What is the effect on film when the maker's background is utterly different from the culture in which he now works. Anna Epstein talked to a film-maker who brings fresh vision to the Australian film industry.
In the incredible shrinking space between 1984 and 2001 the distinction between social-issue documentary and surreal fiction is collapsing - almost as fast as Australian capitalism or Soviet communism.
Over 12 days in November 1992, the Melbourne based Modern Image Makers Association (MIMA) held the third Experimenta presenting nearly 200 works of film, video, installation and performance. It included work from Germany, Japan, England and the USA, thus providing an opportunity to assess the current state of 'avant garde' practice and discourse.
"I am not a TV show, this is not a TV show." These are the oft-spoken words of Tony Tjamu, Chairperson of the Mutitjulu Community at Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the Pitjantjatjara Lands of Central Australia. Their repetition reveals something of the exasperation born of the visibility of being Aboriginal in a predominantly white Australia.
In the decades prior to the expansion of art-house cinemas and television programming, 'independent distribution and exhibition' denoted a more specific activity than it does in the 1990s.
Lesbians do not exist in mainstream Australian cinema. Apart from a brief sequence representing youthful lesbian desire in 'The Getting of Wisdom (1977)' and the undercurrent of adolescent homoeroticism in 'Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)' Australian cinema has remained mute - perhaps dumbstruck might be a more appropriate term - in relation to the issue of desire between women.
The Third International symposium on Electronic Art (TISEA) which took place in 16 venues in Sydney from 9 -13 November 1992 converted the whole city into a massive hologram event.
The emphasis in this collection has been on the films and videos themselves rather than the structures which support their production and circulation but they have not been overlooked....
Discussion with George Mannix. If there is any form of expression that eats money it is the feature length movie. Camera, lights and actors all cost big bucks and many ideas have stopped at the drawing board simply because there wasn't enough money. Independent Producer George Mannix had other ideas.