Cinema Papers no. 57 May 1986 (2025)

OCR

, , // The Ausrralian maazine of film and television

. ‘ ‘—‘ l, Kif

Qur special chemistry is Advanced Crystal Technology and the results of it are finer
grain, outstanding colour ren[...]

PRODUCTION: On the set of
Petrov, Just Us and Dogs in Space,

plus the usua[...].............. ..71

FILM AND TV REVIEWS:
Reviews of Chile, Cool Change,
Dancing Daze, Down and Out in[...]ukana and more ............. ..75

BOQKSI Reviews of Steven Bach's VER 31‘ BY

Final Cut, One Man's[...]The Fringe
Dwellers, a who’s who/who’s
where of Australians at
Cannes and the films they'l[...]

BRUCE BERESFORI3
RHOISIN BERESFORD

Director of Photography

DON MCALPINE A.S.C.

Executiv[...]

- ¥

L r V ‘ I ."
“.‘V_ _.. _‘
K
I , a

Have you been searching for that certain
freshness of approach to shoot your film or
commercial’?

How would you like a choice of locations
from hillbilly to serene English countr[...]d what’s more. we back it up with
current state-of-the-art picture gathering
and post-production facilities.

Tasmania offers the widest range of diverse
locations for any film or video needs outside
of Hollywood.

If you come down for a week's work we'll
shout you the weekend to enjoy a “bite" of
the Holiday Isle.

We’ll even supply a f[...]

Signed articles represent the views of their
author, and not necessarily those of the
editor. While every care is taken with
manuscripts and materials supplied to[...]he pub-
lishers can accept liability for any loss or
damage which may arise. This magazine
may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the express permission of the
copyright owner. Cinema Papers isK . 3 ~_.—
_.A... _ . *

cinema Papers is published
with financial assistance from the

AUS[...]Hogan are unlikely bedfellows — Pringle a maker
of Australian ‘art movies’, Hogan the archetypal[...]sie whose first feature, whatever else it may be, is certainly
not an art movie.

Yet, in different parts of this issue of Cinema Papers, both of them
have harsh words to say about l0BA, the gove[...]e, IOBA has encouraged a situation where
the deal is more important than the movie, where time and ene[...]filmmakers who make

movies for critics and a few of their friends. Neither Pringle nor Hogan
is wild about the present situation, however.

Hogan’s side of the argument is the one that gets the gut response,
because it embraces the ever-popular subject of what happens to our tax
dollar. Film, the argument goes, is a mass—audience art. Ifof script development grants and top-up
investment in the non—deductibles, and the indirect ones of tax
concessions, lets loose the loonies —- the ones who can’t or won’t make
‘proper’ movies.

But what is a proper movie? After all, filmmakers, even those[...]e than a toe in the mainstream, want an audience. So, is a proper
movie one that makes money, or one that just thinks it’s going to make
money? Australia hasn’t made many of the former in the last few years
(not surprisingly, perhaps, since a 48% return is all the investor needs:
the tax break takes care of the rest). But there have been quite a few of
the latter: films that aimed for the big bucks an[...]be). Both ways involve the overseas market, which is what
lots of this special Cannes issue is about. And the world market tends to
accept only two sorts of films from abroad (in this case, from Australia):[...]ms were made; and specialist films — art films, if you like
— which have a long, long shelf life.

Of late, though, proper movies have been defined her[...]r which the package was right.
Without IOBA, that is going to look a pretty sorry definition. And, if
this were 10BA’s bequest to the Australian film[...]t would be a
sad epitaph for an enlightened piece of tax legislation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with ‘licence plate’ films. But, if the
Australian film industry is going to outgrow 10BA, it will have to accept
that the other kind of films — the Picnics, the Breaker Morants, the
F[...]which a
healthy and a financially sound industry is based. That makes them
proper movies, too.[...]

dXNGER us

so
."

ORPHANS

They go too far to escape free

GEOF[...]ES SCREENINGS AT OLYMPIA

"The New Zealand cinema is one of the wonders of the wofld...
an unparalleled success stor[...]

Congratulations on your superb pro-
duction of the new-format Cinema
Papers. It presents a very exciting
lay-out which is easily read, and has
a high-quality look.

I am v[...]e how much Paul Kalina
knows about French cinema (or any
cinema, for that matter), but any in-
sights he may possess were sadly
not evident in his acerbic review of
last year's ‘Film nouveau’ in your
March issu[...]ants terribies as “cheap and
inept" smacks both of arrogance
and ignorance. Large budgets do
not necessarily imply good films,
and Les amants[...]gent and visually sophisticated
film, the meaning of which appar-
ently escaped your reviewer.

"Nasty[...]all Mr
Kalina had to say about Escalier C
which, if not the most profound, was
certainly one of the most enjoyable
and sincere films of the festival. But
they are two words on which I could
not improve for a fitting description
of Mr Kalina’s so-called ‘review’.

From R.l.. Priest, Melbourn[...]new format.
I think it's fantastic and I approve of
all the changes, especially the size.
It's now much easier to handle and
store. I have every issue of Cinema
Papers apart from three of the early
issues.

For a while I was a subscriber[...]refer to the article by Mike Nicolaidi
on page 11 of your March issue
(Cinema Papers 56).

Illustrious Energy, a feature film
project mentioned therein, is not in
fact due to go into production until
Janua[...]into
outside their own territory.

The screenplay is heavily based
on the diaries of an Australian, Alex-
ander Don, who was born in
Bendigo about the middle of the last
century. As a young man, he ‘heard
the[...]mission
among the Chinese goldminers in
the south of New Zealand's South
Island.

From Ian Pringle, Se[...]eel that filmmaking in this country at
the moment is a bit like being on a
sinking boat. The sooner they get rid
of 10BA the better, so that the film
again becomes more important than
t[...]a, and
prefer screening 35mm films (al-
though we do show 16mm if the title
is not otherwise available).

We find the Group's su[...]lighted to find that you
have extended the number of film
reviews. We are, however, chag-
rined that no information about the
distributor is given with the ‘A-Z of
short reviews’.

Is there any chance of such
information being given in the

future? Tracking down Australian
distributors is a major problem for
us.

(No sooner said
88-91 of this issue. Ed.)

See pages

From: Sam Pillsbury,[...]h and had some positive things
to say about Heart of the High
Country (Cinema Papers 53,
September 198[...]e was not
mentioned in connection with either.

I do not want to sound petty or
egotistical, but apart from co-writing
and direct[...]The Quiet Earth. It repre-
sented a large portion of my life and
a pretty amazing physical and emo-
tional input. In view of the compli-
mentary things you had to say about
t[...]him the post-production when I
moved on to Heart of the High
Country, which I directed and which
was screened to an average prime-
time audience of ten million in the
United Kingdom in November.

This is certainly not a complaint.
But I am working in the industry in
New Zealand and have done so for
sixteen years. I am planning future
projects[...]aking
films!

From Almos Maksay, Ballarat College
of Advanced Education.

Congratulations on your new format
and the expression of editorial
opinion that accompanied the
launch of the new Cinema Papers.

I read a section of the editorial to
one of our advanced film classes.
Judging from the response, I take it
that some of the students were
sufficiently motivated to take[...]71 /lg. lithe !let it

— ‘._, rig t— and

/"K/‘ \-R-§/ when we get
it wrong.

VVVVVVVVVV

Fr[...]draw to your attention
the fact that Ned Manning is the
male lead in the feature, Dead-End
Drive-In, and not, as stated on page
17 of Cinema Papers 56 (March
1986), Ned Lander.

FINAL[...]non-Australian
films got a mention in every issue of
Cinema Papers from May to Novem-
ber 1985 inclusi[...]expecting
was Father on a Business Trip —
Otac na sluzbenom putu to those of
a purist disposition — which won the
Palme d’Or at Cannes last year, and
which has recently been[...]Slee, 22 Station Road,
Williamstown, Vic 3016.

J.K. White, 52 Glen Street, Kelvin
Grove, Qld 4059.

Meanwhile, there is another, quite
different, book to be won o[...]

More films than ever, but major chan[...]ne for the Australian film
industry. At our time of going to
press (18 April), eight films v four
features and four shorts A have
been selected for a variety of com-
petitive and non-competitive
sections, and there is a distinct
possibility that a ninth, Bill Bennett[...]and
Tender Mercies), as well as one (The
Getting of Wisdom) in the Directors’
Fortnight, and the Cannes selectors
have always liked a track record.

But some of the other selections
may cause surprise to Australians:
Burke 8. Wills (in ‘Un certain regard’)
is apparently well liked by the
French, and Jane Cam[...]n
Australian one.

The biggest surprise, however, is
the omission from the main competi-
tion — and, at time of writing, from
everything else as well — of Paul
Cox's Cactus. Festival director Gilles
Jacob is reported to have promised
the film's star, Isabel[...]ce he will be
filming in nearby Aries at the time of
the festival, he may well set up a
special ‘inv[...]onded
warmly to his work.

Meanwhile, controversy of
another kind has surrounded the
choosing of former Cinema Papers
editor Scott Murray's Devil[...]tract and releasing a radically
different version of the film than the
one Murray made.

If the film had been released in
France, it would no[...]nces. The
French courts, however, found in
favour of the Murrays on 14 April, so

the dilemma does not arise.

Scandals apart, the plethora of
Australian films has prompted
Minister for Arts,[...]lcomes "an unprecedented
seven films" at the head of a page
that lists eight, then comments on
the 28[...]Crocodile Dundee, featured on our
cover; a couple of films from the
Burrowes-Dixon stable, Cool
Change[...]rprise; the eagerly awaited
Right-Hand Man, which is still not
finished; PBL’s Birdsville (the title[...]over for a special
screening at the last minute, if
problems with the Super-Technl-
scope format can[...]and now apparently being recut.

One major point of debate this
year is just how important Cannes
now is to the Australian film industry,
given the great[...]fine-tuned at Cannes. The latter,
says Turner, “is a very, very difficult
market, and its hard to ge[...]says Nilsen
Premieres Tom Broadbridge, “the
AFM is far superior to Cannes. At
Cannes, you have all the heavies,
and you can't compete with them in
terms of advertising.”

Cannes has one major advantage
o[...]ver: it fits the Austra-
lian production schedule of an early
summer shoot, a Christmas wrap,
and thre[...]ready for
Cannes.

The cultural promotion aspect of
Cannes still remains as strong as
ever, even if the AFC, sensible to
comments about lavish spending on
parties in a recent National Times
article, is keeping its head down a
little this year.

More s[...]'s Jim Henry: “The
AFC has already announced it is
moving out of the marketing sphere,
which makes it difficult for
independent producers. What we
are doing is providing a space for
producers.” The new Austr[...]les Office will thus take
over from the top floor of 52 La
Croisette as the hub of Australian
activity in Cannes.

Remaining entirely separate as
usual is the New South Wales Film
Corporation, which scree[...]niously titled ‘Northern
Hemisphere Premiere’ of The More
Things Change — for Cannes.
Marketing[...]coming down
the pike.” The NSWFC, says Collins,
is primarily interested in doing
package deals on it[...]ty, not
one restricted to festivals. In the
words of the NSWFC's Los Angeles
representative, Bob Lewis, "where
is it written that you only sell at
markets?"

The real sword of Damoeles hang-
ing over the Australian presence at
Cannes this year, however, is not the
threat of the AFM: it is the perennial
uncertainty over the future of the
industry's tax status, which is start-
ing to peak again. Rumours are cur-
rently rife of a May mini-budget
which will axe the 10BA tax con[...]uction in
the concession rates.

Such rumours — or leaks — are,
of course, part and parcel of Austra-
lian political life. And the rumours
ofte[...]his hand, and he may well
thank you when all you do is stamp
on his finger).

But the last-minute cancellation of
the Minister's trip to the South of
France, especially in a year when
there is so much national and inter-
national political capital to be made
out of the state of the Australian arts,
is likely to fuel the rumours. After all,
Cohen woul[...]is col-
leagues back home were
announcing the end of the whole
tax-support system. ‘Un certain
regar[...]uppert and Robert
Menzies in Cactus: its omission is a
mystery.

Jane Campion on location fo[...]

Papers! If you subscribe, you’l/ receive Australia ’s le[...]ss than it costs you to
buy it at the newsstand.

I'd like to subscribe to Cinema Papers for:

I 1 year[...]I am renewing my subscription. My record number is E:

' Please tick the appropriate boxes.

See over for details of overseas subscription rates, back issues and othe[...]Please debit my BankcardlMastercard lo the amount of $ ‘

l7 I Vi

Expiry date ofcard...... ._.

ill[...]‘Be sure to include any orders lor back issues or other pub ications in this total.
Please p[...]

Back issues
Add to the
price of
each copy
Surface
$1.20

Air

$3135
Surface

$5.15
Surface
$1.40
Air
$6.20
Surface

Back issues

1 or 2 copies: $4 each

3 or 4 copies: $3.50 each
5 or 6 copies: $3 each

7 or more copies: $2.50 each

Please enter the numbers of the back issues
you want and the total amount in[...]ublications

Please write the abbreviated name(s) of the
pub|ication(s) you want and the total amount in
the appropriate boxes (see page 96 for details
of available publications).

Tit|e(s):
$ |

THE BEE—EATER

IN THE TRADITION OF OUR MONEY-MAKING PAST:

AUSTRALIA NOW
THE BEST OF FRIENDS
BLISS
CAREFUL HE MIGHT HEAR YOU
CATHY’S[...]ALK
GOODBYE PARADISE
HOODWINK
THE JOURNALIST
LAST OF THE KNUCKLEMEN
THE LONG WEEKEND
MAYBE THIS[...]

I The Australian Teachers of
Media (ATOM) is one group which
gives kids voting power — thoug[...]arrative).

I The AFl’s Shooting Gallery
season of short films is a mix of thrills
and spills. Smartly packaged, it has
managed to bypass the distribution
hassles individual films or videos
might have had. The films have
been funded[...]ead the Tokyo-based Goanna
Films.

Barbara Alysen is a news producer
at SBS-TV.

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

Annette Blonski is a script editor
and writer on film.
Marcus Breen is a Melbourne-

based journalist, freelance writer[...]egularly
about film for the Los Angeles Times
and is Hollywood correspondent for
the Washington Post and other
publications.

Rolando Caputo is a freelance
writer on film.

Tony Cavanaugh is currently a
story editor at Crawford Produc-
tions.

Lorenzo Codelli is a freelance
journalist based in Trieste, a contri[...]INEMA PAPERS

INES

front — try and catch a few of the
programmes, then decide what's to
be shot dow[...]mitments have sparked further
activity in a range of productions.
These include the features: A Lift f[...]amme are May 7, July 16 and
October3.

I Planning is underway again for
the second Pacific Internation[...]attending.

The location signifies the opening
up of the Asian Pacific region to
many groups not usual[...]wing
rooms and other facilities for a partial
fee if they do not want to stay for the
duration of the Market.
I Ftevcom Television, a French
produc[...]t for the International
Film Guide.

Mary Colbert is a Sydney-based
journalist.

Paul Coulter is a freelance writer on
film.

Christine Cremen is a freelance
writer on film.

Sophie Cunningham is a film
student and freelance writer. She

contributes regularly to the
Melbourne Times.

Tony Drouyn is a freelance writer
on film who also plays and teaches
classical guitar.

Derek Elley is associate editor of
the international Film Guide.

Debi Enker is editor of Video Week.
Sandra den Hamer works for the
Dutch Film Market in Utrecht.

Patricia King Hanson is editor of
the American Film Catalogue and a
contributor to[...]es
Times, American Film and Stills.

Steve Hanson is a film writer and
author of the Film Review index,

time.”

For example, ne[...]'s current invest-
ment in Australian productions is
about $8 million through co-produc-
tions. distri[...]opment.

"At the moment were involved in
45 hours of television using different
methods of finance,” Daniels said.

Revcom is planning a co—produc-
tion with the ABC of a miniseries,
The Wind and the Stars based on
Captain Cook's Pacific explorations.

However their main focus is
usually children's drama. Television
rights have[...]van Southall, and James
A|dridge's The Adventures of Spit
McPhee.

“were interested in doing child-
ren's drama, or family drama as we
like to call it. We try to keep up the
quantity of these productions,”
Daniels said.

I The cobweb[...]based in Canberra,
was host to the 42nd Congress of
the Federation Internationale des
Archives du Film (FlAF).

Film restoration and the use of
computerized systems in film
archives were the tw[...]Global Data Base?’, was given
by Roger Smither of the Imperial
War Museum (London), and high-
light[...]heir
own system, FLICS. which tracks the
movement of film and television
material and helps in the updating of
basic cataloguing information.

Fred Harden is a film and television
producer, and has a regular[...]hnical information in The
Video Age.

Paul Harris is co-host of Film Buffs
Forecast on 3RFlFl and a regular
contributor to The Age.

Sheila Johnston is a London-
based writer and translator. She is
film critic for LAM magazine.

Brian Jones is an independent pro-
ducer, director, scriptwriter[...]studies
and photography at St. Josephs
Tech, and is a freelance writer on
film.

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

Belinda Meares is a Paris-based
freelance writer.

Tony Mitchell teaches film and
theatre at the University of NSW.

Mike Nicolaidi is a freelance writer
and contributor to Variety.

N[...]mposium focused on
film restoration and the kinds of ‘edi-
torial’ difficulties it involves. Con-
fronted with a number of versions
(particularly with the silent classics)
and continual technical hitches, how
do you put the jigsaw puzzle
together?

Enno Patalas of Munich intro-
duced the screening of the longest
remaining version of Metropolis
(1926). A Canadian film, Back to
God's[...]their experi-
ences working on the reconstruction
of the Australian classic, For the
Term of His Natural Life (1927).

It was the first time t[...]i-
sphere and coincided with the 50th
anniversary of film archiving in
Australia.

Polish film historian and founding
director of the Australian Film and
Television School, Jerzy[...]mputer
usage in film archives, Harriet Harri-
son of the Library of Congress and
President of the FlAF Cataloguing
Commission, also attended.[...]for the French Commercial
Office in Melbourne and is a free-
lance writer on film.

Dieter Osswald is a journalist and
contributor to Filmecho.

Noel P[...]ersity. He
has a special interest in Pasolini and
is a contributor to a number of Aus-
tralian and overseas film journals.

Brian Shoesmith lectures at the
WA College of Advanced Education.

Mark Spratt is a freelance writer on
film.

lan Stocks is a documentary film-
maker who has been visiting and
filming in Papua New Guinea since
1973.

David Stratton is host of Movie of
the Week on SBS-TV and reviews
films for Variety.[...]ia
Centre, La Trobe University.

Michael Visontay is a journalist at
the Sydney Morning Herald. *

The closing date for applications is 30 June 1986.
This date isof its history,
achievements and future

0 People who will make an impact on the different areas
of Australian film and television.

0 People who can[...]ho wish to develop artistic and technical
control of the medium in a responsible and
professional way.

0 People who are passionate about learning their craft or
skills and through this control develop their art[...]ear Screenwriting Course the School seeks
writers of some experience who wish to develop their
screenw[...]ing applicants are required to submit a portfolio of
supporting work.

For screenwriters this is written material. For all other craft

areas the preferred form of supporting material is a short
film, video or sound tape.

Supporting material which applicants consider as a suitable
demonstration of potential ability in their chosen craft is also
acceptable.

There are no specific education[...]cants have reached matriculation
standard.

There is a future in Australian film and television. If you feel
you can contribute to this future, either complete the

coupon below or contact: Lynn Brown, Students Officer,
Tel[...]

‘Tis the season of award_ceremonies
again, with new shortlists of con-

tenders being announced almost
weekly in the trade press. Not a lot
for partisans of Britpix to cheer
about, though. The most gratifying
event for them has been the strange
case of Brazil, which the US distri-
butor, Universal, ha[...]s Film Critics’ Association
netted it a fistful of gongs (for Best
Film, Director and Screenplay), a[...]t Director nominations, was
nominated as a fellow of BAFTA.

Brazil was the only UK production
to figu[...]Art Direction, but got neither);
not much chance of Hugh Hudson
and friends crowing that “the Briti[...]ually
savage drubbing in this country at
the time of its January release.

Absolute Beginners, the film that will — or won ’t — save Goldcrest. Above,
Patsy Kensit[...]sis (largely
precipitated by the alleged excesses
of Revolution). Now, an awful lot is
riding on the company's next big
splurge, Absolute Beginners, which
also overspent, albeit not so badly.

So far, Julien Temple's avidly
awaited musical adaptation of Colin
Mclnnes’s portrait of teen life in late-
fifties Soho, has attracted an extra-
ordinary amount of media hype,
which might (or might not) be a good
sign. Palace, the co-distrib[...]press coverage and buoyant box
office on Company of Wolves, at
least in the UK. Now the question is
whether they can pull off the same
stunt again. Unveiled to the press to
the sound of enthusiastic cheers
mingled with the distant sharpening
of knives, Absolute Beginners
opened in the UK in ea[...]a cosmetic exercise
to indicate that the company is still in
business. And the TESE manage-
ment take[...](see my column in Cinema
Papers 56, March 1986), is still
pending. as chairman Gary Dartnall
casts ar[...]the production front, events
have quietened down of late,
whether because of the recent cold
snap of Arctic weather or a chilly
business climate. Cannon's latest
project, an adaptation of Tom
Kempinski's Due! for One, about a
concert vio[...]sclerosis, went into production at the
beginning of February. Director
Andrei Konchalovsky aroused
interest for his choice of star: Julie

Andrews, in a serious dramatic role.
The other biggie is HandMade's

Shanghai Surprise, a thriller about
t[...]ies, which
pulled off the impressive casting
coup of teaming Madonna (also in
an unexpected role, as a[...]st intriguing pro-
ject in the pipeline, however, is an
ambitious, double-headed film ver-
sion of Charles Dickens's Little
Dorrit, financed by TESE to the tune
of £5 million ($10 million). Directed
by Christine[...]tell the story through the
contrasting viewpoints of Little Dorrit
herself (Sarah Pickering) and her
s[...]ta Claus the Movie
disappeared smartly in a cloud of
snow once Christmas was over.
Rocky IV predictabl[...]mbo. Other hits
have included A Chorus Line, Kiss of
the Spider Woman and Teen Wolf.
After Revolution[...]ie.

Walters vehicle, Car Trouble, which
a number of critics have already set

aside for their years w[...]ge viewers), has gone to
Nicolas Seydoux, brother of TV5’s
Jerome Seydoux, who is the director
of Gaumont. Other major share-
holders are a duo of advertising
groups and NRJ, Paris's most
popular independent radio station.

With the majority of French film-
makers still unprepared to col-
laborate with TV5, because of its
policy of interrupting films with com-
mercials, and given[...]l
problems confronting both new
channels, the era of independent TV
in France seems to have got offto[...]rvice,
TDF, was over-optimistic in its
assessment of the number of house-
holds the new channels would

In fact, TV6, which got off the[...]lmost unnoticed. Both
channels suffer from a lack of pro-
grammes, and have generally
received a lukew[...]it they are to survive.

France's New Year cinema is run-
of-the-mill, at any rate from a movie-
goer's perspe[...]was disappointing, no doubt
because the abundance of science-
fiction and horror movies over the
last decade has plundered the last
sparks of originality. Predictably,
critics lamented the deja-vu triteness
of most of the fare. Winner was Alan
J. Pakula's Dream Lover[...]Wolfgang Petersen's Enemy Mine.
But the real hit of the festival was
Russell Mulcahy‘s Highlander,[...]many surprises, at least from
the public's point of view. Chris-
tophe Lambert got Best Actor for his[...]nd Best
Screenplay. This immensely popular
comedy is still screening in Paris
after six months, and has (so far)
reached the score of 1,720,000
admissions, with an estimated
6,000,000[...]More recent French releases have
not fared nearly so well. Apart from
L’effrontée (with 610,000 ent[...]anteaux and Philippe de Broca’s
La gitane, both of which were dis-
appointing after reasonable first[...]d by
White Nights, A Chorus Li'ne and
The Journal of Natty Gann. Fellini's
Ginger e Fred only made the[...]100,000 mark.

Presented with an impressive
batch of new talents on both sides of
the camera, French cinema fans
may be wondering why it is proving
so difficult for local filmmakers to
rekindle the new wave magic. After
the comparative flatness of 1985,
films presently in production will
have to provide a lot more punch,
since the credibility of French
cinema is now at stake worldwide.

Frank Cassenti is opting for a
politico-historical direction with his
adaptation of a novel by Jewish
writer Elie Wiesel, Le testament d‘un
poete juif assassine. Filming is cur-
rently under way in Israel, with
Michael Jonasz, star of Qu'est-ce
qui fait courir David (What Makes
David Run, 1982) in the leading role.
Tony Gatlif, director of Les princes
(The Princes), seen at last year's
Me[...]La rue du
départ, filmed in Paris and Le Havre,
is about the escape of a young girl
(Anne Gisel Glass) from her bour-
geois background to her downfall
among a group of marginal delin-
quents. Gérard Depardieu (lest w[...]r. I

La mémoire tatouee, directed by
Ridha Behi of Soleil des Hyéne
(Hyenas' Sun, 1977), unites Ben[...]red by capital from
Virgin France, the subsidiary ofof
Téchiné's Rendez-vous, and Jeux
d’artifice, d[...]Nicolaidi

Tax changes stem

tide but not vigour of
Kiwi industry

The Kiwi contingent at Cannes,
though no less energetic, is bearing
fewer new cans of film than in the
last two years.

The marketing director of the New
Zealand Film Commission, Lindsay
Shelton,[...]ted by Ian Mune (Came A Hot
Friday). Other Halves is a love story
that breaks barriers of age and race,
and Bridge to Nowhere a drama
invol[...]ter, played by Bruno
Lawrence.

Repeat screenings of The Quiet
Earth, Michael Firth's Sy/via, Gay-
len[...]the United States this month under
the title Dark of the Night) and John
Reid's Leave All Fair complet[...]s year.

According to Lindsay Shelton, the
vigour of the Kiwi representatives
reflects the strong impa[...]he local
market, the industry has scored a
string of successes over the last nine
months with Came A H[...]ocker,
directed by Bruce Morrison.

The NZFC team is boosted this
year by the presence of chairman
David Gascoigne and executive
director,[...]ursuing future investment
prospects with a number of inter-
national companies. Along with
several ind[...]ther
countries.

The search for off-shore finance is
partially a result of a report by the
auditor-general criticizing both the
Commission and the Broadcasting
Corporation of New Zealand for

using third-party investors to
m[...]ite the auditor-genera|‘s

statement, Gascoigne is pressing on
regardless, declaring the report
"sel[...]ew Zealand, and the government
itself, in respect of developing major
energy projects, such as gas," he
said. “We have to support an
industry that is high-risk and not
readily visible. This means we[...]auditor-
general’s observations, lS the action
of the commissioner of inland
revenue in delaying tax settlements
for many private investors in film
between 1982 and 1984. No one is
prepared to say how many indivi-

Hunter and W[...]Street wise:
oughby

duals are involved, but it is generally
estimated to be well over a hundred.

Gascoigne says there is currently
little point in seeking film investment[...]features not
receiving pre-publicity in the south of
France (though not for political
reasons, the makers stress) are pro-
jects linked to the sinking of the
Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior.

Phillips Whitehouse Productions is
actively pursuing a New Zealand-
Canadian co-prod[...]erell, a novelist and lawyer, and
founding member of G_reenpeace.
Sam Pillsbury, who returned from
talks in Vancouver in March, is
expected to be named director, with
shooting scheduled to begin in
Auckland in July or August.

Former Los Angeles lawyer Mark
Chambers, now resident in Welling-
ton, is planning what he describes
as "a comedy about Gal[...]the South
Pacific that backfire".

His co-author is writer and actor
John Banas, with Murray Newey
(D[...]line

producer. The project, with a
working title of All the President's
Frogmen, has received[...]

Director of Photography /\C.S.
Original Score by PETER BEST Written by PAUL HOGAN & KEN SH/°\DI E
Produced oyJOHN CORNELL Directed by PETE[...]

MGM takes some of the steam out of
91/2 Weeks

As befits a minor Hollywood legend,
97/2 Weeks opened to lots of head-
lines and plenty of raised eyebrows.
Its controversial journey began with
an erotic novella of the same title,
written under a pseudonym. The
story of a nine-and-a-half-week rela-
tionship that went f[...]st film since Flash-
dance), and with the casting of
Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger.

The film that has finally emerged is
the result of at least ten screenplay
drafts and, by Lyne’s o[...]editing. Originally set for release in
the summer of 1985, the film opened
in mid-February because of all that
editing, which defogged some of the
steamier scenes.

This was done so the film would
be ‘accessible’ (i.e. R-rated instead
of ><—rated). Accessibility being what
it is in the United States, not all the
controversial e[...]wears when Rourke teasingly feeds
her all variety of foods.

A scene that found Basinger and
Rourke committing a stick-up in an
elevator (Basinger is urged on by
Rourke) has been removed,
because tes[...]n's throat,
Basinger seductively kisses him).

As is sometimes the case with pro-
vocative content, overseas audi-
ences will see more than Americans

have. Thus,[...]e a sequence that
Americans won't: a bizarre sort of
play-acting scene, in which Basinger
crawls on th[...]ng to leave her lover. The
reason, explains Lyne, is that “this is
a story of a downward-spiralling,
self-destructive nightmare that the
girl has to escape in order to save
herself. But, if I'd been totally true to
the original script, then, in the course
of the movie, audiences would have
lost sympathy for the character."

Of the extensive editing (much of it
done after the test screenings), Lyne
admits:[...]n your bathroom
walls."

No word yet on the decor or the
actual title of Untitled Comedy, now
shooting on the Universal Pictures
lot, with John Landis directing. What
is known is that it's in the tradition of
his early hit, Kentucky Fried Movie
(1977) — that is, it's a series of
sketches, some less than a minute
long. And, if nothing else, the
casting is eclectic: Rosanna
Arquette, Ralph Bellamy, Steve[...]n-
tain, the Californian ski resort, Eddie
Murphy is at work on Paramount‘s
The Golden Child, Direct[...]nd a missing ‘golden child‘,
kidnapped leader of the people of
lndia.

And, back east, in Chicago, The
Color of Money picks up where The
Hustler left off. Well,[...]ng hotshot Tom
Cruise has come under the tutelage
of Paul Newman. Martin Scorsese is
directing for Touchstone (a.k.a.
Disney).

Speaking of reunions: The Texas
Chai'nsaw Massacre 2 is readying to
shoot in Austin, Texas. Tobe
Hooper,[...]e
original was released in 1974), and
finds three of the original ‘Chainsaw
family’ members still in business, so
to speak. in fact, they run a catering
service! The action takes place over
the weekend of the big game
between the University of Texas and
Oklahoma U. Oh. and this time
around, t[...]l $US2 million.
And, after playing just a handful of
theatres its first weeks out, 97/2
Weeks opened w[...]: $US1.6 million. But, as the
headlines continue. so perhaps the
ticket sales will go up, too.

Ger[...]eim, the film dealing with the
trial and suicides of German
terrorists Andreas Baader and Ulrike
Meinhof, has been the cause of a
series of major upheavals recently.
Avidly discussed in the[...]ts premiere in Ham-
burg. ln other cities, copies of the
film have been stolen from the

A V - .q..[...]) demonstrators threw stink-
bombs.

The awarding of the Golden Bear
to Stammheim was the occasion for[...]ida complained to the
news magazine, Der Spiegel, of
political pressure, and festival direc-
tor Morit[...]nded that
this was “total nonsense". The result
of all this publicity is that Stammheim
has become an enormous box-office[...]d by
Doris Dorrie. Although in many ways
the film is nothing much more than a
neat comedy about educat[...]putting up the ‘House Full’ sign.

This sort of reception seems to be
symptomatic for German film[...]so been an
unexpected hit. In the university
town of Tubingen alone, the film has
clocked up 20,000 admissions,
breaking all records. Daheim

sterben die Leut is a satire about
country life, with an entirely ama[...]e-
matic nationalism, Otto — der Film
(see most of my previous columns!)
is. not surprisingly, to have a sequel,
Otto — Tell 2, which is promised for
1987. Meanwhile, there have been
som[...]ntional and honest
approach, and shows every sign of
becoming a cult movie. The film is
Westler, a love story set between
East and West B[...]ory: it's boy-
meets-boy. The first-time director is
Wieland Speck, who runs the Berlin
festival's ‘[...]brucken. Already broadcast on tele-
vision, tapes of that screening have
become much sought-after items.
The film is due for theatrical release
in the autumn.

With E[...]es’ section and
the Short Reviews in this issue of
Cinema Papers), director Wolfgang
Petersen already has a new project
in hand. Called (provisionally) Rose
of the Desert, it is about the Franco-
Swiss novelist, Isabelle Eberhardt,
who, at the end of the last century,
lived out an adventure story of her
own in Arabia. Petersen is making
the film for Universal; but, as with
Enemy[...]c commuter,
Wim Wenders, has evidently had
enough of stories about dead-end
relationships after Paris,[...]film, Bis am Ende
der Welt, tells the love story of three
— yes, three — people who travel[...]

This is not the only giveaway: a
lack of control over the share of
lta|ian—made programmes produced
and aired ever[...]private networks;
and the indiscriminate awarding of
public money prizes to all films
would help quick, cheap concoc-
tions at the expense of the rarer
quality films.

The sleeper of the season, which
reached the top half of the box-office
charts after being turned down by[...]io
che sr' femmina. Conceived by the
fertile mind of Tullio Plnelli, Fellini's
former right-hand man, it was
scripted by the cream of ltalian
screenwriters: Plnelli, Suso Cecchi
D’A[...]directed.

Working with a young producer,
Gianni Di Clemente (an example of
how a new generation of intelligent,
even intellectual, money—men is
gradually replacing the powerful
wave of greedy old sharks), the
veteran Monicelli put tog[...]e Noiret, Bernard Blier, plus
the younger talents of Giuliana De
Slo, Athina Cenci, Paolo Hendel and
n[...]izia Lante della
Rovere. Speriamo che sia femmina
is a multifaceted, Chekhovian story
about a placidly[...]geois
family and its replacement by a com-
munity of women.

Several projects announced by
established[...]go before the cameras this summer.
Firstly, there is Damiano Damiani’s
L'inchiesta, a script by the late Ennio
Flaiano, which has been around for
20 years or more, about a criminal
investigation into the death ofis put-
ting the final touches to another
longstanding project, La famiglia, an
amusing desecration of that still-
dominant institution, in a film that will
cover 80 years of history, from 1906
until the present.

Pupi Avati, as active as ever, will
finish Regalo di Natale, a dark
drama about four characters playing
poker for everything they’ve'got,
and is also to produce the first film

by his former ass[...]Una domenica si. Finally,
the father-and-son team of pro-
ducers, Mario and Vittorio Cecchi
Gori, who[...]o and Pipolo,
will star all — really all —— of Italy's
comedians.

Nanni Loy will return to his[...]ma, Scugnizzi, which will also in-
clude a number of scenes to be shot
in New York. Gianfranco Mingozzi is
going into the growing soft-core
market with his adaptation of Apol-
linaire's Le imprese di un giovane
Don Giovanni, written by Jean-
Claude[...]ationally
known directors, Michelangelo
Antonioni is recovering from a stroke
and will hopefully be back at work
on his Due te/egrammi, and Franco
Zeffirelli is recovering from a tax
judgement that he has to pay
hundreds of millions of lire on his
pictures made abroad/.

Gian Maria Volonte will star in
Francesco Rosi’s adaptation of
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle
of a Death Foretold, then will return
to the role of late Christian Democrat
leader, Aldo Moro, in Giuseppe
Ferrara’s I giorni deIl'ira. The film is
about the terrorist killing of Moro
which was not so vaguely presaged
in Elio Petri’s Todo modo (1976), in
which Volonté starred as a carica-
ture of Moro.

Finally, it is still not clear whether
Marco Bellocchio will see his version
of the much-discussed ll diavolo in
corpo go into distribution, or
whether he will be won over by pro-
ducer Leo Pescarolo, and the re-
edited version will be shown. At time
of writing, the film is a hot favourite
for the Cannes competition.

*’[...]okyo when
Silberman was there during the
shooting of Kurosawa’s Ran. In the
new film, Anthony Higgin[...]covers that
his French wife (Charlotte Fiampling)
is secretly keeping a chimpanzee in
another apartmen[...]t-
nightly entertainment guide with a
circulation of over half a million,
asked its readers to select[...], it
got an impressive 12,638 replies,
two-thirds of them from men; the
respondents’ average age was[...]the less commercial sphere, the
Art Theatre Guild of Japan, founded
in 1962 by Toho to import foreign
films and finance young Japanese
producers and directors, is holding
a six-week retrospective of all its pro-

Monkey puzzle." setting up a shot f[...]o be the most compre-
hensive and exciting expose of
recent Japanese cinema ever held.

Japanese pictures off to Cannes
this year will include Toho‘s The
Story of Naomi Uemura, about the
adventurer who lost his l[...]anc and at the
North Pole, the $8-million picture is
due to be released domestically in
June. Also off to the market is Yoshi-
mitsu Morita‘s Sorekara, mentioned
in ou[...]6).

To be screened in the Directors’
Fortnight is Comic zasshi iranai
(Comic Magazine), directed by[...]es to
great lengths for scandalous news.
The cast is full of surprises, with real-
life pop stars playing them[...]few pleasant surprises,
plus an encouraging lack of cheap
horror, splatter and action movies.
Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of
Cairo has just opened, and Out of
Africa is currently playing in four
Tokyo cinemas. Among the one-
cinema pictures is Mark Rydel|’s The
River, starring Mel Gibson, whose
face is plastered all over town,
pushing the wonders of Asahi beer.

The biggest Japanese release of
the moment is Fronin, a Toho picture
from director Yoshitaka Ka[...]tars singer

Tetsuya Takeda and Mieko Harada,
who is currently gracing screens
around the globe[...]

3‘

Film Victoria is the Government film authority for the State of Victoria,
established to encourage, promote and assist in the production and the
exhibition of film and television.

PRODUCTION LIAISON

Film Vi[...]regarding
assistance with production in the State of Victoria and can give advice on
financial and leg[...]ction Liaison Division assists with
the marketing of product in which Film Victoria has an investment[...]ria invests in and provides loans and other forms of financial
assistance for the development, production and marketing of film and
television projects.

CULTURAL SUPPORT[...]vides grants and other assistance to a wide range of
cultural organisations and events.

DOCUMENTARY DIVISION

_..
The Government Documentary Division is responsible for the production
of cine or video films for Victorian Government Departments[...]SPECIAL
— 3 FILMS FOR 844

PHONE [02] 660 3964 OR WRITE TO
PO BOX 25, GLEBE, 2037
FOR BOOKIN[...]

There was not, however, a lot of
humour in the festival’s main prize-
winner, St[...], was screened under
tight security and the odour of a par-
ticularly noxious stink-bomb. The
film is a careful recreation of high-
lights of the 1975 trial of the four
members of the Red Army Fraction,
popularly known as the Baa[...]ngly attempting to be even-
handed. The pomposity of the
judges and the paranoia of the
prosecution lawyers, however,
pushed audience[...]to the
dock with the accused, making the
protests of the left against the film
even harder to understa[...]ms that the international jury
debated the merits of the film some-
what heatedly and over many hours.[...]ikely that Stammheim will spark
much interest. It is well made, very
well acted, and doggedly unemo-
t[...]ing with highly
emotive material. But the debates of
the film would seem to be of
marginal interest to non-Germans,
and the courtro[...]claustrophobic after nearly
two hours.

The award of the Special Jury
Prize to one of the festival's three
Italian entries, Nanni Moretti‘s La
messa é finita (The Mass is Over: see
Lorenzo Code||i’s column in Cinema
Pa[...]orthy selection.

Moretti belongs to a generation of
actor-directors who have revived
Italian screen comedy in recent
years, though the group's style of
humour doesn't travel well (when
Moretti's trailb[...]ilm,
successfully mocking the more rigid
elements of the church, is funny, yet
deadly serious.

Admirers of Georgi Shengelaya‘s
P/'rosmani(1969), surely th[...]ilm, Acha/gazrda kompoziforis
mogzauroba (Journey of a Young
Composer), which won a Silver Bear
for Be[...]d the Potemkin
mutiny) had been crushed, the film is
set in lovingly-filmed rural areas of
Georgia, and follows the journey of a
young musician who is engaged in
recording for posterity (on the most
primitive of equipment) the folk-
songs of the hinterland.

As the film proceeds, it becomes[...]Jancso's Szegeny-
/egenyek (The Round-Up, 1965), is
being set; and the wayward humour
of the early scenes gives way to
moments of quiet horror. The film
was, apparently, too leisu[...]but seems to me to have
been the great revelation of the
festival, and deserves the widest
possible screenings.

The big names didn't fare so well
in Berlin. Jancso himself, in a French
produ[...]terior
piece, set during the British occupa-
tion of Palestine. The film was struc-
tured around a lon[...]aelis.

Lina Wertmuller’s Un comp/icafo
intrigo di donne, v/‘co/i e de/itfi
(known in English rather prosaically
as Camorra, after the Naples suburb
where it is set), is a frenzied varia-
tion on a vigilante movie, while
Liliana Cavani’s lnterno ber/inese
(The Berlin Affair) is a ponderous
lesbian romance, presented in Eng-
lish, made in Italy, and set in the
Berlin of the thirties.

There were, however, further
pleas[...]rek Jarman’s Cara-
vaggio, made on the tightest of
shoestrings, was a wayward but
generally inventive biography of the
inventor of chiaroscuro lighting,
though the inspiration seemed
rather to be the doomed career of
Pier-Paolo Pasolini.

Masahiro Shinoda’s Yari n[...]rch
1986) was a resolutely traditional
adaptation of a Chikamatsu play
about misplaced honour and
revenge.

There were, of course, bad films
aplenty in Berlin (better, for[...]entry, by
Jacques Rouffio), but there were
plenty of strong films in the competi-
tion to capture the[...]nternational Film
Festival in the Dutch port city of
Rotterdam, where over a hundred
‘art films‘ were screened in twelve of
the city's cinemas between 24
January and 2 Febru[...]Huub Bals again
succeeded in creating a programme
of wide variety, although this year it
was apparently more of an effort.
According to Bals, seeing 500 films
us[...]han 900 to pick the best
from the growing numbers of inter-
national art/independent/alternative
movie[...]e festival itself has grown along
with the number of possible films.
With sponsorship from the Cannon[...]ress).

Also included for the first time
were one or two films which already
had commercial distributo[...]aurice
Pialat's Po/ice. But, says Bals,
Rotterdam is not taking a step in the
direction of ‘easier’ films aimed at a
larger audience: he[...]pening film, A
Zed and Two Noughts, as an
example of a film which had been
made with Dutch and[...]

Sixteen features were[...]ew
Budapest Convention Centre, set
amid the hills of Buda. This year,
there may have been no Redl
ezredes (Colonel Redl) to tower
above the rest of the field; but at
least the trend of entering into
(largely unsuccessful) co-produc-[...]death.

It was, by coincidence, mostly a
festival of works by younger direc-
tors, several of whom kept the flame
of imagination alive. Gyorgy
Szomjas's Falfuré (The Wall Driller)
was a particularly lively blend of off-
beat comedy, screwball allegory
and Godardia[...]obsessed by a beautiful blonde next
door, who may or may not be a
highly inventive hooker. Szomjas,
wh[...]ilm, does not overstretch the sexual
implications of the title, and the mix-
ture of fantasy and reality is kept
admirably balanced somewhere
between knockabout humour and

Rotterdam emerges as a
major port of call

festival and market going from
strength t[...]er Greenaway,
two brothers, prompted by the death
of their wives, launch into a feverish
search for me[...]rotting
animals. The film, shot in Rotterdam
zoo, is bizarre, mystical and occa-
sionally distasteful.[...]were prizes. A large inter-
national jury made up of festival
directors and members of the inter-
national press was asked to select
films in a number of different cate-
gories, The Rotterdam Award for the
most innovative film of 1985 went to
Jean-Luc Godard for Detective.

Clau[...]uiz, and Mitsuo Yanagi—
machi received the Port of Rotter-
dam award for the best non-Euro-
pean, no[...], VPRO,
gave the award for the best Dutch
feature of 1985 to Orlow Seunke’s
Pervola.

Audience favou[...]ffects cameraman Péter
Timar, recalled the verve of Dick
Lester's films from the sixties, with
every[...]buy
his products. When the women dis-
cover what is happening, they
promptly go on strike and exact their
revenge. Timar’s idea runs out of
breath in the middle, and the con-
stant mugging sometimes pails; but
the film is packed with inventiveness,
not least in having the dialogue
made up entirely of clipped
officialese, and isof the Edinburgh
festival, and The Coca-Cola Kid,
whose director, Dusan Makavejev,
was one of the festival’s featured
directors, with a compl[...]ec-
tive.

Particularly fascinating was the
debut of young American filmmaker
Rachel Reichmann with Th[...]utch film, this time about
money, attracted a lot of attention,
too: Johan van der Keuken's out-
stand[...]so
shot in moody black and white, but
having less of the appearance of a
‘factional’ documentary, it traces a
lorry-driver's attempts to make a
success of his own business in the
face of kickbacks and a strained
marriage. The film is flawed by an
over-schematic script — an illness[...]its characters, and features
fine performances by Kéroly Eperjes
as the driver and Erika Ozsda as hi[...]established names dis-
appointed this year. Zsolt Kézdi-
Kovacs‘s A Rejtozkodo (The
Absentee) aime[...]redit from the
confusion. lstvan Gaal’s version of
Gluck’s opera, Orfeusz es Eurydike,
suffered from a lack of imagination,
other than in its Powell-like sectio[...]sent Gyula Maar‘ also made a
poor return with E/so ketszaz evem

(My First Two Hundred Years), a P

how the world is tied together by
money trading.

A/macito di Desolato, a new
feature by Dutch director Felix d[...]ed on a scenario by his
producer, Norman de Palm, is
based on Caribbean legends about
the struggle bet[...]nd
destructive spirits, fertility and
drought. It is set on the island of
Curagao around the turn of the cen-
tury, made in the local language of
Papiamento, with the traditional
zumba music, and[...]nto the authentic cultural
traditions and legends of the
Caribbean.

in A Woman on Her Own, Polish
dir[...]and tells a
gripping story taken from the diaries
of two Polish women. As the film has
only been seen[...]irector regards
the Rotterdam screening as a sort of
world premiere for what she sees as
her most sign[...],
Kadar told the international press in
Rotterdam of her plans to get the un-
finished work of Welles — The
Dreamers, The Other Side of the
Wind and Don Quixote — ready for
release.[...]organizations), and the over-
all feeling was one of satisfaction,
especially with regard to co[...]

potentially witty portrait of the
absurdities of thirties society let
down by flat direction, lack of music
and over-emphasis on the Jewish
problem in[...]iptwriterlplaywright
Geza Bereményi. The odyssey of a
peasant lad through the tangle of
pre- and postwar Budapest
academia, the film begins with some
tour-de-force mingling of archive
footage and fictional material. Bere-
mé[...]king talent for
cinematic imagery, but the script is
often too elliptical and allusive for full
understanding by foreign audi-
ences. __

Peter Gothar's ldo van (Time), his
long-awaited third feature after
Ajandék ez a nap (A Priceless Day,
1979) and Megall az ido (Time
Stands Still, 7982), is equally inven-
tive and far more accessible. Like
The Wall Driller, it is a Hungarian
absurdist comedy, focusing on the
misguided ambitions of dreamers —
here, a family who take a long-
awai[...]and up pursued by their nightmares
(in the form of a giant hair which
sprouts from the wife's cheek)[...]historical and scato-
logical, it lacks the depth of Gothér’s
previous films (and flags somewhat
in[...]e and imagination,
and provides more than an echo of
the classic Karinthy school of satire.

Gothar's film, along with The Wall
Drill[...]local audience), were the most
purely pleasurable of the films on
show. On a less significant level,
G[...]are filmmaker than
almost any other industry.

As if to prove so —- and as a
healthy reminder that the ‘tactional’
school is still alive, despite signs of a
shift to more ‘cinematic’ works —
this year‘s surprise from left field
came in the form of a tiny production
from the 58-year-old maverick,[...]os), shot in
grainy black and white over a period
of two years, opens like the worst
example of a talking—heads docu-
drama, but develops into a moving
portrait of a doctor's dilemma of
whether or not to abort her child by a
married man. lnvolvin[...]y
Erzsebet Gaéi as the obstetrician
herself), it is decidedly a festival or
TV movie, but packs no less
emotional clout for a[...]n particular might be in-
clined to go to Berlin, or to stay
home and wait for Cannes, the
American Film Marketing Associa-
tion seems to have staged one of its
most dynamic markets in several
years. Among[...]ited
by participants were: a decline in the
value of the US dollar; an increased
emphasis on video; and the opening
of the market to non-members of the
AFMA. However, a not inconsider-
able factor[...]im-
pressed by the new venue. “The
organization of the AFM was better
than in previous years," said[...]about poss-
ible gains and losses this year, and
so did the buyers." “The Hilton's a
wonderful plac[...]“People wanted to stay in the hotel
longer and do business."

indeed, the subject of much of the
business this year was Mastorakiss
own action[...]titles. And, while there were
no ‘must-buys‘ or blockbusters,
there did appear to be an ample
enough supply of solid product to
satisfy even the most highly com[...]ng output arrangements
with foreign distributors, so as to
provide the same guarantees, but
on a pictu[...]d to
line up uncommitted distributors. In
support of this activity, the AFM
exploited its Los Angeles[...]priced at
$US1OO per day ($US500 for the
duration of the market), brought
many unaffiliated filmmakers[...]experiment worthwhile
in opening up new channels of
supply, and they praised the
AFMA’s new-found tolerance of
non-members.

“It was a healthier market this
y[...], attendance climbed
by 40% over 1985, to a total of
2,963. With the addition of the 1,680
attending the Location Expo held in
the[...]-video
thrust. in fact, 1986 marked the
emergence of the AFM as America's
first true multi-media marke[...]uncing new video distribu-
tion ventures. And one of Japan's
largest distributors, Toho Towa,
entered[...]o rights to all forthcoming
product.

But it was, of all things, the Nor-
wegian contingent that appea[...]his intense competition
actually resulted in some of the Nor-
wegian buyers paying “100 to
150% more[...]illary
(television, home-video) options, a
number of distributors responded by
exploring investments in a variety of
projects in development. "By doing
this,” admit[...]nd TV - as will the
producers." “|t's money out of
pocket now," added another execu-
tive, "but it k[...]ppeared to be few losers, judging
from the claims of most of the partici-
pants. Even those who only came to
l[...]Cannes. Although
individual companies’ reports or
sales successes are subject to a
variety of interpretations, the 1986
AFM clearly indicated t[...]gun to
emerge from its year-long slump.
Some kind of momentum was
started in Beverly Hills; but the
ul[...]ill be whether
that momentum continues at
Cannes. if it does, then, paradoxic-
ally, the AFM will have[...].

Steve and Patricia King Hanson
NB. For details of Australian

reactions to the AFM, see the[...]

task when writing about the Festival
of Perth. All but one of the 28 films
screened in the eighteen pro-
grammes (Zanussi‘s Year of the
Quiet Sun) have previously been
screened in the east, and most of
them have been reviewed in Cinema
Papers.

The Festival of Perth Film Festival
is not like other film festivals in Aus-
tralia: it is an adjunct of a larger
cultural event. interestingly, it has
always been a profitable part of that
event. In 1986, however, profits will
probab[...]rth
audiences bask in the open-air
garden setting of the Somerville
Auditorium at the University of
Western Australia. This year, how-
ever, the hard[...]her very important factor in
the Perth film scene is the continuity
in the film-selection panel. Film[...]e past 20 years.

Noni Hazlehurst in Fran: an act of
affirmation for Perth audiences.

Call Me Girlie with Vigil. It would
seem that the length of the films
rather than other considerations
determ[...]one by.

There can be no doubt that the
highlight of the festival for Perth
audiences was the screening of
Fran. The Windsor was filled to
capacity for most of the screenings.
To see Fran and enjoy it became an
act of affirmation for West Austra-
lians. Barron Films,[...]uld have
been made in any Australian state.

This is really just a cautious way of
saying that I don’t share the general

Doubling[...]Perth festival

They have developed a fine sense of
what sort of film will be successful at
the festival, and have constructed an
‘art-movie’ audience which is
reflected in the festival's venues: the
Somervill[...]o may well not
go to the cinema at any other time of
the year.

Not everybody is happy with the
state of affairs. David Noakes. an
independent filmmaker of some
note, is scathing about the festival's
policy of relying on art movies. He
wants more than a leavening of
alternative or documentary films in-
cluded in the programme.

D[...]some-
thing more concrete. Ann Macbeth,
director of the Film and Television
Institute in Fremantle, a[...]ticularly
cross about the double bills. The
Times of Harvey Milk was screened
with Backstage at the Ki[...]r the film, and would
like to see it again in two or three
years time, when all the hype has
disappear[...]tedious, as it skirted round the cen-
tral issue of class, which was never
addressed seriously.

A fi[...]oy was Yuri Flaiz-
man’s Vremia jelanil (A Time of
Desire), which had more than a
passing structural[...]ing men as partners, but Flaiz-
man’s character is more restrained
and self-contained than Hambly‘s.
Fran is a victim, Raizman's woman
an active manipulator w[...]nstruct her world.

Another film with some impact is
Blood Simple. its elegant reformula-
tions of Hollywood B-movie codes
and film noir thematics is most enjoy-
able. De vierde man (The Fourth
Man)[...]k for shocks sake
didn‘t impress this reviewer. Of a
different order of shock was
Gebroken spiegels (Broken Mirrors),
which upset a considerable Pbrtion
of the traditional festival audience. If
it served no other function, that must
be considered a distinct plus. For
the rest of the films, they were pre-
dictable, and they have[...]re.
For the future’? I confidently predict
more of the same in 1987.

Brian Shoesmith

Hindley and v[...]in Paris. Per-
haps this explains the aggresivite of
some of its bureaucrats, almost
mirroring their choice of films with
emotional, contradictory accounts of
economic and sexual politics.

It was fitting, then, that several
films concerned themselves in one
way or another with location: where
are we on the map? Of local film-
makers, Marg Hazelgrove was first.
Patterns is an ambitious film,
attempting to cut in an enormous
range of information, both historical
and aesthetic.

Also[...]aled more about Ruth
Hancock, the buoyant reptile of the
title, than it intended.

Camera Natura explo[...]are, geometric camerawork that
suited its subject of Europeans and
antipodean landscape. With
economic choice of verbal and
visual quotation, it created a fascina-
ting argument about the split Austra-
lian use of space, especially sharp in
its observations of speed and the
automobile.

Rocking the Foundation[...]sible future
as ornate wallpaper in the corridors
of international banks.

is there a shift away from social
issues in video pr[...]gue and stilted acting, it had all
tthe resonance of a cracked temple

ell.

Meanwhile, Blood Ties was[...]rd,
Jane Stevenson and Danae Gunn, it
made up one of the best pieces of
new work to be seen. With an
expressionist use of wide-angle
exteriors and claustrophobic
interiors[...]rb central
performances, and well evoked its
mood of sullen fear and frustrated
passion.

In Little Qu[...]ted off his regal meditation. With
the dull sheen of a fifties cake-knife,
he created a highly individual visual
style. Not so successful, because of
its wish to be more endearing to the
gay community, was Michael
Ftogowski‘s Sleepin' Round, a tale of
the city about the bittersweetness of
living with lovable modern young
persons in a chu[...]through Corinne Can-
tril|’s 147-minute account of her-
self in in This Life's Body, I had the
sinking feeling of being collared by
the Ancient Mariner. With gimlet eye
and the remorselessness of some-
one armed with the family slide-pro-
jector, she fixed the spectator with
images of herself in the first/third
person. In fact, there is much that is
admirable in both Cantri|l’s life and
her long career of subjective and
experimental filmmaking, and this[...]repeated questions, for
all the unconventionality of her life,
revealed someone whose mind has
been held in chains.

The highlight of the festival for me
was Laleen Jayamanne’s A Song of
Ceylon. With a wonderful sensuous
texture blown u[...]itual objects,
ritual speech, whether daemonology
or psychoanalysis — that set it firmly
in the area of Maya Deren and the
West Coast mythologists. But i[...]in a way that finally brought the
contradictions of the whole festival
together.

Noel Purdon[...]

aPPI'0aCh95 In HONQ K0l19- Please complete this form in block letters a[...]Aus"'aIIa- Road, South Melbourne, 3205. Australia or by international money order. A Iormal P.l[...]

Merritt’s formula is one of enter-
prise — he is an idealistic realist
involved in a vision of cultural renais-
sance — and it was this positi[...]investigated
how much time he had (until the end
of the conferencel), and figured he
could just about[...]o trading on the
political climate for funds, and is
rather proud of the non-elitist, ‘open
door’ system, whereby "first in, best
dressed" is the policy.

“Here, we can build a renais-
sance of our culture," he says, “but
first we need to wo[...]idence and disorien-
tation, which are the result of
spiritual and psychological genocide
over the last 200 years.

“The idea, though, is not to create
a ghetto sub-culture but, by a
process of discovery, to develop
self-worth and creative tal[...]cal roots and peer
pressure are at the very heart of
Shortchanged, Merritt’s second

feature script[...]ck record").

Shortchanged he describes as a
sort of “black/white Kramer vs
Kramer", focusing on the[...]ms with himself and society's
shifting values, it is set in a con-
temporary urban context, and is told
from a black perspective. "Yet it
does not a[...]tual — which ends on a
realistic compromise. He is in a no-
win situation: he can't integrate fully
with the blacks or the whites, so

ultimately it's a matter of coming to
terms with himself."

Merritt feels tha[...]white
records": the protagonists were
stereotyped or sensationalized or
just plain bland. “For instance, in
Storm Boy, the Aboriginal presents
no viewpoint: rather, he is sent in to
bat against a pelican and a kid. Or in
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith,
there is the jungle nigger solving his
problems naively with an axe. I
didn't see any reflection of myself or
anyone else I know in those films. As
for Where t[...]Merritt’s own script deals with the
complexity of modern reality — the
kind that the main charact[...]P Peter Levy
(who shot A Fortunate Life). "But it is
a performance drama, and I really
wanted to direc[...]for script
development money, but then I got
sick of pushing it. I realized that, to
get the funding, I had to allow
someone with a track record to do it.
Not that I was incapable of it: I know
the craft, am an experienced drama-
turg and, in terms of getting per-
formances out of blacks, I was highly
qualified.

“There were ot[...]'t want to
be 130 before I got my next work
done. So, I was prepared to hand
over to George Ogilvie. W[...]at the Bondi
Pavilion in 1976. He has a soul, he is
open to ideas, and he understands
blacks. I don't[...]ly from me, relying much more
on camera people."

If Shortchanged focuses on a
black in a predominantl[...]I direct the film, it won't be
about blacks. With so few films pre-
senting our perspective, there's too
much at stake. I can't afford the
possibility of misrepresentation.
There's been too much of that
’already."

Mary Colbert

Vicki Molloy,
Executive Director of
the AFI

Talking this early to Vicki Molloy
about the Australian Film Institute is
a bit unfair, somehow akin to asking
the new kid[...]ghbourhood. But, while the new
Executive Director of the AFI had yet
officially to take over the reins[...]ations
workings.

Following two years as director of
the Australian Film Commission's
Creative Development Branch, pre-
ceded by four years as the head of
the Women's Film Fund, Molloy
made the transition from funding
body to funded body in search of "a
challenge" — though she admits
this sounds "like a cliche''.

'‘I think that the AFI is an essential
organization, that has the chance to[...]a troubled
history, but it has attained a degree
of stability over the past twelve
months. Now the way is wide open
for it to start to tackle more activiti[...], director
Wolfgang Petersen acquired some-
thing of a distinction: The Boat was
nominated for an Osca[...], and also won Petersen
an Emmy, as best director of a TV
miniseries. He was the first German
to do so, and it gave him a good
deal of clout in the film business.

Not as much as his n[...]Neverending Story, 1984),
which was — and still is — Ger-
many's most expensive film of all
time. But its budget of 60 million
Deutschmarks ($37 million) pales by
co[...]he 250 million
Deutschmarks ($155 million) it has
so far taken worldwide.

Born in 1941 in the north German
city ofof German television.

It seems quite a leap from su[...]primarily commercial, and
it can tackle questions of screen
education and the promotion of
debate in all areas of film.''

Molloy defines the AFl's mission
as bein[...]its activities can
complement rather than compete or
overlap with other bodies.”

Other than the ann[...]ance for her:
contextualized mini-film festivals (or
‘events'), and the distribution of films
according to regional requirements.

While the State cinema in Hobart
is functioning as a venue for first-
release, art-ho[...]istribution in Tas-
mania), the Chauvel in Sydney is
functioning as a cinématheque-style
alternative venue.

“The Chauvel has just launched a
calendar that is the best season it
has put on in years," she enthuses.
“lt’s exactly the sort of work the AFI
should be doing. There's a season
of films based around the people
from Cah/‘ers du[...]. There's an Orson Welles
retrospective, a season of new Aus-
tralian independents and numerous
other[...]es that
the attendances — “building at a
rate of knots“ — may augur well for
the expansion of a Chauvel-style
programme to other cities.

Throu[...]an interest in and commitment
to "the other side of filmmaking". It
is a commitment that also links
Molloy's jobs at the[...]uca-
tional purposes, may fill a need in
sections of the video market for
more diverse product.

“Through the work at the CDB
over the past couple of years, I've
gotten to know the workings of all
the funded film organizations and
filmmakers[...]he AFI."

The other asset that can be drawn
upon, of course, is an understanding
of the AFC, the AFI‘s chief funding
body. With a degree of wry under-
statement and a fleeting grin, Molloy[...]-
advantage" in her familiarity with the
workings of the purse strings.

DebiEnker

fiction of Enemy Mine, his new film
which opened recently in[...]But Petersen doesn't see it as a
complete change of direction, least
of all as far as Enemy Mine is con-
cerned. "Of course there are differ-
ences," he says, “because the
cinema is a lot more ‘commercial’
than television. But that is not neces-
sarily a negative thing. For me, what
is important is the combination of
entertainment value and a good
story. Besides, go[...]and The Consequence.
"But the entertainment side is very
important. I like going to the cinema,
and I[...]amazing, spec-
tacular things. That's what cinema is
about: it's about longing and
dreams and wishes. But I think
cinema is also like a journey: you
start out at a certain point, cover a
certain amount of experience and
undergo certain changes. The better
I can encourage the moviegoer to
make his or her own journey, to
break out, to go a little bit[...]ecially far in action and
special effects, and he is more
aware than most directors of how
such things can get in the way. "The
effects[...]important in
Enemy Mi'ne," he says. “The focus
is really on the story. It's like an ideal
combination of The Boat and The
Neverending Story. As a filmmake[...]you have to be careful to
remember that the story is as
important as it ever was. Just
recently, I have felt, with a lot of films,
that the soul was going out ofis
totally innovative," he says. “There's
never been a film quite like it. It's an
adventure film with lots of action, but
it's also about the meeting between
t[...]the other an extraterrestrial
being. For me, that is the whole ten-
sion and beauty of the film. And its
source of emotion. I think Enemy
Mine is a very emotional film: you
need lots of Kleenex to get through
it! It's not at all the sort of film that
can be saved by all the technical
tricks you usually get in space
films."

Nevertheless, Petersen is enthusi-
astic about the opportunity that the
fil[...]special-effects team at Lucas-
film. ''It's a lot of fun, working with
those guys, because the whole
atmosphere is tremendously crea-
tive. They're full of brilliant ideas,

and most of them are amazingly
young — between 20 and 25 years
old! Routine is totally alien to them."

Now in his mid-forties, Petersen is
keen, like Steven Spielberg, to put
his name and his know-how behind
a new generation of young directors.
His track record of discoveries is,
after all, quite good: an episode he
directed in[...]s, Tatort, launched
Natassja Kinski.

But he will do it in Germany, not
the USA. “I used to dream of being
able to work there," he says. “But,
the m[...]years,
the more I've realized that this
[Germany] is my place. For a Euro-
pean, the atmosphere in America is
rather superficial, the lifestyle too
ritu[...]

Walter Burley Griffin, sometime teacher of
Frank Lloyd Wright and architect of
Canberra, also designed some parts of the
Sydney suburb of Castlecrag, including an
incinerator in plastered neo—Aztec. Today,
restored, it is a restaurant called‘ (what
else?) ‘The Incine[...]because it lies
between the harbour and the home of Paul
Hogan — Hogan, who worked on the
Sydney Ha[...]was 30;
who entered a TV talent contest, made fun
of the judges and ended up a star; whose
TV commerci[...]the
tourism figures, and who got sixteen
minutes of 60 Minutes just to talk about his
home country.[...]include the entire male blue-collar popula-
tion of Australia) — has just starred in his
first feat[...]res,
wearier. The brows curve down on either
side of the china—blue eyes, imitating the
tautness of a facelift in reverse. He is 45 or
near enough, a five-child family man with a
_cement mixer in the front yard and his
house in the turmoil of renovation.

There’s something of the country home-
stead about the Hogan home —[...]style, only for them it

“There’s such a lot of wankers
in the Australian film industry.
More so than in television. And
there’s a lot of wankers in
television”

was modified Mission. H[...]ne and teak and heavy
woven wool. A Chinese panel of cranes in a
lacquered and bronzedvframe dominates
the living room, but the knick-knacks are a
clutter of sixties kitsch: leaping dolphins in
white porcelain and, upstairs, glimpsed

26 — May CINEMA PAPERS

OF

guiltily through bedroom doors, Elvis
memorabilia and a pile of stuffed koalas.

Elements of the family trickle in through
the hour we have to[...]ge son, Scott, announce their
arrival with a yell of “I’m home!” and a
slammed door. The view beyond his back
windows is a stark sweep of the coast,
notched far below by a beach that, today, is
just grey but, on a better day, must gleam
gold.

Down there isor be in show-
business until I was 30.”

What did he do until then? “Aw, you
name it . . . The last pro[...]harves, the abattoirs — just about the
spectrum of the blue-collar world. Jobs
were easy to come by[...]rs? For the first time, Hogan’s voice rises
out of a monotone. It’s almost as if he dis-
believes the question.

“I wasn’t a m[...]y, testing the ground. “Tarzan ’s
Savage Fury or something like that was the

ALAS

[Q

by John Baxter

“Tarzan’s Savage Fury or
something like that was the first
thing I ever re[...]g.
Might have been a John Wayne
western. And lots of Elvis movies
and James Dean movies”

first thin[...]g. Might
have been a John Wayne western. And lots
of Elvis movies and James Dean movies.”

He warms[...]inees? “Matinees as a kid, then
Saturday nights or Friday nights, or during
the week when you got older.

“It was a[...]n his club act,
Hogan has joked about the rituals of
moviegoing: chocolate-coated scorched
almonds for[...]but, for the
second string, just a cellophane bag of
‘Conversation Lollies’ — scented pastel
plaques with coy messages like ‘Do you
really love me?’

“Saturday night, funnily enough, you
went with your girl, if you had one, or your
wife or whatever. You got a little bit more
dressed up. A[...]se theatres — quite often you couldn’t
get in if you didn’t book. They were grad-
ually replaced[...]try. Until then, the
movies were the social mecca of the
suburbs. All that’s gone.”

At 30,[...]

because it was terrible. New Faces went for
20[...]y’d always give the prize to a tap-
dancing kid or a cello player. You never
saw a tap dancer or a cello player with their
own show on television.

“They’d just introduced the gong
business, so they’d have these poor, some-
what talentless kids out there, singing, tap-
dancing, juggling or whatever, and they’d
gong ’em and humiliate them. And then,
the soof those things where
you sit around at work — thi[...]ir,
someone should get on and take the mickey
out of those people, cut ’em down to size’.
It’s always ‘someone’. So I said: ‘All right,
I will!’ Sol did.”

Hog[...]rapeze artist”. But, the
moment he got in front of the cameras, all
he did was throw a few knives ar[...]there and
adjudicated, whether you had any talent or
not. I posed the question of how much
talent they had themselves.”

How did[...]e in tears.
And I think the public knew that. And so,
whether I was funny or not, they took to
me.”

What about the camera?[...]ey’d always give the prize to a
tap-dancing kid or a cello player.
You never see a tap dancer oror old-age
pensioners playing the saw or middle-aged
housewives who’d always wanted to be
opera stars. They couldn’t do anything
about it, so I went in as self—appointed
champion of the underdog and ripped into
’em!’

New Faces established Hogan in his
persona of the decent bloke who wouldn’t
let the tall popp[...]hat I didn’t care, that I was just
having a bit of fun. No amount of scathing
attacks could dent my armour. I think
people identified with that — orof the
year. But I got beat by a fifteen-year-old
cello player, which was so typical of those
silly contests.”

With New Faces over, Ho[...]y crowds sated on prawns and beer —
an audience of which (and this must have
contributed to his phen[...]ries in the
seventies (since cut back to a couple of
comedy specials a year).

Trench mouth: Hogan ’[...]ible Pat Cleary in Anzacs.

Elected as figurehead of the burgeoning
ocker trend, he was assessed in the light of
this by the briefly-visiting Clive James, who
cau[...]mes found him
“trouncingly boring, with no idea of how
to work his material. His earthiness was
sheer hard—hat invective. The linguistic fas-
tidiousness of Barry Humphries he just
couldn’t match.” If this worried Hogan, he
didn’t show it, though he’s no fan of the
films Humphries co-wrote with Bruce
Beresford[...]oose in England to throw up
and urinate a lot and do a lot of bodily-
functions comedy.”

There’s none of Bazza in Mick ‘Croco-
dile’ Dundee. Hogan’s voice reaches a rare
pitch of enthusiasm. “This guy’s got
class.” The ide[...]m the bankability to
feature in a film — which, of course, is
precisely what they were intended to do.

“It’s a culture clash. It’s a comedy and[...]d in the Northern Territory, the
great wilderness of the western world, and
has never been anywhere. H[...]ndee gets to New York, fairly
inevitably, because of a woman: New York
reporter Sue Charlton reads a report of his
exploits (surviving a crocodile attack and
dr[...]losophy.

“It’s like the image Americans have of
us, so why not give them one? The
Americans have been creating folk heroes
for years. They made folk heroes out of
villains: Billy the Kid was a grotesque,
deranged[...]e part! But we’ve always
been desperately short of folk heroes in this
country. Ned Kelly is pathetic. So are the
bushrangers. So, I thought: ‘I’ll make one
up, a typical mode[...]American feature costs
double), Crocodile Dundee is in some ways
a modest effort — and, for Hogan,[...]or, Ken Shadie.

Six weeks were spent working out of
Jaja, an abandoned uranium mining camp
in Arnhem[...]North Queens-
land, near Cloncurry. The tiny town of
McKinlay became ‘Walkabout Creek’,
Dundee’s[...]ensland, we’d drive 80 miles to
a location and, if we met a car on the way

“l’m expecting it to gross
millions of dollars around the
world and l’m planning for i[...]York.” Equity fought the case through a
series of appeals, then (according to
rumour) grudgingly si[...]father’s quiet pride in his
film — and plenty of bitterness for its (per-

ceived) opponents. “It’s a very good
movie. The movie is exactly what we set out
to make it. It’s a piece of entertainment,
escapist entertainment —— a proper movie. I
don’t know if it will win awards or
anything; I don’t really care. But I expect it
to gross millions of dollars around the
world, and I’m planning for[...]ie. You
name me one.”

The Man from Snowy River is the one
they usually quote. I quote it. “Well,[...]ice — though
there’s not as many cinemas now, so it

This is your tinny: Hogan and Strop (John
Cornell) on The[...]that
to be a standard. What I consider a
standard is pictures like Arthur, Back to the
Future, Every W[...]:
‘Wasn’t that terrific?’ That’s the kind of
movie I want to make. Crocodile Dundee is
afeelgood picture: you come out of it with
a smile on your face.

“The Australian[...]thing
like us: they need a big commercial success
if they’re going to survive. It’s so bloody
expensive to make films now, and so hard
to get investors, that unless you make one
or two movies that really make a lot of
money — promotable, commercial suc-
cesses arou[...]ilm. We don’t have the budget to make
The Winds of War, so we make Breaker
Morant. It’s a good story, but when the
enemy charges over the hill, there’s fifteen
of ’eml Theatre owners won’t put that on
the big screen, regardless of the merit and
the value that’s in it. I want to[...]ne escapism
without commercial interruptions.

“If you have a couple of big, fat, com-
mercial successes, you can continue to

make those uniquely stylized Australian
sort—of-art pictures, if you like: the Picnic
at Hanging Rock, My Brilliant Career type
of things. They’ve got to be subsidized by
somethi[...]the argument that films shown to
discriminating (if small) audiences overseas
are good for the image of Australia — the
minds-in-gear, not bums-on—se[...]o go on holiday to Italy after they saw A
Fistful of Dollars. If you make a movie
here, no matter what it’s abou[...]em? They
clutter up the place half the time. And, if an
industry’s worth persevering with, it should
hold itself up.”

But perhaps a decade of government
funding has destroyed that instinct. C[...]ghs. “Well,
obviously not. There’s such a lot of
wankers in the Australian film industry.
More so than in television, and there’s a lot
of wankers in television. There are people
making bo[...]ey wank off about how
it’s too clever for ’em or it going over their
heads.

“You kid yourself t[...]your little film under your arm and
walk into any ofif Crocodile Dundee goes the
way of The Coolangatta Gold, another
attempt at aproper[...]an network
TV, which I have an open invitation to
do.”

Television made Hogan the star he is. It
even trained him for a dramatic career by
giv[...],
Anzacs. But, though it may be his
salvation, it is, ironically, TV which has
made increasingly remote the possibility of
continuing aproper feature-film industry in
Australia. And Hogan recognizes this. “If
you don’t have the big commercial success
here[...]people — our behind-the-scenes people,
who are so good — will go back to making
TV commerc[...]

’ 1%; '

Rick Thompson ruffles the surface of TV’s
most glamorous cop show

Miami Vice is a dual-hero show: two elite
detectives, one white[...]). At the outset, their immediate
social location is the ‘vice‘ unit presided
over by a Captain Ro[...]haracter names don’t get used very often.
There is also a weird Mutt-and-Jeff pair in
Hawaiian shirt[...]Zito (John Diehl), who
usually function as a kind of light relief.
Crockett seems to have a continuing[...].

30 — May CINEMA PAPERS

Series television is comfortably divided
between anthology shows with[...]oncerned with establishing their own
‘family’ of characters. Miami Vice — like
Hill Street Blues (or Prisoner) — has a con-
tinuing matrix of situations, characters and
motifs which stretch a[...]each 48-minute unit must solve the
formal problem of completing a narrative.
While the plotwork[...]

con-men. The black character, the Noog
Man (Charlie Barnett), is verbally and
sartorially manic, making an incredibly fast
set of moves to match his disco-rap
dialogue. The Hispanic character, Martino
(Martin Ferrero), is a ferrety, calm source
of Arthur Daley-style malapropisms, at his
most relaxed (if slightly indignant at the
interruption) when caug[...]lated in discussions among the police.

Only one of the episodes seen here has
been completely inflec[...]e
removed entirely, putting the case in the
hands of Switek and Zito. They in turn
employ both the Noo[...]marrying a stripper; and a kingpin from the
world of crime whose incomplete childhood
leaves him with[...]st episodes have spaces left to
be filled by play of one sort or another.

I mention the comic strains in Miami
Vice because the mainstream of the show is
a long way from humour. There is none of
Starsky and Hutch’s “Freeze, turkey!”
Aside from some well-turned TV-noir
dialogue, as a measure of Crockett and
Tubbs’s cynicism and their aggress[...]e world (and to provide
graphic non-visual images of poetic
violence), Miami Vice is one serious show.
This is not the locker—room camaraderie of
the aforementioned Starsky and Hutch, on
which several of the show’s producers, direc-
tors and writers h[...]hand, and the accompanying Montezuma’s

Revenge of terminal angst on the other.

The second way in w[...]esponded to the family crisis —— the ‘death
of the father’ — was, of course, by finding
a new captain, in the form of Edward
James Olmos as Castillo. Olmos is another
Hispanic actor from here and there, but
signs of his Castillo characterization can
clearly be seen[...]lmos holds the
show together in several ways, one of them
being by going against its grain. Miami
Vice is a series noted for its up—to-the-
minute wardro[...]ps clad in
immaculate baggy white designer pants, or
Italian suits and jackets). This is a point
that has escaped no one, least of all Garry
Trudeau who, in a Doonesbury strip that[...]He never raises his voice, makes only
the tiniest of gestures, and lives by the book
—- the Law — in a pre-post-modernist
world. He is, in fact, dead calm and dead
right, presenting Au[...]ate. He
seems to know all about the various forms
of death, and represents them institution-
ally. He[...]panish — and, maybe because, in the
melting pot of Miami, it is assumed that
black people have more experience at[...]ves essentially as himself, but on the
other side of the law. He merely gives a
false name.

Undercove[...]nd-name
uniforms, and don’t begin with a flash of
the badge and an assertion of authority.
They have it both ways, spending most of

their time in the criminal world, acting
([...]switching back
identities again at the conclusion of the
show. They make perfect crooks (rationale:
it[...]o mention
escalating confusion. The first episode of
the series screened here involved an old
colleague of Crockett’s — a federal, not a
local cop — who had reached crisis point.
He’d got so far into his undercover identity
that he could no longer sort out the various
parts of his life — a cautionary tale indeed
for a chara[...]led Tubbs’s
problems in this area. What we know of his
background is that he is not a Floridean,
and that his partnership with Crockett
began with the series, as a result of his
problems as a New York cop watching his
broth[...]on, the
trafficker, but whose relationship to him is
not clear (“Who is she to Calderon,”
Crockett asks a witness: “w[...]late, after Tubbs has fallen
in love with her, it is revealed that she is
(unknowing, innocent) his daughter. After
the death of her (the) father — Crockett,
not Tubbs, does it[...]ughter
watching — she confronts Tubbs with most
of the moral problems of what he has done,
while Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got to
Do With It’ overwhelms the dialogue
track. Crocket[...]ubbs, and says:
“Let’s go home”. Which they do, smash-
ing through a boundless ocean in an enor-[...]gard as the undefined and suppressed
subconscious of Crockett’s past provides
another former colleague not too sure
which side of the undercover law he is on.
What is clear is that the cop, Evan, is gay,
and that his claim on Crockett’s past is
personal as well as professional. The
episode begins with him using an Ingram to
shred a row of female mannequins, and
ends with Evan taking a bu[...]t
snowballs, show by show, like the national
debt of a small nation). The episode ends
with Evan’s face — the release of death —
and Crockett’s face: confusion, anguish,
hurt. Looming out of the blank back-
ground on the centre—line of the screen,

Tubbs, in dark gray, still st[...]

If the characters appear somehow adrift,
the show itself is similarly loosely con-
nected. The act of watching television
demands that any new item be compared
with our experience of its predecessors, in
television or out of it. This is a two-way
exchange in which the TV show and the
v[...]refer, to
compare —— and to be one step ahead of
each other.

With Miami Vice, it is a race to keep up.
From the first instant of any episode, it is
set apart from other series. Most announce
themse[...]thrust in medias res,
into a space and situation of which we
know nothing.

The series does not coddle us with a pre-
credit sequence assembled from tasty bits
of the episode we are about to see — a
sequence ot[...]nd
to provide (sometimes inaccurately) a
synopsis of the story to come. Rather, it
gives us a short but complete narrative
vignette, which sets the tone of the episode
to come, often in a disorienting manner.
This sequence may or may not provide clear
information. Indeed, it may not include
any of the actors or character we already
know from other episodes. Th[...]y, even playfully, but build
towards an explosion of violent energy.

Then we are allowed to see the standing
credits: the block of images, music and
actors’ names which do not vary from week
to week. This sequence, too, p[...]ontinuing players, but it does not show us
images of the characters. Nor does it use its

Doonesbury

../4ND/3/:75‘? Y0!/557 k/“Egg
5577150 /N, ['9 L05 50mg
70 575/I/< W/7H E[...]\ /MM/6/54’
T/W

images to establish situations or to set tone.
It is a travel-brochure series of images (see
illustrations). There are no cast members.
No social or personal interaction. No
action, no violence, no[...]t to construct a highly
specific and limited view of the city: Miami.

The stance of this view is distant. Its
stress is an impersonal public (but not civic)
surface. Its content is a compound of
glamour, conspicuous consumption, sport
and competition, exotic creatures in urban
confinement — elements of an implied life-
style concerned with pleasure.

The image of the jai alai player hints at
the Hispanic strain of the city. In a parallel
way, the ambitious construction of some of
the images and the use of slow motion point
towards stylistic moves to come. It is a
morally pregnant picture of Miami — the
Miami we think of, but also the surface the
series wants to chew up. It is as unusually
thought—out a credit block as the[...]ockford Files; unlike that one,
however (and most of the others), it does
not want to make us feel at home.

Most of the physical operation of Miami

32 — May CINEMA PAPERS

DESP/7E0(RHYm[...]LY.’

CUDEPf7?0Hlll4FlI' gxgwkggqg

Vice is concerned with making things
strange. Much has been said about the
show’s use of pop music and video-clip
visuals. Other, less rec[...]Hammer’s eerie synthesizer
scoring, the effect of which is an immediate
alienation from otherwise inviting or
familiar images; the use of special cinema-
tography, which transforms the ni[...]nta vertical stripes).

Given the ritzy lifestyle of the heroes and
their submersion in a world which leans
towards moralities of convenience and
twilight-zone dealings, this defamiliariza-
tion could result in an ambiguous presenta-
tion of the heroes’ morality. It doesn’t,
because they are incorruptible. So the show
takes the other road: it constantly under-
cuts the possibility of us feeling secure with
the characters — of our understanding
them, predicting them, trusting[...]first sixteen episodes, the show
has been a kind of race between Crockett
and Tubbs, presided over by[...]base state (he has eyes which
belong in a horror or science-fiction movie)
and musically-inflected fantasies. For
Tubbs, the result is a progressive aliena-
tion, in which the producers of the series
conspire.

For Crockett, there is less method. He
isn’t sure enough of who he is to imper-
sonate anybody else. He can say, while[...]spect: “I didn’t become a cop to
spectate”. If he wasn’t a cop, you’d swear
he was coked to the gills.

But what the race between Crockett and
Tubbs is about is to see which one will go
completely crazy[...]

Quality '

Every Cinevex Can

w k,f‘;;a’e/ivered to budget and before time.

A[...]y.

V‘ “V ‘ ll/‘ .v' Q Q“ ,‘ '/r- 5
/ K‘ ' . . G’
_ _- in ‘ “(ID ‘/‘[...]

Around the World in 80 Ways
Backlash

The Big Hurt

Burke & wills

cactus

Dead-End Drive-In

Death of a Soldier

Departure

Australia at the 198[...]

Huppert is the star par excellence of that
period of massive transition, which saw the
French cinema finally abandon the death
throes of the new wave and emerge hesi-
tantly into the period of uncertain identity
from which it has yet to emerg[...]as established herself as
more than just the face of a generation
(which —— vide Madonna — can sometimes
be a question of almost random selection):
Huppert’s pre—eminence comes from the
disconcerting intensity of her screen per-
formances. Neither Masina nor Schygulla
nor Huppert is beautiful in the traditional
sense (and Christie’s real beauty is actually
at variance with her swinging dolly-bird
image of the sixties). But the camera trans-
forms them al[...]he was
amazed to find she was “incandescent”. If
he had done his homework better, he might
not have been so surprised.

Towards the end of her latest film, Paul
Cox’s Cactus, there is a scene in which she
and her lover (Robert Menzies), who is
blind, are alone at the end of St Kilda pier.
Finally, he asks here a question t[...]te.

Nick Roddick talks to Isabelle
Huppert, star of

Paul Cox’s Cactus.

No, replies Huppert . . . “pas vraiment”
— not really. If there is such a thing as cine-
matic (rather than dramatic) irony, it is
exemplified by that scene: a statement per-
ceived as true, but denied by the entire
context of the film.

The first movie in which anyone notice[...]973), a seminal but rather unpleasant film
which, if nothing else, marked the defini-
tive end of the sixties in France. “It was an

important fi[...]generation,”
recalls Huppert, “who were sort ofof individual revolt, and it looked
at sexuality from a very comic point of
view. It launched Depardieu and Dewaere”
— Pa[...]” she says:
“those early roles had nothing to do with
the parts I played later. They were chubby,[...]nsanity by a love affair
with a young student who is embarrassed
by her lack of education and wants her to
better herself. The film is the one that most
non-French people associ[...]

Cactus is quite different from Cox’s
previous films: visu[...]so simpler, more trusting in its
material. And it is tempting to think that
Huppert, in whom he trusts most, has a lot
to do with this. Cactus is the story of a
French woman (I-Iuppert) who arrives in
Australia, fleeing an unsuccessful
marriage. Near the start of the film, she has
a car accident and loses an eye. Doctors tell
her that, if she doesn’t have the eye
removed, she will lose the sight of the other
one — apparently an established medical
phenomenon.

“So much for the medical side,” says
Huppert. “Anyway, while she is deciding
what to do —— because, at first, she refuses
to have the[...]falls in love with him. He has a greenhouse
full of cacti, and they become a kind of
metaphor. He lives among them, but he
doesn’t f[...]n uses their
spines to make music. In the end, he isof working. I haven’t met many
directors who want as much as Paul does to
get back to a simpler form of filmmaking.
When cinema started, that was how it[...]dustry and developed
an infrastructure. What Paul is trying to do
is rediscover that simplicity, that artisanal
side of cinema. He doesn’t want to be over-
taken by the whole industrial side of the
thing.

“For example, he’ll decide the evening
before what scene he is going to shoot the
next day. If it’s a difficult scene, he’ll say:
‘OK, if we’re ready, we’ll shoot it. And, if
we don’t want to, we won’t!’ That’s some-[...]ven on low-budget French films. I’ve
made a lot of those, because I’m a bit of an
anomaly in France: I’m a star, but I work
wi[...]t, even on those little
films, the infrastructure is always present.
Paul is fighting to get away from that
completely.

“Hi[...]movements,
tracking shots, 360—degree pans and so on.
For instance, he doesn’t like to do a wide
shot of the countryside, then a close-up of
me, then a reverse angle on Robert: every-

38 — May CINEMA PAPERS

thing is all in it together — the actors, the
countrysid[...]hink that’s the way cinema
ought to be.”

One of the final scenes of the film — and
the last to be shot — indicate[...]eet, just before the
rush hour, unnoticed by most of those at
what is one of the city’s busiest inter-
sections. There were[...]kies and
police liaison. “There were just three of
us,” says Huppert. “I come out of the
station, and it’s a hand—held shot. Then
there is a closer shot of me in the crowd,
done with a little 16mm camera he loves to
use. If we’d wanted to do that ‘normally’,
with a crew of 30, we simply couldn’t have
done it. Paul did it in a quarter of an hour.
I’ve seen the rushes, and they’re fabulous.

Flavour of the year: Huppert in her best-known
film, as Pomm[...]e (The Lacemaker).

“From an actor’s point of view, the best
directors are the ones whose films the
actors come out of best. In that sense,
Godard is a magnificent director of actors:
he lifts the actors, he sublimates them. You
have the feeling of being important when
you work with him, and there is a kind of
magic in his way of filming: he has a very
special way of looking at actors.

“Paul is great that way, too, but he
hardly directed us at[...]or to direct me. But I
think the director’s job is to make things
happen. And Paul certainly made su[...]a love
affair between a blind man and a woman
who is going blind. It’s very tricky, even
dangerous. But Paul made it work.”

Born in the Parisian suburb of Ville
d’Avray, Huppert originally trained, semi[...]me stage work (including a
major Paris production of Musset’s On ne
badine pas avec l’amour), the reason she
gives for preferring cinema is a revealing
comment on her way of working. “For the
theatre,” she says, “you do the same kind
of internal preparation, but then you have
to extern[...]externalize, it’s necessarily to the detriment
of what is inside.”

Huppert’s performances, in Cactus and
before, are never to the detriment of what is
inside: tiny gestures — a blink, a tentative
ha[...]rstand. It
also explains, perhaps, why her choice of
directors has not so far included any
member of the new generation of French
directors — Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques
Ben[...]as does Paul Cox — to
an older tradition: that of an actor’s
cinema. The new generation, she says[...]television
and video-clips and that whole culture of
the image. But they don’t always make very
good use of it. Godard is part of that
culture too, but there is always a degree of
criticism in the way in which he uses it.

“For me, good cinema isof technique,
but it’s not something which appeals much
to me. I think they’ve lost sight of just the
thing that Paul Cox is trying to rediscover:
the artisanal side of cinema. And, in the
final analysis, films that come from there
have always been the best kind of films.”

Faustine ou le bel été (Faustin[...]isir
(Robert Benayoun, 1975); Dupont Lajoie
(Rape of Innocence*. Yves Boisset, 1975);
Docteur F[...]

Le Plot: Geoffrey Daniels, former Head
of Drama of the ABC, has talked Michel
Noll, chief executive of Revcom Television,
Paris (over a glass or three of champagne)
into setting up a subsidiary company i[...]ucer.

Le Workload: Production and co-
production of children’s and adult drama
in Australia;[...]

In competition, Cannes 1986

“The film is based on a novel I
read nine or ten years ago. i
stumbled across it in London, in
one of those secondhand book
barrows! it's a first editi[...]robably quite valuable
now! But l’d never heard of it or
the author then: i bought it
because somebody tol[...]w1.‘)z‘i6

was interesting.
“it reminded me of my child- A '
hood, of the Aboriginals l’d h I.‘

known then. And no[...]wonderful performances. The
only real difference is that they
aren't world-famous!"

Bruce Ber[...]

Fink puts these difficulties down to a
variety of causes. “They didn’t like the
book, though frankly I don’t think many of
them read it. It’s not an easy novel to get
int[...]y read.
And I don’t think people liked the idea of
it. But then, they didn’t like the idea of My
Brilliant Career. Pat Lovell doesn’t have
to[...]could be.” I

long-awaited, proiect.

wondered if, perhaps, her reputation as a
tough, no-nonsense[...]word ‘diffi-
cult’. “Could be. I know that is said of me,
but only by people who haven’t worked
with me.”

One of the things behind the on-again,
off—again delay[...]couldn’t have
anyone older than 23 in the part. So we
were looking at NIDA graduates, though
we test[...]took
years to find Helen Buday. Hilary Linstead
(of M & L Casting), Stephen Wallace and I
searched for her for years. Of course, if
we’d got the money earlier, another actress
wou[...]felt it wasn’t for
him. Then I gave him a copy of the book,
For Love Alone, and he really responded[...]t’s a tight-rope we have to walk:
making a work of art that’s commercial.
It’s not easy. Five ye[...]ot in Britain, where in fact about
fifty per cent of the story takes place. None
of the actors went overseas, and a great
deal of front projection was used, as well as
some striki[...]too many
dazzling blue skies.

Now that the film is finished and ready to
go into distribution, Fink is cautiously opti-
mistic. A few previews, includin[...]and distribution. She even has
time to take stock of the state of the Aus-
tralian film industry.

“The tax boom is over, and the carpet-
baggers are getting out. A lot of people
have been making films who probably
shouldn’t have been, and the standards
have obviously declined. So we’re entering
an interesting era. One t[...]

are proud to be associated with
the production of

Cool Chang

R H Tolley & Gardner Pty Ltd

Specia[...]I
I
I . . .
n television insurance.
: The support of
. Australian film-makers
Everyone needs professio[...]lm
and television production.

Think about it and do yourself a favour. Contact us
immediately for det[...]Carmen Coutts Jenny Sabine
Sydney (02) 887 1666 OR Melbourne (03) 328 2517

insurer in the field.

9[...]m and
Television Insurance Specialists
A Division of Terence Lipman Pty Ltd.
Sentinel House,

4[...]

Paul D[...]Backlash and A Street to Die. c/o
J.C. Williamson or the Australian
Producers’ Sales Office.

Tom Br[...]lm Distri-
bution. clo UniFrance, Nouveau
Palais, or Australian Film Commis-
sion.

Stewart Chilton, M[...]to
Die. clo Australian Producers’ Sales
Office or J.C. Williamson.

Danny Collins, Marketing and
Sa[...]’ Sales Office.

Alan Finney, National Director of
Marketing and Distribution, Village
Roadshow Corp[...]y, David Hannay Pro-
ductions, co-producer, Death of a
Soldier. c/o Bromco International.

John Hanrah[...]an Pro-
ducers' Sales Office.

Jill Hickson, wife of the Premier of
New South Wales. clo New South
Wales Film Corpora[...]28.

David Hurley, Press Secretary to
the Premier of New South Wales. c/o
New South Wales Film Corpora[...]d Australian Film
Commission.

Pamela Lange, Head of Acquisi-
tions, Village Roadshow Corpora-
tion. c[...]or, Death ofa
Soldier. c/o Bromco international.

Di Morrissey, Good Morning Aus-
tralia, Ten Network. c/o Residence
Panoramique, Apt K, 6th floor, 98 La
Croisette. Tel. 38.78.69.

Scot[...]Flesh. clo Sofitel-Mediterranée
(Tel. 99.22.75) or World Film
Alliance.

Matthew Ody, General Manage[...]lms Inc.

Oscar Scherl, executive producer,
Death of a Soldier. c/o Bromco Inter-
national.

Jeannine[...]riety, No. 3, Apt La Josefa, 7 rue
du 14 juillet, or c/o Australian Film
Commission.

Christine[...]

Backlash. Directed, produced and[...]ennett can be contacted through
J. C. Williamson, or through the Australian
Producers’ Sales Office,[...]An inventive, low-budget thriller, The Big
Hurt is about a journalist who has just got
out of jail after serving a sentence for
contempt, and w[...]for a dead man. It comes from the
ingenious team of Barry Peak and Chris
Kiely, whose other credits i[...]haos and the
upcoming The Cricketer. The Big Hurt is

their film noir.

The Big Hurt. Directed by B[...]on dramatic structure,
and which used the freedom of improvization. I worked from a 27—page scene br[...]he editing stage.

“The film has a lovely sense of flow. David Argue and Gia Carides [the actors] to[...]But it ’s paid off, I think: the overall result is quite remarkable.’

“Backlash’s qualities m[...]tralian films: it has a disciplined
looseness; it is tight and pacy; and the improvization has given it a natural rhythm.

“Visually, I think the film is stunning, but I do find it hard to talk about my own
films. . I”[...]ured three ribs and wasn’t very well at the end of it. And the biggest jump anyone’s ever
done was 186 feet, in The Dukes of Hazard: a guy went over a train. But he was wiped out:
you get a lot of rib and internal damage with jumps.

“On Dead-E[...]best thing about it for me, apart from it
working so well visually, was the fact that my special seat[...]ut that was it. All I
could hear was the churning of the camera. ”

Guy Norris, stuntman

CIN[...]

Burke & Wills. Di[...]own ‘independent’
filmmaker, Paul Cox, Cactus is about a
woman losing her sight as a result of a car
accident, and about her love affair with a[...]th. The
film's leading actress, lsabelle Huppert, is
interviewed on pages 36-38.

Cactus. Directed by[...]Ltd.
Written by Paul Cox, Norman Kaye and Bob E//is.
With lsabelle Hupperl, Robert Menzies, Norman
Ka[...]n 1, 47 La Croisette.
Tel. 38.62.02 and 38.62.12, or through the Aus-
tralian Producers’ Sales Offic[...]alian competition entry, Bliss,
Dead-End Drive-ln is a very different kind of
movie: an action adventure movie with an
apocalyp[...]year, but won’t
be on the Croisette because he is, as usual,
shooting a film). With its story of kids looked
up in a drive-in and pacified with se[...]d Manning, Natalie
MCCurry, Peter Whitford, O/lie Haof Howling 11, my last film, in which he played a co[...]as quite convinced he could play Leonski in Death of a Soldier.

“With guys who look like Reb, it’[...]!’ Like Marilyn
Monroe. It applies to men, too. If they’re hunks, they don ’t often get the chan[...]’ We
were at dinner and he said: ‘Look, there is one thing you may find interesting. My one
memory of the court martial is that, when they came in to give sentence, Leonski[...]very moving for
Rothgerber: forty years later, he is still defending Leonski. ”

Philippe Mom

“The fact that the novel was set in France and the film is set in Australia doesn’t concern
me particularl[...]transposed to any country, and
Devil in the Flesh is not a picture of A ustralia. The world is just the world of the film: even the
time is a little vague.

“That’s how I see pretty well all films: the thing I most like is to be drawn into their world.
And I don ’t think the world of a film has to obey the same rules of logic and time and space as
the outside world. I think realism has been the near-death of the cinema. One is entitled to
create one ’s own unique wor[...]

Having gone through a bewildering array
of title changes, The Leonski Incident has
emerged, via War Story, as Death of a
Soldier. It is director Philippe Mora's first
Australian feature[...]d in Melbourne in 1942 when an
American G.l., one of several thousand
both welcomed and resented in the city,
committed a series of grisly murders. The
original defence attorney at the Court
Martial of the real Leonski, Ira C. Ftoth—
gerber, advised on the film.

Death of a Soldier. Directed by Philippe Mora.
Produced by[...]rture

Based on the highly-acclaimed play, A Pair
of Claws, by Michael Gurr (compared by
one Australian reviewer to Sam Shepard's
Buried Child), Departure is a feature debut
for both director Brian Kavanagh,[...]Zealand rep for
Motion Picture Guarantors Ltd. It is about a
traumatic evening in a city hotel, where a
distinguished retired diplomat faces up to
the ghosts of the past and the way in which
they haunt his present. it is also distinctly
unusual for an Australian film, i[...]en by Michael
Gurr, based on his own play, A Pair of Claws.
With Patricia Kennedy, Michael Duffield, J[...]stic. Tel.
38. 70.94.

Devil in the Flesh

A note of pride creeps in here; Devil in the
Flesh is the first feature by former Cinema
Papers editor,[...]ies novel, Le diable au corps — and
not, Murray is swift to point out, the 1947
film by Claude Autant-Lara — it deals with
the sexual and emotional awakening of a
cold and not very likeable young man. The
cinematography, by Andrew De Groot, is
magnificent.

Devil in the Flesh. Directed by[...]ed at the Sofitel-Mediterranee,
Tel. 99.22.75.

k

“What interested me, with Going Sane, was the idea of a man who was obsessed with time,
and who turned[...]hat his time bank was a lot bigger than it really is — or was!

“I thought how funny this could be, if no one around him understood what was going on.
And, of course, that’s what happens in the movie: he is, quite literally, going sane, but the
people arou[...]en they ’re highly successful!

"The main focus is on his adjustment to it, and his acceptance of time. He changes his life.
He ’s got a spoilt w[...]Favlizvrrl

)<<«@é

“Lawrence is about the only great modern writer who ’s bothe[...]for us — particularly, 1 think, because he was so acute: not just acute in a
poetic way, but sociol[...]o be here for five minutes to pick up on the
bulk of the thing.

“What makes Kangaroo so interesting, and what makes it such a vivid sort of film, is that it
is the least doctored of all his novels. He wrote it very fast, and it is very autobiographical. He
was in touch with a lot of things going on in Australia that a lot of Australians didn’t know
about. What you have is really a very simple story with a lot of decoration, fascinating
characters and a fascinat[...]ng out at
the same time. And he does ask a number of really key critical questions about the sort of
things we were into.”

Tim Burstall ,

C[...]

One of a trio of films at Cannes this year
about Australia during World War II,
Emma's War is the story of a woman and
her two daughters coping with the traumas
of death and separation. The film was shot
in the Blue Mountains at the end of last
(Australian) summer, and saw Lee Remick
maki[...]Jessop, c/o Australian Producers‘ Sales Office,
or Bill Gavi'n, of Gavin Film Ltd.

The Empty Beach

Based on the novel by Peter Corris, The
Empty Beach is an updated Chandler-
esque tale of loyalty and lost illusions, in
which the unique light and seascapes of
Sydney replace the smog and palm trees of
Los Angeles. Bryan Brown, now poised on
the brink of major US stardom, plays
private eye Cliff Hardy, whose toughness
is, as in all the best shamus movies, a
shield again[...]Chris Thomson, The Empty Beach makes a
good fist of a genre the Australian cinema
has not often attem[...]Love Alone sees the welcome return to
the screen of producer Margaret (My
Brilliant Career) Fink, and[...]romance and
independence. The director this time is
Stephen Wallace (Gillian Armstrong did
Career), and the star is Helen Buday (in
Career, it was Judy Davis). For m[...]8.74.18.

Fran

Glenda Hambly’s harrowing story of a
welfare mother, which won Noni Hazle-
hurst Best Actress at last year’s AFI
Awards, is making a return visit to Cannes
after a generally[...]tralia's
capital cities, and was recently the hit of the

48 — May CINEMA PAPERS

Film Festival in Perth, the city where it is set.

Fran. Directed and written by Glenda Hambly[...]Touquet, Majestic. Tel. 38.70.94. Paul D.
Barron of Barron, Films Ltd is staying at the
Sofitel-Méditerranee. Tel. 9922.[...]r Morant and
Tender Mercies), The Fringe Dwellers is
actually his fourth film to be officially
selected on the Croisette (The Getting of
Wisdom was in the Directors’ Fortnight). it
als[...]to Oz, after a mixed
career in the US. The story of an Aboriginal
girl’s struggle to leave home, it is both an
emotional and a humorous film, and there
is a double-page spread of pictures from it
on pages 40-41. Unless there have been
any last—minute changes of plan, Beresford
himself won't be in Cannes: he started
shooting a new film for Dino De Laurentiis,
Crimes of the Heart, on 5 May.

The Fringe Dwellers. Direct[...], Carlton. Tel. 38.67.10.

Going Sane

Going Sane is a coming—home present
from John Sandford, a literary and radio
figure of the fifties, who spent a large
portion of his career in the UK, where he
gave up a successf[...]to train as a screenwriter
with Carl Foreman. It is a comedy about a
mining engineer who becomes obsessed
with the minute-by-minute passing of time.
Screening at Olympia Four, Monday 12
May (1[...]26.

Housebroken

Housebroken, formerly Emoh Ruo, is one
of a trio of films making a comeback from
last year's Festival, where its star, Joy
Smithers, was the darling of the Croisette.
The film has since opened to disap[...]Films lnc., Carlton.
Tel. 38.74.18. David Elfick is staying at the
Sofitel-Mediterranée, Tel. 99.22.[...]illion (Australian
dollars), l Own the Racecourse is a story
whose main attribute is its charm: it tells of a
somewhat dim-witted teenage boy who is
conned into believing he has bought the
Harold Park Racecourse for $20. The out-
come of the scam, though, is not quite what
one might expect.

I Own the Racec[...]Touquet,
Majestic. Tel. 38.70.94. Paul D. Barron of Barron
Films Ltd is staying at the Sofitel-Méditerranée.
Tel. 99.22[...]men”, Brian Trenchard-Smith’s Jenny
Kissed Me is a moral tale about a woman
who quits her man and[...]and there falls into some
wicked ways. The Jenny of the title is her
eight-year-old daughter, whom she takes
with[...]ather be back with
her ‘Dad’, Dad, meanwhile, is dying . . .

Jenny Kissed Me. Directed by Bria[...]quet, Majestic. Tel. 38.70.94.

Kangaroo

The end of a long battle by director Tim
Burstall to film what is arguably the only
novel by a major novelist to have been set
in Australia, Kangaroo is a fascinating
mixture of D.H. Lawrence's perceptions of
the Australia of the twenties, a portrait of a
sinister fascist army run by the title
character, and an anatomy of Lawrence's
relationship with his wife Frieda. The[...]m —
are played by the husband—and—wife team
of Colin Friels and Judy Davis, and this is
their first screen partnership.

Kangar[...]

Eitor, the Publisher and the staff of
Papers congratulate Scott Murray, former Editor of the

magazine, on having his first feature, Devil in the

selected fior the Sema-Sine de la ..

She Was Fair Game.[...]94.

Shortchanged

1986 at Cannes sees a plethora of films
with Aboriginal themes, including Backlash
and The Fringe Dwellers. Shortchanged,
however, is the only one to have been
written by an Aboriginal, Bobby Merritt,
who is profiled on page 24 of this issue. it is
the story of an Aboriginal drover who is
trying to re—establish some kind of contact
with his son from a marriage that has long
since broken down. Merrit is the first
Aboriginal writer to have a play perfor[...]ds
as his first ‘real’ feature film. Director is
George Ogilvie, a man with a great deal of
stage experience who recently shared
directing ch[...]Originally known as Frog Dreaming, Spirit
Chaser is the film which brought E. T. star
Henry Thomas do[...]ects — with some justifica-
tion — that there is something nasty lurking
in a local pond called Donkegin Hole. The
director is the ubiquitous Brian Trenchard-
Smith, who[...]

A[...]outhern Queensland, The Surfer promises
to be one of the few Australian films
successfully to tap into that bedrock of Aus-
tralian culture, surfing. Gary Day plays an
ex-surfie, now proprietor of a beach-hire
stand, who gets caught up in a murder-
and-blackmail plot. At time of going to
press, only a promo reel is likely to be
available in Cannes.

The Surfer.[...]Twelfth Night

Tackling the difficult proposition of filming
one of Shakespeare's more elusive
comedies (apparently l[...]lly the disused
Bijou Cinema in the Sydney suburb of
Balmain), and have devoted their attention
to bri[...]h Night Pty

5o — May CINEMA PAPERS

‘Malcolm is a comedy which travels: it isn’t based on Australian humour. It comes out of
the situations and characters we have built, and it’s not reliant on particular Australian
sayings or attitudes. I ’m not Australian-born: I ’m European, so I ’m able to incorporate all of
that and make sure that it’s not just for Austr[...]funny. That ’s a mistake we've
been making for so long. It was something I really had to work hard on with the actors. God,
if you played Chekhov funny, you’d fall flat on your face!

“Malcolm is a character who, on the surface, appears to be stupid. In the film, we see an
exposition of his ability; so, even though he might be classified as retarded,[...]human being behind that who, given the right sort of circumstances — not an
institution, not a patronizing situation — will come out of himself.

“There are other people like that: th[...]ell as being a very intelligent kid, Henry Thomas of E.T. fame had the experience of
four features behind him. So, on Spirit Chaser, I treated him as an equal part[...]uation, because I don ’t
think through the mind of a fourteen—year-old.

“You can ‘t treat kids like robots and just tell them -what to do.‘ it ’s far better to create a
situation in their minds so they ’re not acting it, they ’re being it. That applies to all actors, of
course, but kids can operate on that level[...]

2 Friends. Di[...]is put together his
version for just over a fifth of the price and
by never going more than an hours drive
from Melbourne. Or, as the press
campaign (one of the films more inventive
elements) put it: "With[...]they double-crossed a nation“.
Setting the tone of the piece, Burke is
played by Garry McDonald, known to Aus-
tralian t[...]70.94.

Windrider

Marking the directorial debut of cinemato-
grapher Vince Monton, Windrider is a
comedy—romance about a wlndsurfer who
falls i[...]r Tom Burlinson,
the latter by Nicole Kidman, one of the
busiest Australian actresses of 1985. The
soundtrack is by Kevin Peek, who did the
one for the British fi[...]ore where the energy level from cast and crew was so
high: you can see it on the screen. The Surfer is a fast-moving thriller, and its quality is unlike
most present-day product in Australia. I think Frank Shields has created a look —— or a texture
— that is very European, almost French.”

James Vernon

(:.{.~a- -

.{inlmlm ul Ilrr I‘/If/i

l'\. _l\.
)4(’v<<4f

', (.'Imm\ Irrlrmuli[...]ienced, but it ‘s they who make 2
Friends work. If they were too experienced, they ’d be hitting marks too much, and they ’d lose
the sense of idle casualness that they lend to it. And anyway,[...]ing. They always have their lines
down, and there is no difference in their behaviour on set, e[...]

The 1986 Kiwi presence on the Croisette is a
little muted this year, at any rate in terms of
numbers. And the familiar first-floor-with-
terra[...]Marketing Director, Lindsay
Shelton, for reasons of economy: the first
floor gaff was not, for some reason, avail-
able this year. The NZFC is thus up one, on
the second floor left.

Of the eight films being screened at the
Olympia, on[...]Riddiford’s Arriving Tuesday,
formerly Monica, is produced by the
ubiquitous Don Reynolds (whose na[...]n no less than half this year’s Kiwi
crop), and is about an expat returning to
the homeland and a fo[...]e title
role.

Dangerous Orphans (Reynolds again) is
directed by John Laing, one of the few
veterans of the New Zealand film scene
(Beyond Reasonable Doubt, The Lost
Tribe, Other Halves). It is an urban thriller,
set in Wellington, about a trio of kids who
take on a multi-million-dollar heroin set-
up.

Dorothee Pinfold of the Gibson Group is
representing Dangerous Orphans and last
year’s The Quiet Earth; Shelton is looking
after Arriving Tuesday, Other Halves, and[...]ge Films/ Challenge
Film Corporation to take care of Bridge to
Nowhere and to show a promo reel of
Queen City Rocker (fuller details in Mike
Nicolaidi’s regular New Zealand column at
the front of the magazine).

The New Zealand Film Commi[...]

Of Petrov, prisons and grips

Three Victorian productions provide
exercises in problem-solving

Cheating is a major part of Australian
filmmaking — in the nicest possible
way, of course. For his last film, Wills
and Burke, Melbo[...]Weis cheated
like mad, recreating the red centre of
Australia in its generally green
bottom right—hand corner. Now. for
his latest project, Petrov, which Weis
is producing as a four-hour,
$3-million-plus miniseries for PBL,
the cheating is less spectacular, but
equally crucial.

The main[...]reary
panelled rooms, and the regimented
neatness of the RAAF base at
Laverton — an ideal equivalent[...]ing, says Petrov's pro-
duction designer Jo Ford, is to cap-
ture the feel of what it was like for
Russians to come to Australi[...]as ditchwater.

“You have to remember that this
is the early fifties, which would be
the equivalent of the mid-forties any-
where else in the world. We talked to
the real Mrs Petrov about the interior
of the Russian embassy. And, if
we'd made the sets as stark as she
said they were[...]t we were doing it all for two-
and-six — which is probably what
the Russians did their interiors for,
anyway!"

Petrov deals with the defection, in
1954, of Soviet diplomat Vladimir
Petrov — an event whos[...]effectively keep the Aus-
tralian Labor Party out of office for
20 years, thanks to Menzies’ ability
to make political capital out of the
links between the Soviets and the
ALP under i[...]played in the film by Simon Chilvers.

“Act One is a spy thriller,” says
director Michael Carson.[...]etrov defects; in Three, Mrs
Petrov defects. That is at the centre
of it, because defecting to a foreign
country is almost a bigger deal than
shooting your lover, an[...]efect: he forced her to. Then, in Act
Four, Evatt is the central character,
and we focus on the political side of
the affair.”

Petrov himself is played by Alex
Menglet, a Russian actor who left
Russia — he is at pains to point out
that he didri’t defect — in 1980. For
him, the series is mainly “a spy
thriller”, or that, at any rate, is how
he is approaching it, “it widens the
space for the ac[...]ith Petrov, I've got much more
space.”

Menglet is not the only Russian on
the set of Petrov: during the lunch
break, the corridors of the Gas &
Fuel Building are heavy with foreign
vo[...]party scene which had
taken up the morning looked so
right, was because they were right.
The extras ha[...]ground information on every-
thing from the shape of the arm-
bands Russians wear when mourn-
ing, to the correct way to drink
vodka. The more onerous side of the
research which lies behind Mac
Gudgeon and Cl[...]r Robert Manne.

One completely unreliable source
of information has turned out to be
ASlO which. thou[...]thing," says Ford.
“They wouldn't even tell us if they
had telephones, in case that gave
something away!”

An equal degree of non—coopera-
tion resulted in the other big cheat of
the autumn schedule: the finding of
a prison location for Entertainment
Media's Just Us. Based on the book
by Gabzrielle Carey, co-author of
Puberty Blues, it parallels the love
affair betwe[...]to get Haley released.

The Victorian Department of Cor-
rective Services proved as unhelpful
as ASIO[...]to allow director Gordon
Glenn to film inside — or, for that
matter, outside — Pentridge. Glenn
an[...]meant to
keep people in. A boathouse on the
edge of Albert Park lake then pro-
vided the setting for the prison
theatre, which is where Carey and
Haley met.

The boathouse, which had few
windows, was much to the liking of
Ellery Ryan, a cinematographer for
whom the passing of film noir was a
dark day [sic]. Stills photograph[...]ing major
problems, but Ryan remained
unmoved. “If the stills photographer
doesn't complain," he sai[...]a Trobe, and who have
worked together on a number of
previous projects, have spent two
occasionally fr[...]l theatrical
potential, citing Fran as an example
of a movie whose limited big-screen
exposure could do wonders for its!

—.

What rrexr? Micliuel Cars[...]mr) and Phil Cross

(focus pullen on ll1e'.\€I of Petrov,

Political intrigues:
Wabik (Dr Mi[...]

TV career: “Fran is going to rate its
arse off when it is shown on TV,” he
says.

Just Us has, says Beilb[...]to be
seen in The Right-Hand Man); and
the issue of the injustice done to
Terry Haley who, since the age of
nine, has spent only one year of his
life on the outside. “We were all out-
raged that that kind of situation
could exist: that’s another reason we
made the film," he says.

Glenn, who had spent most of the
lunchbreak asleep on the grass,
indicating the rigours of a five-week
schedule which requires him to
deliver three minutes of screen time
a day, is eager to point out that Just
Us is not a stereotypical prison tale
— all beatings[...]te at all. i think
you can understand their point of
view: every time someone does
make a prison film,[...]unsympathetic to the system. What
were trying to do here is show how
it happens. in Ted Fioberts’s script,
there is this one warder who is out-
raged that they can get away with
this. I wa[...]have produced a tight shooting
schedule, but they do not seem to
have otherwise hampered the
project.

Working with “an enormous cast
of untried actors” and a low budget
does make for[...]ar moments: organizing six
rock bands and a crowd of 200 at
the Seaview Ballroom, dressing up
350 peop[...]e Melbourne Cricket
Ground. But surprisingly, one of the
most spectacular shots has come
from the grip[...]ibility and movement than
the usual single crane, or even the
more sophisticated Louma crane,
could handle. Constructed by
McDonald at a cost of $9,000, it is
the only one of its kind in Australia.

The crane itself looks li[...]narrow, tumble-down
street in Richmond, where it is set up
on the back of a gleaming, silver
converted F100.

For the shot, the camera has to
follow the actor walking past the
front of a two-storey house and in
the gate; it then has t[...]straight up to the top verandah
and in the window of the front room.
in effect, it is a double movement
with the small, top, crane maki[...]A normal crane would
only have been able to go up or
down and through an arc of less
than what was needed to follow the
action. T[...]es, they would have
used a Louma crane on the end of a

Chapman,” says McDonald, “which
is basically the same as what l‘ve
done here,except the Louma crane
has a ‘hot head’ (that is, its remote
control). You can’t ride a person on
it. Thats good and bad. But if youre
doing a critical shot like this one, it's
p[...]the camera than rely on
video splits. This crane is also a little
thicker and bulkier, but it still only
weighs about half a ton.“

One of the biggest problems the
grips had was indeed the weight.
With the camera operator on the end
of the small crane and the assistant
grip (Wayne Mar[...]be a good
counterbalance — a 1,000 pound
block of lead, in fact. The double
crane also required two[...]Mr"-
Donald '.C douhle-armed crane‘ on the
56/ of Dogs in Space.

Production
notes

The Australian[...]metre rogue croc that terrorizes the
inhabitants of Darwin, started shoot-
ing on 21 April in Norther[...]oman, with Rachel
Ward, Bryan Brown and Sam Neill is
underway, as is Barron Films‘
Shame, a drama set in an outback[...]ting ,until 11 July,
Directed by Tim Burstall, it is an
ABC/International Film Management
co-production. Filming on Richard
Lowenstein's Dogs in Space is now
on the downhill; Set in inner urban
Melbourne in the late seventies, it is
one of the few films attempting to
commit contemporary events to
celluloid.

Production of Yoram Gross’s
animation features Dot and the
Bu[...]ight takes and the shot was
done. After two weeks of prepara-
tion, everything in the grip depart-
men[...]But, according to
McDonald, that won't be the end of
this new device. “There are so many
uses for the double crane," he
enthused. “At different times when
I'm on jobs or just driving around, I
dream up all these crazy shots,
hoping that somebody will say, ‘lets
do it!’ "

He believes cranes should be
used more[...]ou just move
the arm and you get a‘ dolly shot. If
you want to go down, you move
the crane to ground level and don't
have to build scaffolds or rostrums.”

recent deal with Disney. Both fi[...]pie Produc-
tions‘ Footrot Flats — The Movie, is
still going, and is expected to be
readyjby Christmas.

Producers of the comedy, Spirits
of the Air, originally planned as a
50-minute short,[...]May. The Bee Eater and
Just Us wrapped at the end of
March. Still in pre-production, Some-
thing Great is yet to find another
director, after Jonathan Hard[...]list.

In the television industry, another
change of directors (or direction)
caused more drama than most. Jack
Thom[...]s, Joe Wi/son, was abruptly
ended after two weeks of shooting.
Filming began again on 14 April, this
t[...]ally, Sharks (not
crocodiles) Paradise, the story of
three undercover cops working on
the Gold[...]

FEATURES

PRE-PRODUCTION

AVENGERS OF THE CHINA SEAS
Prod. company .....Ni|sen Premier[...]Synops g in town whose
skill with a cricket bat is almost unnatural . . .
he's gotta have a secret.[...]s
Gauge. .35 mm
Synops . . maker.
find the spread of a big city threatens their
lifestyles.

Prod[...]m
Shooting stock . 9247. 5294

Synopsis: The film is based on the true story of
the Pyjama Girl Murder. A girl's body was
found i[...]n
bath at Sydney University, on view to
thousands of people, until the murder was
solved in 1944.[...].. .... ..35 mm

Synopsis: A high adventure story of a boy's

The Cinema Papers
Production Survey

A full listing of the features, teiemovies,
documentaries and shorts now in pre-
production, production or post-production in

initiation into manhood[...]ane crash in the remote Australian
raintorest. It is a life or death journey that
involves magic and ritual.

PANDEMONIUM

Prod. company ............ ..K.F.M. Pandemonium
Pty Ltd

Producer. ..Robert Fran[...]A pagan passion play set under and
on the shores of Bondi beach, with bulk
ratbaggery and meaning.

T[...]n
Length. ...120 minutes
Synopsis. The true story of the trials and
triumphs of Australia's golden boy of boxing

who fell from grace as a result of world War I’s
conscription hysteria and was res[...]emphis, lonely,
bewildered and reviled at the age of 21.

TERRA AUSTRALIS

Prod. company .............[...]........................ ..Graham Sharpe
Director of
model design ........ .. ..Norman Yeend
Consultan[...]Synopsis: Based on scientific findings, the film
is set in prehistoric Australia.

PRODUCTION

BACK[...]ry comedy/drama set
in Melbourne and New York. It is the story of a
female American singing star who has
achieved w[...]A huge rogue crocodile terrorises
the inhabitants of Darwin.

DOGS IN SPACE

Prod. company ...........[...]set
amid the comedy, chaos and crazy con-
fusion of a typical inner-city shared
household as the indulgent years of the
seventies give way to the harsher realities of
life in the eighties.

DOT AND THE BUNYIP

Prod.[...]Yoram Gross
Scriptwriter .....Greg Flynn
Director of photography Graham Sharp
Director of animation.. ..Jacques Muller
Assoc. producer... S[...]oil his plans. Dot soon
discovers that the circus is merely a front for an
international wildlife smug[...]..Yoram Gross
Photography Graham Sharpe
Director of animation.. ..Ray Nowland
Assoc. producer[...]

FRENCHMAN’S FARM

Publicity[...]adame
Cheveraux).

Synopsis: A university student is driving back
to Brisbane in the summer of 1984 when she
passes through a time warp taking h[...]dler (Sugar).

S nopsis: The film tells the story of a woman
w o breaks with convention and defies the
taboos of an era in the pursuit of self-know-
ledge and sexual fulfilment.

PROMISES[...]artin Sacks (Slate).
Synopsis: A compelling drama of abduction
and obsession set along the Murray Rive[...]and Wyn,
kill a policeman while robbing the bank of a
small country town. A young school teacher,
Blanche McBride, witnesses the crime and is
kidnapped by the brothers and taken across
the state to a hideout.

SPIRITS OF THE AIR

Prod. company ......... ..Meani[...]ly
religious sister live in a shack in the middle of a
vast desen. The man dreams of leaving in a
flying machine of his own invention. A comedy
of the ironic.

THE STEAM DRIVEN ADVENTURES
OF RIVERBOAT BILL

Prod. company. Phantascope Ltd[...]ted adventure set on the
Murray River at the turn of the century.
Riverboat Bill and his crew attempt to protect
an illegal bunyip from the long arm of the law.

PRODUCERS

Help us make this Production
Survey as complete as poss-
ible. If you have something
which is about to go into pre-

production, let us know and we
will make sure it is included.

Call Kathy Bail on (03)
329 5983, or write to her at
Cinema Papers, 644 Victori[...]

F Rushes — a fast and reliable[...]T Air Charter ensure were close by at all times.

is an accredited travel agent able to organise all P[...]Charter team Courier and Airfreight Services —

is assured to find you the right aircraft for the j[...]ability and speed you need Australia-

A DIVISION or TNT MANAGEMENT PTY LIMITED Wide —Worldwi[...]

3 F.U.K. FM (106.3 ON YOUR DIAL)
Prod. company .. ..MS Pr[...]FM disc jockeys who find themselves suddenly
out of work, and in need of money quickly.
They implement a series of get-rich-quick
schemes as well as elaborate cons[...]Keith Allen (James Hammett).
Synopsis: The story of the Tol uddle Martyrs,
a group of six Dorset farm wor ers who, in the
early 1830s, formed one of the world's first
trade unions and, in doing so, were convicted
of sedition and transported to the penal colony
of New South Wales. Their plight became a
cause céi[...]y led to them being
pardoned, largely as a result of the work of Mr
Pitt.

FREE ENTERPRISE

Prod. company .. ..B &[...](Mouth).

Synopsis: A love story based on a book of the
same name by Gabrielle Carey.

Please help us[...]Phone Kathy Bail on
(03) 329 5983 with any errors or
omissions.

5

Rank Electroni[...]you the best — with
their comprehen-
sive range of
Steenbeck post
production
equipment and
Quartzcol[...]luminaire to
a comprehensive
studio installation,
or post production
excellence — like
Steenbeck’s ST 921
Film Editor, or the
new ST 20’lVVideo
Reporter, you can[...]

Howsen (Governor-General), David Grey
(Clerk of Courts), John Howard (David
Silverman), Andrew Bo[...]e Harding (The Surgeon).
Synopsis: The true story of the discovery of
Australia. Sort of.[...].. ...Betacam
Synopsl red centre
during the event of HaIley‘s Comet.
GOING BUSH
Prod. company ......[...]elley
community.

Synopsis: How the West was Lost is the
story of the Aboriginal pastoral workers’ strike
of 1946-49 told through a combination of
documentary and dramatic reconstruction.
Aborigin[...]il they
began to question their lot with the help of
white prospector, Dori McLeod. in 1942,
McLeod met with hundreds of Aboriginals from
the Pilbara region and, after six weeks of
meetings it was decided the only way to achieve
justice was to strike. after WWII. This is the
story of their struggle as told by those who lived
it.

LI[...]. . . . . . . . .50 minutes

Synopsis: The origin of life and the
controversial suggestion that life did not begin
on earth but was seeded from the depths of
space.

MAKE WAY FOR THE MACHINES

Prod.[...]....50 minutes

Synopsis: investigates the effect of new
technology on work and leisure in capitalist
society.

A MEETING OF MINDS

Prod. company .......... .. Ministry of Education-
Curriculum Branch

Dist. company ........... .. Ministry of Education —
Curriculum Branch

....Ivan Gaal

_[...]is: The film follows the involvement
and progress of four students with various
backgrounds and intere[...]ican dance
competitions. The film follows a group of
dancers who vary in age from eight years old to

60 years old.

VINCENT, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF
VINCENT VAN GOGH

Prod. company... ...... ..l|Ium[...]Fuji

Synops s: A film about the life and ‘work of
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890).

WAR B[...]ngth .. 50 minutes

Gauge...
Synopsis: War Brides is the story of some of
the 15,000 Australian women who married
American[...]ship' to join their sweethearts
on the other side of the world. Forty years later,
they talk about the[...]cc .
Cast: George Donikian.
Synopsis: Witch Hunt is a story of trial and
error, innocence and guilt. It was an attempt to
find a crime — the so-called "Greek
Conspiracy", but it turned into a m[...]r

in judgement that was revealed as a
conspiracy of a far larger order — a conspiracy
against members of t e Greek community.

SHORTS

THE ANNIVERSARY
P[...]amilton hold a
dinner-party to celebrate 25 years of marriage,
with disastrous results. A madcap comed[...].24 minutes
Gauge.... ...... ..16mm
Synopsis. ony is con ronted with his own
sexuality when he meets a[...]Adrian Ward
(Tom).

5 nopsls: An alien spacecraft is the last thing
C ris expects to find in his backy[...]teenage
boys encounter with a vicious alien.

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN
Prod. company... ..Full Moon Films[...]this Production
Survey as complete as poss-
ible. If you have something
which is about to go into pre-

production, let us know and we
will make sure it is included.

Call Kathy Bail on (03)
3295983, or write to her at
Cinema Papers. 644 Victori[...]

SHARKY’S PARTY
Prod. company. .[...]...... ..16 mm

Synopsis: Sharky’s social style is lacking, but
his luck shines at a party where men[...]s
0 Australian innovation, presenting an
analysis of how it works, how it has worked and
where it and[...]Eastmancolor

Synopsis: The first in a series of films entitled
Voices on the Page about contempor[...]k, planned for use
in secondary schools, Colleges of Advanced
Education and tertiary institutions generally.
The series is concerned with writers as inter-
preters of society. David Williamson is seen in
various activities, such as a rehearsal o[...]Synops .

Heritage Commission's series, Artisans of
Australia. It shows the work of Christine Cooke
and Elizabeth Stevens who work in[...]ncilling and
some investigation work on the walls of Villa
Alba, an unrestored and unoccupied building[...]ng stock ....Kodak

Synopsis: The creative force of women as
reflected in their contribution to prehi[...]mm
Shooting stock Kodak

Synopsis: The ‘c case is
the latest milestone in a 100-year battle by
wome[...]ut the
journey through the rehabilitation process of
alcoholic Aboriginals at Benna|ong's Haven.

HENR[...]sis: Four short videos for the
international Year of Shelter for the homeless.

THE HUMAN FACE OF
HONG KONG

BETTER RICH THAN RED

Prod. company...[...]... ..16mm
Synopsis: A film about the top stratum of

commercial and social life in Hong Kong. lt
cent[...]nopsis: A film set within the Chinese com-
munity of Hong Kong. Here, people know little
of the romantic social life generated by British
presence. The film is about two hawkers, a
squatter and their families as they struggle to
make a home and living in the face of a well~
organized bureaucracy.

LOOKING AFTER YOU[...]rina Lee

Length. .20 minutes
Synops . es is very
common among older people. This film shows
o[...]age their
diabetes by proper diet, exercise. care of the
feet, and consultation with their dieticians[...]didate
in a marginal seat through the seven weeks of
the campaign, to the numbers coming in and
the gathering of the faithful for the election-
night party.

DOCT[...]m follows Dr Bruce Shepherd
through the aftermath of the Medicare dispute.
Shep erd is committed to the privatization of
health care, and the film explores the
personalities and the lifestyle of the surgeons
and their relationships with the com[...]r last days in the clinic and the first few
weeks of their return to the community as they

struggle t[...]h .90 minutes
Gauge. ....16mm

Synopsis: The film is about the criminal justice
system and its treatment of juvenile offenders.
The film includes, for the fi[...]ant.. Jim Ward
Gauge ...16 mm

Synopsis: The film is an inside story of life at
The Sydney Morning Herald. The film looks[...]athering, the meetings, to
the late night rolling of the presses.[...]90 minutes
Gauge... ....... ..16mm
Synopsis. e im is y I the world of
the unattached. Charles is recently divorced

and struggling to get his life together. He is in
love and trying to establish a relationship. At
the same time, a small group of women vie for
his attention.

TH[...]. . . . . . . . . . . ..16 mm

Synopsis: The film is about a Vietnamese
refugee family and the visit to Australia of a son
they haven’t seen for four years. A movin[...]share their
present with their son.

THE SCIENCE OF WINNING

Prod. company... ...... ..Film Australia[...]nt
has declined dramatically since the golden age
of the sixties. The debacle at the Montreal
Olympic[...]an athlete? What are the ethics . . . is it still

spon?
SOLID PLASTERING

Prod. company..[...]minutes

Gauge... ....... ..16 mm

Synopsis: This is the fifth in the Australian
Heritage Commission's series, Artisans of
Australia. It shows the work of Larry Harrigan,
a third generation solid plasterer. He has been
working on the exterior of the Collingwood
Town Hall in Melbourne for the pa[...]estoration job. He demonstrates the various
kinds of plastering including running moulds,
makin[...]

FILM ROBOTS OF THE FUTURE
HAVE ARRIVED AT FILMWEST!

FROM CAMRAI[...]1
Telephone: (02)B16 3371

With the versatile KEM K800 you can easily transfer
16 mm or 35 mm film to video or lay sound direct
to your video pictures.

THE
NEW XTR

FROM AATON

CAMRAIL is simple to handle, easy to assemble and despite
its lightweight is very tough. It can be put upside down to
g[...]

Synopsis: Uluru — An Anangu Story is a
unique portrayal of Australian history. Rarely if
ever before has the opportunity been available
to present the entire history of an area, from
the times before the white man to the present
day through the perspective of Aboriginals
whose lives have spanned such a period. The
program is set against the backdrop of Uluru
(Ayers Rock) and is a personal, human story.

WE ARE THE LANDOWNER

P[...]6 mm
Shooting stock ....ECN

Synopsis: Today, one of the most positive
aspects of traditional Aboriginal Australia is the
outstation or clan homeland movement. After a
general introduct[...]e, the film
goes to Baniyala, homeland settlement of the
Madarrpa clan. The picture that emerges is of
traditional Aboriginal people running their own
a[...]gy in
the process, with competence and joy.

WHAT IS A JEW TO YOU?[...]. .Tom Haydon

groducer" Agkins
irector... . i e do 5
Photography .. ......Mike Edols,

Fabio Cavader[...]unity in
north-west Australia after several years of
banishment.

WOMEN’S STUDIES SERIES

Prod. comp[...]onjunction with the
Curriculum Development Centre of the
Schools Commission and all State Educational[...]nutes
Gauge.. ........ ..35 mm
Synopsis: A series of documentary films on
Australia's five world herit[...]..16 mm

Synopsis: A film made for the Department of
Sport and Recreation and the Victorian
Camping Association concerning the
integration of disabled people into the
Residential Camping Prog[...]A film to delve behind the bland
scientific walls of an herbarium, to reveal the
rich matrix of history, scholarship and common
unity found there[...]$2o,ooo
Length 2 minutes
Gauge... ..BVU
Synopsis. of the
SEC.

NEW SOUTH WALES FILM

CORPORATION[...]to tele-
phone for information and help in times of
mental stress.

ROUNDABOUTS — GAINS ALL[...]this Production
Survey as complete as poss-
ible. If you have something
which is about to go into pre-

production, let us know and we
will make sure it is included.

Call Kathy Ball on (03)
3295983, or write to her at
Cinema Papers, 644 Victoria
Stree[...]Synopsis: A dramatized documentary on the

plight of the Afghan cameleers brought to
Australia to open[...]Jennifer Allen
Boom ope ..Geoff Krix
Publicity.. or ie Brown
Studios Gore Hill
Length. ..... ..30 minutes
n origina p ay or television.
BUTTERFLY ISLAND 2
Prod. company . .l[...]ops y p es depicting the
Iiestyle and experiences of a family-run
Queensland Barrier Reef resort islan[...]entangling ramifications -
much to the irritation of both.

FUTURETROUPERS

Pr[...]..1" video

Synopsis: In the near future, an out-of-work
theatre troupe inadvertently prevent the piracy
of Australia's underground power source by a
most de[...]uge
Synopsis.

Tan, when an Australian patrol of 108 men
fought off more than 1000 experienced Vie[...]pper (Nellie).
Synopsis: A miniseries on the life of Nellie
elba.

THE SHIFIALEE
Prod. company ..[...]rden and a handicap, and also
a constant reminder of bitterness and failure. It
was his nature to do things the hard way: the
way he saw it, there was[...]services for

any money-making operation. inept, if
enthusiastic, businessmen, their ve jobs lead
the[...]Phone Kathy Ball on
(03) 329 5983 with any errors or
omissions.

CINEMA PAPERS May — 63

D

Composers ........................[...]and an unbeIiev- Standby wardrobe Davina Maxwell Kdi"a'°'-- '-361:9" E93” gra)pher Sally Woodrow Da[...]‘
rod. manager .. ris age ~l - ’ » - - H l M k»l'l ec rician . . IC ayne
Prod. supervise vi lai[...]lson

'C'EWa" Bumen brawling climax in the waters of tropical Standbyprops...[...]wardrobe . ob n Adams ro . secretary .. a erine is op Nurse ic i i ers
Standby wardro e . ...[...]

FOR THE SUPPLY OF ALL _ ' ll PROUD TO BE SUPPLYING:

FILM PRODUCTIO[...]e. “Assign- David Watts
__Alan ‘rrevona ment" is the programme. David Lockhart owns Asst directors[...]n Perrot the show, the company that makes it, and is Karen Moore,
Elaine Fitonor the new current affai[...]......... ..Sue Manger,
Synopsis: The love affair of two youngsters Sound edit David Dundas bl9 5l°ll[...].—PeterBusse|l
families alienatesthe population of a small Oplicals... ...BillS kes, PRISONER Stagin[...].......... ..Peter Morris,

345000 Scriptwriters.
da Marsh John Messenger

mlnUlF-‘S Story editor..[...]gitghting supervisor ...KeI(cI:‘loI|:.efr%|Ll°SO_|'sl R h JJacl<it\1oryaih :e"|il‘<;lh-er rJi~r[...]_ ' Ian Crawford,
Vision switche . Jenny Williams is! asst directors... R ri...E0c|'|Iy Fgrster, synlo[...]........................ ..Tara Ferrier, Prisoner is about the crimes they committed. Prod. manager Gr[...]Casting ...... .. . aham Moore
Synopsis: Love 'em or hate ’ern.but everybody ""“"‘;’t°l§,‘[...]KeY9’lP - '3” Bellallacl‘
and the passions of Ausrrarian families ‘ _ _and Hairdressers .....[...].............. ..Anna Baulch. synopsis. The Story of rhree undercover cops Best b_oy ..Peter Maloney
P[...]e P d. f f th I . r Boom operato .Scott Ftawlings
OF NOVEMBER Standby props .....PauIKiely. ‘"3 '59[...]UGH-I-ERS C1oo(tume designer. F '..%|aSrehGrigin|
is.company .......... .. pecia e ecs .. . rry icoc .[...]:_ Kris Orchard (David Lockhart), Tony , ZbYSZ3l< K{ZY5Zl<°Wl3k Construction manager. ..Micl'iael McLean
Prod. ma[...]onstruction... Wilf Flint,
Unit manager ..Lance e or re ‘s, en en eso n a ones . ‘ eer _ non-ipson[...]irector.. E| ...bKarl1eSWoods ¢rt'r|i_ur),GKatri_na josteg) (iooglyg 'CAoleF)y1 Sojnia Exec producer[...]n Marrir._
ontinuity ....... .. . iza et teptoe a is eorgina one , n ni ur y an . . . . . . . . . . .[...]David r:reld_
.JenniferAllen Synopsis: Prime Time IS a new concept in Prod.manager ...JanetVeal[...]

* Professionally equipp[...]udio;
preview theatres (16 and 35mm); and a staff of
experienced professional camera and sound operato[...]ws.

What we don ’t have are Sydney ’s prices or
waiting lists.
Call us and compare our pri[...]

Synopsis: A woman is murdered . . . a truck is
hijacked . . . and terror comes to the Ioneliest
road in the Australian outback. Alice to
Nowhere is a story of desperate men and
lonely people. It is an action-packed drama in
which the characters act under the awesome
influence of the vast emptiness that is the Aus-
tralian outback.

THE BEERWAH BOLT[...]ane
Mixed at. ..ABC Brisbane
Laboratory ...Cineco|or
Length .15 minutes
Gauge... ....16mm
Shooting sto[...]st, Alan Frost.

S nopsis: A c|imber‘s eye view of the ascent
ofy Mt Beerwah in S.E. Old. The climb[...]c’.
roof climbing, spectacular scenery and some
of the more obscure problems encountered by
rock cli[...]Flying Rigs — 3 dimensional movement for models orof a
young country schoolgirl. Sexually attacked by[...]she runs away alone to
the raw Ii e and pitfalls of the city streets.

DREAMTIME — THE MONSOON[...](Wala).
Synopsis: Based on Dreamtime Legend, this
is the tale of an Aboriginal boy Wala and Quork
Quork, the frog.[...]largest frog in the
world, to help. What follows is a lesson in tact
Wala will never forget. Whatever you do, don't
step on a Quark Quark!

FILMSTRUCK

Prod.[...].
Synopsis: A ten-pan series on the social
impact of the cinema.

FIVE TIMES DIZZY

Prod. company. .Sa[...]Video Transfer Services

Mixed at ..Audi O’brien
Budget.. ...$1.4 million
Length 2 x 25[...]ing and the world goes five times dizzy.

FLOWERS OF RETHYMNON

Prod. company .. Media W[...]larke,

Phillip Dalkin
Based on the recollections of ......... ..Lewis Lind
Photography Gaetano N. Man[...]e island

evading German forces during the Battle of
Crete in 1941. it is a documentary with drama-
tised sequences.

FUNER[...]onary heart disease. How and
why it develops, who is at risk and simple pre-
cautions we can al[...]

7 /’ 2 , ) V

. if/1:». . /C.»/1/Z ///1./a-ii. -
The Premier of New South Wales (The Hon. Neville Wran,Q.C., M.P.[...]ation to continue to carry
out Recommendation Two of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry
into the Distribution and Exhibition of Australian Films in New South
Wales.

The Recommendation provides forthe blowing up of 16mm shortfilms
to 35mm gauge. The Corporation will contribute towards the cost of
blowing up four short films annually if a commercial distributor/
exhibitor will guarante[...]ion;
2. Not a promotional documentary, travelogue or any other
film of that kind.
The four films to be blown up within the scheme will comprise:

0 The winner of the Greater Union Distribution Prize at the
1986[...]the New South Wales Film Corporation with a list of films in
order of preference by July 30, 1986.

it is important to emphasise that the New South Wales Film
Corporation will not be involved in the selection of such films. This will
be an arrangement between t[...]nted on 4 wheel drive vehicles, for the film-
ing of ’The Man from Snowy River’ — that's portable power.

MacFarlane's emergency service is FAST and their rates
very reasonable.

Send for our brochure and price list and think of us when
you next hear ”Lights, action. .[...]

HUNGER

............... ..ABC
Jan Ch[...]ya), Lupco
Talevski (Tome).

Synopsis: In Between is a four—pan miniseries
about a group of four adolescents from
Turkish, Cambodian, Macedon[...]n backgrounds, facing the challenges
and dilemmas of growing up in a multi-cultural
society. it shows[...]r Birch,
Barbara McGregor.

Synopsis: The control of Life. Tomorrow's
people — Today! Australia's stance in man's
next stage of evolution.

ONE WILD WEEKEND WITH THE
LONESOME RU[...]omat, hankers after the
beautiful and rugged land of Texas. One
weekend she escapes with her horse-lov[...]nh rodeo where
they learn a little about the ways of the rodeo —
bulls, horses, stetsons. country Sr[...]lot about cowboys and their
WOfI'|6I'l.

THE PACK OF WOMEN

Prod. company .Sideshow Alley Ltd
Producer[...]Kennedy, Merryl Tankard.
Synopsis: The programme is based on the
successful cabaret produced in London and
across Australia. Consists of songs, prose and
poetry fitted together to make up a mosaic of
new ways of looking at women. Old images are
juxtaposed with new lyrics, layers of irony and
humour bring out startling meanings in[...].Brett Hull
Runner.. ..Mark Bishop
Unit publ .....Di White
Catering. . anny Popper
Mixed at. ..Soundli[...], George Shevtsov (Kislytsin), Bill
Fox (Fergen O'Su|livan), Peter Black (North).

Synopsis: The Petrov Affair is the greatest
spy story in Australian history. The detection of
Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov in Canberra in
1954 becomes a political thriller with all the
elements of espionage, intrigue and romance.

QUEST FOR HEALI[...].April 1986

Synopsis: A worldwide investigation of the
traditions and methods of alternative healers.
The series shows there are methods of
healing, used for thousands of years,
developed through constantly changing
soci[...]essentially the same.
They work on the root cause of illness and take
the whole being into account: mi[...]supervisor.
Make-up artist
Hairdresser.
Wardrobe su

Stan[...]est boy
Publicity ..

..Johnathan Hughes
Sandra O'Ha||oran

Unit publicis . Sandra O'Hal|oran
Catering[...]).
Synopsis: A miniseries based on the true story
of cyclone Tracy, which virtually destroyed
Darwin i[...]gth .. ...... ..30 minutes

Synopsis. An original ha|f—hour play for tele-
vision.

CINEMA PA[...]

- For details please contact:
One large[...]0
TELEPHONE NUMBER REMAINS
2213966

****i'********k**
Wanted & Positions Vacant

For quality 35 mm sc[...]t, etc., people) more than experience. Write tous if
you see yourself as: assistant, acting talent, line producer, artist,
designer, machinist, technician, etc. or consultant/supplier of props,
wardrobe, weapons, Techniscope, Kodachrome[...]hics, electronics, servo motors, locations, etc.

If you think you have anything to contribute, or if you know of anyone
who has, please send fullest information,[...]not to have to return anything; enclose s.a.s.e. if you
want anything returned. Angol Holdings[...]

22 March.

Trying to organize any kind of meet-
ing of film industry people is difficult
enough, given that promises of
attendance are only ever as firm as
shooting schedules and the erratic
nature of freelance work. Trying to
organize such a meeting[...]ng a transport
strike proved even more difficult. So
it was something of a surprise that
the first Cinema Papers film indu[...]d out to be as success-
ful as it did.

The topic of film-to-tape transfers
is a crucial one, now that more and
more cinematographers’ work is
reaching audiences electronically,
and it attract[...]ry
representatives. With the financial
assistance of Agfa-Gevaert, the
venue of the oddly shaped (and
even more oddly named) Sixs[...]he reasons I have mentioned
above, the final list of speakers for
the morning session came together
at the last minute, and most of the
speakers had not had a lot of time to
produce visual material to support
their[...]presented
in an open manner — something

which is vital if future seminars are to
be as useful as this one w[...], from Agfa’s head office
in the Antwerp suburb of Mortsel;
Chris Hutson, a telecine operator
from AAV in Melbourne; Erik
Liepins, who is in charge of video
preservation at the National Film
Archive;[...]cal director at Videopak; Brian
Bailey, in charge of quality control at
Channel 10 in Sydney; Andrew
M[...]Roddick said that
he hoped for a relaxed exchange of

‘‘It says a lot about
what people will accept,
when you have a fellow

who lives down the
bottom of a gully, has a
set of rabbit ears on his

TV set and 22 ghosts,
and he[...]e
from a vectorscope.

ideas rather than a series of formal
lectures; and the day was obviously
succes[...]n electronics. His two-screen
slide demonstration of the qualities
of the new Agfa negative stocks.
XT125 and XT320, while primarily a
demonstration of their technical
abilities, also served to stress some
of the unique characteristics of film.
The ability of negative film to handle
an exposure range of several
camera stops and a contrast range
of 200:1 is something that cannot be
fully exploited by avail[...]finition achieved by
negative films — in excess of 1,400
lines — is still much higher than even
the high-definition v[...]ing dis-
cussed”. This makes the continuing
use of film as an originating medium
attractive, but there is a need to
press for improvements in film-to-

tap[...]ted a problem that was to be
taken up by a number of speakers:
that we are all apparently quite
willin[...]ape
post-production house with the
responsibility of making sure that, no
matter what format has been used
for shooting (Betacam, BVU, 16mm
or 35mm film), the final quality was
acceptable, not[...]tiansen was the first to point out the
difficulty of trying to judge the tech-
nical quality of rushes from VHS or
U-matic tape. It was, he said, the
tape operator's responsibility to alert
the client to any build-up of video
‘noise’. caused by successive
generations of tape dubbing. Chris-
tiansen also stressed the final nature
of a telecine transfer, pointing out
just how diffic[...]nge the
result once it was on tape.

With the aid of a waveform
monitor and a vectorscope image
projected on the large screen at the
front of the room, Christiansen then
demonstrated some of the technical
parameters of videotape. it was a

demonstration that sh[...]

importance of the colour bars on a
monitor as a reference point[...]nted later only served to
stress the deficiencies of the non-
broadcast format.

Telecine: history and
technical development

For this issue of Cinema Papers, I
will merely summarize Erik Liepi[...]assist-
ance, we plan to return to the ques-
tion of telecines in a forthcoming
issue. in Sydney, Liepins pointed out
that both the industry and the audi-
ence have come to accept a drop in
standards. Th[...]resolu-
tion from the one-time industry
standard of 2" quad VTRs to the
Betacam format or even BVU, has
been considerable. But this was
not[...]cept, when faced with
the greatly reduced quality of VHS
or Beta VCFls. “It says a lot about

72 — May CI[...]by the enemy: Peter James
talks about the problem ofof a
gully, has a set of rabbit ears on his
TV set and 22 ghosts, and he s[...]he pictures not bad!’ ”

While the major part of the
morning session was intended to
present techn[...]oached the topic with
comments about manipulation of the
telecine as a very definite part of
the creative process, and spoke of
the role of the telecine grader in
post-production. The subjective
aspects of colour and differing inter-
pretation by each individual of terms
such as warm, cold and high-key,
said Hutso[...]t to
look at a particular grader’s work as
part of the pre-production process.
Hutson stressed the n[...]a dia-
logue with the cinematographer as a
means of eliminating problems.

He then gave a valuable demon-
stration of the range of creative con-

trols that was possible, and showed
examples of the common problem

areas. He also made it clear[...]ly have the monopoly on crea-
tivity in the world of film-to-tape
transfers.

Monitors

The afternoon[...]Award winner, Peter James,
who talked about some of the
problems that he had encountered
with telecin[...]h
American NTSC system, while
working in Toronto. If nothing else,
James's demonstration served to
illustrate the quality of our own PAL
system.

“We all know what
colour bars look like?
But do we? l’ve never

held a colour bar in my
hand, or seen it on a
wall somewhere”
Peter James

But J[...]-
duce ‘bland’ images, knowing that
there was so much control available
in the telecine process. ‘‘I think this is
sometimes a bit of a cop-out," he
said. “Cinematographers tend not[...]e
with the new technology. But l don't
think this is an excuse for lazy
cinematography. I think you sh[...]that style on the screen, whether in
the theatre or in the living room."

James also talked about the
growing use of Videocassettes for
the presentation of rushes. “Just
recently," he said, “some produc-
tion manager had a flash of genius
when we were out in the desert
somewhere,[...]duction
manager, who didn't have to find a
cinema or a flatbed to screen them
on. The first day's stuf[...]t back to Colorfilm to see
how good they were. it is a trap that
people are falling into more and
more[...]in viewing the work.”

As James pointed out, it is a
psychological truth that the first im-
pression is the one that people will
carry away with them, an[...]ult will never be to their satis-
faction because of it.

James also took up what would
become[...]

in his introduction to Brian Bailey of
Channel 10, Nick Floddick said that
Bailey was either a very confident
man or a very brave one, facing a
room full of cinematographers and
production people. But Bailey
proved to be concerned with
opening up the subject of quality
control on television to a wider
group th[...]-screen comparison
between two telecine transfers of My
Brilliant Career. The first was of the
cinema-release print that was initially
suppl[...]alerted by the telecine
operators to the problems of exces-
sive contrast.

This lead to the situation[...]d, in effect, regraded the
AFI Award-winning work of Don
McA|pine, but it was a situation that
Bailey believed could have been
avoided if there was more wide-
spread knowledge of the technical
limitations. As Bailey pointed out,[...]the two
ideals together, and was highly
critical of them if they did the wrong
thing. Dialogue between a TV s[...]d one approach to this problem,
using the example of first 16mm
prints, then 1" transfers of the Ameri-
can series, Dallas. After a lengthy
process of explanation to — and
education of — Lorimar, the results
were to everyone‘s sat[...]video
post-production houses was the diffi-
culty of finding correctly-adjusted
monitors. It was, he felt, the single
most frequent cause of quality-
rejection problems.

Standards

Vince Mo[...]ailey's
decision to call for a low-contrast
print of My Brilliant Career. Although
the telecine operat[...]with a further comment about
the potential misuse of the controls
of the telecine. ‘‘In normal cinemato-
graphy," he said, “all we can do
later in grading is perhaps alter the
density and the colour. On video
transfer, you can do almost any-
thing: contrast, colours, re-rack, re-
frame — and this is a fantastic tool.
But, with all these tools, the problem
is who controls them, and how much
control the original cinematographer
has over the product.

"If you are doing the grading on a
feature film, you take enormous
care. Print upon print is sometimes
done to get it absolutely right. You
then follow it through to the cinema
where it is going to have its first run.
You talk to the proj[...]ter it goes
out to the country and the drive-ins,
of course, anything can happen:
that's something you can't control.
But, maybe two or three years down
the line, you have the film broadcast
or transferred to tape for the rental
market, and you think: ‘My god,
what's happened to that?’ We do
lose control of it, and the thought is
that there are gnomes out there in
rooms, printing it up or flattening it
down, and there is real paranoia. i
think a lot of it is our own fault,
because we don't follow it through[...]h some passion
about how the problem was a repeat
of the creative-versus-technical
arguments that, 30[...]ecause he wanted to soften the
chocolate-box look of Technicolor at
the time.

Using Monton’s examples of the

problems in communication
between the labs a[...]team, the general discussion then
turned to some of the problems
individual panel members had en-
cou[...]n, however, with a
statement that summed up a lot of
the earlier points. “Because we are
in a relati[...]this film-to-tape
explosion, perhaps the
channels of
communication that
we’ve been using
traditional[...]rtistic endeavours communicated
to a large number of people. The
higher the technology that's in-
volv[...]o average out the problems
to make sure that most of the
information gets across. That's not a
bad thi[...]nk we
should stop struggling.”

In Mason's area of special effects
work, the precision of telecines is im-
portant for accurate matte work. He
pointed o[...]e them in the cinema,
because the higher contrast of the
print is sufficient to kill off the edges.
But, on television, it is all com-
pressed, and people are suddenly
aware of it. You have to accept that
My Brilliant Career i[...]But I agree with John
Sayles, who said: ‘Cinema is becom-
ing the equivalent of a hardback
book release. TV is the paperback,
and that's where the market is.’

‘'I think that is pretty right. if
you've really got the luxury, then you
make cinem[...]gener-
ally, you've got to work knowing that
most of the people who will see your
work are going to see it on a tele-
vision screen." The difficulty of esti-
mating the loss that will occur in
transmis[...]ully’
switch, that would allow some judge-
ment of the lowest common denomi-
nator in reception. The mention of
the need for a ‘home TV set’ that
would have[...]ouble judging the
result at home. Various methods of
controlling home sets were talked
about, and comp[...]C and PAL, citing the
latter's obvious advantages of stable
tint and hue.

Special effects cinematogra[...]asked about develop-
ments in reducing the amount of
telecine ‘float’, the effect that is most
noticeable when an electronic title is
added over a film transfer, and the
film image is obviously ‘floating’ up
and down behind it Ar[...]where they
had to keep the effects shots to three
or four seconds, because of the
weave and float between miniatures
and real e[...]ses with
variation in the mechanical dimen-
sions of film stocks," said Hutson.
“They may be close e[...]es have been designed to use
the edges as a point of reference,
there are variations. I've done tests[...]tape house. A general point that
may interest you is that 16mm
actually has less problem with
weave and float, so if you're doing
opticals on tape, you will quite oft[...]esult than with 35mm as
far as telecine stability is con-
cerned."

Another interesting discussion
poi[...]V, where there are
familiar objects in your field of vision
that make any dramatic change in
colour ob[...]e subject, was probably inevitable,
given the mix of the audience. And it
continued well beyond the formal
closing of the session. From it arose
a general consensus that the next
Industry Seminar should broach the
subject of telecines in greater detail,
looking at cast studies of video post-
production methods on two film-
origi[...]audio,
and will involve representatives from
each of the areas. Further details, a
date and a venue wi[...]ture topics will be
gratefully received.

(A copy of the complete tran-
script of the Seminar is available
from Cinema Papers at a nominal
charge of $5.)

CINEMA PAPERS May — 73

What do Indiana Jones,
James Bond
and Alfred Hitchcock

'[...]ctions can help solve the problem. ( Every aspect of fihn advertising and marketing from

ESTV have the experience, with production of

. your prospectus through to posters, trailers a[...]jects include:— Flying High II (The Sequel), An Officer and a
Gentleman, The Bostonians, Brainstorm[...]opussy, Rumblefish, Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom, Scarface, Terms of Endearment, Top

Secret, Trading Places, War Games, The Year of Living Dangerously.

THE
PETER

for Network Telev[...]people and the equipment for

virtually any type of video production, large

or small. Hire the Studio or hire the people. ‘
Whichever way, you wi[...]

Whatever has happened to his
English, Konchalovsky has certainly
learned a thing or two about
violence in the intervening years, at
any rate on the evidence of Run-
away Train, which has blood, knife
sticking[...]).

At first glance, Runaway Train
looks like one of those films — The
Cassandra Crossing (1977), Terror
Train (1980) — in which a group of
miscellaneous individuals are some-
how trapped.[...]on a train-ride to oblivion. But Run-
away Train is not really like that at all.

True, two extremely[...]in, heading
for disaster across the frozen wastes
of Alaska. But the focus is emphatic-
ally elsewhere. Manny (Jon Voight)
and[...]ee, Buck a young punk who
idolizes the older man. If the train
crashes, they will be killed. But, if it
doesn’t, they will be caught.

They are also[...]orced to unweld him by higher
authority. Learning of the escape, he
growls skywards: "God, don't kill
them! Let me do it!” It is not the only
line in the film to be addressed in the
general direction of the infinite.

The pair escape via the sewer,
protected against the Alaskan mid-
winter only by a layer of grease and
cling-film beneath their prison track
suits. But it is with the train (actually
four locomotives coupled[...]emesis, and the
film its main metaphor. The train is
more mythic beast than means of
transport, emerging eerily out of a
cloud of steam to a growling base
note, and losing its eng[...]very sensibly treats
the escalating improbability of the
situation — the engineer's heart
attack, the train’s apparent un-
stoppability, the late appearance of
Rebecca DeMornay as a railroad
employee who had f[...]as narrative intensi-
fiers, whose justification is not that
they are convincing,‘ but that they
wo[...]s to be more
than just an action movie (though it
is, also, a very good action movie).

Freeze frame: Jon Voight as
Manny in Runaway Train.

And it is no mere quirk of casting
that the film’s last image, ending a
tracking shot along a row of convicts
still behind bars, should be of the
myopic, wrinkled but utterly un-
mistakable face of old Hank
Warden, core member of John
Ford's stock company.

Among other things, Runaway
Train is a homage. And watching it
is like watching a voyage of initiation
into American cinema. It is not a
gentle journey. Voight, his left eye
half c[...]rmageddon. And Roberts, never
the most restrained of performers,
constantly tries to outdo him, deliver-
ing a performance which is 90%
teeth.

Walking a tightrope of absurdities,
Konchalovsky embraces these
excesses with enthusiasm, adding a
few of his own.

Out of it all, breathless and
fascinating, comes a kind of Jaco-
bean tragedy of a movie, built round
a world-view in which chaos is held
in check, not by civilized behaviour
or knowledge — not by the control-
ler's computer or the prison’s rules
— but by a power beyond mo[...]vism
and christianity with equal deter-
mination: if there is no social order in
this world, there is no god either.
“Miracles, my ass," snarls Voight.
“One must count on oneself.”

The result is a manic, express-train
of a film, beyond belief, but beyond
mere liking or disliking, either. Only
Sam Peckinpah ever achiev[...]nd he only
once, in his sublime Bring Me the
Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), the
one great movie he made.

But that was a film born out of self-
hatred and alcoholic paranoia. Run-
away Tr[...]s thought it were, first and
foremost, a question of style. It is a
gutsy, clever film, but not a passion-
ate one.[...]uture work:
well, in that it indicates a director of
great resource and astuteness; ill, in
that it suggests a kind of clean slate,
waiting to be written on — a direc[...]Ford, but Henry Hathaway, Richard
Fleischer . . . orof production: Sue
Baden-Powell. Screenplay: Djordje[...]based on a screenplay by
Akira Kurosawa. Director of photo-
graphy: Alan Hume. Production
desig[...]

The film is structured around a TV
talk show, on which an int[...]et (Monica Maughan), to
recount their experiences of breast
cancer. And, while the women
speak, the film moves into a re-
enactment of their stories.

Kate is a 34-year-old divorcee
with an adolescent daughter, whose
own mother had died of breast
cancer when Kate was a child.
Before havin[...]ctor to perform a mastectomy
during the operation if the tumour
proves to be malignant. On dis-
covering that it is, she returns to
hospital to have the mastectomy.

The scene in which Kate goes to
the self-help group is one of the
strongest in the film: with Kate and
the group, we watch a film on breast
self-examination, and members of
the group then describe their experi-
ences to the camera. All but one of
the women who speak have actually
had breast cancer. One tells us
of her husband, who left her
because he thought she[...]trauma, and they
emphasize that high self-esteem is
essential in overcoming damaged
self-image.

For all its strengths. though, it is
during this scene that the film
becomes stylistic[...]h we are supposed to be
watching the re-enactment of Kate’s
experience as she recounts them to
Arndt[...]they were — as indeed they
are — the subjects of a more con-

76 — May CINEMA PAPERS

ventio[...]a 46-year-old woman,
married with three children, is pre-
sented with a different set of choices
to Kate: whether to have a mastec-
tomy or a ‘lumpectomy’. A lumpec-
tomy is the removal of the lump and
lymph nodes under the arm, com-
bined with three months of radiation
therapy. If cancer cells are found in
the lymph nodes, a mastectomy will
be necessary.

With the help of large quantities of
white wine, Margaret chooses a
lumpectomy, against the wishes of
her surgeon. This section of the film
is better at exploring the range of
people’s responses to breast
cancer, often with a gentle sense of
humour. Margaret's mother (Sheila
Florance) rushe[...]band, Geoff
(Peter Adams), keeps reminding her
he is affected by the problem as
well, until Margaret s[...]position to make
decisions; and that they should do
what is right for them, rather than
feeling at the mercy of doctors.
indeed, doctors do not emerge well
from Brooksbank‘s script.

Marg[...]cer affects one Aus-
tralian woman in sixteen and is the
leading cause of death in women
between 30 and 50, these fears do
not seem unreasonable. Margaret’s
surgeon tells her husband what
treatment he recommends, while
she is lying next to them on the bed.
“if it were my wife," he says, “l’d
recommend a mastectomy."

Handle with Care is again
evidence that Cox's forte is human
drama on what some would call a
small scale[...]set in
the TV studio and interspersed with
clips of Kate's and Margaret's lives

Lucinda Cowden and A[...]returning to normal, the problems
with the device of the interview situa-
tion become all too obvious. Arndt is
awkward as the interviewer, and the
film becomes[...]y
not me?” rather than “Why me?”
While this is an important message,
its delivery is reminiscent of the
doctors earlier criticized, and sets
the closing scene at variance with
the tone of the rest of the film.
Sophie Cunningham

Handle with Care: Di[...]Anne Landa. Screenplay: Anne
Brooksbank. Director of photography:
Yuri Sokol. Production designer: Nei[...]anyons

Nearly a year after the release of the
feature film (reviewed in Cinema
Papers 51, M[...]ebruary. The
production as a whole was an
unusual if not unique experiment in
marketing, with both the[...]parate mediums. The
reason for this approach was, of
course, financial: with the addition of
another marketplace, the miniseries
became a viable proposition,
despite the inevitable size of its
budget.

Unfortunately, as we know, the
film[...]yed by Sam Neill in what must be

the $7.00 price of a cinema ticket,
they were only going to get two-and-
a-half hours of drama, instead of the
six hours of miniseries which would
come to their television screens for
nothing.

The fi|m’s lack of box-office suc-
cess did little to boost expectat[...]three-
night period, it was without the fan-
fare of publicity that we've come to
expect with major Australian produc-
tions.

That was something of a shame;
for, in this reviewer’s opinion,
Robbery Under Arms is one of the
best miniseries to have been pro-
duced in Au[...]meless Land to Cowra
Breakout and The Dismissal), is its
sheer entertainment value, its charm
and humo[...]on to other bushranging sagas,
Robbery Under Arms is like a breath
of fresh air.

The scripts, by Tony Morphett and
Gra[...]-liners and are filled with
escapades reminiscent of the
Richard Lester Musketeer films of
the seventies. A somewhat standard
gaol break, for instance, is topped
by the heroes jumping into a circus
balloo[...]a
world that looks and sounds like the
past, but is seen in a distinctly con-
temporary way. Thus, when a
woman is insulted, she doesn't
become demure in the stereo[...]he punches
the man out. Captain Starlight,

\K Na; :7’

Sam Neill as Starlight: the Robbery
miniseries stands (up) and delivers.

one of his best performances to
date, is an unlikely character; yet he
is an enormously attractive one, as
he casually wanders from the cricket
fields of Adelaide to the harsh land-
scape of the bush, smoking long
cigars and chatting in French and
Chinese as occasion dictates.
Starlight, of course, is not your
normal bushranger. Closer to Raffles
than to Ned Kelly, he is a man from
the British upper class. And it is pre-
cisely this class background that
sets off t[...]r (another
strong performance, from Robert
Grubb) of Her Majesty's Constabu-

Although Neil|‘s Starlight is so
appealing, Robbery Under Arms is
not really his story. The focus of
the drama is on Dick and Jim
Marston, two young brothers who
slide further and further into a life of
crime. Their father, played by Ed
Devereaux, work[...]tuation
from which both we and they realize
there is no escape.

On this level, the miniseries —— like
the novel — is highly moralistic. And
it is also interesting to observe the
affirmation of the traditional value of
the home. While the nomadic life-
style of the bushrangers is repre-
sentative of their outlaw status, the
Marston home is seen again and
again as a sort of sanctuary, popu-
lated by the womenfolk left behind.
Dick and Jim and their father return
to the safety of the home for periods
of peace — and, of course, to revive
romances.

But they never stay[...]into the bush,
their very male world. At the end of
the drama, Dick Marston, the only
survivor, leave[...]ce
he (still) knows: home. His woman
(Liz Newman) is waiting for him, and
the final scenes establish t[...]the
future. Dick has learned his lesson.
The life of crime is behind him.