay love story which Doyle shot, was expected to be invited to participate in Compétition at Cannes, and Sight and Sound wanted diaries for its Cannes issue. We all go off to dinner with director Stanley Kwan (Actress, Rouge), plus a few visiting critics. We start off by discussing a possible retrospective of Stanley’s films to be screened in Brisbane later this year, and try and think of some strategies to get Shaw Brothers to provide a copy of Stanley’s first feature, Women. Over a splendid seafood banquet, we are regaled with gossip and debate in equal measure about who’s doing or done what in Hong Kong filmmaking. Discussion turns to whether you can tell a great direc tor by his taste in food. Some dogmatic statements are made. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten in a bad restaurant with a great director”, says Rayns, “but I’ve had some terrible meals with hacks!” Stanley, who has personally ordered the sensational meal, supervized its delivery and solicitously attended to each guest throughout, basks somewhat in this. The conversation turns to an old film being shown in Hong Kong’s massive retrospective of 45 films being screened under the banner “Fifty Years of Elec tric Shadows”. The film is called The Deaf Mute Heroine, a sword-fighting epic made in 1971 by Wu Ma. Rayns recalls favourably reviewing the film when it was screened in London in 1973! For Rayns, it seems like no time at all, but reflecting back it’s easy to see how its been a long and dedicated struggle which still goes on. Not that his work is unrecog nized. The South Koreans presented him with an award at their first international film festival in Pusan last year. One search engine on the World Wide Web comes up with the startling information that it can find 285126 documents about him! But the work goes on, slogging between London and European festivals, and then backwards and forwards to Tokyo, Taipei, Manila, Seoul, Hong Kong and beyond - anything up to half-a-dozen times a year. Watching and writing about films, particularly when there are so many bad ones, is sometimes exhausting but occasionally exhilarating. “I have to slow down a bit and finish some major projects.” A book on the history of the cinema is still not finished and I’m too polite to mention the long-delayed book on the Japanese master Kenji Mizoguchi, which seems to have gone missing for quite a time. “Then again, if Stanley wants to go to Brisbane [he does], then perhaps I should come out to make sure his ret rospective goes off without a hitch ...” The voice trails away a bit and it’s obvious that it’s hard not be on the job the whole year round. During the Festival, we attended a private preview of a new low-budget film from Hong Kong called, somewhat unimaginatively, Made in Hong Kong. Watch out for it at this year’s festivals, possibly with the title changed. Rayns liked it a lot.

sim p ly in

Vidéothèque de Paris

by Ross F. Coop<

INCE I WENT to Paris, I have become a “fan” of the Vidéothèque de Paris. It is a place right in the centre of Paris where anybody can go and buy an electronic card for FF25 to enter the Métro-like turnstiles. This is about A$6, and it is even less if one becomes a 3- or 12-month sub scriber. In Paris, FF25 is roughly half what a mainstream cinema admission costs. Yet for this sum in any one day you can see up to 4 full feature film programmes on a big screen in 3 different cin emas with from 100 to 300 seats, 6 days a week, from 2pm to 12pm. You can also use the video viewing room for 4 hours. Here there are 40 com fortable seats in front of individual television monitors with their own computer. You can access more than 5,600 titles, all having some reference to Paris, but including the best of French cinema. Within minutes of typing in your selection on your own console, “robots” will automatically load your film and wish you “Happy Viewing”. Your entrance also includes 15 min utes on one of the 10 computers in a facility called Cyberport. Here you can consult internet or send and receive email. In addition, there are frequent conferences and seminars by cinéastes of all sorts (including film historians), and an independent film festival once a year. I interviewed the director, Michel Reilhac, who is 41 years old, and French but has lived most of his life abroad and speaks excellent English. His background is in both business and performing arts and he has been director of the Vidéothèque since July 1993. He explained that his job is not just to travel, although he has to do a lot of that and enjoys it, but mainly his job is to look into the future and anticipate the trends that will affect the Vidéothèque. He sees the Vidéothèque at a turning point now 9 years after it opened - and he finds it an exciting prospect because it will be at the cutting edge of new develop ments in film and video. The Vidéothèque de Paris differs from the Cinémathèque Française, in that it was first conceived as a place to hold the visual memory of Paris visual memory meaning moving images. Yet almost from its opening, it has moved from being just that, to being a place for a confrontation between the past, the present and the future, and is now pursuing that rôle more and more. It is still acquiring films from the past and it is very much involved with the young filmmakers of today. It helps them in the last stages of post-produc tion and by showing their films. It is also very much looking forward to the future with the opening of Cyberport, its new internet service. All of this makes the Vidéothèque a unique place. There is no real equiva lent in other cities of the world.

Because of its very nature, it is, therefore, involved in a network of international organizations. A lot of sharing takes place with other institutions which have ambitions to do something like the Vidéothèque. This year, the Vidéothèque is planning a “Portrait of Shanghai”, a two or three months’ long portrait of Shanghai with 120 films from China - from all periods of the cinema history of Shanghai. As is well known, Shanghai was the very first stu dio that opened in China. Reilhac found real treasures there from the very first days of Chinese cinema. In exchange, the Vidéothèque is looking at organizing a “Portrait of Paris” in Shanghai. This is something that has already been done with other cities such as Moscow, Rome, Prague, Tokyo, and now the Vidéothèque is preparing a “Portrait”. As director, Reilhac believes that, once he has found the right people, the next step is to trust them and let them do their work. This frees him to prepare the future constantly - to live like two or three years ahead. The Vidéothèque is currently facing a huge financial chal lenge. Right now he is focusing on the next phase: the replacement of the robots. They are rapidly becoming obsolete and will need to be replaced within 2 -3 years. By the year 2000, he

Reilhac is convinced that four years from now the need will be for a different type of institution than the one that exists now. says, the system will be dead. Yet it’s very difficult for the Vidéothèque’s sponsors - the City of Paris - to under stand that ten years later they need to invest millions of francs again to keep it alive and to keep it in synch with the times. He is concerned with the whole idea of what is the real need for some thing like the Vidéothèque in the future? Reilhac is convinced that four years from now the need will be for a different type of institution than the one that exists now. By then, he says, everybody will be used to digital tech nology in television, in VCRs and computers. The image technology that we use at home will all be computerdriven and will be digital. If the Vidéothèque remains with its analogic system, he thinks that people might come to see it as a museum - for what the technology used to be - but it wouldn’t be filling the purpose that it has been assigned. So, he says, they need to invest in a new system on digital platforms and offer a whole new range of services that they cannot offer today. The one thing that will not change, he says, is that people will always need places to go, whether it’s bars, restaurants or fun places, to share emotions with other people. So a place like the Vidéothèque e3=“4 4

CINEMA P AP E R S • JUNE 1997

Frameworks, first in non-linear in Australia, has once again taken the initiative in film editing. We are the first facility providing a dedicated non-linear assistant’s room for syncing rushes which allows for true 24FPS cutting, providing frame accurate edl’s, cut lists and change lists for feature films. This method of post for 24FPS film provides a one to one relationship with picture time code, film key code numbers and sound time code.

This method provides simple and frame accurate output of cut lists, change lists, picture and sound edl’s directly from the Avid. This avoids the need for trace back edl’s for sound post production and conversation between 24FPS and 25FPS for cut lists.

(

For fu rth er details, and a more com plete explanation of the different

)

post production methods, please contact Stephen F. Smith at Fram ew orks.

“Knowledge, Experience, Service” Fra m ew o rks Ed it Pty. Ltd .

Suite 4, 239 Pacific Hwy, North Sydney, NSW 2060

Tel : 02 9955-7300 Fax :02 9954-0175 Email : framewks@ozemail.com.au

The Man from Kangaroo

luci Australian Baker's Stunts

|x>ok .it the types— straight from the great Outbade, bringing the life, the color, the imotnr, the adventure of the onderful W est, glittering to the screen. They're the men and women who make T h e M an From K an garoo as truly and greatly Australian as was ‘The Sentimental Bloke’

are something to m ake you gasp. Wilfred Lucas ha*

--------- „—sgre

e&l stunt-actors, and he claims that Snowy beats them all. Atfioi* blazes through the play like a wind-driven bush-fire,

The Jazz Orchestra at the Shearers’ Ball

C arro ll

by Paul Kalina

r®le,a *e d im m ed iately—th e f irs t g r e a t B a k e r A u s tr a lia n -m a d e F e a t u r e ;

WARFED BY THE ‘canons’ of Aus tralian silent cinema, shot in the year between The Woman Suffers (1918, Raymond Longford) and A Girl of the Bush (1920, Franklyn Bar rett), is Wilfred Lucas’ sadly-neglected feature, The Man from Kangaroo. Unlike the above-mentioned and numerous other films made in the same year, The Man From Kangaroo is absent from most celebratory lists though it is acknowledged in the Centenary of Australian Cinema trailer screened in 1996. Discussion of it tends to focus on the film’s perceived “Americanization”, rather than its inherent qualities as filmmaking (or, for that matter, a more thoroughgoing understanding of what is meant by the catchphrases that decry the film’s lack of “Australian” qualities). The virtues of this modest film are axioms of its absence from the pantheon, of its qualities as an entertaining genre film that is in many ways superior to its pedigree siblings. Wilfred Lucas and Bess Meredyth, the film’s scenarists, were an American husband-and-wife team brought to Australia at the behest of producer

« J M

* « * '> « * by W it(r«t Luca»,

¿»INOWY BAKER an d BROW NIE VERNON S f e f e t .....

î l e Sentimental Biotte

CARROLL,

E. J. Carroll, and producer and actor Reginald Leslie “Snowy” Baker. Baker visited Hollywood in 1918, at which time he met Lucas, who had begun directing at Universal in 1914. Prior to this, Lucas had been one of the stock company of actors at American Biograph. It is believed that Lucas met Baker through Allan Dwan, in whose productions Lucas appeared in 1915. Bess Meredyth had written the scenario for Louise Lovely’s first Hollywood film, Stronger Than Death (1916). Baker and Carroll were determined to find subjects that would appeal to the international market and, as Pic ture Show reported, “to send film footage out of Australia as against the foreign film mileage which now comes in”1. Lucas and Meredyth were enlisted to launch the proposed slate of films, and were accompanied by actress

Banking

House.

Pitt-st., Sydney i**J5^v5 Í^ n.z

Brownie Vernon, cameraman Robert Doerrer and a film editor. (The Man from Kangaroo is the only extant film of three produced in 1920 by CarrollBaker Australian Productions. The other two are The Shadow of Lightning Ridge and The Jackeroo ofCoolabong.) Snowy Baker was already known to audiences for his parts in The Lure of the Bush (Claude Flemming, 1918) and The Enemy Within (Roland Stavely, 1918). Baker, a champion all-round athlete2, invariably played roles requir ing a great degree of action and stuntwork. As well as acting in movies, he ran fitness classes in Sydney, had been an entrepreneur, and would later move to Los Angeles to manage a country club. In the film, Baker plays pugilistturned-preacher John Harland, who is Muriel Hammond (Brownie Vernon), centre, and John Marland (Reginald L. "Snowy” Baker). Wilfred Lucas' The Man

from Kangaroo.

Ginger Mick

Viewed today on VHS video, one is struck by the high quality of the lighting and camerawork. The delicate luminosity of a “moon-lit” scene in which the lovers meet atop a brick wall is. arguably, as refined as one would find in any of the treasured relics of the silent era. posted to a remote town as he awaits his commission as parson. The small town authorities are distrustful of Harland, who makes no secret of his affection for Muriel Hammond (Brownie Vernon) and teaches the lads the finer art of boxing - though, it should be pointed out, the specific context of this is self-defence, not aggression for its own sake. Hammond’s swindling guardian, Martin Giles (Charles Villiers), arranges to have Harland dis patched to the city where his fighting skills are again put to good use in rescuing the victim of a theft, who rewards him with a posting to a town that has fallen under the influ ence of outlaws, led by the brutish Red Jack Braggan (Wilfred Lucas). Here, he is reunited with Hammond, who snubs him for having aban doned her earlier. His attempts at religion also fail, so Hammond renounces both his love and his faith, and becomes a shearer until the climactic scenes when he saves Hammond from the lecherous Brag gan. As historian John Tulloch points out:

C INEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

lost a n d fo u n d

It is easy to dismiss the highly lim ited actor of the boyish grin and the superman stunts, but in fact Baker the producer was here sensibly placing in the Australian context a formula already successfully applied by Tom Mix in America, and adapt ing it, as he said he would, to the ‘Australian romance’ of which he himself was undoubtedly a part. It would be wrong to think of these as naive Australian productions.3 Which is exactly, at best, what the fiercely nationalistic The Bulletin (and other press) did: Uncle Sam soon gets in his dirty

work, and the Australian story becomes starred and striped ... It simply couldn’t happen in Australia. In our backblocks the parson is as inevitable as the drought [...] When will we get an Australian film? Bar ring the ‘Bloke’ pictures, they all have the flavour of chewing-gum.4 Not surprisingly, the film proved popularwith audiences both here and in the USA (where it was retitled The Better Man and released in 1922), at least some of whose commentators realized the more substantive merits of the film. Motion Picture News wrote: The Better M an may be called a

Western because it contains the vital qualities which have character ized this brand of production, but it is a picture which is far above the average of the ordinary Western.5 The outdoor locations form evocative and highly-practical stages for the action. An early scene has Baker deftly diving from a clifftop into the river below. With each dive, Baker practises a different manoeuvre, announced by way of an inter-title. A group of impressed children sit in a row on a fallen branch with their legs dangling in the waters, whilst sweetheart Ham mond ties knots in Harland’s clothes. The lyricism of this sequence could not be more understated, nor could the thematic resonances be drawn out with more subtlety. The trade press praised the film for its new and modern features: there was the major importance of a woman co-director on the set and Bess Meredyth, it was noted, worked in ‘constant association and collabora tion’ with husband Lucas and had

an ‘unusual tendency to improvise on the script’ during production. Each scene was simultaneously shot from three cameras, which goes a long way toward accounting for the high standard of the action sequences throughout the film, in particular the rousing finale in which the now van quished couple leap into a deep ravine from a fast-moving carriage as it crosses a bridge. The continuous cov erage from various angles sustains the tension of the chase and capitalizes on the display of the performers’ extraor dinary skills in carrying out the “live” stunts.7 Equally impressive is the sequence in which Hammond chases a thief through the back alleys and streets of Sydney, with its modern use of inter-cutting. Viewed today on VHS video, one is struck by the high quality of the light ing and camerawork. The delicate luminosity of a “moon-lit” scene in which the lovers meet atop a brick wall is, arguably, as refined as one would find in any of the treasured relics of the silent era. Scott Murray, director of the Australian Centenary trailer, even goes so far as to liken the sequence to scenes in Carl Dreyer’s Gertrude (1964). The Man from Kangaroo also offers today’s viewer an opportunity to revisit early Australian cinema by way of a film that is clearly invested with the will to entertain, amuse and thrill an audience - in this way, too, the film is surprisingly modern - rather than a vehicle for sweeping declamations intended to be read as matters of national pride and history. © 1 As quoted in Australian Cinema: The

First Eighty Years, Graham Shirley and Brian Adams, Angus and Robertson, Australia, 1983. 2 Baker is rated as Australia’s greatest all-round athlete in Harry Gordon, Aus

tralia at the Olympic Games, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1994, p. 54-

3 Legends of the Screen, John Tulloch, Currency Press, Sydney, 1981. 4 As quoted in Tulloch, op cit.

5 Motion Picture News, as quoted in Tul loch, op cit. 6 As quoted in Tulloch, op cit. 7 The great future director, Charles Chauvel, was the film’s horse wrangler.

THE MAN FROM KANGAROO Directed by Wilfred Lucas. Producers : E. J. Carroll , Reginald L “S nowy” Baker . S criptwriter : Bess Meredyth . Director of photography: Robert V. Doerrer . T itles : S yd Nicholls . Assistant directors : John K. Wells , Charles Villiers . Cast : Reginald L. “S nowy” Baker (|ohn Harland), Brownie Vernon (Muriel Hammond), Charles Villiers (Martin Giles), Walter Vincent (Ezra Peters ), Wilfred Lucas (Red Jack Braggan), Malcolm Mac Kellar (foreman). Carroll -Baker Australian Productions. 35mm. 68 mins. 1920.

C INEMA P AP E R S • JUNE 1997

LEIAHLK &

The Princess (Yvette Mimieux), centre, in Henry Levin's The Wonderfull World of the Brothers Grimm (unrestored 70mm single-frame Cinerama).

ELOPE ELT"

j A rv\ E ^C. Ic A T Z (GWE D

Oil THE EYE OF THE LOCAL RELEA SE OP A PRI1TT OP A LPREL HITCHCOCK’ S

VERTIGO

RESTORATION- EXPERTS ROBERT A . Ka t z

talk

am es

sh erlo ck

), J

HARRIS

PILM

a m es

a iil

about

THE PUTURE OP REVIVING PILM C L A S S IC S . R O B E R T A. H A R R IS is one of the most respected figures in contemporary film restora tion, specifically in complex, large-format reconstructions. His filmography includes Abel Gance's 1927 silent epic Napoleon (on which he aided Kevin Brownlow), David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Stanley Kubrick's Spartacud (1960) and, most recently, M y Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964) and Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958). His producing credits include The Grifterd (Stephen Frears, 1990). Harris’ partner on his two most recent restoration projects was JA M E S C. KATZ. Katz has served as a producer —Scenedfrom the Cladd Struggle in Beverly Hdid (Paul Bartel, 1989), Ludt in the Dudt (Bartel, 1985) —and co-producer -Nobody d Fool (Robert Benton, 1995). In the early 1980s, Katz was President of the Universal Pictures Classic Division, where he oversaw the re-issue of five, long-absent Hitchcock films. JA M E S S H E R L O C K is a Melbourne-based film historian who has been working with Harris to locate materials on a range of films that have been slated for restoration and re-release.1 Ro b e r t ,

w h a t m a d e yo u g e t in t o r e s t o r a t io n ?

L ean

ca m e a c r o s s a s an in c r e d ib l y c h a r is m a t ic

Harris: I’ve always had an interest in and digging through things. I was ' Kevin Brownlow on N apoléon. wholeheartedl' I really got invo Lawrence] because I wanted to see minute version. I went to a and he said, “Well, we are told that complete negative and we have a and-white back-up. We just haven’t Do you want to see them?” I looked at found out that they had not only been cut but twice. That started literally an odyssey that went over 26 months, in which I started by trying to find out what the film was. There were no records of it, and ended up working with David Lean, Peter O ’Toole, Anthony Quinn, AlecGuinness and all these people. What

w a s it l ik e w h e n

Da v id L ean

w a l k e d in y o u r

DOOR FOR THE FIRST TIME?

I was scared to death. I was not supposed to contact him, but I finally found Anne Coates, the editor, and she said, “Does David know about this?” I said, “No, I’m not supposed to contact him.” She said, “Well, I bloody well can. We can’t go fucking about on this without his knowing.” Anne found him and called me back. She said, “He is in Spain. He wants you to call him tomor row in London.” I called London and he wasn’t there. He had stopped, showered, changed clothes and gone to LA. I found the Bel Air and figured, “Why am I He picked up the phone and I was absolutely panicked. W hen

yo u s p e a k to t h e s e p e o p l e fo r t h e f ir s t

TIME, DO YOU HAVE RESERVATIONS ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING?

Absolutely. Why am I doing this? Why am I going to get myself in trouble immediate reaction was “Good somebody is trying to save it.” are you?” I told him and he said, there Tuesday.”

CINEMA P AP E R S • JUNE 1997

A WONDERFULSENSE OF HUMOUR.

. a great sense of humour, extraordinarbasically said, “I’m coming through Send a car for me in the city, office, and we’ll see what That is how it all started. That was en it changed from an ‘I’ restoration

which the film needs to be restored. In this case, the negative had got to a point where it was fad ing so rapidly that, if we didn’t use it, if we didn’t bake the elements, it couldn’t have been done. And to not do it would have been unthinkable. Fortunately, the gods were with us. The contracts between and everyone else just James Katz: One of the with the Hitchcock Foundation was that they would restore the pictures, particularly Vertigo. I don’t know what the financial arrangement was, but there would be some responsibility on the Hitchcock Foundation’s part to finance that. In turn, they would also obviously benefit from any theatrical, laser disc and any video sales that would be coming down the line. Ve r tig o w a s s h o t on V is t a V is io n [35 mm t u r n e d s id e w a y s ], w a s n ’ t it ?

Correct. Wa s a

t h a t t h e f ir s t t im e y o u ha d w o r k e d on

V is t a V is io n

p r in t ?

No, Spartacus, which is anamorphic VistaVision. yo u h a v e a n y m ajo r o b s t a c l e s w it h Ver tig o

D id

REGARDING QUALITY? d n ’t

L ean

c u t t h e film b a c k a f t e r

D THE RESTORATION?

Katz: Every frame. There is even a portion in there now where we couldn’t justify the money

it back to 222 minutes. The problem is we had to re-voice and the studio hired an actor without any testing. David directed him and he knew that it wasn’t working. He hoped that we would be able to change the voice digitally somehow, but it just didn’t work. Basically the studio said, “We have to shoot before he leaves town”, so we had to re-cut that sequence and take out the pieces that didn’t work audibly. David said, “Fix it up, some how”, went off on a struggle and then he passed away before we could do anything. The studio, of course, was saying, “We put this out as the director’s cut, ain’t that what it is?” He had Peter [O’Toole] do all of his dialogue and dialogue [for Jack had died]. La w r en ce

is y o u r m o s t p u b l ic iz e d f il m ,

BUT WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE RESTORATION?

Lawrence. Finest film ever made. HAVE TO AGREE, A MOST MAGNIFICENT PIECE OF WORK.

Now w h y Ve r t ig o ? Number one, it’s one of the greatest films ever be one of the Top Ten. Number looking at restoration, there is a balance between availability of mateof materials, and the speed at

to fix it. That is in the flashback sequence. It is there as a reminder of what the entire film would have looked like not too far down the line. HOW IMPORTANT IS DIGITAL RESTORATION, DIGITAL COMPUTER WORK?

Harris: Not important at all. We didn’t use it. It could have helped slightly on this film, but is so expensive and unwieldy. Some people think that it is nirvana. We could have digitized the entire film and made it look better for about $60

million. That would have been really simple work. If we wanted to go in and clean frames and really bring up the yellow layer, things like that, it would have cost closer to $250 million.

You FOUND THE DRESS WORN BY KlM NOVAK IN THE VAULTS?

Katz: We found it in the wardrobe department at Paramount. It was actually in the section that says “1950s rentals”. It was there to be rented as a ’5 Os-style dress. HOW IMPORTANT WAS SOMETHING LIKE THAT TO YOUR RESTORATION?

Harris: It is extremely important because, if you look at a 1958 Technicolor print, the colour is high; it is not accurate; it doesn’t look like any thing that we could get off a decent colour negative. So you try and find whatever point of reference you can, and that was one of them. D id y o u h a v e a n y s u p p o r t fro m J im m y S t e w a r t or

K im No v a k ?

Harris: We had support from Kim, from Barbara Bel Geddes, from Pat Hitchcock, of course, from Herbie Coleman who produced the film, Henry Bumstead, the production designer, “Doc” Erickson, the associate producer, Sam Taylor, co-screenwriter ... The list goes on and on. Katz: Anyone who was alive who was on that set. S a u l B a s s had q u it e a c o n s id e r a b l e in p u t in t h is .

Harris: Yes he did, but unfortunately he died before we could speak to him. Wa s H it c h c o c k l o o k in g o v e r y o u r s h o u l d e r w h il e

...

Harris: Permanently ... especially in the shower. T h e r e a r e a few o f H it c h c o c k ’s f il m s t h a t w e h a d n ’ t s e e n fo r y e a r s do w n h e r e .

Harris: There were five that were pulled in by Hitchcock, which was a very good marketing decision. Katz: Rear Window [1954], The Man Who Knew T oo Much [1955], The Trouble with Harry ' [1954], Vertigo and Rope [1948] were pulled in 1971. They were locked away and that is when they started to deteriorate. That was when most damage was done. They were not released until 1984 when Universal bought the rights from the estate for five years. HOW LONG WAS THE RESTORATION ON VERTIGO?

Katz: More than 2 years and we are still working on it.

D u r in g y o u r s e a r c h fo r m a t e r ia l s on f il m s t h a t YOU HAVE WORKED ON, HAVE YOU EVER ACCIDENTALLY COME ACROSS SOMETHING THAT YOU WEREN’T LOOKING FOR, THAT YOU PUT ASIDE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE?

Harris: Sure. Normally I turn it over to the peo|J pie that own it. In London, I found a four-track magnetic Technicolor print of Cleopatra [Her mann J. Mankiewicz, 1963] that they didn’t know they had. I found stereo soundtracks for Anastasia [Anatole Litvak, 1956] in London in Columbia’s vault ’§ and they should have been at Fox! I found a lot of Columbia soundtracks in London that they had been looking for. You are always finding things.

You HAVE BECOME PRETTY WELL THE WORLD’S FORE MOST EXPERT IN 70MM RESTORATION.

Harris: By default, I think! [Laughs.]

Do YOU THINK THIS FORMAT IS NOW LARGELY IGNORED? Harris: Yes. It is really sad. The death-knell really was the coming of the digital audio format. In the past, certainly, 70mm blow-ups were created so .„ that people could have six-track stereo as Opposed to the four-track stereo which was on the 35 prints. Because 70mm also ran 25 percent faster, the frequencies gave higher highs and lower lows, and just better sound. But now you get the sound on 35mm that you do on 70mm and there is no reason, except if you are doing something on an extraordinarilylarge screen, to create a large-format print. I’d love to see more work shot on 70mm, but the scripts aren’t there.

Do YOU THINK IT COULD EVER MAKE A COMEBACK? Harris: It could for the right screenplay, for the right director, for the right cinematographer. If you do it with the wrong film, it is going to bury it even further because the studios are going to say, “We are spending all this extra money and what are we getting for it?” Ve r t ig o h a s b ee n r e l e a s e d w o r ld w id e on 70 m m ?

Correct; 70mm and some 35mm. James Katz: At first they said there wasn’t much interest in 70mm around the world, until we sent them a list of all the 70mm theatres, from Japan to Madagascar. Finally they got the idea that maybe there were a few of these pictures out there, and maybe there was some interest, I’VE FOUND OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS THAT NOT

SO, WHEN YOU WALK INTO A PROJECT, YOU ARE LOOKING

ONLY ARE THERE MORE 70MM THEATRES AROUND,

AT GIVING PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING FOR A PERIOD OF

BUT THERE IS AN ASTRONOMICAL AMOUNT OF 70MM

2-3 YEARS?

PRINTS THAT WERE SHOT THROUGH THE ’60S. CAN YOU

Harris: Yes. That is not counting Lion in Winter [Anthony Harvey, 1968], which we have been trying to do some work on since 1989.

Sherif Ali Ibn El Kharish (Omar Sharif) and T.E. Lawrence (Peter 0 7 oole) in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia.

RECOLLECT WHAT WERE THE LAST FILMS IN 70MM?

Harris: Hamlet [Franco Zeffirelli, 1990], Far and Away [Ron Howard, 1992] and Little Buddha Madeline (Kim Novak) in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vértigo. '

[Bernardo Bertolucci, 1995], which was partially 70mm. Parts of Far and Away were shot in 35mm. HOW IMPORTANT IS CABLE AND LASER DISC TO YOU NOW?

Harris: The laser disc is not the great force. It is there for quality, and it is there as the ultimate record of the film where most people want to see the quality. But video, cable television and satel lite are all extremely important because they help amortize the cost of the restoration. I BELIEVE THERE IS A GROUP OF FILMMAKERS - MARTIN S c o r s e s e is o n e , S t a n l e y K u b r ic k a n o t h e r - w h o HAVE ACTUALLY FORMED A COMMITTEE.

Harri^:;Y’he Film Foundation. They are basically lending their names and prestige and whatever power they have to try to persuade the studio executives to save films. Katz: It originally started with Universal. Then, with the departure of Tom Pollock, Marty and Woody Allen took up the gauntlet. With Francis Coppola, they are trying to keep it going, but I don’t think it has quite the whack it had when it was connected to a studio. Universal under Pollack also said they would put á million dollars into a restoration every year. I don’t know if that is still happening with the departure of Marty and Pollack from the studio. T h e c h a n g e o v e r o f r é g im e s s e e m s t o b e q u it e CONSTANT IN HOLLYWOOD. DOES THAT MAKE THINGS ALL THE MORE DIFFICULT?

Katz: Constantly. We tell them all the time that they are like museum [curators]; they are just the custodians of these negatives. Eventually, someone else is going to come in, and they are responsible for them on their watch. There is a lot of responsibility on the one hand, but, on the other, with the pressure they are under -to make money, restoration is not right up at the

CINEMA P AP E RS • JUNE 1997

top of the list. It is not a real cash cow for them. At the same time, they have the problems of proving themselves effective with these films that are now running to $50, 80 and 100 million. Wa s A b e l G a n c e

s t il l a l iv e w h e n y o u d id t h e

RESTO RAT ION FOR NAPOLEON!

Harris: Yes. He was a lot of fun. He was 79 or something like that when we first met. Lworked with him since ’74, and we finally ran in Tel luride in ’89. He came over and, in March ’80, w eiook him to Minneapolis with us for a test screening at the Walker Art Theatre. He was wbfiderjful. DO YOU ACTUALLY CHOOSE A PROJECT OR IS ONE SUBMITTED FOR YOU?

Katz: it goes both ways. We have a hit list and, at thl:Jsame time, many of them, like Lion inY WinteY, sort of fall through the cracks because the libraries are owned by distribution people - in this case, Canal Plus - and they don’t necessarily care about the negatives. They care about the materials they can produce to put on the Sky Channels and the syndication packages. There

is a lo t o f r e s t o r a t io n w o r k g o in g o n o u t

THERE, BUT IT IS NOT REALLY RESTORATION, LIKE THE TERM “DIRECTOR’S CUT”.

Harris: When they do a director’s cut, there is sometimes more of a chance that they are actu- . ally doing some work on the negative and the film. After Vertigo came out, they suddenly came out with the restored version of North By North west, which they managed to do in four days! We were a little curious about that, but the bot tom line is they just sit there and try to piggy-back on our stuff. They say “newly-restored this, newly-restored that” in the ads. Giant [George Stevens, 1956], for instance, they kéep saying was

CINEMA P AP E R S • JUNE 1997

restored, when it wasn’t. And you know that when The Garden o f the Finzi Contini [Vittorio De Sica, 1970] was restored, all they did was wash the negative. Y o u ’v e

b u il t u p a n in c r e d ib l e r e s u m e o f s o l id

HARD WORK. I WOULD IMAGINE NOW'THAT YOU COULD WRITE YOUR OWN TICKET REGARDING RESTORATION. Do YOU STILL HAVE A LOT OF DIFFICULTIES?

Katz: Every time we go into a project, we are try ing to convince someone to pay us to fix something that they own. First of all, they are embarrassed by the condition it is inland that they have to put up money for us to undo their lack of diligence. Ha v e

y o u e v e r f o u n d m a t e r ia l a n d c o m e u p

AGAINST A BRICK WALL AND CAN’T USE.

Katz: I don’t know. We know where material is, for instance, on Becket [Peter Glenville, 1964], which is going bad. The people that own it don’t seem to care much. We are seeing a little bit of that with Lion in Winter. There is stuff around that we would love to get all in the one place and do some work on. Do YOU HAVE ANY DREAM PROJECTS, SOMETHING THAT HOPEFULLY ONE DAY YOU’LL COMPLETE?

Harris: We have a number of the 70mm films that we would love to do: West Side Story [Robert Wise, 1961], It's a Mad M ad M ad Mad World [Stanley Kramer, 1963], Ben-Hur[: A Tale o f the Christ, William Wyler, 1959], The Alamo [John Wayne, 1960], The Music Man [Morton Da Costa, 1962]. Katz: I think The Music Man would probably be a very successful one theatrically. © 1 The following films were shipped to Australia in com plete versions and/or with stereo/mag soundtracks. They were changed in the USA after their first release, the footage and audio tracks presumed lost in the “ USA: The Big Country (William Wyler, 1 9 5 8 ), mag stereo tracks; N icholas and Alexandra (Franklin Shaffner, 197 1 ), mag print; T fs A M ad M ad M ad M ad W orld (Stanley Kramer, 1963), uncut version/inter-jfii mission tracks; Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1 9 7 2 ), mag stereo tracks; Rear W indow (Alfred'Hitchcock, 195 4 ), full print; Lord Jim (Richard Brooks, 1 9 6 5 ), full ver sion; Planet o f the Apes (Franklin Shaffner, 1 9 5 8 ), mag stereo tracks; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1 9 6 9 ), mag stereo tra d e ; South Pacific (Joshua Logan, 195 8 ), full print/mag stereo tracks; The Sand Pebbles (Robert Wise; 1966), full print/mag stereo tracks; T he.G reat Escape (John Sturges, 196 3 ), mag stereo tracks.

d! [ilniiy liJrmriükdi-:;, tbr: Tori film if- mmrtyilif; [>r«rr. (i'o'iiivrr;in They make that leap too early, co; & Radio School graduate Jane Campion, Monica Pellizzari has experimented with style, honed her craft and expie i stamp and an international reputation Even prior to making her début feature. Fistful of Flies, which was due for nr hen Pellizzari’s 35mm drama Just Desserts (1992) won the Leoncino d’Argento (Silver Baby Lion) for Best Short at Venice, Peter Weir, whose Picnic at Hanging Rock inspired Pellizzari to become a film maker, commented: “I’m thrilled for her. She has a style that is recognizable, a single unique voice.” At the Kobe Short Film Festival, jury president Chen Kaige described the coming-of-age drama as “Not only a good short film, but a great short film that took risks”. When Martin Scorsese viewed the tape of the film that the entrepreneurial director had sent him, he responded with what has

become one of Pellizzari’s proudest possessions, an express letter of encouragement, lauding the film’s inventiveness: “I really enjoyed it [...] and look for ward to seeing more of your films in the future.” To Pellizzari, it was “like getting a message from God, saying ‘It’s okay. Proceed.’” For Pellizzari, however, film was not only a revered art, it was a cross-pollination of defensive weapon and therapy, converting potentially-heavy emotional and cultural baggage into inspirational fuel.

CINEMA P AP E RS • JUNE 1997

misrepresented. I wanted to tell stories from my roots to represent people who had migrated as three-dimensional characters, not just mafiosi or greengrocers with heavy accents and greasy hair.” At the University of NSW, where Peilizzari majored in political science and drama (also, under Peter Gerdes, an excellent cinema studies course), she discovered in film her ultimate weapon. “A lot of people who’ve known me think Pm a less angry person because I’ve exorcized demons that have been bugging me about this country. They say, ‘You’re lucky you can vent your frustrations through cinema.’ A lot of people don’t have that outlet. They go and pick up a shotgun instead.”

C u l/ u r a

I 5 l 0 r\ 5

When Pellizzari’s first application to the Aus tralian Film Television & Radio School (AFTRS) was rejected, she decided to gain valuable, practical hands-on experience. Where better than with her original source of inspiration, Peter Weir? A For Peilizzari, both on and off screen, the word >v-A 5 Or\l c i) “impossible” didn’t exist, as everyday for six n ~L ~L ? ' i l months she hassled producer Jim McElroy until he eventually weakened (“Anyone who perseveres so much would also do that in their work”, he allegedly said), employing her as a production assistant on The Year o f Living Dangerously (Weir, 1982). She formed a good mentor relationship with Weir - a fabulous experience - who recalls she was “always listening, watching, and asking questions”. Peilizzari then threw herself into other on-set jobs: production assistant on On the Run (Mende Brown, non-theatrical feature, 1982), unit driver on Hostage: The Christine Maresch Story (Frank Shields, 1983), casting assistant on Street Hero (Michael Pattinson, 1984) and stills photographer on various projects. Even a second rejection from the AFTRS did not deflate her. (“It was a time that the School was going through a real identity crisis about whether it was training artists or technicians. In one of the interviews I was told to watch more Mars (Tasma Walton). Monica Pellizzari's Fistful of Flies. \ sport. Can you believe it?”) Finally, at age 24, Peilizzari was accepted by, iUlldlil i Italy’s most famous film school, II Centro Sperintentale di Cinematografia in Rome. “A lot of my idols had gone there. I just figured that if I could walk the corridors then I’d be inspired.” Again, Peilizzari entrepreneurially maximized opportunities: while the students and school staff were on strike, she arranged “I really felt the need to address my reality as a bi-cultural Australian”, says attachments (as director’s assistant) on Lina Wertmiiller’s Notte d ’Estate Peilizzari, the daughter of north Italian migrants who arrived here in the late (Summer Nights), Federico Fellini’s LTntervista and Nikita Mikhalkov’s Oci 1950s. “I felt we didn’t exist. My family and I experienced enormous racism Ciornie (Dark Eyes), and set visits to the Taviani brothers’ G ood Morning in the outer western suburbs of Sydney [Fairfield]. I grew up in trauma most Babylon. She appeared as an extra in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. of the time. Between being beaten up at school and by the next-door neigh Between 1985-87, she thrived in this creative hothouse and there wrote the bours, it was just horrendous. I couldn’t stand this country.” script for a future short, Rabbit on the Moon. Blonde and blue-eyed, Peilizzari - in appearance, at least - hardly resembles “I was fascinated with my heritage and absorbed a lot in that environment, the stereotype one would naturally associate with prejudice and discrimination. but found the Italians were more fascinated with Australian film and Peter Her feelings of alienation were exacerbated by what she saw on television. “I Weir and George Miller. I wasn’t allowed to make a film, so I acted in quite a grew up addicted to TV and yet never saw anybody that looked like my imme few and found it hard to come back”, she says. diate family on screen. In the rare moments they were represented, they were

television need that only then will the world take notice. Like fellow :red thematic concerns through a body of short works, establishing a strong personal itional releases at the end of May, Peilizzari had attracted a keen following.

CINEMA P AP E RS • JUNE 1997

“Italy has an incredible film culture and that’s where I tap in - not at the source of my relatives. Rome is my second home and maybe one day I’ll make a film there. About 15 attempts have failed because the place is so chaotic. I’ve been sent scripts, but at the moment I’m more interested in English language, a world trend - and the Italians are desperate to go that way, too. In fact, due to American cultural domination, the strongest asset I have going for me there is that I can make bi-cultural films in the English language.” Pellizzari returned to Australia and finally gained entrance to the AFTRS, where she made the short Velo Nero (Black Veil), the first of a trail of films about loneliness and alienation. It’s about a youth’s questioning of his identity after an encounter with an Italian widow, shot in her favoured black and white. “The influence probably harks back to the English Gothic films I used to watch growing up and a love of neo-realist Italian cinema, cross-pollinated with what I absorbed in film history and my own environment as a madkeen photographer obsessed with the stimulation of crushed-black and pure-white combinations.” She would have loved to use it on Fistful o f Flies, but found it too difficult to tackle on a first fea ture, opting to go for as much monochrome in choosing bright blues and greens. While Velo Nero shows promise, it was Pellizzari’s graduation film, Rabbit on the M oon (1987), that launched her as a major talent. This ostensibly simple but moving fairytale about a young Italian girl growing up in suburbia marked a fairytale beginning - winning an AFI Award for Best Direc tion, Best Short Drama at Chicago, and a stack of other awards, as well as being an official entry into the 1990 Academy Awards’ short film category. Pellizzari got an agent (Hilary Linstead & Associ ates) and was on her way. A succession of SBS projects for radio and tele vision kept her working and consolidated her reputation, particularly No, No, N onno (1989), the story of a displaced Italian grandfather living in suburban Sydney, who dreams of returning to his birthplace in Naples. It was the first short pur chased by Qantas for its in-flight entertainment. Film festivals and prizes followed, but it was her fourth short, the 14-minute, 35mm, stylisticallyimaginative and idiosyncratic drama Just Desserts that catapulted Pellizzari into the international limelight. The film is a visually-sophisticated and overtlypoliticized work that moves beyond the concerns of her earlier films to explore the realities of female sexuality - a recurring theme since - and the vicissi tudes of Italian-Australian upbringing. Through a series of black-and-white scenarios, it charts the tragi-comic experiences of heroine Maria Stroppi (played by Dina Panozzo, the mother figure in Fist ful o f Flies), juxtaposed on split-screen format by complementary scenarios of erotically-charged coloured images of assorted northern Italian dishes. It isn’t the first time food/sex metaphors are intertwined, but it is certainly one of the most novel, as sensuous servings of food are served alongside provocative explorations of sexuality and a critique of Italian patriarchy spiced with lib eral helpings of idiosyncratic humour. Pellizzari says: “The world is becoming a lot more conserva tive and I have to be more surreptitious in the way I serve up/disguise my themes because some audi

ences find the situations too aggressive and bold. If you want to put a message across, you wrap it up in nice paper and make it easy to swallow, or else forget it.” But even Pellizzari’s wit couldn’t make palatable to conservative viewers explicit images rarely seen - on Australian screens, at least - of traditional sexual taboos: menstruation, female masturbation (to be taken up again in Fistful o f Flies) and lesbian experience. Some choked at this deliciously-witty, confronting rites-of-passage drama. Venetian fritters suggested an edible aid to female anatomy in a hilarious scene of attempted masturbation. Maria’s sexual defloration atop a surfboard finds visual counterpoint in the domestic ritual of gnocchi production and a bubbling polenta accompanies scenes of lesbian betrothal. “I wanted to correlate food and sexual parts of reality”, says Pellizzari. “The idea behind the split screen is that we remember big occasions in our life, many of them sexual - first fuck, etc. - but memories fade and we remember only select things. So, I shot the vague part in black and white. Food on the other hand, a constant part of living, was photographed in colour.” Pellizzari claims even the AFC assessors were not too encouraging. “I had the impression the assessors were terrified and didn’t want me to go that way - after all, I could have made a nice little social-realist film. “People are afraid of tackling those issues which are part of my reality of being a woman. Women are 52 percent of the population, so what’s so horri fying about showing menstruation, which is part of their reality? These are a part of my life, but the reactions certainly haven’t always been pleasurable.” But the film did tickle the tastes of the predomi

nantly-Italian audience and jury at the 50th Venice Film Festival, and the Baby Lion guaranteed auto matic purchase and screening on Italian Pay-TV, making it the first Australian short to be theatri cally released in Italy. “I think they appreciated the bi-cultural aspects and the succinctness of the style. Italian film is notorious for endless dialogue and little action, and this was just the opposite”, says Pellizzari. Pellizzari’s next work, Best Wishes, a half-hour drama part of the Under the Skin series (produced

by Real World Pictures and Film Australia), exposes another taboo subject: sexual abuse. What makes sad-faced, young Angela’s plight more poignant is the cultural domestic context perpe trated by a family friend, with whom she stays while her mother is in hospital having a baby. As her protector turns abuser, Pellizzari shatters some of the most sacrosanct values of Catholic ItaloAustralian culture. “The statistics speak loudly that one in five kids is abused. Those from non-ESP background are obvious targets precisely because of the extended family notion. You have a lot of extended family men with extended hands”, Pellizzari asserts. “I didn’t want to do a story of a victim without a revenge aspect. These girls have anger in common because no one helps them take life into their own hands. I wanted to inspire anyone who has been a victim, or has been not able to deal with it, to do something to break out.” Pellizzari’s film-as-therapy effort, with its empowering surprising ending, garnered praise from human rights sources and a Strength and Courage award from the Italian-Australian Wom en’s Association. By now the stage was set for her début feature, Fistful o f Flies. It took five years to refine the script, providing scope to encapsulate and evolve her socio-cultural feminist concerns in the rites-ofpassage of Maria Lupi (Tasma Walton), rebelliously self-named “Mars”. This time, Pellizzari’s focus is more ambitious. While the film’s core is driven by Mars’ coming-ofage and rebellion against patriarchal oppression and traditionalist values, it plays against a mosaic of interwoven stories of three generations of bicultural women. Pellizzari says, “I felt strongly about giving all of them an arc of change to allow them to develop. With Mars as the catalyst, even Grandma [played bril liantly by Anna Volska] mellows and finds her own individual stand.” Rebellion is in the air. Mars’ parents want her to go down the tra ditional path of marriage; she wants an education and career as a lawyer. Mars discov ers her own sensuality, exacerbates tensions in the household in the small town, and des perately seeks privacy. With revenge on her mind, she challenges her father’s abusive domina tion of the household in a climactic confrontation. Traditionally, it is believed that if you follow your own spirit in this culture you will end up with a “fistful of flies” (“un pugno di mosche”) - a fistful of nothing - but Mars’ defiance adds up to a great deal. Mars took a while to cast. “I didn’t want a pure teenager straight from the streets,” says Pellizzari, “because that traps you into social-realist type of acting style and I wanted to go hyper-real. Tasma

CI NEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

had enough training, she was a little bit older and could play down, and has an emotional range above all others.” Producer Julia Overton was drawn to the migrant roots and the universality of family ten sions and dilemmas expressed in the script. “Monica is one of a generation of younger film makers who tell stories in a different way”, says Overton. “Their films are one short image after another rather than long, lingering scenes. It’s interesting to watch that combination without los ing the story, and one of the challenges is to make sure visual style doesn’t overtake narrative. Monica was successful in that.” Thematically, according to Pellizzari, the film is an amalgam of earlier concerns: “I wanted to set up

the notion that violence is carried on through the generations, but that maybe there is hope for the next generation brought about by the act of rage by Mars.” Gradually, one sees a declining influence of the home-country values: Grandma is rooted in the traditional Italian culture; Grace, Mars’ mother (Panozzo), straddles both cultures; while Mars, an Australian girl growing up, is eventually responsible for her mother’s liberation from her tyrannical father’s control. Her father’s double-standards are exposed in his adulterous relationship with his mis tress (Maria Venuti). Says Pellizzari: “Grace is an amalgam of a lot of women I know. I think our mother’s generation had it tougher than us and a lot of them would have liked to have broken out but didn’t have the means or know-how. It’s a sort of fantasy to me to show it’s possible. “I know quite a few women from migrant back grounds who did get out of horrendous marriages late in their lives and escaped the patriarchal domi nation. It wasn’t easy and a lot of them tend to stay in marriage because they can’t see another way out. “Italian men seek wives who are the embodi ment of their mothers, a whore and madonna, and

CI NEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

I think I tackle all these metaphors in my work.

course? “I do believe that when left to their own

Unfortunately, we have the bloody Virgin Mary

devices women tell stories in a different way. As you get more and more professional, and demand more money, there is a much greater pressure to erode that femalenesss, to tell stories in a much more acceptable mainstream - that is, created by

out there to be constantly pitted against. Yet, it’s not like everyone wants Jesus Christ as a husband.” Coming from an Italian Catholic, these are rebel lious words. “I think women are incredibly strong. The things we have to bear as underdog make us that way. If we had it all on a platter, we wouldn’t be that way. I don’t shy away from calling my films feminist. At least 90 percent of cinema is boys’ sto ries and I want to redress some of the balance. I’m interested in telling human stories mainly because that’s what I know, and I want to validate women on screen. We hardly see enough stories about women; it’s only token representation.”

The oppressive father figure is almost a carica ture, I suggest. “It comes back to screen time”, responds Pellizzari. “W e’re so used to men domi nating screen time that, when it’s reversed, people have a sense of aberration. It’s a matter of the sub-

boys - way .” In Fistful o f Flies, Mars’ exploration of sexuality is expressed through vivid tones, with boldly-colourful ‘in-your-face’ images of menstrua tion and forced defloration. Pellizzari explores alienation through camera moves, from micro-lens close-up to - bang wide-shot. “My editor [fellow APTRS graduate James Manche] knew I wanted to go from close-up to widescreen, but it also comes back to creating that cinematic experience which enables us to examine life at that microscopic level. Most film is shot like TV, but why spend all that money if you’re not going to cinematically enhance it?” Pellizzari attributes much of the distinctive look of her last three films to her cinematographer, fellow AFTRS graduate Jane Castle (camera operator on Campion’s Sweetie). “She, in her own right, has a strong visual style and we basically combine our two visions. We storyboard everything to make sure we’re both speaking the same language. “I wanted to accentuate the idea of hyper-realism and surrealism. A journalist for the Italian newspaper La Republica described my influences as very much Peter Weir surrealism and Lina Wertmiiller hyper-realism. I worked with both and some critics see the unconscious influences. But I also find that Australia’s a magical place to live. As soon as I go out into the country, I can smell blood. I find that fascinating and threatening com ing from a background where life is so chaotic. Few filmmakers would admit to emulating the form of other movies. Pellizzari scoffs: “There isn’t anything original on screen; it’s your approach that can be, the way you unveil the story.” She cites Martha Meszaros and Agnieszka Holland as influences; Scorsese (“though I have j

ut \ u c i l

le , f(\C

Ì~l\t

wcl'j

5 /0 r

conscious and people don’t stop to analyze that. “Nightly, we watch what I call the testosterone nightly news, because everything is about what men have done that day: who they’ve killed, maimed, the stupid laws they’ve introduced - and we’re ignored. W e’re victims and along comes a film where the male is in the background and suddenly there is a sense of discomfort in the subconscious.” Dreaming and nightmares explosively convey on screen her female protagonists’ traumas. Do female filmmakers use a special distinctive film dis

a problem with his handling of women”); she loves the way

Bertolucci uses sound (though is less appreciative of his misogynistic 0 0 u streak); and, of course, fellow Italians - Antonioni, Fellini - come in for praise. Locally, Jane Campion, Peter Weir and Paul Cox (a source of support) are cited as inspiring. Cinema has provided Pellizzari with a cathartic canvas, yet the issue of identity continues to be complex. “I don’t know what it is to be Australian. 1 feel Australian when I go away overseas. But when I’m here I feel like a foreigner. And there are still voices saying, ‘When are you going to make films about real Australians?’, like I’m not legit imized because I make so-called ‘wog’ films. It’s very distressing, but I’m validated elsewhere and that keeps me going.” ©

c^r\

Sandra Harris (Marilyn O'Donnell) and Bret (Matt Dyktynski).

Ja ck (Alwyn Kurts).

Ned (Rod Williams), Geoff (Andrew Curry), Ted (Terry Norris), Keith (Don Bridges) and Alvin (Bob Hornery).

Brian (Bill Young) and Maurie (Paul Chubb).

small country town is turned upside-down by four bowling ladies. An “accidental comedy”, R oad to N hill marks the feature début of director Sue Brooks, working with a script by Alison Tilson. Brooks says, “It is hard for me to believe the characters in R oad to N hill don’t exist in the real world. I’ve been living with this community for so long. I still talk to the screen when I see the film. I growl at them, cajole them, get frustrated with them, and ultimately love and care for them. “Mum used to say, ‘His or her heart is in the right place’, and that was always enough said. I think Road to N hill’s heart is in the right place. I hope people can enjoy it for that.” Brooks won the Best Short Fiction Award for The D rover’s Wife at the 1984 Sydney Film Festival, was a documentary finalist with High H eels (written by Tilson) in 1985 and in 1988 directed A« Ordinary Woman. After doing an episode of Six Pack for SBS, Brooks made Land o f the Long W eekend in 1992 for the ABC and Film Australia. Sue Maslin is R oad to N hill’s producer, and Nicolette Freeman the director of photography. (Freeman shot most of Brooks’ other films; this is her first feature.) The cast includes Bill Hunter, Tony Barry, Lynette Cur ran, Monica Maughan, Patricia Kennedy and Lois Ramsey. Photos : Jennifer Mitchell

CI NEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

Carmel (Lois Ramsey), Margot (Lynette Curran), Nell (Monica Maughan) and Jean (Patricia Kennedy).

P ¿9

fk ..Æ

******* i

>s'T*

rr « S|?ti|w V j j

Wl«ST«L

totin t*m

Gwen (Denise Roberts) and Jim (Tony Barry).

Bob (Bill Hunter). while director See Brooks waits for the dost to s e t t l e « n Ï Ï Î l T ™

CI NEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

' ' ' 8 ''0“ S PU" Br’

“ ’ be ° amera

MICK CONNOLLY 'T^hen I was driving cabs years ago, / \ J I’d just had somebody vomit in V T the car. It was dark, and I saw this guy by the side of the road hailing me, walking all wobbly. I thought, ‘I can’t pick up this guy’, but he got his hand on the door handle. I had to stop so I wouldn’t rip his hand off. He got in and I said, ‘Please, mate, just don’t throw up in the car.’ It turned out he was disabled. I felt so small. He went on to abuse me all the way home.” Anyone who has seen Mick Connolly’s AFI u

▼ \

Award-winning short Cabbie o f the Year will have no trouble recognizing the genesis of this wicked urban anecdote. That viewer would also be in no doubt about the filmmaker’s sympathies. For while Cabbie o f the Year, like much of the Melbourne filmmaker’s work, revisits the figure of the socalled loser, it ingeniously asks which of the nebbichs is the true clown, and why are we amused at their plight? Connolly sees his short films, seven in all, as gentle comedies about people who are behind the eight ball: “They’re about characters. Trying to be true to a character - that’s what I really love. It’s not about getting off on slapstick gags and trying

to be as funny as I can. I like to stay truthful to characters and tell a story that people can identify with.” Comedy, Connolly says, “is part of my make up. Every time I think of stories, I see the funny side of them. Even when I try to be serious, I come out with something stupid.” He laughs with the modesty of a person who refuses to take him self too seriously. “I think it’s just part of you.” Connolly took the long route to his fast-mount ing career as a director, working as a copywriter, taxi driver, advertising rep, shop assistant and prop-maker. “It’s a bank of information. I’ll run out of my experiences soon and have to do some

CINEMA P APERS • JUNE 1997

research”, he adds. Most recently, he directed episodes of G ood Guys, Bad Guys and Raw-FM, and is currently developing his first feature script. In 1992, Connolly undertook the VCA PostGraduate course, his short Opportunity Knocks winning a nomination for an API Award and a theatrical season. The black comedy had its origins, says Connolly, in “the idea of somebody tattooing their life story on someone else’s body. I spun the story around that.” That, plus a stint in a German detention centre for not paying a train fare many years ago. Making comedy, Connolly insists, isn’t very funny. “You have to go into the shoot relying on

CINEMA P AP E R S • JUNE 1997

your first instincts in the script, knowing that your casting is right and that it will be funny when you chop it all together. But watching rushes and doing it on the day can be worrying because nobody’s laughing.” Laughter can be a danger, too. “I had one experience on a short, Sink or Swim, where the crew were pissing themselves all the way through. I don’t think the film’s very funny. I think it’s because the actors were playing it like theatre; the crew was the audience. They were playing it up to some people outside the frame and suddenly it wasn’t funny when we looked at it in a room on a screen. None of those laughs are there.

“If I go in there trying to be funny, rather than being true to the characters, it’s terrible. Audiences pick it straight away.” Connolly says that he grew up in a family of big storytellers, which may be where he found his intu ition for the pay-off. “Structure has a lot to do with whether it’s funny or not. I think that’s the same in any storytelling - warming the audience to get them ready for something funny. Often I think of really funny scenes and write them down, but when I go to do them they’re not very funny because they weren’t given the right set-up. The audience isn’t ready for it. It’s a long process to get those structures right.” Photo : Rocco Fasano

ALEKA DOESN’T LI!

S o m e m u s i n g s on suburbia, migration and film

Christos Tsiolkas 30

N TH E underrated children’s film Say a Little Prayer (Richard Lowenstein, 1993), there is one lone shot that is evocative of Melbourne’s suburbia. This is the brick-veneered outer suburbia of my adolescence, all asphalt and lawn, not the Victorian and Edwardian borders of the inner-city. It is only one shot, and quickly the camera returns to the alleys and closed streets of inner-city Rich mond. Though Melbourne films have consistently used working-class milieus and characters, the landscape, if it has not been the bush, has remained very much the inner-city. The long stretches of suburbia that sprawl for miles in every direction have been largely ignored. Suburbia, if it is referred to at all, is a place to escape from. In Say a Little Prayer, it flashes, for an instance: a neatlawned and Vi acre-blocked version of Hell. The Melbourne skyline, as viewed from the inner-western suburbs, dominates the iconography of Melbourne-based films: from Mouth to Mouth (John Duigan, 1978) to Romper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright, 1992), from Spotswood (Mark Joffe, 1992) to The Big Steal (Nadia Tass, 1990) and

CI NEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

Holidays on the River Yarra (Leo Berkeley, 1991). The very phrase, the west ern suburbs, is a shorthand that refers to a working-class urban Australia. Whether the films are celebratory or grim, comedies or tragedies, the west continues to function as a site of class definition. This definition strikes me as problematic, almost mythological, in that it fails to accept the changing landscape of the city, the changing patterns of migration - inter-cultural as well as “ethnic”. Romper Stomper, from this perspective, can be understood as a pivotal Melbourne film, simultaneously charting the changes to the inner-city and fiercely defending the mythology from collapse. The skinheads become representatives of a working-class culture that is being destroyed by the foreign communities moving into Footscray. I would argue that Romper Stomper, confused and largely incoher ent, is the coda of an Australian cinematic representation and subjectivity: Anglo-identified, nostalgic, simultaneously homoerotic and homophobic in its obsession with mateship.

CINEMA P AP E RS • JUNE 1997

A MEMORY IN TERLU D E (BRUNSW ICK S T R E E T , CIRCA 1 9 7 8) hough I lived only a few blocks away from it, Brunswick Street in 1977 was a place I was discouraged from visiting, especially on my own. Mum had got her first job in Australia on Brunswick Street, a textile sweat-shop, and I knew it as a place o f gambling, hard-drinking and criminal activity. This was a street o f Commission Housing estates and o f cheap small businesses and pubs. I rem ember the streets ofFitzroy, o f Richmond and o f Collingwood as small and dirty, filled with Greeks, Italians, Turks and Slavs, as well as Anglos. At 13, in 1978, my family was to move away, part o f a migration to outersuburbia that was to be massive in its repercussions and which was to transform the cultures and look o f these inner-city suburbs. The 1983 Melbourne film Moving Out (Michael Pattinson) is one of the few chronicles of this migration. Set in a three-week period which sees an ItalianAustralian family prepare to move from Fitzroy to the eastern suburbs, the film is framed from the point of view of the adolescent son, Gino (Vince

Nick (Alex Dimitriades), centre, and friends. Michael Jenkins' The Heatbreak Kid.

Colosimo). Gino resents the move. His world - at school, at play - is bounded by a continuous cross ing over, and in between, the “Anglo” and the “ethnic” worlds. The categories of w og and skip are marked clearly but among his peers, Gino is capable of flirting between these categories. Only within his family home is there a tension in defini tion. His mother speaks to him in Italian and Gino answers her sullenly in English. It is to the credit of the film, that for the most part, the Italian remains unsub-titled. The effect is to convey sharply and poignantly the inter-generational cultural confu sions of migrant experience. We see Gino swagger confidently through the streets, empty lots and pin-ball parlours of Carlton and Fitzroy. As yet, the gentrification of the inner-city is not in evidence. Gino’s parents, however, are framed within the confines of home and of factor)'- work, and their isolation from the landscape is evident. We never see the family shift to the outer suburbs. The film ends with the arrival of the removalists. Moving Out represents a working-class milieu that is instantly identifiable to anyone growing up in Melbourne in the 1970s and ’80s. Rather than a consciously-dictated pol icy or ethics, multi-culturalism is embodied in the physical terrain in which Gino lives. An Italian sits at a desk next to a Greek who sits next to an Aussie. Some of the most effective scenes in the film are of the teenagers hanging out in an abandoned car, smoking. Ethnicity, cultural difference, remains a tension - “you wogs”, “you aussies” - but it is often subordinate to the shared experiences of school, generational conflict and lack of money. Ten years on, The H eartbreak Kid (Michael Jenkins, 1993) examines a sexual rela tionship between a Greek-Australian schoolteacher and her Greek-Australian student. As much as their age separates them, so does location. Christina (Claudia Karvan), the schoolteacher, lives with her parents in a large modern house “on top of the hill”. Seventeen-year-old Nick (Alex Dimitriades) lives with his father and sister in a small house in the inner-western suburbs. Apart from the obvious symbolic demarcation of class represented by the two houses (inner/outer, working-class/businessclass), The H eartbreak Kid also obliquely refers to the transformation of Melbourne, and of Aus tralian culture, effected by migrations. A marked difference between Moving Out and The H eartbreak Kid is that though both films are concerned with adolescence, the multiple-ethnic relationships within the school are now mediated by a conscious (capital-M) Multi-culturalism. Eth nic tension forms an important sub-plot, and, as befits an Australian film, it is played out within the medium of sports (this time Soccer vs. Aussie Rules). Unlike the tentative Gino, who refuses to speak Italian, the established Greek-Australian communities in The H eartbreak Kid articulate a more proudly ethno-specific identity. Both Nick and Christina use Greek as well as English; both of them are comfortable with, and surrounded by, Greek-Australian peers. What Christina and Nick share with Gino is the tension of family relation ships, a tension over-determined by the cultural effects and displacements of migration. Even though an adult, Christina is trapped in a 45

CI NEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

ADAM BENJAMIN ELLIOT wenty-five-year-old Adam Benjamin Elliot did the Post-Graduate Diploma in Anima tion at Victoria College of the Arts’ School of Film and Television last year, and produced a six-minute claymation film, Uncle. Since then, Uncle has won the Best Animated Film Award at the Provincial Cafe Comedy Short Film Festival and a string of VCA Awards, and screened at the St Kilda Film Festival on opening night. It was also shown as part of the Australian short film showcase, Cinema Days Antipodeas, at Cannes this year, and was selected in competition for the Annecy International Animation Festival in France. Elliot spent five years travelling and working as a freelance designer, illustrator and t-shirt designer before doing the course at VCA, but claymation was never his intention. “Initially what I wanted to do was 2D animation on cels”, Elliot explains, “and Uncle was going to be 2D. However, the lecturers convinced me to do 3D, because they thought it was a good script, and things in the round seem to grab more attention, especially with t success of Wallace and Gromit.” The whole thing almost didn’t happen because, while Elliot had a folio, he had no under graduate qualifications or previous film work behind him. “I got in on the skin of my teeth”, he confesses. “I actually got in on the second round, so I really appreciated it, and I think I worked that extra bit harder because of that.” Elliot had been working on a completelydifferent script all year, which was received poorly, so one night he put together a series of family remembrances and developed the script for Uncle. It’s a nostalgic, semi-autobiographi cal look at an archetypal uncle figure that is immediately engaging, and is both funny and devastatingly sad. Elliot has been working on his next script, which will also be a claymation film, as well as developing a children’s book, and travelling to Annecy for the Festival. While he would love to make a half-hour animated film like those with Wallace and Gromit, he really can’t see it happening here. Photo: Tamara Harrison

CINEMA

PAPERS

• JUNE

1997

p a r t ic le s

Silicon Graphics

ComputerSystems

HM3d Graphics Systems 3 / I Ridge Street North Sydney NSW 2060 Australia ph 02 9

Away pest, hence Scheming men and bedded women John Duigan’s recent offerings have caused few waves, but his latest, The Leading Man, has a compelling hum

Australia is blessed with many things: * < one is that

Kenneth Branagh has now tackled William Shakespeare’s Hamlet - in two versions. Brian McFarlane starts with the shorter, and is well pleased

Stern lives ' in America. But Stern has the last laugh with his autobiographical tale invading our silver screens

THE LEADING MAN Directed by John Duigan. Producers: ^ Bertil Ohlsson, Paul Raphael, pi Scriptwriter: Virginia Duigan. Director j k of photography: Jean-François Robin. P^Editor: Humphrey Dixon. Production f jpesigner: Caroline Hanania. Costume ÉËÎdesigner: Rachel Fleming. Cast: Jon W w Bon Jovi (Robin Grange), Lambert |pM/Vilson (Felix Webb), Anna Galiena • JElena Webb), Thandie Newton (Hilary y Rule), Barry Humphries (Humphrey P Beal). Australian distributor: REP. USA. 1997.35mm. 100 mins.

Food on film is rarely more passionately represented than by those o f Italian heritage. And Marty’s mom didn’t let her son down with Italianamerican: The Scorsese Family Cookbook

J ohn Duigan’s latest film is full of

irony. There’s the irony of the middle-aged male playwright, Felix Webb (Lambert Wilson), supposedly the hottest in England, influencing the casting of his secret young lover, Hilary Rule (Thandie Newton), as the female lead in his play, The Hit Man, only to run the risk of losing her to the dashing leading man. And for Hilary there’s the irony of Felix’s writing a part that calls for passionate love scenes with a much younger man, whilst she is feeling betrayed by the playwright because he won’t leave his wife and family. Then there’s the irony of the playwright setting up his wife, Elena (Anna Galiena), to have an affaire,

For the m ost part, the a ctin g is of a high standard [...] It's ju st a sham e that, fo r all its am bitions, True Love and Chaos ge ts som e of the elem ents right, but is let dow n by a scrip t th at's too literal and too sup erficial. p 45

CINEMA PAPERS • JUNE 1997

Robin Gcäg}| HilargÄRule (s

Jon BoYi Jovi)) indie Newton]

only to realize that he’s jealous of her liaison. And for the young, very attractive leading man, Robin Grange (Jon Bon Jovi), there’s the irony of helping the playwright write the script for his own life, which may or may not change the script of the play. All this is told in a fastly-paced, three-act screenplay by John Duigan’s sister, Virginia Duigan, who’s clearly interested in what goes on behind the scenes, especially in the schemes men will come up with to get the women they want into bed. It’s a script that’s clever on a number of levels, and John Duigan’s casting and direction makes it even more interesting. The Leading Man starts with

"-review Film s

continued Hilary’s audition in a upmarket theatre set in modern-day, swinging London. The play’s director is Humphrey Beal (Barry Humphries), who’s a likeable knockabout sort of Engbsh chap. Curiously enough, Humphries plays his role pretty straight and resists the temptation to parody one of his more outrageous characters. At home, Felix’s wife is clean-

his situation by making this mad pact with Robin, he finds himself even less able to go home to face his wife and family, reduced to sitting in his car outside Hilary’s place to watch her comings and goings, and check that she isn’t with Robin or some other dude. Meanwhile, Robin is making all the right moves, after he has researched Elena’s character, so he knows just when to pounce. He also has itemized his expenses and given Felix a bill of £12,000! And while all this sexual cloak and dagger is going on, we the audi-

expected to do better in England, where films about repressed and messy sex lives have always been in vogue. In Australia, it will probably have a short box-office, despite the presence of charismatic Jon Bon Jovi, and some fine acting from Lambert Wilson and Anna Galiena (famous for her work in The Hair dresser’s Husband) and smaller cameo roles by Patricia Hodge, David Warner, Diana Quick and even Nicole Kidman. But Thandie Newton as the girlfriend and Barry Humphries as the theatre director are so understated they leave us with a very slight impression. © M a r g a r e t S m it h

PRIVATE PARTS Directed by Betty Thomas. Producer: Ivan Reitman. Executive producers: Daniel Goldberg, Joe Medjuck, Keith Samples. Co-producer: Celia Costas. Scriptwriters: Len Blum, Michael Kalesniko, based on the book by Howard Stern. Director of photography: Walt Lloyd. Editor: Peter Teschner. Production designer: Charles Rosen. Score: Van Dyke Parks. Cast: Howard Stern (Himself), Robin Quivers (Herself), Mary McCormack (Alison Stern), Fred Norris (Himself), Jackie Martling (Herself), Gary Dell 'Abate (Himself). Australian distributor: Roadshow. USA. 1997.35mm. 109 mins.

T his film is the life-story of Elena V p ^ -fA h ria G^lieHaTS’n.i Hilary ñu\e. Jhj$0ÊÊiifg

ing, cooking meals and watering flowers, caught in a Jane Austen timewarp, which makes one wonder how accurate this film is about the English artistic élite. She’s a writer who has sacrificed her career for her husband’s, and who loves her three children to the point of distraction. Like most Hollywood films, she doesn’t have any friends and is ripe for the picking, so when Robin sug gests he could have an affaire with Felix’s wife to give Felix more time to screw Hilary, Felix is shocked and then tempted by such an inge nious idea. The girlfriend and wife know nothing about this plotting and scheming, which makes the male bonding even more malevolent. Unfortunately, our sympathy for the women isn’t helped by Hilary saying lines like: “We can’t go on like this”; and Elena, “I created a home for you so you could write!” It’s the men who are given the most interesting lines, especially Robin, who makes daredevil forays into Felix’s subconscious with, “I’m like you: I’m a mercenary and I’ll do anything for money!” But when Felix thinks he’s fixed

ence are wondering just how far these two men will take their exper iment and whether anyone will actually get hurt or even come to a sticky end. So whether or not the play goes on is the subplot that strings all this together and adds a darker dimension, especially as there are guns involved as props and Felix has changed the script so that Robin actually gets killed. The Leading Man definitely has a good sense of the absurd, and how crazy people can be when they are falling in lust and/or love. And under Duigan’s direction it is smooth and fast, though filmed at times like a stageplay, with minimal interpretative or expressive work by the camera. But it does have a certain com pelling hum to it, and like Woody Allen’s films it seems to say just as much about the writer and director as it does about the craft of filmmaking. There is a good deal of personal irony in this film, which will make it very enjoyable to those in the know, but will unfortunately be lost on a wider audience. The Leading Man only had a small release in the USA, but is

Howard Stern, starring Howard Stern, based on the tell-all autobiography of, you guessed it, Howard Stern. Ergo, if you are a Howard Stern fan, you will love this film; otherwise, there will be little, if anything, in it for you. Howard Stern, little-known in Australia, is, according to the source himself, nothing short of a phenomenon in the USA. Stern claims to have invented the radio genre of “shock jock”: the practice of being as rude, obnoxious, sex ist and racist as possible for the supposed enter tainment of the unful filled

But the real thrust of Private Parts is that, although Howard now

has fame, fortune and the adoration of millions, he really is a nice guy, down-to-earth, struggling against the system and with his fidelity meter on high. Howard wants us to like him, because really he’s a mis understood genius, a little on the lonely side. This tale of woe comes from the same man who constantly laments the length of his penis, has an unending stream of naked women parading through his radio studio (and the film) and has an insatiable appetite for all things lesbian. But all is to be forgiven because he loves his wife and he’s funny, or so he tells us. Private Parts has little style and less substance. It is nothing more than an extremely-cynical marketing exercise from a seasoned producer, Ivan Reitman, from whom we could have expected more. In the land where the cult of celebrity reigns supreme and dirty laundry is at a premium, Private Parts has already made its killing ($15.5 million in its opening week end). Stern is yet still more famous, and has perhaps even elicited fur ther worship from viewers duped by his “I’m so misunderstood” catch-cry. Stern’s life, as depicted by direc tor Betty Thomas, is not intrinsically interesting. This is not the kind of

biopic that relies on a fascinating plot, great humour or a subject that, although foreign, is nonetheless intriguing. Private Parts shows Stern growing up in a middle-American family where he is not listened to (a fact that New York radio listeners pay for day after day), has problems dating, finds and marries the woman of his dreams, develops his radio career and becomes a legend. Amongst this are some amusing moments, including the first radio orgasm, playing frisbee with dis abled men and a running conflict with a programme manager. Defenders of this film would say that the issue at its core is free dom of speech. They would paint Stern as a crusader against censor ship and a champion of democracy (the first amendment, et al), while the detractors would say that Stern’s opposition, in the guise of NBC management, are portrayed as incompetent fall-guys who appear unworthy of the energy that he spends on them. The NBCers are drawn as such in-fighting carica tures, with no weight assigned to them, that the writing and portrayal of them inevitably undermines Stern’s victory - a victory over these fools is surely a hollow one. One of the redeeming features of the film is the lead female charac ter, Robin Quivers (played by Quivers herself), Stern’s on-air co-star who began as a news reader and graduated to side-kick. Quivers makes an attempt to bring dignity where little is to be found, and seems comfortable on film, although the more “dramatic” scenes sec her flounder a little. Mary McCormack,

True Love and Chaos Directed by Stavros Adonis Efthymiou. Producer: Ann Darouzet Scriptwriter: Stavros Adonis Efthymiou. Director of photography: Laszlo Baranyai. Production designer: Stephen Jones-Evans. Editor: Ken Sallows. Sound Designers: Craig Carter, James Harvey. Cast Naveen Andrews (Hanif); Miranda Otto (Mimi); Noah Taylor (Dean); Hugo Weaving (Morris); Ben Mendelsohn (Jerry); Kimberley Davies (Ariel); Genevieve Picot (Hannah). Australian distributor: Newvision Rims. Australia. 1997. 35mm. 97 mins.

the film's climax is contrived and,

roles in Australian films in a long time,

across the Nullarbor and between

therefore, ineffective.

is unfathomable. Picot tries to give her

towns seem incidental. The towns

scant material some body, but it's just

themselves are an anonymous string

not there in the script.

of pubs, and give no indication of

Road movies, by their nature, have a conventional structure, one that involves a personal journey as well as

The males come off best, with

exactly where they are - something

the physical one, but True Love and

Hanif the winner as the best-scripted

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of

Chaos is too obvious in the depiction of

of the lot. There is at least some ambi

the Desert (Stephan Elliott, 1994)

imi (Miranda Otto) is a

the alcoholic lead singer of a covers

this journey, and it is far too easy to

guity to the character, and Andrews,

achieved with much aplomb. And

young woman of an

band. He is given the boot from both

anticipate-you can see ¡tall coming in

who also appears in The English

when they finally reach Perth, we see

unspecified age about

his girlfriend and the band, and

the first reel. Character depth is also

Patient (Anthony Minghella, 1997) and

little, if not nothing, of the city. While

to travel from Mel

decides to accompany Mimi and

lacking; we can't really feel anything for

Kama Sutra (Mira Nair, 1997), is able to

the city itself may be irrelevant, and

bourne to Perth to reunite with her

friends to Perth. Hanif is suspicious,

any of the characters because they're

play that depth to great effect. Morris

the journey and its resulting climaxes

mother after a twelve-month absence.

especially when Mimi becomes

all just too sketchy and superficial.

also gets substance and Weaving

the focus, there is no sense of

Mimi does not know who her father is,

attracted to this older, but somehow

works well with his material, especially

distance or arrival.

and her mother is not willing to tell her,

likeable, man, but he is also oblivious

and, given that Mimi is the main char

the songs Morris covers to amusing

saying she is better off not knowing.

to what Mimi's periodic nausea may

acter, it is surprising that the picture

drunken effect, but it does seem a little

moments: Otto's karaoke number is an

The female characters suffer most

Having said all that, the film has its

But Mimi is still curious and hopes that

mean. It seems that everyone has

painted is evasive and superficial.

superficial, and his complexity is never

indulgent delight; Dean's Mills & Boon

this time she'll found out who he is.

something to hide from everyone else

We are only given the bare bones of

really explored. Taylor as the grungy

habit is a running joke that works well;

and, when they finally reach Perth, it

Mimi's motivation, and we never really

loser is given an obsession with cheap

and the atmosphere of the pubs is

all blows up into a huge mess.

get to see who she is and why. Otto

romantic fiction, which is amusing and

nicely portrayed and gives the film a

does her best, and she does make Mimi

kooky. He plays the poignancy well,

contemporary edge similarto Love

Accompanying her is her British boyfriend, Hanif (Naveen Andrews), and his friend. Dean (Noah Taylor).

Written by director Stavros Ando-

They have just stolen a stash of drugs

nis Efthymiou, this cool and groovy

a likeable character, but she's just not

but again ifs just trappings, and

and Other Catastrophes (Emma-Kate

from Dean's brother, Jerry (Ben

road movie has story signposts so

given enough to really work with.

there's no real sense of the character

Croghan, 1996), which, of course,

Mendelsohn), something of a New Age

large it's just impossible to get lost, or

The other female characters -

beneath. Mendelsohn at least gets to

Efthymiou produced. For the most part,

drug dealer, and are using Mimi's trip

to even care what happens at the end.

Jerry's ditzy girlfriend, Ariel (Kimberley

play with, and subsequently turns in,

the acting is of a high standard; with

to put as much space between them

Revelations such as the reason behind

Davies), and Hannah, Mimi's mother

an exaggerated, violent caricature that

such a strong cast, it's expected,

and him as possible. Jerry, however,

Mimi's nausea and Morris' past, and

(Genevieve Picot) - are embarrass

can't even be saved by the 'quirky'

really. Ifs just a shame that, for all its

finds out and sets out to find them,

the threat that Jerry represents, elicit

ingly-stereotyped and -underwritten

New Age twist.

thinking positive, but violent, thoughts.

groans of disappointment rather than

respectively. Why Davies agreed to

Along the way, the travelling trio meet up with Morris (Hugo Weaving),

For a road movie. True Love and

ambitions. True Love and Chaos gets some of the elements right, but is let

the satisfying shock they should pro

play this part, which is perhaps one of

Chaos is surprisingly lacking in a sense

down by a scriptthat'stoo literal and

voke. The entire dramatic tension of

the worst and most demeaning female

of physical travel. The driving scenes

too superficial.

CI NEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

in review Films

continued playing Alison Stern, also puts in a good performance as Stern’s longsuffering (long-pregnant) wife. As for Howard Stern, he appears relaxed in front of the cameras and has begun his acting career by playing something that is familiar to him - a version of him self that he is second-guessing an audience will like (or love to hate). His vocal ability does rate a mention - particularly as Stern’s voice has a remarkably-similar twang to a younger Alan Alda (just close your eyes). If self-aggrandizement and phoney manipulation are on your menu, Howard’s your man. He’ll serve them up in equal helpings and leave you room for a hearty scoop of misogyny on the side. If this doesn’t whet your appetite, Private Parts is something you may like to leave unexposed. ®

D e b o r a h N is k i

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET SHORTER VERSION Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Producer David Barron. Scriptwriter: Kenneth Branagh. Director of photography: Alex Thomson. Production designer: Tim Harvey. Editor: Neil Farrell. Costume designer: Alex Byrne. Music: Patrick Doyle. Cast: Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet), Richard Briers (Polonius), Julie Christie (Gertrude), Billy Crystal (First Gravedigger), Judi Dench (Hecuba). Australian distributor: Columbia Tristar. USA. 1997. 35mm. 120 mins1.

he arrival of Kenneth Branagh’s William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

(in two-hour and four-hour ver sions) makes one consider again the whole business of adapting the clas sics to the screen. Literary people persist in expecting a literary com plexity when their favourite texts are filmed, and are apt to be very dismissive when they don’t find it. Too often, they don’t consider that cinematic complexity, which they are not trained to perceive, might i take very different forms from its

literary counterpart. Those trained solely in film sometimes simply con sider the precursor text irrelevant, but are, on the whole, less likely to lay down the law about literature than the literary are about film. There is surely an area in which film and literature clearly overlap above all, in matters of narrative and those not bound to asserting the primacy of either may find a very interesting instance of “convergence among the arts”, as one commenta tor put it. Certainly there is no sign of the current fervour abating in the matter of adapting the classics. Audiences are promised two more from Henry James (Agnieska Holland’s Washington Square and Iain Softley’s The Wings of the Dove), two from Joseph Conrad (Christopher Hampton’s The Secret Agent and Beeban Kidron’s Amy Foster), versions of Mrs Dalloway and Anna Karenina, and three more goes at Shakespeare (Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titus Andronicus). Perhaps the most com

pelling reason for talking about adaptation is just this: filmmakers seem irresistibly drawn to works of literature, especially classic works, and filmgoers seem insatiably curi ous to ‘see’ their favourite texts bodied forth in visual images. Film-

makers may once have felt that asso ciation with the older mode would imbue the screen version with a sort of cultural respectability, but surely the cinema has long outgrown the need for this kind of imported sta tus. More probably, there is still some commercial mileage to be had from a pre-loved title, and, even more likely, that there is the attrac tion of at least a narrative skeleton which has shown itself persuasive in one medium. Shakespeare remains a special case. He comes to us at the end of the 20th century trailing immense cultural baggage. “Shakespeare” is a commodity to inspire awe, even among those not familiar with him at first-hand, and fewer and fewer are as the œuvre has to jostle for places on overcrowded syllabuses. He is undoubtedly difficult to read today when reading itself is in such competition with the visual media for our narrative attention. Shake speare enjoins on the filmmaker the absolute requirement of making him accessible to modern audiences, and this implies not just moment-tomoment clarity but a sense of his matter having some connection with our lives. The most demanding criterion is surely: Is this intelligible/interesting to someone

unfamiliar with the play on which a particular film is based? The chal lenges in meeting such a criterion are daunting indeed: What can be omitted? Descriptive language per haps, if the film’s visual images are doing their job. Maybe above all is the problem of securing suspension of audience disbelief when faced with the stylization of blank verse in the intense realism of cinematic mise en scène. Simply, can we accept these characters talking to each other in iambic pentameters? It is not the intention of this review to offer answers to any of these issues which have been brought to the forefront of the mind by Kenneth Branagh’s William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which is now, unusually, being presented in Australian cinemas in a two- and four-hour versions, both made, astoundingly, in ten weeks, for a fraction of the cost of a run-of-themill Hollywood comedy or thriller (or, say, Demi Moore’s salary). It is an enterprise of great daring (“of great pith or moment”, one might say), and, on the evidence of the two-hour version, it is an almost unqualified triumph: breathtaking in its imaginative sweep, hurtlingly fast, greatly exciting, again and again very touching, and ending on

CI NEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

an authentically tragic note of loss filmed at Shepperton Studios, Mid and restoration. Branagh, who dlesex), dazzling use is made of the instigated a revival of filmed Shake splendour of state rooms (for speare with the popular success of Claudius and Gertrude’s initial his Henry V in 1989, here offers a scene of wooing the court, while vindication of the traditional Hamlet in black remains hidden in approach, showing it to be as a corner); of mirrored halls for amenable to intense cinematic emphasizing introspection (“To be excitement as more obviously radical approaches - from Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books to Mercurio as a transvestite in silver lamé mini-skirt. With so well-known and muchfilmed a play as Hamlet, it is hard for the viewer not to wonder: How will it handle this or that scene? How will it present the Ghost? What sort of Hamlet/Ophelia/ Gertrude/Claudius, etc., will it offer? Its intertextuality will include those other famous film Hamlets: Olivier’s moody film noir version of 1948; Tony Richardson’s 1968 filming of the London Roundhouse production with a wayward Prince from Nicol Williamson, epitomizing the contemporary disdain of dissi dent youth for its hypocritical elders; and Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 version with a sensible, unexciting Hamlet from Mel Gibson. On the basis of the two-hour version, I should say that Branagh has succeeded in effacing these earlier competing images which some or not to be ...” is done in such a filmgoers will bring with them. way as to insist on the duality of the The film opens on the film’s title issues Hamlet is weighing up) or on a stone wall which then gives duplicity (when Hamlet forces way to a long shot of Blenheim Ophelia to admit they are being Palace, which stands in for Elsinore watched by Polonius and Claudius); in the exteriors at least. (The Duke and of the stairs and balconies for of Marlborough is thanked in the the final duel, staged with startling credits; one hopes his home was left ferocity. as it was found, after a lot of very This is not to suggest that the violent action.) Superb use is made film’s merits are confined to its of the vast snow-covered grounds manipulations of space and to by Alex Thomson’s camera, tracking kinetic effects. Very strikingly for through leafless woods in pursuit of much of its length, there is a power the Ghost, when fires flare up and ful sense of domestic melodrama in the earth seems to open as the char full cry, and why not? The text acters run, and elsewhere achieving offers anger over inheritance, adul a Turneresque mistiness which ren tery, murder in the cause of passion ders the landscape dangerous. In and power, and the blocked oedipal fact, the disposition of film space is drama of the son whose unresolved persistently intelligent in the way feeling for his mother prevents him it works to create an Elsinore of from carrying out his dead father’s brilliantly-lit interiors only just injunction to revenge. All this is separated from the potentiallyrendered with accurately-judged dangerous world outside its echoing awareness of its potential for pain, corridors. For all its grandeur, and gains enormously from Derek Thomson’s camerawork makes it Jacobi’s brilliantly tense and duplici look exposed and isolated, open to tous Claudius (with cropped affray, and when the final attack Prussian officer’s haircut) and Julie from the Norwegian army arrives it Christie’s very interesting and achieves a sense of disruption the greater for being built on these ear- ! touching delineation of Gertrude as lier frissons. This is a long way from i a sensual but light and silly woman the debilitating pictorialism of Zef brought face to face with horrors. firelli’s lush green seagirt Elsinore. j Purists will perhaps not care for the Inside the palace (interiors were representation of sexual love C I N E M A P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

between Hamlet and Ophelia, and it is not clear what the drama gains from this - it really seems no more than a sop to late-20th centurymores. But while the film functions with melodramatic vigour in its first half, it undoubtedly deepens its tone

to the authentically-tragic note as it moves toward its dénouement of the loss of one who: was likely, had he been put on, To have proved most royal.

The grief of Horatio (beautifully played by Nicholas Farrell) guides our feeling here as he farewells his friend and Rufus Sewell’s Fortinbras is persuasively forceful as he claims his rights in the kingdom and orders full military honours for the dead Hamlet. Shakespearians will - reasonably - want to know how the verse fares on the lips of the most star-studded cast since the heyday of the MGM musicals. The answer is, Very well indeed, from the point of view that it makes dramatic sense rather than opting for an outmoded mellifluous musicality. One is constantly struck by the sensation of actors’ thought and emotion impelling what and how they speak. And it is not only those, like Jacobi, who are experienced in Shakespearian per formance, but others who, like Julie Christie, Billy Crystal (the gravedig ger) and Robin Williams (Osric), emerge with credit in this respect. For the most part, the potenriallydangerous incongruity of declaiming poetic drama in a realist ambience is successfully skirted. Actors in close-

up have to talk; they can’t recite, | has some stiff competition for and Branagh’s adventurous (perhaps ! audience attention. I opportunist) casting is a gamble that The three movies are powerful pays off again, as it did in his Much j pleas for greater understanding of Ado About Nothing. j the barbarity of the state killing one Finally, of course, none of the ! of its citizens, making itself the foregoing will matter at all if the equivalent of the killer that it has centre of the play - that is, Hamlet found guilty. They also highlight himself - is unequal to the task, or how society needs to examine its even if the audience feels the actor conscience about its own structural tells it nothing it didn’t already sinfulness rather than simply blame know about the role. If Branagh’s is a convicted killer, even scapegoating not unequivocally a great Hamlet, it the killer for society’s inability is still one of the most compelling I and/or unwillingness to deal with have ever seen: it is a violent, dan its problems which have shaped gerous, sexual, witty, intelligent the consciousness and behaviour of the killer. Prince. With his hair dyed blond and with moustache and imperial The Last of the Ryans tries to do goatee, he invites and does not suf this but is comparatively mild in its fer from comparison with any of his presentation of its issues. It raises famous precursors. He copes questions about how effective and equally with the physicalities of the insightful drama can be if its chosen role: haring up and down stairs and public is the average home viewer through the woods, haling Ophelia watching a free-to-air commercial through the mirrored corridors, channel with its ad interruptions hurling his mother to her bed and after the day’s work, with the with the quieter more reflective presumption that there will be moments, most notably and affectsomething entertaining to see. ingly in the penultimate scene with Crawfords, the Nine Network and Horatio when he confesses “how ill writer Graeme Farmer (The Feds, all’s here about my heart”. Cluedo, Newlyweds and mini-series As it happened, I saw the shorter The Darlings of the Gods and Glass version first (a report on the longer Babies) have opted for the popular version will appear later) and it is series style of ease-of-access treat likely to be the one most people will ment and writing. The benefit is see. It deserves a wide audience that a lot of people watch a film because it is a fine, vigorous, about Ronald Ryan and respond to cinematically-aware film. its questions. The loss is that the © B r ia n M c Fa r l a n e film critically avoids complexities 1 The 240-minute version is a of issues and comes across as rather 70mm print. bland. Director George Ogilvie has a strong reputation in theatre, film and television. He elicits credible performances from his cast and has made quite a stylish-looking tele-feature (with Jaems Grant as cinematographer and Bruce THE LAST OF Smeaton as composer). However, THE RYANS the characters have very limited Directed by George Ogilvie. Producer: screen rime and, with the popular Richard Brennan. Scriptwriter: Graeme treatment of issues, they have to rely Farmer. Director of photography: Jaems on broad strokes (Tony Barry as Grant Production designer: Paddy Reardon. Editor: Vicki Ambrose. Fr John Brosnan, Paul Sonkkila as Composer: Bruce Smeaton. Cast Governor Ian Grindlay, Douglas Richard Roxburgh (Ronald Ryan), Ian Hedge as Mr Philip Opas), on IMune (Henry Bolte), Zoe Bertram invite-you-to-hate-me caricature (Dorothy Ryan), Tony Barry (Father (Ian Mune as Henry Bolte) or famil Brosnan), Paul Sonkkila (Governor Ian iar posturing (Julie Herbert and her Grindlay), Douglas Hedge (Philip Opas). pious, hands-joined praying, Going Tele-feature. Australian distributor: Nine Network. Australia. 16mm. My Why-style as Ryan’s mother). 90 mins. Richard Roxburgh, on the other hand, has an assured screen pres I n a year when Australian audi ences have been able to see three ence and has the opportunity to Hollywood films on capital punish offer several facets of Ryan’s charac ment (and themes of repentance and ter. Ryan’s personal charm (a forgiveness) - Dead Man Walking mixture of conman and lovable (Tim Robbins, 1995), Last Dance Ocker larrikin) has been attested to (Bruce Beresford, 1996) and The and Roxburgh certainly communi Chamber (James Foley, 1996) - the cates this. But he is also presented as tele-feature The Last of the Ryans an ineffectual thief, an absentee

Tele-featured

review Film s

continued husband and father, and a man ready to resort to armed robbery after his escape from Pentridge. The film indicates doubts as to whether he actually killed Prison Warder George Hodson while trying to escape, even uncertainty about whether he fired a shot, or whether the warder was accidentally shot by another guard. Ryan may have had charm but he also had more than a share of ruthlessness. But, the central issue is whether Ryan, guilty or not but convicted of murder, should have been sen tenced to death in Australia, 1967. The dialogue and actions given to Ian Mune to portray Henry Bolte fulfil all the feelings of hostility Victorians might have against an overbearing and arrogant premier. He refers to Ryan as a “two-bob crook” and remarks that the law is like the transport or the waterworks of the state and that he can turn them on and off as he wishes. He judges that the public are on his side about law and order (and the subsequent election seemed to vindicate his stance). He had no personal interest in Ryan, no qualms or hesitancy about the application of the death penalty. Complications about the law concerning murder and its connec tion with escape from gaol are alluded to as well as appeals to the Privy Court. Changes of heart by some of the jurors are reported, declaring that they might have found differently had they known the death penalty would be invoked. But there were class issues in the background of the Ryan case. He has married Dorothy George (Zoe Bertram), who came from a wealthy family who looked down on Ryan. This is easier to communicate in a tele-feature than legal issues and, so Beverley Dunn as Dorothy’s mother treats Ryan with disdain, while Dennis Miller as Dorothy’s father seems to like him. But Dorothy divorces Ryan while he is in Pentridge and remarries. One of the best-known features of the Ryan case is his prison conversion experience. This is pre sented quite sketchily, a fade-out just as Ryan is about to make his confession. Had the writer found a

dramatic way for Ryan to confess so that the audience heard the con fession, the religious dimension of the tele-feature would have been enhanced. (This was one of the great strengths of Dead Man Walk ing, Last Dance and The Chamber.) So we have to rely on Ryan devoutly receiving communion and his weeping and sighing mother knowing that her prayers were

answered at last. This means that Ryan’s dramatically powerful last words to Fr Brosnan, “Never forget that you were ordained for me”, lack dramatic resonance. A television comparison for The Last of the Ryans is Lewis FitzGerald’s docudrama, The Last Man Hanged. This 58-minute film has the advantage of interviews with Ryan’s wife and daughter,

with the Pentridge governor and with Fr Brosnan himself. This makes the scene where Colin Friels, as Ryan, speaks the final words to Fr Brosnan (John Clayton) a very powerful experience. The Last of the Ryans is not the tele-feature event it might have hoped to have been. It is a Wednesday Night at the Movies contribution to the debate about capital punishment, the role of the State, politics and law, and the possibility for a “two-bob crook” to find some meaning in his life and death. © P eter M a lo n e

religious beliefs translated into fanatical and violent action. Mike (Martin Harris) is a lighthouse keeper on a remote island. He has taken his wife and two children to this refuge away from a sinful world, protecting them from “sex, drugs and too much money”. His family control and régime are patriarchal. He reads the Bible to them and so quotes texts about wives being obedient to their husbands, not only obedient but submissive, that the prudent wife is silent. This protracted experience has had such an effect on his wife,

Molly, that she continually defers to her husband in the smallest detail (especially when a newspaper reporter visits them for an article): “I’m a mother. That’s what God ordained me to be. That’s what 1 am.” However, Mike has religious delusions. He listens to a radio evangelist who uses the language of “soldiers of Christ”, the fight against

lso n o t e d

MADNESS OF TWO [No credits available.]

adness of Two is a small-bud

get, rarely-seen tele-feature (no date visible on the print) directed by Hugh Keays-Byrne. It has been screened on the Nine Network. It dramatizes the extreme and dire consequences of fundamentalist

Satan who does not give up without a fight, and exhorts his audience not to be lax and to beware false prophets. Mike recognizes the pres ence of Satan and false prophets (especially the media, who are liars, “tools of Satan”): “darkness sur rounds us, we must watch and pray, mother”. He prays at the meal table, kneeling beside his bed and in the lighthouse, ultimately dancing/motioning on the island’s helipad, “They’re on to me”, and declaiming the decalogue from the clifftop. While he flirts with the journal ist, touching her, he is puritanically suspicious of his teenage daughter and the helicopter pilot. His wife, according to the psychology of “madness of two/folie a deux”, is a normal person but, because of her subservience to her husband, absorbs his persecution complex and his paranoia. This means that, at the end, he shoots his daughter and the pilot - after ominous quotes about Adam and Eve and the ser pent in the Garden of Eden (the daughter’s name is Eve) and declar ing “in my name, you will cast out devils” and “sacrifice is a religious act above all others”, “I recognize you, messenger of Satan”. His wife then takes the gun and shoots her young son. Mike is taken into custody but blames his wife, explaining to the police psychologist how he had wanted to protect his family from a world filled with violence, and had always tried to follow the word of the Lord. His wife, meanwhile, runs desperate and grieving across the island, trying to wash herself clean in the water, ultimately caught by a group of scouts, camping with their leader and a clerically-garbed chap lain. She wanders in and joins their singing Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd”. They tie her up and carry her to the police. Filmed of Bribie Island and that Moreton Bay, Queensland, the film is not a polished production and some of the minor performances are very ordinary. However, there is an energy drive that keeps one fasci nated by religious mania. (For some treatment of similar themes, there is Mull (Don McLennan, 1988), Backsliding (Simon Taggart, 1991) and Fatal Bond (Vincent Monton, 1993). This is the most explicit of Australian films on the potential for madness and for righteous violence amongst strict, patriarchal families, all in the name of a very literal religion and Bible reading. ©

P eter M a l o n e

C INEMA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

B ooh JAM ES STEWART Donald Dewey, Little Brown, London, 512 pp, illus, rrp $35.00

itchcock cast James Stewart in Rope (1948), Rear Window

(1954), The Man Who Knew too (1956) and Vertigo (1958) as versions of himself. He cast Cary Grant in Suspicion (1948), North By Northwest (1959) and To Catch a Thief (1955) to play the man he wanted to be. Curiously, in reality, Stewart couldn’t make his mind up about women till he married at forty-one, whilst Cary Grant was a bisexual for most of his life. Dewey explains in his wellresearched biography that Stewart was indecisive about being an actor, but once the choice was made he clung on so tenaciously that he slipped into melancholy when old age meant the damn phone just didn’t ring anymore. Stewart was born in 1908 and grew up in a western Pennsylvanian town where his father owned a hardware business. His acting career started almost by accident when he was studying architecture at Prince ton University. He was waiting to graduate when some friends asked him to join the Cape Cod players, so he joined and played bit parts and went with a production to Broadway. One of his friends was the young feisty actress Margaret Sullavan, whom, some say, was Stewart’s first real love. Another act ing friend was Henry Fonda, and the two men shared a small dingy apartment in New York with gang sters down the hall and prostitutes upstairs. So, when Stewart graduated from university, he graduated onto the New York stage, where he was spotted by a Hollywood talent scout. He was tall and lanky with incredible eyes, and an ironic mis chievous smile. He didn’t like to talk much but he gradually got over that. It was 1935 and A1 Altman gave him several auditions, and a con tract with MGM. Dewey writes that it was Stew art’s way of speaking that was particularly intriguing. He would talk slowly, emphasizing each word, as though it was a completely new part of his vocabulary. It worked well on stage, making the audience sit on the edge of their seat. In Hol lywood, it worked even better, Much

especially when Hitchcock used this trait of Stewart’s to further add to the suspense. But when Stewart arrived on the lot in Hollywood, he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Then Stewart landed the part of Shorty in the Spencer Tracy film, The Murder Man (Tim Whelan, 1935), and he complained to the star that he was “all hands and feet. Didn’t seem to know what to do with either”. Tracy told him, “To forget the camera was there”, and said later, “That was all he needed. In his very first scene he showed he had all the good things.” Stewart was sharing a rundown home in Brentwood with his lifelong friend, Henry Fonda. Dewey writes that they got on by agreeing never to talk about politics. Stewart was a Republican and Fonda a Democrat, and it was only during the McCarthy era and the Hollywood witchhunt that their friendship threatened to come unstuck. Dewey writes that Jane Fonda told him they had a tremendous argument: “I know it was definitely about the House Un-Ameri can Activities Committee and what became known as McCarthyism later on. And it’s true that their friendship really almost ended over that.” But Dewey argues that we shouldn’t be too hard on Stewart. He didn’t testify, though some say he might have been uncool. He had served in World War II and was a product of his era, “especially given his age, economic status, and mili tary background”. He had a lifelong fear of communism which seemed to be paranoiac, but his friends in Hollywood say he made up for this in other ways. Jack Lemmon said once, “The thing you get with Stewart, like maybe before you got from Spencer Tracy and Robert Donat, is that they never give a sense of the film take. What you see coming off the screen is fresh, real, immediate. Maybe they were working at it for the entire day, a hundred times over, or maybe it really was the first go-round. Doesn’t make a difference.” And Frank Capra is quoted as saying, “There is bad acting and good acting, fine per formances and occasionally great performances, but there is a higher level than great performances in act ing. A level where there is only a real live person on the screen. A person audiences care about immediately. There are only a few actors - very few- capable of achieving this level of an actor’s art, and Jimmy Stewart is one of them.” After appearing in fifteen films, it was Capra who gave Stewart his first real break when he cast him in You

C IN EM A P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

Madeline (Kim Novak) and John Ferguson (James Stewart).

Vertigo.

(1938). Dewey writes that it was Holly wood’s first “hippie” film, because its values were critical of business and the capitalist work ethic. It also stared Lionel Barrymore and Mary Forbes, but it was Stewart who caused a minor sensation with the media. One critic even wrote, “No actor on the screen today manages to appear more unconscious of script, camera, and director than Mr Stewart.” Stewart went on to make the famous Mr. Smith Goes to Washing ton (1939), also directed by Frank Capra, which caused controversy over its political slant. Then, in 1940, Stewart starred in The Philadelphia Story (1940) with Katharine Hepburn and won his first Oscar. The film became a clas sic and was later remade with Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra. Though Stewart had predictable political views, he was completely unpredictable when it came to women. He had affaires with Norma Shearer, Marlene Dietrich, Olivia de Havilland and Dinah Shore. Dietrich was amused by him and said, “Even when he made a vis ible effort to play a love scene, he always gave the impression he was wearing only one shoe and looking for the other one while he slowly droned his lines. One day I told him about this rumination of mine and he answered, ‘How’s that?”’ Finally, aged forty-one, Stewart met the smart, sassy Gloria Harrick, who already had two sons by a pre Can’t Take it With You

vious marriage. They married and stayed married for 45 years till her death in 1994. During all this time, his acting career went on and on, and, even when he was perhaps past it, he was still being cast in Westerns, where Hollywood put its old boys out to pasture. By far the most interesting years of his life were with Hitchcock, though the two of them did not have a good start. In Rope, the director put his actors through a gruelling shoot with ten-minute takes and moving walls in a studio. Stewart wasn’t impressed and said, “It was hard to see how the picture was going to work, even while we were doing it.” But in 1954 Hitchcock made up for everything when he cast Stewart in Rear Window alongside Grace Kelly. But even though it was not the most flattering of roles, with Stewart playing a crippled voyeur and per haps even a sadist, he managed to get the audience to like and sympathize with him and, of course, we wanted him to get the girl. The Man Who Knew Too Much

with Doris Day was a big box-office success, but it’s less of a classic today. And, of course, Vertigo (1958) with Kim Novak, is perhaps the strangest of all, with Stewart portraying a man whose obsession with a woman takes him almost to madness and then leads to her death. Stewart was then promised North by Northwest but Hitchcock betrayed him and went for Cary Grant

instead, which hurt him immensely. Stewart was always meticulous in his preparation, and always stood in for other actors’ lines on set. He was the consummate actor and, though he kept apart during the breaks from filming, almost every one he worked with respected and liked him. Donald Dewey’s book will be revealing to many actors, directors and writers, especially as Dewey is a writer of fiction himself and is very interested in the process of filmmak ing. He leaves you feeling you know more about the man James Stewart, and even more about his approach to his craft. © M a r g a r e t S m it h

WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT Billy Frolick, Dutton, rrp S49.95

T f there is a more worthless X college degree than Philoso phy, it might just be a film course”, says Billy Frolick, author of What I Really Want to Do is Direct, a cau tionary tale that documents the ups and downs of seven film school graduates who go to Hollywood in the era of political correctness. It is also a study of Hollywood’s affecta tions to affirmative action - the positive promotion and exploitation of attributes relating to race, gender, sexual orientation and culture. Constructed from regular inter views conducted from 1989 to 1992, it

What I Really Want to Do is Direct

combines the sometimes-contradictory advice of established industry

in review Books continued personnel (including Australian Gillian Armstrong) with the testi monies of seven recent film school graduates, each of whom bears testi mony to college affirmative action programmes: Marco Williams is a middle-class black from a single parent background; P. J. Pesce is Italian-American; John Keitel is gay; Lisa Klein is Jewish; and Bernard Joffe is a South African Jew. There are two white heterosexual WASPs of either sex as control subjects: Lisa Cane and John McIntyre. In 1989, when Billy Frolick introduces his graduates, they have all recently moved to Hollywood. All are from middle-class families (it costs around $50,000 a year to attend an American film school), and each student has written and directed an award-winning short film. Their chosen subjects and themes revolve around issues of eth nicity, racism and anti-apartheid, coming out, feminism and growingup black and fatherless. At first, it seems affirmative action will fast-track our graduates to success in Hollywood, as it did in college. African-American Marco Williams is courted by England’s Channel 4 for a documentary on Rodney King and the L. A. riots on the basis of his youth and his skin colour. Bernard Joffe, who worked in independent television and actively campaigned against apartheid before moving to the USA in his late thirties, begins work writ ing an anti-apartheid feature film. John Keitel is courted by agents and studios alike in search of the next gay arthouse hit. At the end of the first year, Lisa Klein settles into writing comedy. As the second year gets under way, she has produced ‘spec-scripts’ for Murphy Broum and Seinfeld.

In their second year, Keitel and Williams are faced with starving or selling-out. Funding for Williams’ Rodney King documentary fell through as have a series of other jobs. His idealism ends when his agent comes up with The Power of No, an updating of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, where all the women of a neighbourhood conspire to refuse sexual favours to the men for as long as it takes to stop them warring. The

is set in “South Cen tral” and packaged with a “young black director”. In year two, Keitel continues to be offered gay subject matter, but the “gay novelty has worn off’. He turns down a documentary on the gay and lesbian choir. The most resilient of the seven is Italian-American Pesce. Accepting the inevitable, his first feature for

Power of No

with it”, says Klein. Nevertheless, she is optimistic that in Hollywood she “won’t be discriminated against as a woman”. As she is put through the hoops over the three-year period, she never reneges on this statement. Cane only mentions it once when she suspects she may miss a documentar)' job shooting in “a bad neighbourhood” because she is a petite, white female. Director Randa Haines believes that windows of positive discrimina tion open and close, and that being viewed as “special” means that “You’re in a precarious position.

movies have taken their place in the search for new markets, like the pink dollar or the next Spike Lee. Hollywood is always looking for a sales angle and if ethnicity or sexual orientation is salient then Holly wood will sell it. But it isn’t only Hollywood’s myopia. All of these graduates embraced subject matter which pigeonholed them with an issue rather than showcasing their directing and storytelling ablities. But it takes them a while to real ize this. By the third year, Keitel has written a “gay” feature film but decides that his agenda has changed and that he Mil not market it as such. Cane quits film work and all comedy writing, and turns to teach ing Jewish and Holocaust studies. Williams takes a job teaching film studies in the South. Joffe locks him self in his home in Los Angeles; the only contact he has with Hollywood is putting the garbage out once a week. He says he likes it that way. What I Really Want to Do is Direct is a first-hand experience of

the new Hollywood. Its constants of greed, power, gambling and illusion prove that it isn’t that much differ ent to the old Hollywood. All these graduates are talented. In Holly wood, where there are few jobs and more players, only the passing of time and particularly Hollywood time is against them. © M ic h a e l K itso n

Roger Corman was an exploitation, teen-titty-surf movie called Body Waves. Pesce has just finished direct ing his second feature, but finds himself deeply ill-at-ease in Holly wood. “There [are] all these bad films and bad filmmakers just strug gling and going onward, insanely believing in themselves, looking at them objectively, they [have] no reason to believe in themselves.” Frolick visits Pesce on location for his second film, a sexy Western with actor Linda Fiorentino called Desperate Trail. The violence in Desperate Trail threatens to take the film to an R-rating. Pesce’s producer demands full nudity' and a raunchy sex scene. Maybe the material stinks, but, unlike his counterparts, Pesce is both working and employed as a director and writer. It isn’t easy for the WASP con trol subjects either. In the entire three years absolutely nothing hap pens for Cane. McIntyre stays put in a small animation house performing in-between work. It is unlikely that he will direct animation till he is in his fifties or older. “Is it about talent? I’m hearing all these stories that lead me to believe that talent has nothing to do

You’re not part of the mainstream, and always in danger of not being ‘special’ enough anymore.” Many of those who now ques tion the validity of affirmative action have themselves been advan taged by equal-opportunity' legislation or affirmative action. In Hollywood, “specialness”- as a gen der, age, racial, sexual or cultural diversion from the mainstream - is viewed as an asset, a device that stu dios and agents can use to market their new or unknown talent. Genre movies, like Westerns or teenexploitation subjects, are used as testing grounds for untried directing talent. Now, ‘issue’ or ‘statement’

ITALIANAMERICAN THE SCORSESE FAMILY COOKBOOK Catherine Scorsese with Georgia Downard, Random House, pp. 165, illus., rrp S37.95

artin Scorsese has a brother called Frank. Frank makes his own pasta. Mother Catherine and father Charles were the subject of Martin’s documentary, Italianamerican (1978). Catherine’s “Tomato Sauce ... with Meat” almost stole the show and even got its recipe in the credits. Italianamerican is too sparse to be called just a cookbook; it’s also a

family memoir, a curriculum vitae and a strange window on the soul of Martin Scorsese. Catherine doesn’t like the language in Marty’s films, but, hey, what can you do? Cather ine cameoed in Mean Streets (1973), and most recently in Casino (1995), but she is best known for GoodFellas. After a gangland slaying, the boys (Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta) swing-by Tommy’s place for the shovel. It’s the middle of the night, but Tommy’s mother can’t sleep. She’s up cooking and soon has them sitting down to a hearty meal. Outside, the macabre thud ding from their carboot reveals a lack of success in the execution of their other ‘family’ duties. Martin admits that even at film school he never missed a hot lunch. In It 's Not Just You Murray (1964), the protagonist is pursued by his mother eternally traipsing after him with a bowl of spaghetti. (And we thought it was surrealism.) In between extra-ing on Desperately Seeking Susan and The Godfather III, Catherine caters. A whole chap ter is given over to cooking for film shoots. The recipes aren’t all Sicilian; there are influences from Northern Italy, like the Pasta e Fagioli and, being Sicilian, I suppose they’re allow'ed to throw' in a Spanish Frittata. American flavours influence the traditional Italian dishes in the form of ingredients like Heinz Ketchup, Gravy Master, Idaho pota toes, tinned peas and crushed pineapple, and Catherine recom mends cutting pizza with (her husband’s) tailoring scissors. Catherine’s cooking is endorsed by sons Martin and Frank, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Francis Ford Coppola. Francis recommends the chicken bedded wtith a head of garlic and drowned in lemon juice. A great gift book! © M ic h a e l K itso n

Boo ko Received THE BENT LENS A WORLD GUIDE TO GAY & LESBIAN FILM Claire Jackson, Peter Tapp (editors), Australian Catalogue Company Ltd, Melbourne, 1997,419pp., S39.95

BRITISH NATIONAL CINEMA Sarah Street Routledge, London, 1997, 232pp.

THE CINEMATIC CITY David B. Clarke (editor), Routledge, London, 1997, 252 pp. Martin Scorsese with a photo of himself and his older brother, Frank.

C IN EM A P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

1-4 JULY 1997 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

CONFERENCE: Wesley Conference Centre EXHIBITION: Sydney Exhibition Centre Darling Harbour _,t

New Technology, New Opportunities You cannot afford to miss the premier Broadcast and Film industry forum in the Southern Hemisphere. Key players from around the globe will converge upon Sydney for the staging of this world class exhibition and conference programme. Join us for four days of invaluable information exchange and discover the latest ideas and technology in your industry. SMPTE '97 - Your competitors are coming .... You've got to be there! Visit the SMPTE ‘97 Web site: http://www.exevents.com.au/smpte97.htm For further information, phone, OR mail OR fax back this section..............”

10 in co n fe re n ce historical differences - differences of cultural, economic and political history - and traditions that affect its story telling. These differences are to be both acknowledged and valued. For example, many films of the Czech “new wave” utilize irony, while in con temporary Chinese cinema metaphor is particularly important. Later, Dancyger commented on the major differences between American and European stories. American sto ries, he suggested, were more linear and plot-driven. European stories are more often character-driven and more likely to be open-ended. Interestingly, Dancyger’s method is almost a formulaic approach to anti formula. Occasionally, I wanted more detail. When he dismisses Jim Jar musch’s films as observational stories, I want to ask whether there are any cir cumstances in which observational stories can be involving for audiences. When Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1995) is discussed as a film that chal lenged formulaic structure through its use of tone, I want to say that I found this a deeply-conservative film. Dan cyger surveys an enormous amount of work and this is part of the appeal of his analysis and musings - the attempt to come to grips with so much of con temporary cinematic storytelling. At times, I wondered whether the broad sweep of his approach could be supplemented with a couple of more in-depth analyses of particular scripts/films. At the end of the seminar (and having re-read Alternative Scriptwriting), I was left with lots of questions. Could Dancyger’s struc tures and categories also be applied to stories on the page? What about visual storytelling and the role of images in constructing screen stories, not just as part of the director’s role but at the writing stage? Is conflict central to sto ries? What about Raul Ruiz’s claim that an insistence on conflict is central to a North American world view and that other cultures might not emphasize conflict to the same degree? What about our desire as audiences to construct our own stories from what we experience and view on screen? As a teacher of screenwriting, Dancyger says that he almost over emphasizes the narrative components of screen stories in order to get people to engage with plot and drama. Many beginning writers are more attuned to images and sensations than narrative. He also sees mythologies currently growing up around new technologies

with considerably more discussion of the technologies themselves than ideas and aesthetics. Like playwright and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, Dancyger is interested in both screen writing and film and video editing. He doesn’t see the rôles of writing, direct ing and editing as being as clearly differentiated as is often assumed. They’re all different stages in the process of cinematic storytelling. Overall, i can only hope that any one involved with writing, reading, editing, evaluating and assessing screenplays will get hold of a copy of Alternative Scriptwriting and read it (if they’ve not already done so). It’s liter ate and thoughtful about a vast range of approaches to screenwriting across genres, styles of filmmaking and differ ent cultures. It’s likely to provoke lots of questions and ideas, and because as Dancyger himself says -Alternative Scriptwriting and its methods are intended to be a contribution to an evolving discussion about screen sto ries. I think that an approach as open-minded and insightful as Dan cyger’s can only be helpful to screenwriters and filmmakers inter ested in exploring the full narrative possibilities of cinema, and engaging with contemporary audiences. ©

sa 14 sim p ly in has to remain a place for conviviality for pleasure to be in. It also needs to be a place where anybody can find information and access images they can’t get at home, or to listen to peo ple who will talk to them about topics which are still not available on cable, or internet or television. He is convinced that they need to merge what is today the Cyberport and the automated consultation room into one service, with direct access to the networks and to data and image banks both within the Vidéothèque and out side. The Cyberport works very well, he says, and is well attended with people really getting involved in it and asking interesting questions, which is challenging the Vidéothèque manage ment to make it move forward. Not long after it was opened, the Vidéothèque started thinking about the next step. What’s its purpose? It’s not just a Cybercafé. They are showing people how to use the internet as a tool so that it serves a purpose, so that it creates something and avoids people just being hypnotized by it. To quote Reilhac again: What’s very interesting is the more you use internet the more you see

that it’s just a tool - it’s like a tele phone or a fax machine. W e’re just beginning to learn how it can help us. If the web does not involve images and access to moving images on the net, then it won’t work - it won’t last. But I think it’s bound to move in that direction. As to the policy of only holding copies of films with some connection with Paris, Michel Reilhac counters the crit ics by affirming that the Vidéothèque’s strength lies in the focus of the collec tion. If they were to widen the collection to other areas like Perform ing Arts, Visual Arts, Video Arts or Classic Film History, they would spread their financial resources too thinly and would just create a new demand that couldn’t be satisfied. So much for their actual collection, but it’s another thing to come to the daily screenings. They have themes which run for 3 months. Reilhac agrees that people may not particularly care about the theme - they come to see the individual films they are interested in - but nevertheless he believes that it’s still important to have a backbone or a structure - an intellectual reason to present such and such films. This is where the Vidéothèque dif fers both from the commercial cinema and the Cinémathèque. It has a very good partnership with them. The Vidéothèque is more like an art house. It is showing films that the commercial cinemas would never show because they’re old films. As far as the Cinémathèque goes, the director, Dominique Paini, is a per sonal friend of Reilhac’s. They have worked together before. Reilhac says that he has a very different approach. The Cinémathèque calls itself a Museum of Cinema. Its approach is from an aesthetic point of view. It will do a retrospective on a country or a studio or a director, or a particular time in history. It publishes books on very specific films. It always bases its approach around the concept of cin ema as a language, as an art form. The Vidéothèque’s approach is very different. It approaches film as the expression, or as a tool, or as a way of looking at society. What comes first is what do the images tell us, and what can be seen through the films? They might show a film this year about the housing situation in England, and then next year show the same film because they are interested in the working class, and that same film can say a lot about that. Such films reveal some thing beyond themselves, and that’s

why the films are presented in threemonth-long themes that bind them together. In all this, the Vidéothèque buys the rights from the holder of the film rights. They don’t have copyright in France - they have author’s rights. This is very different from Australia or the USA. No one can buy the complete rights, and the owner retains the moral right to forbid anyone from showing it in particular venues or events if the owner feels it is to the detriment of their work.1 Under Reilhac, the Vidéothèque has become naturally the place for people to come and organize and be involved in the film culture in general. That’s the reason why it has FIPA. This is an amazing festival for international tele vision programmes. It’s strictly television programmes, but it’s the only chance that one has to see televi sion programmes of incredible quality from around the world. The Vidéothèque hosts it. It happens in Biarritz and then comes to Paris. This is just one among many other special events, premieres and conferences which the Vidéothèque initiates. The Vidéothèque is shifting peo ple’s taste, and moulding an audience. It seems significant that its clients are mainly young people 16-30, because they are the people of the future who are absorbing all this - all the initia tives and the diverse programming. The Vidéothèque sees them and talks with them, and is involved with them in workshops and seminars. Reilhac is really impressed with the way young people are so eager to learn about the tasks of the cinema and cinema his tory. He is optimistic by nature, and believes that just because Life is not as it was, it is not necessarily worse. It is clear that if the French New Wave of the 1960s got much of its impetus from young filmmakers watching films at the Cinémathèque Française, then a similar thing is hap pening at the Vidéothèque in the 1990s in the city of Paris, which has been called “the film buffs paradise”. Imagine a similar facility existing in Australia for our future filmmakers, critics and film historians! © 1 The Vidéothèque purchases the rights from the authors at an average cost of about FF115-120 (AUS$27-29) per minute, and that includes the rights to show the films for 10 years within the premises of the Vidéothèque, or in events organized or co-organized by the Vidéothèque.

C IN EM A P A P E R S | JUNE 1997

'¿3 31 A le k a d o e sn 't live here ...

Footscray. Post-World War migra tion had already begun to transform

crucially, subservience to her family.

ment, but, apart from this possibility, Nick is trapped within the confines of an “ethnic” role which the film

The stereotyping of inter-genera tional conflict within migrant families

both celebrates and refuses to investi gate. Nick’s beauty, his home in a

Sydney. What Hando is giving expression to is the racist nostalgia

has become a standard narrative within Australian films which utilize

traditional inner-western suburb, his love for soccer exoticize his ethnicity

of his father or of his grandmother. The Footscray of R om per Stom per is

multi-ethnic characters. (See, for example, Nirvana Street Murder

and his class. Again, this is not to argue that soccer-playing-workingclass-Greek-Australian teenagers still do not live in Melbourne’s inner-

a fantasy, a myth that borrows from

relationship of honour, respect and,

(Aleksi Vellis, 1991) and Death in Brunswick (John Ruane, 1991).) The H eartbreak Kid and Moving Out both differ significantly from standard representations in that, in both instances, the conflict is presented from the point of view of someone within the family, rather than the usual framing of the (Anglo-)Australian being thrust into the family conflict. This is an important differ ence, particularly as I would argue that often the framing of “ethnic” familial conflict excludes the perspec tive of the migrant parental characters themselves. This is not to argue that the dramatization of inter-genera tional conflict is in itself necessarily a stereotypical deployment (it is, after all, an inevitable effect of migration), but rather to make the point that the first-generation migrant has rarely been the centre of the narrative in Australian cinema. (Paul Cox’s 1979 film, Kostas, remains an interesting exception. Sig nificantly, Kostas (Takis Emmanuel), the main character, is single and his attraction is to an Anglo woman.) Christina’s parents have a voice in The H eartbreak Kid, but significantly their ideas of home, of location, are negated in the film’s conclusion. Christina finds the will to defy her parents precisely at the moment her fiancé shows her the house he has bought, a large brick mansion across the road from her parents. Moving angrily though the cold empty house, she refuses her fiancé’s present. At the end of the film, shamed by the public knowledge of her affair, Christina drives away from her outer-suburban home and into the city. She has the radio on and starts to laugh gleefully. The move into the outer suburbs, which has been a motivating “dream”, if you like, of working-class migrants, is revealed as a confining and sterile existence. Suburbia, again, is relegated to the nightmare of alienation. Nick’s emancipation, however, remains problematic. The film pre sents his prowess at soccer as a path leading away from a bleak future of low-paid work or under-employ

C I N E MA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

city, but rather that this is a framing of “ethnicity” which has not moved on from 1983. Nick could be one of the peripheral faces in Moving Out. Significantly, the film ends with Christina’s liberation from family, a move back to the inner-city. (This moving back rather than moving out is often referred to by my parents’ migrant peers as indicative of the “Australian-ness” of their children.) Nick is isolated against a romantic western suburb’s skyline. Now “ethnic” as well as “Anglo”, the cinematic representation of Mel bourne working-class life remains unchanged, trapped in an inner-city post-war iconography. If The H eartbreak Kid and Moving Out explore dislocation from within the migrant experience, Rom per Stomper does it from outside. The skinheads at the centre of the film exist in an inner-city transformed by the effects of migrant communities. Unemployed, poor, white trash, their anger is directed at the VietnameseAustralians. Though Rom per Stomper has been championed as a realistic, contemporary and innovative film, its portrayal of urban life - particu larly the landscape of the inner-city western suburb of Footscray - is disconcertingly archaic. Rather than a fluidity of communities, there are the Anglos and the Vietnamese (and, significantly, the largely nameless and silent Vietnamese-Australians do not share any relationship of lan guage, friendship or exchange with Anglo-Australians). There are no queers, no blackfellas, no wogs in Rom per Stamper's Footscray. No yuppies. The film’s nostalgia for a working-class past is made explicit in one of the few scenes within the film that expresses the skinheads’ frustration. Hando (Russell Crowe), the fascist leader, points to a map of Footscray and remembers growing up in the suburb when only “true” “white” Australians lived in its streets. But, of course, this is a fantasy, because the young Hando could not have grown-up in such a

the inner-cities of Melbourne and

colonial mythologies, even though it is jazzed up by industrial noise and contemporary language. This is a western suburbs that no longer, if it ever, existed. The post-Cold War period, a time we are living in now and therefore elusive in terms of historical catego rization, has upset the traditional perspectives of understanding class. This is more than simply the collapse of the communist project. The poli tics of migration (and, again, I am referring to a migration across local as well as national borders) have largely been ignored or made tangen tial to the concerns of the Australian film industry, even though these

dichotomy between Anglo/foreign. This is a contemporary inner-city criss-crossed by differing affiliations of class, ethnicity, subculture and sexualities. Place BeDevil or Only the Brave alongside The Big Steal or Rom per Stom per and you have the difference between films that are of the present and films which romanti cize a past. The outer limits of suburbia remain uncharted on film. They appear as symbolic moments of alienation and then disappear as the narrative unfolds in the inner-city or in the spaces of the bush. Clara Law’s recent film, Floating L ife (1996), is an exception which manages to detail the colour, the geometry and the physicality of suburbia. Filmed at the edges of suburban Sydney, Floating Life's chronicle of a Hong Kong family’s migration across three continents also manages to effectively introduce a new cinematic iconography for

The outer limits of suburbia remain uncharted on film. They appear as symbolic moments of alienation and then disappear as the narrative unfolds in the inner-city or in the spaces of the bush. migratory effects and politics are, I would argue, essential to understand ing the changes in the definitions and identities of class. Tracey Moffatt’s BeDevil (1993) is one film that has managed to imag inatively suggest the fluidity and conflicts of a multi-cultural world, a terrain in which this fluidity and conflict continually impacts and alters on the mythologies and practices of tradition. The return by filmmakers to the symbolic inner-city of the West, to a romance of working-class life, avoids the reality of working communities scattered across the stretch of the urban sprawl, of the tensions between working people and non-working people, of the contem porary class differences within families and ethnicities. That doesn’t mean that working-class lives cannot be represented on screen which are

suburbia. The suburbs in Floating Life are both alienating and exhila rating. The immigrants are silenced and made minute under the intense glare of the Australian light but they are also enchanted by the opportu nity of space. Floating Life, made by an immigrant to Australia, articulates both the ugliness and beauty of sub urbia; an ugliness that sometimes necessitates escape (Christina in The H eartbreak Kid) and a beauty which articulates longing (Gino’s family moving from the confines of Fitzroy to the spaces of Doncaster). Law’s film opens the possibility for a reading of suburbia as not static and homogenous but as capable of reflecting the multiple and fractured communities and identities existent in urban Australia. That English is rarely spoken in Floating L ife is one of the things that marks it out as a contemporary Australian film. There

not located within the inner-city. Ana Kokkinos does that effectively with Only the Brave (short, 1994), a film which traces the lives of two adolescent Greek-Australian girls.

are no sunsets over weatherboards and Victorian terraces in Floating Life. This is a new world of brick veneers, and class is no longer a sim

But, significantly, their inner-west is not dominated by Rom per S tom peds

ple matter of dichotomy - a division of the world into East and West. ©

: C ursor

l& k k Ë I U

■ I

Iit

■

Multi

•ildfeat

Palette

Busier

rept under

add IMAGE: TOOLS 1 . Adjust

Noise Cinti

Apply 1' C olor

M ap C olor

Reveal C olor

Rectangle rectangle

Blur fu s t

Adjust Grow

Chinmud lum inan ce

1 til Musk

MaiIch H iïB

Recall Hie

Save tile

Hie Manager

Save File As SGI rgh

C olor Clip

,, Poster

Paste Normal

M ull lin i

Cut

M ove Grab

Paint

Show levi LIB E R TY 3 2

H&S

H iie r

nipp le

M uern

K H R P S M E K O O lS f Um> All Invert Mask

C olor C ow ed

...

VT«

U m

V e r s io n 5 .5

Canvas

: M«KjitMy

Erase M ask

C ircle

Alpha

ÄutoPan

ts L fu ll

Set

O ut

Throw away your crayons. CHYRON’s LIBERTY® Digital Design Studio allows you to go beyond your boundaries. Instead of painting out of a box, the LIBERTY family of tools offers a complete range of paint and animation solutions for Silicon Graphics® workstations. New version 5.5 software adds: *

• Indigo2™ IMPACT™ Video Support • Real-Time Filter Processing • Layering Mode • Multi-Level Undo • Internet Creation Support

S/hconGraphics

Computer Systems

T O O L S

ran

fO ß . D IG IT A L

A C X V S T S

LIBERTY 64 • LIBERTY 32 • LIBERTY Palm 64 • LIBERTY Paint ■ I

MA3NA

SYSTEMS £ ENGINEERING

Quality Broadcast Equipment A trading division of Silklore Pty. Ltd. A.C.N. 004 004 997

Unit 2,28 Smith Street, Chatswood NSW 2067. Phone: 02 9417 mi Fax: 02 9417 2394 Email: salesa>magnasys.com.au

t e c h n ic a lit ie s

The Gongs of Cannes by Barrie Smith INNERS AREGRINNERS. Or, to put it another way, a gong at Cannes can be worth far more than its weight in base metalespecially if you’re an ad-maker. Operatives in film and video production find the self-marketing of their skills one of the imponder ables - ringing around, looking for work may portray their current quiescence — while not trumpeting their skills may falsely represent them as too self-ele vated to need assignments. One of the ways that an individual in the produc tion industry can achieve more than the apocryphal 15 minutes of fame, pull in some work and kick the bank balance along is to win awards. So while those who from year to year never score an Oscar, an AF1Award or even a Logie mention, yet still prosper, may scoff at the winning of a gong, those who do can look forward to targe dollops of valuable visibility - at zero cost. Everyone likes to be recognized. A gold statuette is the physical embodiment of this. Then the PR fol lows: “At the Cannes Festival, Joe Bloggs, director of the wonderful Pippo chocolate bar 30-sec TV ad, was awarded a Gold Lion.” And, in most cases, the phone starts ringing. It works the other way, too: a big ad agency wants some fresh, hot new talent to pilot its new television campaign spots, so where do they look? The show reels and the latest Cannes Ad Festival or Clio winners. Film on tape The Cannes International Advertising Festival has been a fixture on the advertising and production scene for decades. Initially revered as a recognition for filmmaking craft, it is now an event which recog nizes the entries in their specific form as pieces of advertising. There is even a special award for the “Agency of the Year”, as well as a Palme d’Or granted by the City of Cannes to the ‘best’ produc tion company. The Festival committee invites competitors to enter ‘films’, but requires they be submitted on videotape (Beta SP or l-inch C format). It should be mentioned there is a parallel division of the Cannes Ad Festival devoted to press and poster advertising. Australian advertising people take great notice of a Cannes award, no matter whether it be the Grand Prix or a Lion in Gold, Bronze or Silver. Generally, a Cannes gong ranks level with an American Clio award. Terry Savage, CEO of the Val Morgan company, cinema screen ad contractors, sees the Cannes Ad event from his company’s point of view as “a bit of a labour of love”. Savage has “a great belief and com mitment to the Australian production industry. We are consistently rated in the top ten in the world in terms of awards won at Cannes. And I think that we should be shouting that from the rooftops. I think we should be proud of it and I’m very happy to continue to try and promote it.” The 1997 event will be held between 23-29 June in the Palais de Festival, as a replication of the Film Fes tival. Each year, roughly 5,000 delegates attend to

CI NEMA P AP E R S • JUNE 1997

review about 4,500 television commercials (in their entirety, if you have the stomach and the Visine) in 24 different categories. Savage points out there are numerous workshops and seminars throughout the week, where presenta tions are given by international agencies and companies on new trends, creative techniques, etc. Savage: “Because you have so many heavyweights in the town in the one week, there’s a huge opportunity to network and, in fact, to do business - from the pro duction companies’ point of view, from a headhunting point ofview and from a client/agency point of view.” In Savage’s view, the Cannes Ad Festival is seen as “the Olympic Games of advertising festivals. It’s the Number One in the world and it’s the one that the people most want to win.” The judging takes place at the Palais in Cannes, by 23 ‘international jurists’ who fly in from around the world. Savage points out that this year Australian interests entered 135 commercials, which is no small feat because the entry fee is £365 per entry. Last year, Australia entered about 85 press and poster pieces at £155 each. A stiff price? Savage: “Well, yes, but the reality is that if you win a Gold Lion at Cannes or a Lion of any colourthe enhancement to the repu tation of both the individual and the company that has won it is significant.” If you’re thinking of tripping off to the ’98 ding, you may be interested to know that full delegate reg

istration is £750. Staying at a pub? A four-star lodging will set you back around $600 a night (specially reduced for the event). Circus Those of us who were around in the 1960s and ’70s will remember with pleasure the annual circus as Val Morgan (or its predecessors) trundled the 35mm reel of winners around the countryside, pulling capacity crowds of ad and production people to special screenings at cinemas in Double Bay and T’rak. In those days, the spots were all cinema ads. The Festival itself was originally founded by an organization called the Screen Advertising World Association. Savage sees it as an “irony of life that it has now become the biggest television festival in the world, which is ultimately controlled by the screen advertising contractors”. These days, as time shrinks and technology races, a cinema screening of the winners is not so relevant

as it once was. Today, you’re more likely to see Andrew Daddo and (the dog) Caine front a Channel Seven programme entitled World's Greatest Com m ercials-tw o half-hour television programmes. And, in fact, Andrew Daddo last year, and again this year, has been appointed as the official host forthe awards ceremony. So, in that sense, Australia achieves quite a high profile without scoring a point! Larceny As a market, the Cannes Ad Festival has yet to be quantified, but high-level networking and talentspotting definitely goes on — aside from the occasional bit of creative larceny as reps from one country pinch a new commercial idea for airing in their own country! Judges This year, the Australian judge is Alan Crew, from ad agency BAMSSB. According to Savage, “The level of quality of judges that Australia presents is very high. Our judging is like a Who’s Who of the Australian ad industry, with names like Bob Isherwood of Saatchi’s, David Blackley of Clemenger’s, John Fawcett MD of George Patts. We have a very high level of jury members.” And does the Festival ignite creative activity in other production areas? Savage acknowledges the event as “a two-way street. You have a number of people who started in commercial directing, like Fred Schepisi and more lately Alex Proyas, who moved on to feature filmmaking. And then, of course, you have the reverse happening, with people who started making features moving into commercials.” And high-profile names have made commercials. In the past couple of years, Cannes has a commercial made by Woody Allen. Two years ago, a Gold Lion was won by an ad (for Banco di Roma) made by Federico Fellini. Savage comments: “The concept of his making commercials 15 years ago would have been laughed at, but in fact he made one and it won Gold.” Technology In this country, the arrival of advanced technology, such as Domino and other high-level Quantel digital devices such as Harry and Henry, has been made possible only by the production needs of high-level — and high-budget — television commercials. As a result, their contributions are now trickling into feature production. Each year, Cannes hosts creative workshops run by such companies as Kodak to show delegates what the hardware can do and help ‘wise up’ the ad com munity as to what trickery is de rigueur this year. So w hat’s in it for V a l M organ? Savage: “I have to say that clearly it gives a profile for Val Morgan’s. There is absolutely no argument. If you’re associated with the number one creative advertising festival today, then it would have to give you some positive spin. And I’m sure it does and we’ll happily take that, thank you! But that goes hand in hand with a genuine belief and commitment, because I don’t believe you get the spin unless you have that.” ©

t e c h n ic a lit ie s

No Paradise to shoot A large multi-national cast, locations in three countries and the meticulous creation of a wartime atmosphere made special demands on the cinematography of a new Australian film. B A R R I E S M I T H talks with Peter Jam es, director of photography on Bruce Beresford s latest, Pa rad Lie Road. P

aradise Road is the biggest and most demanding produc tion Peter James has shot. Locations in Penang,

Malaysia, Singapore, Sydney and Port Douglas were merged in order to depict a World War II story set in South East Asia.

cast, sourced from The Netherlands, the UK, the USA, Japan and Australia, and the location moves. As often happens, the film’s narrative was filmed out of order, with the mood locale shots of the Sumatra camps made in Penang first, followed by the main camp interior/exterior sequences and opening Singapore evacuation scenes shot in the Cairns-Port Douglas area later in the four-month schedule. The Marrickville Town Hall performed admirably as the 1940s Raffles ballroom. Once the

The containment of the cast helped the prison feel; with so many women herded together in these very cramped conditions, it did give the feeling of a con centration camp. One problem was matching the day interior of the huts with the bright exteriors. We had to go up around T5 or T8 on the interiors because I didn’t want the exteriors to bleach out. There had to be some detail in the exteriors which were up at around T16 - so I had three 12ks and two 4ks and two white grid lights running all of the time, with Rosco light grids and 1/4 CTO on the lights coming in from the outside. To raise to overall fill levels inside, gaffer Mick Morris had rigged four 2.5k HMIs in the roof of the hut with 1/4 blue and light grid to give an

Achieving the film’s look Peter James: We wanted to make this medium sized budget production [by American standards] look like a big film. This led to the decision to use anamorphic lenses. Even though it was a fairly intimate story, because of the anamorphic frame we have three or four people in every shot. That actually helped the story in a way because there really wasn’t any privacy in these camps. Herbert Pinter’s beautiful sets and good loca tions were helped by the anamorphic format - and stopped it looking like a film made for television. The story takes place between 1942-45, from the fall of Singapore to the end of the war. The opening sequence centres on an elegant ‘do’ at Raffles and the unexpected bombing of the city by the invading Japanese. The women and children are evacuated from Singapore docks at night by a British navy ship, which is sunk the next day by a squadron of Japan ese Zeros. The survivors swim to the nearby Sumatra shore. They are picked up by a Japanese officer and taken to a village, where they are rounded up with other survivors and marched off to a POW camp. The majority of the film takes place in this camp before they are moved on by train to a disused tin mine, high in the mountains where the war finally ends. James: I wanted Singapore and Raffles to look really opulent and flash, to make a contrast with what was to follow. I wanted the first camp in Sumatra, shot in Port Douglas, to look hot and dusty. Then, when they go to the second camp, shot a kilometre away from the first camp, I wanted it to have a different look again. So, I used extremely contrasting lighting combined with black Pro Mist and black nets on the lenses to create a cooler jungle feel. With the last camp, the key light came from very high, with no dark shadows or high contrast. I wanted to make the women look more gaunt by raising the light, with more starkness in their faces. To lose weight, the cast were put on a special diet to look like they had been starving in the camp for years. Some of them were very successful, including Glenn Close. According to Peter James, this made her very easy to photograph because she really got quite thin. Some actors needed to be helped more with make-up, careful lighting and camera angles.

48 Out of order

crew and cast reached the main location in the backblocks of Port Douglas, the shooting pace picked up with a vengeance. James: We had already spent a lot of time travel ling around Asia and shooting the sequences at sea, working all day and only getting about forty seconds’ worth of screentime. But when we got to the camp, we had to shoot five pages a day.

Location interiors The film’s dramatic tension draws on comparisons of close confinement with open spaces. Much of the staging takes place within the huts of the prison camps - but there is always the tantalizing glimpses of tropical greenery through the windows. This of course just made the task of the camera and lighting departments that much harder! James: The huts were like boxes, small and quite cramped. The ceilings were also very low, so thatched shutters on the windows were also used to control the light. Production designer Herbert Pinter had put horizontal wooden cross-bars on the windows to enhance the prison look. There were few practical light sources - apart from a globe here and there in the night sequences - and ‘moonlight’ became one of the major light sources.

overall soft light. To add to this, my grip, David Nicholls, had his boys remove sections of the thatched roof to let daylight through, which we also filtered with a frame containing 1/4 blue. Night-time sequences in the huts were often shot with relatively long lenses. We were often on a 100mm and we used the 180mm a lot. I usually set them at T3 - any wider than T2.8 with longer lenses and the image goes mushie. The depth of field is a lot less in anamor phic, so you need to give the focus puller a bit of a chance. It’s a bit of a worry when the focus puller turns to you and says, “Which eye do you want in focus?” Well, that’s the worst thing you’ll ever hear! It’s like, “Oh, shit, I’ve blown it.”

Day exteriors James: We used a combination of wide-angle lenses (40mm) and long lenses (400mm) to create the different moods when shooting close-ups of the actors. We found jumping between these two extremes created a very powerful contrast between the opposing sides of the Japanese guards and the women prisoners. It is something I have not done before, but I found it worked extremely well and created a lot of tension.

CINEMA P AP E R S • JUNE 1997

■

WHEN

INS

//////

AVID

us i on

AVID is a registered trademark and M EDIA ILLUSION is a trademark of Avid Technology, Inc. Image © 1 9 9 6 ChiselVision.

t e c h n ic a lit ie s

Planes and cranes and Steadicam The film is noticeable for some imaginative digital work in an aerial attack sequence, the elements of which were shot by 2nd unit DOP André Fleurin ACS. A sextet of Japanese Zero fighters was composed by Dale Duguid of Photon Stockman from footage of one full-sized aircraft shot by Fleurin — and output back to film at Dfilm, the Sydney Cineon facility. The shots used in the sequence consisted of: exterior of one aircraft, diving, dogfighting, pilot in cockpit, interior POV rearwards into the cockpit, aer ial flak bursting across the Zero’s nose, tipping and weaving blue sky and sea used as the main back ground plate. The remarkably realistic flak, gunfire and some flames were digitally created. Duguid even exploded a low-flying Zero and crashed it into the sea alongside the burning ship full of women and children. Later in the film, a commemorative funeral service is held in the jungle, captured by a soaring crane shot. The shot is striking because of the general lack of ‘showy’ shots elsewhere. For this, James explained, “We used a hot head which Toby Copping had rigged on the Giraffe crane at full extension.” Carefully concealed is a small amount of Steadicam shooting by camera operator, Brad Shields, in an extended tracking shot around the camp gardens as some of the internees venture out of the hut, and a memorable shot when the women are being rounded up in the village. As they come into the square after coming down a small alley and around a corner, Brad stepped onto a crane with the Steadicam and went 15 metres into the air to show a huge terrified crowd of shipwrecked survivors and two beautiful temples.

Two in the bush One eery sequence depicts a moment when the Japanese sergeant forces Glenn Close into the jungle at gunpoint - as James describes it, “ a quite threat ening scene”. James: When you are in a rainforest, even at midday, it’s so dark. But we really couldn’t shoot without light, it would have been flat, and with very, very hot spots of sunlight, and not in keep ing with the mood of the film. Or we would have had to wait for the sun which the budget could not afford. So, what I did was have the grips and the riggers set up two rock-and-roll trusses at the top of very high fig trees. On these trusses, we hung 2.5k HMI PAR lights with spot bubbles, and shone them straight down. These made very isolated areas of light through the leaves of the tree and which gave a cookie, dappled pattern, reproduc ing sunlight. I then had special effects lay a clear plastic ‘air line’ around the background into which they blew smoke, making holes in the ‘air line’ where neces sary to let the smoke out.

Ladies who do Ostensibly, Paradise Beach has no ‘star’ as such, in spite of the presence of Glenn Close and Pauline Collins. In many scenes, the camera encompassed 20 or more principal players — each with differing

wardrobe, make-up, skin tone and health condition. James: There is one scene with these upper-class Englishwomen up to their knees in a filthy rice paddy and, of course, the actors were great about it. Glenn just waded in - and she did the whole film barefoot. There were no conflicts in the main cast. It could have been a potential catastrophe, with that many women actors under adverse conditions. They could have been fighting. Another scene called for three women to be treading water mid-ocean. They were just floating in the ocean, off the Barrier Reef. We shot with the camera partially submerged in a splash-box, suspended on bungies off a gallows on the back of a boat. Three divers would position the women and then, when we were ready to roll, the women would float into position, act and do their dialogue and hopefully they wouldn’t drift off out of shot. Mick Morris had a 70 KVA Viking generator on the boat with two 6k and two 4k HMI PARs on them through silks on a lighting grid. Then when we did the day-for-night scene we really pumped the light into them, by taking the light grid away, putting a polar screen on the camera to darken the sky and not allowing for my

‘day-for-night’ filter. It looked great, just like moonlight at sea. Out at sea? Yeah, out in the ocean again. We had a polarizer on the lens, so I put a lot of light on the actors like four 4ks straight onto them with no diffusion - then stopped the lens down so that everything went quite dark. It was twilight, so I really wanted a lot of light on them.

Matching locations In the film, Penang and Port Douglas stand in for Sumatra, Marrickville Town Hall performs service for Raffles’ interior, while the Cairns waterfront does duty for Singapore Harbour. It must have been a nightmare matching the loca tions. James: It wasn’t easy. But I find you have to match within the sequence - you can never match the whole thing, the whole film cannot be matched shot for shot - unless you have m illions of dollars to sit around and wait. It’s got to be within the scene continuity.

Special effects James: You must rely very heavily on special effects. If you have rain, you need wind with rain,

C INEMA P AP E R S • JUNE 1997

W orking at the speed of D om ino d o e sn â&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just mean increased productivity. It m eans greater creative freedom too.

Speed means time to create In an industry where deadlines and budgets can strangle creativity, the unrivalled speed and realtim e w orking of Dom ino gains you precious tim e. Tim e to create a shot, then experim ent, stretching creative boundaries and exploring new ideas.

Speed means time to craft Creative co m p o sitin g is a craft and D om ino gives you tim e to perfect it. It allows you to consider each shot m ore precisely, and because you can see ideas evolving on-screen in full film resolution, the results and quality is there for all to see.

Start w orking at the speed of D om ino and you'll soon discover the creative pow er of its phenom enal speed.

QUANTEL Q uantel Pty Ltd, 8/81 Frenchs Forest Road. Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086 Tel: (02) 9452 4111 Fax: (02) 9452 5711 h ttp ://w w w .q u a n te l.c o m

t e c h n ic a lit ie s

so you need big wind machines. Then you need cranes and towers and all sorts of stuff to pump the water. Then the water has to be clean, other wise people get sick. Then we need smoke or dust. We created a lot of smoke and dust in this film to give the feeling of heat and dryness. So, these days you think you reckon you can’t move without special effects? They’re your best friends on location, they really are. In the Singapore Har bour evacuation at night, there were explosions, bombs going off, fires, gas bars and smoke everywhere, and then there was this big flash and all of the actors had to go to their knees. The first AD was just saying “Bang” through a loud hailer, but that wasn’t really working. So Brian Cox, the main effects guy, rigged a small charge on a bit of wood up in the air and it let off. We just about needed a change of underwear. There was a bright orange flash which pho tographed fantastically, and the principals and 250 people in the background all went to their knees at the same time.

important role in the final look of the film. He got the film, shot over three months, everywhere from Penang to Cairns to Sydney, a second unit operating and Dale Duguid doing the digital enhancement, and then Dfilm doing the print out in Sydney. Arthur got all of this negative back. It was all cut together, 1,800 splices in the film. Then he had to colour grade and density change all of this to make

I was a little apprehensive about coming back to work in Australia after ten years, having done so many films in America. I hoped my way of work ing hadn’t changed so much that I couldn’t get along with the crew. I found a few of the people were the same that I had worked with in the past, which was good, because they at least knew me and could put up with me. I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly it all went and how orga nized the key grips and best boys were. Lighting and grip gear is in excellent condition. Basically, we have all of the toys that they have in America. I think that Australian crews are as efficient or even more efficient than their American counterparts. Aussie crews work as a team and get along very well, and that’s a real plus. It is good to see that crews have not lost that wonderfully resourceful way of thinking that gets you out of a sticky situation often with a more creative result, making the shots much better than they would have been.

On zooms Operating Peter James began his early career as a DOP and mostly operated as well. When asked did he enjoy getting his hands back on the wheels of the geared head, he answered: Oh yes, I love operating. When we had three cameras running, I would jump in and operate. But I find that with two cameras and that many peo ple and that much lighting going on, it’s counter-productive for me to be a full-time operator. It tends to slow things down.

Lab contact In Malaysia, rushes were on a two-week turnaround from the Sydney lab, whilst on the North Queensland location it was down to two days. It is easy to see what an important role lab liaison plays on a film when tens of thousand of dollars a day are at stake.

Lab reports are crucial James: I found Denise Wolfson, our Atlab liaison, a great help. When we shot our first lot of footage, she would tell us what it looked like and how it was all going - she was our ‘eyes’ in the laboratory. She would look at the film every morning and have a report for us. It was a critical appraisal, too. She would have an opinion on things. In America, they don’t have an opinion because litigation could happen. For tunately, we are still in a position where people can speak honestly and freely. And grading? Arthur Cambridge [Atlab grader] played a very

it look like the way I imagined the film to look. In America, the first print is usually diabolical. It’s really just for the lab to get their lights. It’s not until you get the third or the fourth print that everything works. And the fourth print is actually about what Arthur’s first print looks like. That’s just the way it is. Arthur, in my opinion, is a miracle worker, a legend in his own time. And not just that. Ask any feature DP. His work over the past 25 years or more has been outstanding. He has worked with every DP in the business, giving every film his full attention no matter how big or small.

Crews Peter James’ camera operator was Brad Shields, with Darren Keogh the focus puller. When asked what he thought about Australian crews, James responded:

Noticeable on a few occasions in the film is the subtle use of the zoom lens. James: Bruce and I found that the zoom worked where someone was contemplating and looking at the camera. We used the zoom a couple of times and found it made a much more spiritual effect than a dolly. In a dolly, you are going to the person, with a zoom you are bringing the person to you. The actor comes out to you when you zoom into them and it’s a more moving technique if done correctly. Obviously, it’s a slow zoom, taking time, and is sometimes combined with a dolly. Bruce tries not to be gymnastic with the camera. He likes fairly seamless-looking photography; he likes it to look good but not necessarily flashy.

On Beresford James: It’s an absolute privilege to work on one of Bruce’s films. He’s such a gentleman to work with. He’s got such a vision of the whole film and, in this particular case, he wrote the story as well. He did all of the research, went and inter viewed the surviving women. It was a very, very happy production. Sue Milliken [producer], Anne Bruning [production manager], Colin Fletcher [1st AD] and everybody were really up against it getting this many actors together, keeping a crew together and moving and accommodating everybody. It was a really big ask. The production office pulled it off marvel lously and, I think, we made a wonderful film. ©

C INEMA P AP E RS • JUNE 1997

iièàd Office 434 Clarendon S t, South Melbourne Victoria, Australia 3205 Tel: (03) 9699 3922 Fax: (03) 9696 2564

16 Conyngham St., Glenside South Australia 5065 Tel: (08) 338 2811 Fax: (08) 338 3090

82 Berwick St., Fortitude Va Queensland, Australia 4006 Tel: (07) 3854 1919 Fax: (07) 3852 1814

340 King Georges Ave. Singapore 0820 Tel: (65) 291 7291 Fax: (65) 293 2141

The Finest Motion Picture Rental Equipment

ESP HAS

AVID FOR DRY HIRE CALL CHARLOTTE ON (02) 9956 7530 • AVID M C 800 W ITH 18GB S TO R A G E / REAL TIME EFFECTS / 4 CH AN N EL A U D IO INPUT / OUTPUT / M O N ITO R IN G SP BETACAM FEED VHS & CD PLAYER. • ALSO AVAILABLE: O N UNE FACILITY - GRAPHICS CAM ERA & V / O BO O TH - UM ATIC • EXPERIENCED EDITORS A N D SUPPORT STAFF - R O O M Y AIR -CO N D ITIO N ED SUITE - SEPARATE CLIENT R O O M - CAR PARKING 10 HOUR DRY HIRE DAY - AFTER HOURS A N D W EEKEND AVAILABILITY

ESP, 107 W EST STREET, C R O W S NEST N SW 2 0 6 5 FA X : 9 9 5 6 5 4 4 4

in p ost

Post for everyone? by Barrie Smith

just-completed live-action feature film, edited entirely on Media 100. HOW’S THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE SYSTEM GENERALLY IN the

HAT HAS HAPPENED to the post-production world? Prices of dedi cated film and video hardware and software are coming down. Soon your local butcher or baker may be making corporate videos. Don’t laugh, already there are some DOPs getting into post as well as doctors, dentists, etc. Towards the end of 1996, we saw the spectacle of Silicon Graphics launching its O2 platform — at under $10,000 — replete with video in/out capabil ity, but you must buy your own software. Only a few days into 1997, Media 100 Inc announced a new low-cost post-production package that costs less than $9,000. To this you must add $10,000-$20,000 worth of computer hardware. Still, purchase of this low-cost post-system puts you into business to output 4:2:2 digital broadcast-quality television. So you can then compete with the baker, butcher...

St a t e s ?

Copher: It’s been fantastic. We have about 10,000 systems installed on a worldwide basis and about 7,000 of those are in the USA. I’d say that probably we sold about 4,000 systems last year — so that’s nearly double in 12 months. C an

y o u d e s c r ib e t h e r a n g e o f p e o p l e u s in g it ?

Copher: We had one guy who sold his motorcycle so he could buy a system and start doing some video authoring, as we call it, on his own. W h a t ’s

h e u s in g it f o r ?

Copher: Corporate videos. In fact, he’s probably

instructional for staff or whatever. We also think it has a tremendous future in the coming years over the Internet. As it grows, it can handle more video capability. I can foresee Web pages will include more videos. It’s something you can just shoot yourself, edit it, put some special effects into it. You don’t have to ship the job out to someone else to do. The most common output format is analog Betacam. Copher explained that initially the acceptance by broadcast engineers “wasn’t real high”. Copher: The conflict was because we were coming in like mavericks and saying, “This is very easy to use and you don’t need a lot of training.” Broadcast engineers are highly-trained people who take a lot

Everywhere He is hard to avoid. You can see him at virtually every film or video tradeshow, seminar or discussion group. Mark Richards, of Sydney company Adimex, has wrought a miracle in just three years to make the Media 100 post-system a highly-appreciated means to a post-production end. Digital Media World, held in Sydney at the end of last February, saw Mark out there again, strutting the Media 100 presence and networking his bum off. Supporting him from the international sidelines was VP International Operations, John Copher, from Media 100 Inc in Marlboro, Maine. I took the chance to talk to both during the show.

Thrust Media 100 Inc is in the first phase of rounding out its product line to satisfy post needs from high to low end. As John Copher sees it, “The Media 100 range has an entry level for every customer.” If there ever were any lingering doubts that the Media 100 range could not cut the mustard when it came to high-end production work, these can be ignored when recent credits are reviewed. Currently, the system is also making inroads into feature pro duction. Copher: Movies is a marketplace we’re just starting to get into. There was a TV movie just made in the USA called Asteroid, a two-part, four-hour disaster movie. All of the post was done on four Media 100s. So, we are starting to get into that type of market place. Richards: There’s a company in Melbourne called New World Features. They were responsible for the Silver Brumby animated television series. It was post-produced with Media 100. They animated it on PC platforms, transferred the files to the Mac, and did all the dissolves and audio post-production, and put it all together and went out to tape from the Media 100. But they’ve also used it on their

getting into the industry by buying the hardware. There’s a lot of people that will go out and estab lish themselves and do something on their own. We do very well in the university marketplace, where there’s a lot of people getting them. We just sold 36 systems into a university in the USA — and that’s only one university among 24. So, we’re really leveraging off the way Macintosh has done so well in the education marketplace. The future from my standpoint looks extremely strong. It really starts at the low end and goes right up to the broadcast marketplace with BBC, MTV, CNN, NBC — all of them have systems in place. W hat

p r o p o r t io n o f m a t e r ia l w o u l d y o u r

CUSTOMERS BE POST-PRODUCING IN VIDEO AS AGAINST FILM?

Copher: Probably about 80-85 percent is video vs. film. SO WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER LEVELS OF USERS?

Copher: We do very well in the health-care industry. In Japan, our largest distributor ties into health-care applications - things like doctors using it for training, showing surgery techniques. In the case of, say, doctors, they’re shooting video patients with various ailments, then making

of pride in what they do — and rightly so. We weren’t really targeting the broadcast market as the first thing because we didn’t have all the func tionality they initially needed. And there were competitors out there that could meet that market place at that point in time. So, it really wasn’t something we were going after. But what’s happening now is that the broadcast industry is expanding so much. There’s not going to be just three, four or five channels; there’s going to be 50 or 60 channels. The need for more good pro gramming is growing tremendously and you can’t do it at the same cost that you used to do it. We’re coming in and filling a different need. You plant a little seed and you get into CNN or MTV, and there’s one little maverick system that someone’s using — and people kind of say, “Wow, you did that on that”, etc. W il l

y o u c o n t in u e t o s u p p o r t t h e

Ma c

pla tfo rm ?

Copher: We’re creating a version for the PC plat form, but we’re doing that in conjunction with Apple, developing a QuickTime interface. It will still be a Mac, but it will be able to talk with the NT software. Productivity on the Mac is about, 35-40 percent higher than on a PC. It’s a lot easier

CINEMA P AP E RS • JUNE 1997

Now with Henry V8 and Inferno on board, just watch Willy, Caro, Mark, Justin, Geoff, Mike, Warren and Michelle turn your job into a flaming Bobby Dazzler. For more information about our people or our machines phone us on 612 9439 6600.

â&#x2013;Ą m n ic o n http://www.omnicon.com.au

FILM CULTURE PROPOSALS NOTE NEW CLOSING GATE 31 JULY ■

Talent and ideas development is a cornerstone of the role of the NSW Film & TV Office. The FTO recognises the valuable relationship between a healthy film culture and the film and television production industry. In August 1997 the FTO will allocate funds for the support of events, publications and organisations that contribute to film culture in NSW. Funds, as usual, are tight but the FTO would welcome approaches from individuals or organisations with an initiative that might warrant support. There is no formal application form. Proposals, which should include information and a budget, should reach the Film Culture & Policy Officer by 31 JULY at the latest. N S W Film & TV Office Level 6, 1 Francis Street, East Sydney NSW 2010 Ph: (02) 9380 5599 Fax: (02) 9360 1095

NSW FILM AND TV OFFICE

FREE EDIT SUITE TO LAU N CH O U R NEW M E D IA 1 0 0 D IG IT A L O N L IN E E D IT S U IT E PRIME CUT IS O F F E R IN G 3 H O U R S F R E E S U IT E H IR E ?

T h e b r o a d c a s t s u it e is f u l l y o p t io n e d AND IS A V A IL A B L E FOR D R Y H IR E OR W ITH AN E D IT O R . T e c h n ic a l s u p p o r t , t r a in in g AND AN IN H O U S E G R A P H IC S S T U D IO A R E A LSO A V A IL A B L E . P r im e c u t - E d it in g & g r a p h ic s 2 5 5 P a c if ic Hw y n o r t h Sy d n e y P H : 9 9 2 2 5 5 8 0 & A SK FO R G E O R G E O FFER AP P LIES T O FU LL DAY DRY HIRE ■'ND IS L IM IT E D . SO G E T TO IT!

ELECTRIC SHADOWS BOOKSHOP • F ilm /V ideo P roduction • S cripts • N ational C inemas • B iographies of D irectors /A ctors/P roducers • V ideos for Sale including F oreigh L anguage Special Orders/Mail Order Welcome Join our free m ailing list for a quarterly update of new books and videos

OPEN LATE: MON-SAT 9 - 9 PM. SUN I 2 .30 - 6 .30 PM City Walk off Akuna Street, Canberra City. Tel: (06) 248 8352 Fax: (06) 247 1230

AUSTRALIAN SCREENPLAYS

The A u s tra lia n Screenplays collection, published by Currency Press, the performing arts publisher, highlights the diverse, highly individual and vigorous state of contemporary Australian films. These screenplays explore a variety of issues including: race relations (Dead Heart), small town yearnings (Love Serenade), teenage violence (Blackrock), schizophrenia (Angel Baby) and ideology (Children of the Revolution). Other titles include Muriel’s Wedding; Bad Boy Bubby, The Sum of Us and The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. All titles are priced at $17.95 (RRP) and include BAV and colour stills from the film as well as introductions from the films’ writers/directors/producers and film commentators. C urrency P ress, PO B ox 452, Paddington, NSW, 2021, Australia. T el: 61 2 (0) 9332 1300 Fax: 61 2 (0) 9332 3848 E-mail: cu rrren cy @ m ag n a.co m .au W ebsite: h ttp :/ / w w w .cu rren cy.com .au D istribution : C ambridge U niversity P ress, M elbourne

inpost

to use for professional people and I think it will stay that way. I mean Apple has to resolve where they fit in the industry and hopefully they’ll address those things correctly. A S il ic o n G r a p h ic s

v e r s io n ?

Copher: We don’t have any plans, but, if the demand’s there, we will do it.

But y o u

can s e e a d e m a n d f o r a

PC v e r s io n ?

Copher: Yes. I don’t think it’s the cost factor so much; I think it’s the confidence level of people used to PCs. So, we are coming out with an NT ver sion that people can look at it and say, “Well, do 1 want an NT version or do I want the Mac version?” And they can make decisions. Then they can move the files from one platform to the other. We do have a number of multiple system sites. And there’s marketplaces where Apple just didn’t do very well — and NT is going to be stan dard. Asia is one place where NT is very strong, even though we’re having a great deal of success with our product on a Mac.

As they change their configuration or upgrade, there’s a peak and then it drops away. Ha s

t h e r e b e e n a n y r e s is t a n c e b y t r a d it io n a l film

EDITORS?

Richards: Non-linear editing is much more like film editing than tape editing. In tape, you have to wait while the tape shuffles up and down, and you can’t insert into the middle of a section without having to remake the whole tape again — and lose a genera tion. Tape editing is entirely artificial to a film editor, but non-linear editing is splicing in footage and shots in exactly the same mode as film editing —

Do YOU FIND THE DEVELOPING MARKETS’ GROWTH AREAS?

Copher: Absolutely. We’re looking for a growth rate of about 7o percent in the international market and a good bit of that is coming from Asia. We have some 150 systems in China already. We’ve run sev eral large projects with CCTV and it looks like we’ll have substantial business there in the future. India has a very strong film industry and we’ve had a lot of interest there; that’s an area we are taking a look at. In Japan, we have close to 1000 systems. For many people, with or without some level of com puter knowledge, the learning curve of tackling sophisticated technology and strange software can be a put off. I asked Copher and Richards how long it takes to learn to use a Media 100 system? Copher: I would say most of the distributors are giving a day or two of training. On our product alone it probably takes a day to learn, but then there’s all the other third-party products that peo ple also need to learn. Richards: For a system, we do a day of installation, configuration and training. And at the end of that day, that’s enough for them to be competently edit ing and producing a final product usingthe Media 100 software. Then we leave them for a week prob ably, exploring and getting to know it and finding out what everything does. But they know the over all concept because it is really simple once you understand ‘drag and drop’ and ‘cut and paste’ and ‘point and click’ — everything else is just explo ration. You only need those concepts to learn. And it comes with very good tutorials. After a week, we normally go back for another day or two because they want to start doing animation or compositing. Do e s

t h e n e e d f o r t e c h s u p p o r t c o n t in u e on a f t e r

THAT?

Richards: When you first install it, people — and we encourage them to — pick up the phone straight away, rather than struggle to learn it, even if they forget something. Then the need tends to drop away. Then they add more software to it and they call more often and then it drops away again.

C INEMA P AP E R S • JUNE 1997

but 100 times faster. They relate to it very quickly. We’ve often had the comment, “This is just like cut ting film.” Copher: It allows them to become a lot more pro ductive because they can make edits in real time, do it and see what it looks like. If you don’t like it, then you try something else. It’s very easy to change what you’re doing. A nd

t h e r e s p o n s e fro m t a p e p e o p l e ?

Copher: Same comment. I think they’re ecstatic using something like this. They find it easier. Richards: The thing is that some people typically have a huge investment in a whole lot of dedicated hardware. They might have three Betacam decks with A/B roll, a switcher, a DVE, character genera tor and the rest. And a lot of people we sell systems to say, “Well, I’ll just use it as an offline. Then I’ll go back to my online system because I have all this equipment.” But they do one job offline and then the rest they finish on Media 100 and output back to tape. They forget about all that equipment at the other end. The tape guys love it because they have in one box that vast array of post-production equipment. IS THERE RESISTANCE BECAUSE OF THE LUGGAGE THEY’ RE CARRYING AROUND?

Copher: It’s kind of foolish to the financial guys when they have to dispose of gear that was supposed to last five years and it goes after only three. But I would say it’s more the unknown factor of what they’re

jumping into, dealing with a computer instead of pieces of equipment that they’re familiarwith. We try to constantly go out and do seminars, and invite people to see how this really works. The com ment we always get back is how easy it really is.

How WELL DOES IT INTEGRATE INTO A DIGITAL BETACAM ENVIRONMENT?

Richards: There are plenty of people in Australia who shoot on Digital Betacam, originate graphics on the computer, mix them together with Media 100, output back to Digital Betacam — and then they may go to a post-house and use Henry or Harry and process it even further. Then go to air from there. With Media 100, there’s no colour space trans lation, so you go from Digital Betacam, which is working in a YUV colour space. You digitize it without translating it to a different colour space, and you put it back out. Copher: Avid doesn’t do that. They convert it and then have to convert it back. You do have some degradation there. Richards: No matter how many layers you want to do, how many effects, no matter how many graphics you add, it’s a one-generation output. Copher: We’re trying to create new users. And they can produce one corporate video or some thing and pay for the system. Richards: Although a lot of companies moved out of in-house production of corporate videos a while ago, we think a lot more will come back into it and will start producing for themselves again. Copher: From Mark’s point of view, he wants to make sure the users are happy with the product. And if you look in the used-equipment market place, you can’t find a used Media 100.

The line-up Six new Media 100 digital video products are now available, each based on the Vincent 601 digital video engine. All prices are ex tax.

Media 100 qx ($5,995) Broadcast-quality Quick Time digital video system. Fully compatible with, and able to be upgraded to, the rest of the Media 100 product line. Media 100 qx with component ($8,495) Compo nent image quality for QuickTime. System delivers YUV colour space 4:2:2 digital component signal pro cessing. Media 100 /p ($8,795) Complete digital video system with real-time editing, effects, and playback. Media 100 ix ($14,995) Real-time component digital video system. Media 100 xe ($21,995) Professional real-time graphics digital video system. Media 100 xs ($36,660) Top-of-the-line real-time digital video system; delivers maximum productivity and quality with real-time 8-track audio mixing and real-time preview transition effects. Gaudi ($10,260) Developed for Media 100 pro gramme authors requiring advanced digital video effects. Further information : AdimexPty Ltd, 5/263 Liverpool Street, East Sydney NSW 2010. Telephone (61.2) 9332 4444. Fax (61.2) 9332 4234. Email: mtown@adimex.com.au. ©

Prod u ction Su rv ey

The Interview

My Blessings

Justice

One Way Ticket

Oscar and Lucinda

Features in Pre-production Fallen Eights

Features in Production

Features in Post-production Aberration

The Alive Tribe

Black Ice

Amy

Four Jacks

Family Crackers

A Little Bit of Soul

Joey

Greystoke II: Tarzan and Jane

Pigeon

Redball

Shorts Your Move

AN E A R FOR M U S I C • S W I N G I N G C O U P L E S • P E T - F R E E

Production Su rvey [As AT 5 M ay 1997]

Featured in p re-production FALLEN EIGHTS Production Company: KUDOS PRODUCTIONS Pre-production: M arch -ÜUNE 1997 Production: JuLY-SEPTEMBER 1997

P rincipal C redits Director: KRISTIAN I. CONNELLY Producers: DANNY GINSBERG,

K ristian I. C onnelly Executive producer: Kathleen H utson Line producer: N athan S tones Screenwriter: K ristian I. Connelly P roduction C rew Production supervisor: Kathleen H utson Production secretary: S tephanie Stones

On - set C rew 1st assistant director: A shley B ell Marketing Publicity: D anny G insberg K udos P roductions

odern day sexual thriller set in the post-apocalypse.

Featured in production AMY A my Film P roductions Distribution company: B eyond Films Ltd ( international ), V illage Roadshow Ltd (A ustralia and N ew Z ealand ) Production: 24/3-24/5/97

P rincipal C redits Director: N ad ia T ass Producers: N a d ia T ass and D avid Parker Co-producer: PHIL JONES Based on the original screenplay titled: A my By: David P arker Director of photography: K eith W agstaff Production designer: J on D owding Costume Supervisor: C hristiana P litzeo

Editor: B ill M urphy Composer: P hil J udd Sound designer: D ean Gawen Sound recordist: ANDREW Ramage

P roduction C rew Production manager: Lesley Parker Production co-ordinator: T rish Foreman Producers' assistant: J ane HAMILTON Production secretary: COLETTE BlRRELL Location manager: N eil M c Cart (S pider ) Unit manager: L eigh A mmitzboll Unit assistant: P eter B oekeman Production runner: J onathon R ishworth Production accountant: N adeen K ingshott Insurer: T ony L eonard , AON R isk

Tutor/chaperone: MAREE G ray

A rt D epartment Art director: HUGH BATEUP Art department co-ordinator:

my is an eight-year-old girl who A can only hear music and communicates by singing.

Pty Ltd Pre-production: M arch - A pril 1997 Production: A pril - M ay 1997

FAMILY CRACKERS

Christina N orman Set decorators: L isa THOMPSON,

Nic B runner Set dresser: D aniel M a pp - M oroni Standby props: Harry Z ettel Art department assistant: JANIE PARKER Graphic artist: JANE MURPHY Draftsperson: STEVEN WHITING

Distribution company: BEYOND FILMS,

P rincipal C redits

S harmill Films Production: A pril 1997 ...

Director: Craig M onahan Producer: B ill H ughes Scriptwriters: CRAIG MONAHAN,

P rincipal C redits

G ordon D avie

Director: D avid S w an n Producer:CHRIS WARNER Scriptwriter: DAVID SWANN

W ardrobe Costume assistant: B ernice D evereaux Standby wardrobe: M andy SEDAWIE Costumier: A lison Fowler Assistant wardrobe: D enise P etrovic

THE INTERVIEW Production company: I nterview F ilms

Director of photography: S imon D uggan Production designer: Richard B ell Co-costume designer: JEANIE CAMERON Editor: S uresh A yyar Composer: DAVID H irschfelder Sound recordist: J ohn W ilkinson

G overnment A gency I nvestment Production: A ustralian Film F inancing

Corporation , Film V ictoria Marketing: B eyond Films

C onstruction Department

M arketing

Scenic artist: J ohn H aratzis Construction manager:

International sales agent: B eyond Films

Completion guarantor: ADRIENNE R ead Legal services: B ryce M enzies ,

B rendan M ullen P ost- production

Roth W arren C amera C rew

Post-production supervisor:

W arren M itchell, Daniel Kellie, P eter Rawsthorn , S usan Lyons, M aggie K ing , T erry Gill, V alerie B ader, Chris Chapman S ynopsis

Camera operator: D avid W illiamson Focus puller: W arw ick Field Clapper-loader: J ude Lovatt Key grip: R ichard A llardice Grip: P eter S tockley Assistant grip: MARIN JOHNSON Gaffer: Ian D ewhurst Best boy: L ex MARTIN 3rd electrics: MICHAEL HUGHES 4th electrics: Chris D ewhurst

Assistant editor: D avid B irrell Editing assistant: ROCHELLE OSHLACK Sound editor: PAUL HUNTINGFORD Foley artist: Paul HUNTINGFORD Music supervisor: CHRIS GOUGH,

S ervices

On- set C rew

1st assistant director: B ob

D onaldson 2nd assistant director: Christian Robinson 3rd assistant director: I ain P irret Director's assistant: Clea Frost Continuity: Jo W eeks Video split operator: PlP WlNCER Boom operator: TONY DICKINSON Make-up: A m and a Rowbottom Hairdresser: ZELJKA STANIN Special fx supervisor: P eter S tubbs Stunts co-ordinator: Z ev E letheriou Safety supervisor: T om Coltraine Unit nurse: T ed Green Still photography: S kip W atkins Unit publicist: S arah Finney Caterer: JENNY STOCKLEY Caterer's assistant: T iffany M orris

David B irrell

Cast

comedy with a heart about a A chaotic family Christmas that goes terribly wrong.

GREYSTOKE II: TARZAN AND JANE

M a n a M usic Laboratory: C inevex Laboratory liaison: I an A nderson Cutting Rooms: NOISY PICTURES Telecine: COMPLETE POST

Government A gency I nvestment Production: AUSTRALIAN Film C o m m issio n : Commercial T elevision P roduction Fund

Production company: V illage Roadshow P ictures of A ustralia , D ieter G eissler Filmproduktion , G ermany Budget: $20 MILLION Production: M arch 1997 ...

B eyond Films L imited

Director: Carl S chenke Co-producer: M ichael Lake Based on the characters created by:

International sales agent:

e y

EP Executive Producer P Producer Co-P Co-Producer AS Associate Producer LP Line Producer D Director SW Scriptwriter C Cast PC Principal Cast SE Story Editor W D W riter-director D IST Distributor N O T E : Production Survey form a now adhere to a reviaedform at. regret,! it cannot accept information received in a different form at.

Cinema Papers

P rincipal Credits

Marketing

Cinema Papers doea not accept

Domestic distributor:

Edgar R ice B urroughs

V illage Roadshow L imited Network Pre-sale: N ine N etwork C ast

Cast Casper van D ien (T arzan ), J ane M arch (J ane ), Steven W addington (R avens )

Rachel Griffiths (Tanya), Alana De Roma (Amy), Ben Mendelsohn (Robert), Nick Barker (Will), Kerry Armstrong (Sarah), Jeremy Trigatti (Zac), William Zappa (Bill), Sullivan Stapleton (Wayne), Torquil Neilson (Luke),Mary Ward (Mrs Mullins), Susie Porter (Anny)

arzan and Jane centres on Tarzan's post-Greystoke return to Africa to save his homeland from mercernaries trying to uncover the secret of the lost city of Opar.

S ynopsis

reaponaibility fo r the accuracy o f any information ¿applied by production companies. Thia ia particularly the cave when information changea but the production company m ated no attempt to correct what had already been jupplied.

H H B P O R T A D A T T IM E C O D E DAT

THE LOCATION DAT STANDARD FREECALL 1 8 0 0 675 168 58

CINEMA P A PE R S • JUNE 1997

I ‘^ ' VS S

line between ttbld-your-breath creative

I H ks: i t

| |

^4 _i

and been-there, done-that mediocrity can be razor thin. So you have to go*for it. The question is, how do you make a prof

| j* w*11*e y °uyre tryin9 t0 mal<e a name?

MCXpress gives you an intuitive editing model that's been time-test ed and proven by over 30,000 professional editors worldwide.True reaUu^gpííffécts. integrated compositing and titling. Seamless mtegjpgkri with QuickTime' or AVI. Broadcast-quality, 72JQ|^|PPW ir ^ ^ ^ ^ lt n compression levels as low as 2:1. And much more.

Why? Because MCXpress gives you the tQ.gJs v o i^ ^ ^ l to turn your creative visions into reality. Fast. And with s u p e r io S S f e MCXpress is the newest addition to Avid's proveh-in-the-trenches, award-winning

Showcase C

AVID Avid is a registeçed tracfemark and M CXpress is a trademark of Avid Technology, fricl Macintosh is a registered trademark and QuickTim e is a trademark o f ‘A pple Computei; Inc. Windows and Windows NT are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

MCX0197

FOUR JACKS

Camera assistant: G ary S o n

production Production Survey P lanning and D evelopment Script editor: A lison NlSSELLE Casting: PROTOTYPE Casting consultants: G reg A p p s , J enny L ee , N ick H amon

P roduction C rew Production manager: T errie VINCENT Production co-ordinator: L esley T homson Producer's assistant: R o sanne M onahan Location managers: G reg E llis , Fran L ugt Unit manager: M ichael B arnes Production runner: SEBASTIAN GUNNER Production accountant: G ina HALLIS Insurer: H.W . W ood - T ony G ibbs Completion guarantor: F ilm FINANCES INC. Travel co-ordinator: T ravel T oo G reg H elmers Freight co-ordinator: T ravel T oo G reg H elmers

Camera C rew Focus puller: B en S hirley Clapper-loader: N icole S wan Key grip: G raham e L itchfield Assistant grip: D avid L itchfield Gaffer: M ichael A dcock Best boy: T im F ullarton Assistant electrics: A lex Laguna

On- set C rew 1st assistant director: Karen M onkhouse 2nd assistant director: E ddie Raymond Continuity:Julie B a t e s - B rennan Make-up: P am M urphy Stunts co-ordmator:ZEV E leftheriou Safety officer: Z ev E leftheriou Catering: S w eet S eduction

A rt D epartment Art department co-ordinator: SHARON Y oung Art department runner: B arney C arter Set dresser: S imon M c C utcheon Standby props: S imon C arter Armourer: JOHN Fox

W ardrobe

Pre-production: 1 A pril 1997 (5 w e e k s ) Production: 5 M ay 1997 (6 WEEKS) Post-production: 16/6- 12/9/97

P rincipal C redits Director: R on E lliott Producer: B ob R oget Line producer: D ixie B etts Executive producer: LARRY HlRSCH Associate producers: Ryan H odgson , K elvin M unro , S tuart M c C racken Based on the original screenplay titled: J ustice By: B ob R oget Director of photography: A lex M c P hee Production designer: C layton J auncey Costume Designer: LlSA G alea Editor: Law rie S ilverstrin Sound recordist: S cott M ontgomery

P lanning and Development Script editor: STEVE TURNBALL Casting consultants: A nnie M urtagh -M onks & A sso cia tes Extras casting: J enni C ohen Budgeted by: D ixie B etts

P roduction C rew Production manager: D ixie B etts Production co-ordinator: Liz J an n ey , J enni C ohen Location manager: TlM B urns Production accountant: LlSA SMITH Insurer: HW W ood A ustralia Pty Ltd Completion guarantor: F irst A ustralian C ompletion C o.

Camera C rew Camera operator: ALEX M c P hee Focus puller: T orstein D yrting Clapper-loader: S ean M eehan Camera assistant: D avid M c M illan Key grip: B arry Han sen Gaffer: T ed N ordsvan Best boy: C raig I rwin

On - set C rew

Standby wardrobe: B ronwyn D oughty

Musical director: D avid H irschfelder Laboratory: ClNEVEX

1st assistant director: M ichael Faranda Continuity: J an P iantoni Make-up: L esley R ouvray Hairdresser: Lesley R ouvray Stunts co-ordinator: P eter W est Safety officer: P eter W est

C ast H ugo W eaving (E ddie F lem in g ), T ony M artin (D et . S g t . S teele ), A aron J effery (D et . C o nst . P rior ), A ndrew B ayly (P row se ), P aul S onkkila (J a ck so n ), M ichael C aton (W a l l s ), P eter M c C auley (H udson ), Leverne M c D onnell (S olicitor ), L ibby S tone (M rs B eecroft )

C onstruction D epartment Studios: S crewed & G lued

P ost- production

he Interview is a highly-suspenseful psychological drama about a terrible miscarriage of justice. To that end, it is a head-on collision between the process of police investigation, the law and morality.

Production company: P ipeline F ilms

Gaffer: B R En H ull

Production: 2 0 /1-2 1/2 /9 7

Best boy: Ross O rr

Post-production: 21/2 -30 /4 /9 7

On - set C rew

P rincipal C redits

1st assistant director: MONIQUE G rbec

C ast

Director: M ath ew G eorge

2nd assistant directors: Jo TODD,

Producers: ROBERT GOUGH,

M arcus G raham (B obby L e w is ), K erry A rmstrong (A nnie M a r t in )

N ad ia C ossich

S tephen S tanford

Director's assistant: T am ara S chnapp

Line producer: G ene G eoffrey

Script editor: YVONNE PECUJAC

Scriptwriter: MATHEW GEORGE

Continuity: A nna L ightfoot

Director of photography:

continued

Key grip: S tephen Oyston

ustice is an 'against the odds' story

of hope and inspiration. Set against the background of the city slums, an alcoholic derelict is framed forthe murder of a female Internal Affairs officer. In order to prove his innocence, he must first fight and conquer his personal demons before he is able to challenge the legal system and, representing himself, discover the truth and bring the guilty to justice.

Make-up: J ulia G reen ,

J u stin B rickle

C lea S tapleton

Sound recordist: M artin K eir

Stunts co-ordinator: PJ CHRIS PETERS

Editor: M ark E llis

Safety supervisor: P eter C ulpan

Production designer: Ralph M oser

Stills: P eter M ilne

Costume designer: R uben T homas

Featured in podt-productlon

A rt Department

P lanning and D evelopment

Armourer: JOHN Fox

Casting: C hameleon C a stin g

W ardrobe

Shooting schedule by: MONIQUE GRBEC

Wardrobe: K aren T ate

P roduction C rew

P ost- production

Producer's assistants: HOLLY MACKAY, N ioue R ich es , P ip S alla b a n k ,

Sound: MICHAEL KlTSON

N ina N ichols

Mixing: M & E

ABERRATION

and Queenstown, New Zealand)

P rincipal C redits

Special fx: D avid R iley , S u sanna M orphett , D a n iel P erry .

Marketing

Assistant grip: M ark B uzzcurrie Gaffer: Karl E ngler

J ohn C larke , P eter M oon ,

Best boy: D arren CHOU

On - set C rew

B ernie Q uinlan

1st assistant director: MONIQUE GRBEC

he Alive Tribe is a wild bunch of hipped-out student radicals who fight for anything, from ecological Armageddon to the ozone layer and animal liberation. Set around the final days of the Fitzroy Football Club merger, the film explores the theme: evolve or die.

2nd assistant director: L inda K ane Continuity: GlULA SANDLER Boom operator: C hris O 'S hea Catering: Fab F oods

A rt D epartment Art director: Ralph M osek Propsperson: JlM L e V eque

C ast

Sales agent: V ictor F ilm C o.

BLACK ICE

Publicity: S ian C lement (02) 9450 3650

T ommy D ysa r t , S tephen P ea rse , A dam Had d rich , A lan K in g ,

Production company: W edgetail

C ast

D ave S errifin , Lachy H ulme

F ilm M an agem en t Ltd

S imon B ossell , P am ela G idley

chiller film in the tradition of A woman on the run becomes trapped in a remote cabin with a local scientist during a blizzard.

Camera type: A arton Key grip: FREDDO D irk

David J ohnston , L illian F rank ,

Production designer: G rant M ajor

On - set C rew

Clapper-loader: SlNEAD BuHLER

S ophie M oor, G ary G a r tsid e ,

Director of photography: A llen G uilford

1st assistant director: C hris S hort

Focus puller: C ameron D unn

M aureen A ndrew , S teve G ome ,

Scriptwriters: D arrin Oura , Scon L ew

Location manager: Scon D onaldson

C amera C rew

Cast C raig A d a m s , Kate A tcheso n ,

Co-producer: S cott Lew

P roduction C rew

Track-laying services: LABSONICS

Ian Scon, J ohn A rnold , S usie D ee ,

NZ producer: T im S anders

Production supervisor: BRIDGET BOURKE

Production runner: D avid P ritchard

Film gauge: S uper 16

Production: 25/11/96 - 6/1/97 (Wellington

Producer: C hris B rown

Unit manager: R ohan J A nderson

Laboratory: ClNEVEX

Production company: Grundy Films

Director: T im BOXELL

Location manager: A oinya Nl NuLLAIN

Telecine: A A V

our young men piece together their role in a murder gone wrong.

Budget: $ 1.5 M illion

A Tremors.

P rincipal C redits Director: J am es R ichards

A LITTLE BIT OF SOUL

Producer: ROBERT GREENOUGH Executive producers: B ill MunER,

P rincipal C redits

R on W illiam s

Director: P eter D uncan Producers: PETER D uncan , S imon M a r tin , M artin M c G rath , P eter (PJ) V oeten Executive producer: T ristram M iall Scriptwriter: P eter D uncan Director of Photography:

THE ALIVE TRIBE

Associate producer: R on V reeken

A rt Department

P rincipal C redits

Scriptwriters: J am es R ich ard s ,

Art director: C layton J auncey Art department co-ordinator: D ebbie Ă?AYL0R Art department runner: S am H obbs Set dresser: D ebbie T aylor Props buyer: B eth G arswood Standby props: K elvin SEXTON

Director: S tephen A mis

R ob G reenough

Producer: S tephen A mis

Director of photography: K evin 'L oosey ' Lind

W ardrobe Wardrobe supervisor: L isa G alea Standby wardrobe: C h ristine Lynch Wardrobe assistant: A bby W ilson

P ost- production (Film and/ or V ideo)

Line producer: SHARON PEERS

P roduction C rew

Associate producers: H eng T a n g ,

Post-production supervisor:

P eter J in k s , G reg J in k s ,

K arl B ransten

Law ren ce S ilberstein

Choreographers: RON VREEKEN,

Director of photography: DARREL STOKES

J am es W illiams

Editor: R obert M urphy

Assistant editor: A dam W eis

M artin M c G rath Editor: SlMON MARTIN Production designer: T ony C am pbell Music: N igel W estlake Costume Designer: T erry Ryan

Production designer: P riscilla D a vies

Cast

C ast

Music: J ohn P hillips

J ohn O rcsik , T ony B onner ,

G eoffrey R ush (G odfrey U sh er ), David W enham (R ichard S horkinghorn ), F rances O'C onnor (K a te H a s l e t t ), H eather M itchell (G race M ich a el ),

P roduction C rew

R on V reeken , T onia L ee .

Production manager: MYRLENE B arr

athan Vaughn, an enigmatic man, a coiled spring ready to explode, is recruited by Detective Andy Riddle to hand out his own form of rough justice. Vaughn begins working for criminal Curtis Starr which is his final journey to self-destruction.

JUSTICE

Post-production supervisor: Law rie S ilverstrin G overnm ent A gency I n vestm ent Production: SCREEN W est , FFC

Production company: W est C oast P ictures Distribution company: N ew vision Budget: $ 1 .7 2 m

Marketing

Camera operator: S teve W elch

International sales agent/distributor: A ugust E n tertainm ent

Clapper-loaders: A rianne PEERS,

Production co-ordinator: Ra sa Z danius Producer's assistant: M arla A krtitis

C amera C rew

C h ristine B irman

J ohn G aden (D r S om m erville ), K erry W alker (E ugenie M a so n ), J ennifer Hagen (P rosecution ), R oy B illing (J u dge ), Iris S hand (M rs C ra n e ), C raig Rasm u s (B o bby ), P aul B lackw ell (F red M c G rath )

HHB PORTADAT HEADPHONE M ATRIX RETRO FIT TO A N Y PO RTADAT FREECALL1 8 0 0 675 168 A U D IO SOUND CENTRE

C I NE MA P A P E R S â&#x20AC;˘ JUNE 1997

INEGTHINK

Pty Ltd has just accurately & painlessly POS conformed

and NEG matched these features:

• Thank God He Met Lizzie S T A ME N F I L M S • Kiss or Kill B I L L B E N N E T T P R O D U C T I O N S • The Well s o u t h e r n s t a r x a n a d u And we are currently matching:

• A Little Bit of Soul P E T E R D U N C A N - F A U S T F I L M S • The Sugar Factory I M A G I N E F I L M S

N ES T K IN K P T Y

L T D

Contact Greg Chapman Ph: (02) 9439 3988 Fax: (02) 9437 5074 email: negthink@ozemail.com.au 105/6 Clarke Steet Crows Nest NSW 2065

WALK OUT OF ILAA WITH A SHOWREEL Direction, cinematography, 1st A.D., Sound Recording, Screenwriting, Camera Operation, Still Photography, Continuity, Editing, Video Production and Video Editing. Any or all of these can be on your showreel within the Diploma of Screen Arts programme at ILAA. Typically our students direct at least one film (16mm Synch) and crew on four or five other key roles.

LECTURERS practising professionals AFTRS qualified

IN STITU TE OF LEN S A R T S

THE V IA B L E A LTERN A TIVE

PO B O X 1 7 7 K A L O R A M A V I C 3 7 6 6 T E L E P H O N E 9 7 2 8 1 1 5 0

O p t ic a l & G r a p h ic “

“

Pty Ltd

Titling design & graphic effects • Extensive range of typefaces Word processing files accepted • Flexible proofing system r Shooting in all formats • Quoting & student discounts Digital shooting 5 Chuter Street McMahon's Pt (North Sydney) 2060 Phone: 61 2 9922 3144 Fax: 61 2 9957 5001 Email: ogteam@og.com.au Web address: www.og.com.au

production Production Survey

Production company: M eridian F ilms Distribution company:

continued Little Bit of Soul follows the adventures of scientists, Richard and Kate, who require funding to complete a vital project When they are invited to spend a weekend with two potential investors, Richard and Kate find themselves embroiled in the weekend from hell. Eventually they get their money - but at what price?

OSCAR AND LUCINDA Fox S earchlight

Production: SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 1996 Budget: $16 MILLION

Production assistants: GEORGEIA DEARAUGO, L ouise S terling

C amera C rew

Director: G illian A rmstrong Producers: T im W h ite , R obin D alton Scriptwriter: Laura J ones Government Agency Investment:

Camera operator: K a ttin a B owell

FFC

Focus puller: A ndrew M c C ormack

C ast

Clapper-loader: A ndrew B all

Ralph F ien n es , C ate B lan chett .

Camera assistants: M a tt T oll ,

Tov B elling Gaffer: L iam A dam

ased on the novel by Peter Carey, a story about fate, love, gambling and faith.

On-S et C rew

JOEY Production company:

V illage R oadshow P ictures

1st assistant director: B ill MOUSOULIS Continuity: D a n ic a D.B. Still photography: R obert B all Catering: S andi W ishes

Production: 4/9 -1 6 / 1 0 / 9 6

Art director: DANICA D.B. Assistant art director: J ulie RAFFAELE

P rincipal C redits

W ardrobe

Director: VlNCENZO GALLO

Wardrobe supervisor: Da n ic a D.B.

Producers: La v in ia R a m pino , R obin J olly

P roduction C rew

Screen ratio: 1.33:1 Shooting stock: 7248

P ost- production Sound transfers by: D irk de B ruyn

P ost- production Animatronics supervisor: J ohn C ox

M arketing International sales agent: V illage

R oadshow P ictures W orldw ide Unit Publicity: F iona S earson ,

DDA

C ast J am ie C rofts , A lex M c K en na , R ebecca G ibn ey , E d B egley J r, R uth C racknell , H arold H opkins

hen a young Australian boy boards a train to Sydney to reunite a baby kangaroo with his abducted parents he begins an hilarious adventure through the city's mean streets and to the halls of government, finding a new best friend and justice along the way.

Length: 90 MINS

Film gauge: 16 mm

Gauge: D igital B etacam

diary film, chronicling six days in the life of a woman in her early 30s.

ONE WAY TICKET

P rincipal C redits

Production: 15/2/97 (FOR 5 WEEKS) Location: M elbourne and environs

P rincipal C redits Director: R ichard F ranklin Producer: Ian B radley

K ris N oble Scriptwriters: MICHAEL BRINDLEY, Karen A ltmann Director of photography: E llery R yan

Budget: $8 ,0 00

Production designer: P addy R eardon

Post-production: 12/10/96 - 1/3/97

P u n n in g and Development Casting: M aura Fay &

P rincipal C redits

Assoc

Director: B ill M ousoulis

Production C rew

Producer: B ill MOUSOULIS

Production supervisor: E m anuel MATSOS

Marketing

Sound recordists: P hillip H ealy ,

Publicity: SlAN CLEMENT

C hris O 'S hea , J ennifer S o ch ackyj , E mm a B ortignon , J ohn C umming Editor: B ill M ousoulis Production designer: DANICA D.B.

P eter P helps , Rachel B lakeney ,

P roduction C rew

C ast

Editor: David P ulbrook

Pre-production: 12/8 - 22/9/96 Production: 23/9 - 11/10/96

Producer's assistant: S andi A ustin

REDBALL Production company: G ray M alkin Pre-production: JANUARY 1997 Production: F ebruary -M arch 1997 Post-production: A pril 1997 . .. Director: JON HEWITT Producers: M ereoith K in g , P hillip P arslow Line producer: Fa bien n e N icholas Associate producer: DANIEL ScHARF Scriptwriter: J on H ew itt Director of photography: M ark P ugh Production designers: VANESSA CERNE, L isa C ollins Costume designer: LlSA COLLINS Editor: A lan W oodruff Composer: N eil M c G rath

Production company:

M a r ie -L ouise W alker

(t e l e - f e a t u r e )

I n nersense P roductions

Casting: BILL MOUSOULIS,

he story of a man undergoing a strange breakdown who wants to become a pigeon and the journalist sent to cover the story.

Production company: GRUNDY TELEVISION

MY BLESSINGS

P u n n in g and Development

C ast K ate F isch er , G arry H illberg , A nthony A rgino , T ony N ardella .

C ast M a r ie -L ouise W alker (J a n e ), Ian D ixon (M ich a el ), Dale S teven s (L is a ), E mma S trand (S ue ), M ark S hannon (L ind s a y ), V ictory D ay (R a ch el ), G raham P ages (J effrey ), B ill M ousoulis (as h im self ), D irk de B ruyn (a s h im self ).

Executive producers: A ndrew B rooke ,

Scriptwriter: BILL MOUSOULIS Director of photography: Ka ttin a B owell

Other C redits

Mixer: D irk de B ruyn Laboratory: ClNEVEX

Production office: G old C oast Unit production manager: B rian B urgess 1st assistant director: S tuart F reeman

Scriptwriter: VlNCENZO GALLO Production designer: B renton A ngel

Cast C hris H aywood

he story of a female prison officer: married, reliable, trusted. Yet she planned the most spectacular gaolbreak in Australia's criminal history -forth e love of a convicted murderer.

B elinda M c C lory, J ohn B rumpton , F rank M ag ree , P eter D ocker , A nthea Da v is , N eil P igot , D am ien FIichardson , J am es Y oung , P aulene T erry - B eitz , D an iel W yle , Ray M onney , R obert M organ

P roduction C rew Production manager: MlCHELE T h istlew a ite Runner: SlMON FEENEY Insurer: ClNESURE Travel co-ordinator: M elinda E aston

C amera C rew

DUST OFF THE WINGS (111) HEAVEN'S BURNING (113)

Focus puller: C ameron C lark

THE INNER SANCTUARY (111) KISS OR KILL (116)

Assistant grip: B ob HAMILTON

Camera operator: Jo E rskine Clapper-loader: JULIET Z abik Key grip: K urt O lsen Gaffer: G raham R utherford Best boy: J am es T hompson

LOVE IN AMBUSH (FORMERLY ANGKOR AND MIRABEAU) (112)

Electrician: ALEX FITZSIMMONS

On - set C rew 1st assistant director: W ayne M oore

OUT OF THE BLUE (116)

THE REAL MACAW (116)

Director: Ian B arry Producer: M ichael Lake Executive producers: R obin B urke , G reg C oote Scriptwriter: S tuart B eattie Director of photography: D avid B urr Editor: L ee S mith Production designer: P eta Law son Costume designer: M arion B oyce

Casting: D ani R ogers Storyboard artist: TONY S hort

Producer's assistant: S imon FEENEY

DOING TIME FOR PATSY CLINE (114)

PAWS (115)

Production office: MELBOURNE

P lanning and D evelopment

DARK CITY (114) DIANA & ME (114)

PIGEON

Production: F ebruary -A pril 1997

Sound recordist: BASIL K rivoroutchko

FOR DETAILS ON THE FOLLOWING, PLEASE CONSULT PREVIOUS ISSUES:

Production company: S ilo Budget: L ess than $ 5 00 ,0 0 0

A rt D epartment

P rincipal C redits

Aw aiting Release

Script supervisor: L iza M c L ean Video Continuity: S harryn M c M illan Boom operators: LINCOLN WILLIAMS,

G eorge J ohnson , N ick P aton Hair/Make-up Supervisor: K it C am pbell Safety officer: W ilfred F lint

RED HERRING (110) ROAD TO NHILL (110) SCREAM (116) SIAM SUNSET (116) SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING (116)

Still photography: VERONICA SlVE Unit publicist: D ani ROGERS Catering: M aria C astillo

A rt Department Art directors: B rad C am pb ell , A dam C laringbull Props makers, Standby props: K athy MET CALFE, A ngie F ielder , G ary P fiefer

THE SUGAR FACTORY (116) THANK GOD HE MET LIZZIE (114)

C onstruction Department Construction supervisor:ExHlBIT ONE Scenic artist: T ony S hort Carpenter: GLEN T aylor Studios: B r isba n e C ity C ouncil

THE TRUTH ABOUT TARO (116) WANTED (116)

P ost- production Sound transfers by: B E E P S Sound design & editor: VlC KASPAR Music Producer: J u stin B rown Musical directors: A ndy A rthurs , G uy W ebster Music performed by: P enny C onnolly C o tes , A ndre D utoit , P eter K y p a r is s is , L isa S heridan , A ndrew S haw , C olin E nnis Recording studio: SUITE 16 Opticals: D-FlLM Titles: O ptica l and G raphic Laboratory: A tlab Grader: A lan H a n sen (O m n ico n )

WELCOME TO WOOP-WOOP (FORMERLYTHE BIGRED) (116) THE WELL (115)

Shorts YOUR MOVE Production company: WARNEROO P ty Ltd Budget: $ 6 5,00 0 Pre-production: SEPTEMBER 1996 Production: October 1996 Post-production: J a n -F eb 1997

G overnment A gency Investment Development & Production: F ilm Q ueensland Post-production & Marketing: F ilm Q u een slan d , A FC

P rincipal C redits Director: P hilip W arner Producers: P hilip WARNER, D ani R ogers Scriptwriters: P hilip W arner & David M c C artney Based on the story titled: "D on 't M ean a THING"By: P hilip WARNER Director of photography: B en N ott Production designers: B rad CAMPBELL, A dam C laringbull Costume designer: M ichele M urray Editor: B ob B lasdall Composers:ANDY ARTHURS & G uy W ebster

Cast H arold H opkins (O vero n ), A ndrew B uchanan (B e n ), T revelyn Lakay (D ream G irl)

S ynopsis

hat happens when you lose your best friend? A look at the first five minutes and last five minutes of a friendship set against the backdrop of a foreign prison.

dark, contemporary police thriller about a few weeks in the lives of some used-up Melbourne detectives. Constructed as a series of snapshots of the Homicide, CIB, Vice and Drug squads, Redball is a gritty, hard-hitting, darkly comic descent into the tensions, abuses and psychoses inherent in frontline policework - and a resonant paean to a city haunted by corruption, police shootings and the murder of innocence.

HHB PO RTADAT& H H B D A TTA PE YO U R PRO FESSIO NAL PARTNERS FREECALL 1 8 0 0 675 168 A U D IO SOUND CENTRE

C I NE MA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

Winning Post Film Editors 02 9439 4366

All Dogs Go To Heaven D on Bluth

Beavis and Butthead Do America M ike J udge

Big Night Stanley T ucci & Campbell S cott

Blackrock Steven Vidler

Blood and Wine Bob Rafelson

Bound L arry and Andy Wachowski

Conte d’Ete E ric Rohmer

Donnie Brasco Mike N ewell

Extreme Measures M ichael Apted

Flamenco Carlos Saura

Gabbeh M ohsen Makhmalbaf

Un Héros Très Discrer (A Self Made Hero) J acques A udiard

Last Man Standing Walter H ill

Marvin’s Room J erry Zaks

Mother Albert Brooks

One Fine Day M ichael H offman

Our Hospitality B uster Keaton

The Saint Phillip N oyce

Trigger Happy L arry Bishop

True Love and Chaos Stravros E fthymiou

When We Were Kings L eon Gast

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet1 Kenneth Branagh

Wind in the Willows T erry J ones

Zone 39 J ohn T atoulis nb: Eidetic: a. Applied to an image that revives an optical impression with hallucinatory clearness, or to a person having this faculty.

1Four-hour version.

A panel of eight film reviewers has rated a selection of the latest releases on a scale of 0 to 10, the latter being the optimum rating (a dash means not seen). The critics are:

B ill Collins (F X on F o x tel); B arbara Creed (T he A g e); Sandra H all ( The Sydney ¿Morning H era ld); P au l H arris ( “The Green G uide”, The A g e); Stan James (T he Adelaide A dvertiser); Tom Ryan (T he Sunday A g e); David Stratton (V ariety; S B S ); and Evan W illiam s (T he A ustralian). C I NE MA P A P E R S • JUNE 1997

F r a m e , S et & M a 2 RIDGE STREET, NORTH SYDN NSW

AUSTRALIA

2060

(61-2) 9954 0904 F a x : (61-2) e m a i l : f s m@f s m. c om. ai

.. .WITH TWO NEW KODAK VISIO N FILMS THAT CUT GRAIN LIKE NOTHING BEFORE. A daylight balanced, Kodak Vision 250D color negative film and Kodak Vision 200T color negative film balanced for tungsten light. Both are medium speed products with the grain and sharpness of much slower speed films. ^ Colors reproduce accurately. Latitude is exceptional.And both films intercut beautifully with other members of the Kodak family. Explore your imagination and capture your vision, with the gold standard in motion picture color negative films. Kodak, Eastman, and Vision are trade marks.

C O L O R

N E G A T I V E

F I L M