Monday 2nd.
Tonight's programme is based around a visit to Melbourne byDavid Cox, digital screen production lecturer at the School of Film Media & Cultural Studies at Griffith University inBrisbane. His background is in both motion picture production& interactive media. We'll be screening a selection ofDavid's short films, including:
TATLIN (1990), Colour.
Puppet rendition of the life & work of Vladimir Tatlin, brilliant engineer/ artist, whose ideas included a bicycle like flying machineand a tower which would have used up all thesteel in Russia & been three times higher than the Eiffel Tower, projecting movies onto the clouds. 1 min.
PUPPENHEAD (1990), B/W.
Berlin, 1934: JOHN FLAUS plays Goethe, the puppeteer whose mechanical clockwork knife-throwing act is beingsurvielled by a slimy SS agent (Heinze Boek). The showdown comes at a New York presentation of the show. 7.5 mins.
MONUMENTS FAR AND STRANGE (1989),
Eery look into the world of puppets, Zeppelins, & antiques,where a hapless balsa wood figure becomes lost amidst thedetritus of time & architecture. 4.5 mins.
plus excerpts from:
OTHERZONE (1990),
OTHERZONE was a 15 minute, 35mm sci fi film starring STELARC & Marie Hoy, set in near futureMelbourne. The Machines All Nations (MAN) Corporation dominates global communication with a massive satellite network girdling the earth. The network is powerful enough to enable contact with other dimensions.
Kareen Hedding has been murdered by MAN securityassassins for passing on data on neutralising the network to her collaborators in the Information LiberationFrontier, based on the moon.
She has arranged for her daughter, Zheng, to retrieve theAmeth fabric from a beach. Ameth is a top secret artificialintelligence device, which uses the network to access theOtherzone - a whole new catagory of communications whichhas smashed barriers between the dead & the living.Whoever has the Ameth scarf holds the key to globalfreedom, or global tyranny.
Zheng must deliver the scarf to her mother's collaborators onthe Moon, but the evil Nam Melogue & his henchmen,Cutts and Chickensticks, are on her trail.
Featured here will be those elements of the film put through the computer, shown as 16mm. It comprised both live action & computer generated elements. The film hasbeen included in Melbourne, Rome, & Noosa Film Festivals,and has been released as part of a compilation of worksthrough Blasthaus Gallery in San Francisco. Otherzone alsoincluded an interactive cd-rom.
Wr, Dir: David Cox. Prod:Sarah Zadeh. DoP: Paul (R.) Cox. Anim: GRAEMEJACKSON, Marco Bresciani, Andrea Bresciani, & DavidCox. Mus: OLLIE OLSON. Snd. Des/ & Dolby SurroundSpatialisation: PHILLIP BROPHY. Ed: Jane Usher, SteveDoyle. Scr. ed: ADRIAN MARTIN. Starring Marie Hoy as Zheng, STELARC as Nam Melogue, Jaqueline Mitelman:Kareen, MAX FAIRCHILD;Cutts, Bruce Naylor:Chickensticks. http://www.cinemedia.net/otherzone/
To conclude the evening, David has also guest-curated tonight's screening of the classic Australian feature film:
DALMAS (1973),
The first half of Dalmas follows an ex-cop's passage through Melbourne’s drug scene in search of anarchistic acid dealer, 'plastic man', who he eventually tracks down to a seaside commune.. As the scene shifts from city to country, the fictional framework of crime melodrama is taken over. Here, the camera reverses its gaze, becoming a documentary about the crew,the communal "tribe", & the shared experience of drugtaking and the filmmaking process.
Only the 1st half of Dalmas is scripted. The 2nd part of the film becomes an exercise in self-expression in which distinction between cast & crew is dissolved, leaving all free to contribute outside of normal directoria lcontrol. Part two is free of structured narrative.An eccentric study of the problems of capturing honest experience in film, & of attempting to create a cinema propelled by personal revelation- an ultimately frustrating experience for those involved ,jarringly represented in a guttural screaming exhibition by one of The Tribe. Deling concedes, theproblem lies in the nature of film... "a crude linear form (used)to convey a complex multilayered experience."
Dalmas conceives of narrative cinema in terms of itsillusionistic processes, but uses reflexivedevice in order to contrast the constructedness of the 1sthalf of the film against the more truthful personal expression of the 2nd half, where participants are 'freed' from cinematic'roleplaying', both on & off screen.
A key work in independent Australian cinema of its time, this experimental feature was made on a collective basis primarily by members of the communal artisticperforming group, The Tribe. Heavily influenced byalternative culture, the film impresses with its formal innovation.
"Change your perceptions & you change your life. Change enough lives & society falls, and that my friends is anarchy..." -Plastic Man, Melbourne City Square, 1973.
Dir: Bert Deling. Prod Co: Apogee Films. Scr: Bert Deling.DoP: Sasha Trikojus. Music: SPECTRUM. Addit. Crew:Lloyd Carrick. Cast: Peter Whittle (Dalmas), Peter Cummings(Plastic Man), MAX GILLIES (Rojack), John Duigan (filmdirector), Roger Ward (Policeman), The Tribe. 103 mins.NFVLS.
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