SHORT ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROGRAM

Wednesday 16 July  2014 @ 12:30PM

Wednesday 10 September  2014 @ 12:30PM _ to be confirmed _ stay tuned

WEEK [06] CITY PROJECTIONS: MELBOURNE & PARIS MODERN IN 1924

Film: The Bridge Project by Delia Teschendoff & Helen Sutton 2011 (6mins)

Film: L’Inhumaine by Marcel L’Herbier 1924  (90mins)

Guest speaker: TBA

A SHORT ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROGRAM

Wednesday 09 July 2014 @ 12.30PM

Wednesday 03 September 2014 @ 12.30PM _ to be confirmed _ stay tuned

A SHORT ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROGRAM WEEK [05]: THE CITY & THE SUBURB SPOTSWOOD [FILMS: HARVEY KRUMPET / CITY: MELBOURNE]

Guest speaker: TBA

The Suburb, a modern phenomenon, the context in which this film is set. The attention to detail of the urban fabric in this Oscar wining claymation is telling. HARVEY KRUMPET…Spotswood in detail…Harvey’s life told…

Wednesday 2014 @ 12:30pm / MADA Gallery Building G Caulfield Monash University 

Film: Harvey Krumpet by Adam Elliot 2003 (23mins)

A SHORT ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROGRAM

Wednesday 02 July  2014 @ 12:30PM

A SHORT ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROGRAM 

WEEK [04]: CARLTON & THE FRENCH NEW WAVE / LOOKING BACKWARDS & FORWARDS 

[FILMS: The Girl Friends, Secondskin, Subterranea & 57 Spring Street / CITY: Melbourne]

Guest speaker: Louise Mackenzie

In the late 1960s and early 70s in Carlton, Melbourne, there was a bunch of films being made that were unashamedly frenchnewwaveques…made cheaply mostly by students this body work seeded the renaissance of the Australian film industry. THE GIRL FRIENDS being made in the nineteen sixties indicates, in looking at Carlton today, the massive changes that have taken place since and where taking place at the time the film was made.  The next three films are from The Cinecity Project and suggest change as well  – places lived in, some abandoned and some regained, some with adjusted uses, some enabling ways of life lived, some thinking back and moving on.

THE GIRL FRIENDS (1968) Carlton, Melbourne…commission flats…terrace houses…the nineteen sixties _“These boots were made for Walking”… and dancing…    

SECONDSKIN (2009) Once was home…home again      

SUBTERRANEA (2010) Car parks…as art spaces…as film space as art                      

57 SPRING STREET (2013) Cinematic long section of a life in place in time

Wednesday 02 July 2014 @ 12.30pm / MADA Gallery Building G Caulfield Monash University 

Film: The Girl Friends by Peter Elliot 1968 (25mins)

Film: Cinecity: Secondskin by Georgia Forbes & Lisha Corcoran 2009 (1mins)

Film: Cinecity: Subterranea  By Lindy Fetherston 2010 (1mins)

Film: Cinecity: 57 Spring Street By ShMoJo 2013 (1min)

A SHORT ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROJECT

Wednesday 25 June 2014 @ 12:30PM

WEEK [03] PARIS: THE FRENCH NEW WAVE – – – AND very FAST CARS

[FILMS: PARIS VU PAR: GARE DU NORD & C’ÉTAIT UN RENDEZ-VOUS  / CITY: PARIS]

Guest speaker: Helen Runting Urban Planner & Designer KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm

These two films in their juxtaposition explore ideas which touch upon the experience of living in Paris during this period of rapid modernisation (often referred to as a second Humanization of the city). Paris at this time was not only reshaped by modern architecture – there was also a new affluence and a new freedom a new pop culture to be experienced. The two films raise questions about transport and how it shapes the city.

GARE DU NORD  by Jean Rouch: The French New Wave directors of the 1960s took their handheld cameras into the streets and it is this which contributes to Paris itself playing a role as main character in this body of film works.  GARE DU NORD  explores much of the modern experience in the second half of the 20^th century in Paris. Demolition…construction…boredom…a tiny flat…in Paris!! … A train station / a bridge.

C’ÉTAIT UN RENDEZ‐VOUS by Claude Lelouch  made a decade later, is a classic single take film, which amongst other things talks about transport and the city  [the car only becoming affordable is this post war modern period] – the film has a strange mix of contractions  – it begins just on the periphery near to where Le Cobusier worked and lived – it suggests a possibility but one that is only allowed due to a given circumstance – Just before dawn…one Paris morning…one fast car…it was a meeting.

Film: Paris Vu Par: Gare du Nord by (1964) Jean Rouch  (20mins).

Film: C’était un rendez‐vous (1976) by Claude Lelouch  (9mins)

Wednesday 25 June 2014 @ 12:30pm / MADA Gallery Building G Caulfield Monash University

PARIS VU PAR: Six short films made in specific neighbourhoods of Paris by Six different French New Wave directors.

JEAN ROUCH: Is not strictly thought of as a New Wave director but you can see the connection between his work and theirs.  He made CHRONICLE OF SUMMER in 1960 with Sociologist and film lover Edgar Morin. It’s an ethnographic film made in Paris.

GARE DU NORD: [Station of the North]one of the six main train stations  in the city, which in the 19^th century  where the  major gate ways to Paris,  with their curious and wonderful mix of grand civic fronts and shed type backs.

C’ÉTAIT UN RENDEZ‐VOUS: [It was a meeting]

CLAUDE LELOUCH:  http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0500988/

 

 

 

 

A SHORT ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROGRAM

A SHORT ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROGRAM

Week [02]: MODERNITY 20-60 PARIS & LOS ANGLES: LE CORBUSIER & CHARLES & RAY EAMES:

[FILM: BATIR – THE POWERS OF TEN / CITY: PARIS – LOS ANGLES]

This weeks screening will be followed with a discussion by STUART HARRISON

 It’s not quite the classic 20-60 split but both these films show different but related modernities. This week 1930s modern architecture in the film BAITR, directed by Peire Chenal with inter-titles by LE CORBUSIER is juxtaposed with the work of post war modern Californian architects and film makers CHARLES & RAY EAMES. BATIR and Le Corbusier speak in reference to the future using the new – new construction methods, new building types, new materials and what this will bring, new better ways of living. THE POWERS OF TEN (1977)  set in a park in Chicago, another great modern city, via  suggested camera movements asks questions about scale and context, our place in the world and the worlds within us.

[This week could be viewed in some ways as from “Functionalism” to what Peter McIntyre may call “Emotional Functionalism” at global and personal scale.]

 Wednesday 21 May 2014 @ 2pm / MADA Gallery Building G Caulfield Monash University

A SHORT ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROGRAM

A SHORT ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROGRAM

Week [01]: MELBOURNE HOUSING THEN & NOW

[ FILM: YOUR HOUSE AND MINE / CITY: MELBOURNE ]

In this week MELBOURNE HOUSING THEN & NOW the filmic is used to explore the modern architecture of post war Melbourne in terms of housing and how this in turns shapes the city.  YOUR HOUSE AND MINE (1954), written by Robyn Boyd and directed by Peter McIntyre uses the juxtaposition of various images of housing types in Melbourne from white settlement to the present day  (when the film was made in 1954). The film reflects upon the International Style and what it can offer for housing in relation to the existing housing stock. The film also gives an opportunity to think about our housing today in Melbourne.  This is an important film for what it tells about housing in Melbourne and also for what it documents about the thinking and what people felt at a significant time of change in Melbourne, in term of architecture and city and what this means for us who live here.

The guest speaker is PETER MCINTYRE director of this particular film and one of the most important architects in Melbourne in terms his contribution to the city through his architectural work, his thinking around architecture and the heart, the feeling and emotions, he brings to his projects ,  thereby encouraging us to bring the same to our own projects.

Wednesday 14 May 2014 @ 3pm  / MADA Gallery Building G Caulfield Monash University

SOYLENT GREEN (1973) 

“When I was a kid food was food…before scientific magicians poisoned the water, polluted the soil, decimated plant and animal life…how can anything survive in a climate like this…a heat wave all year long…the green house effect…everything’s burning up” Edward G. Robinson in SOYLENT GREEN (1973)

[NEW YORK]

THE CARLTON NEW WAVE @ ACMI

OVER THE NEXT MONTH OUR AUSTRALIAN PERSPECTIVES’ MINI-SEASON THE CARLTON NEW WAVE BRINGS TO YOU A SERIES OF AVANT-GARDE FILMS MADE RIGHT HERE IN MELBOURNE’S INNER-CITY. GUEST BLOGGER AND CO-CURATOR LOUISE MACKENZIE EXPLAINS WHY THESE FILMS FROM THE ’60S AND ’70S ARE SO SIGNIFICANT TO THE REVIVAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN FILM INDUSTRY.

http://blog.acmi.net.au/index.php/2013/08/the-carlton-new-wave/  

In the 1960s and ‘70s there was body of films being made in Carlton that film critic and curator Bruce Hodsdon suggests were the seeds of the Australian film revival. The French New Wave influenced these Carlton films, which similarly tell the story of individuals within a specific place.

 

Exploring the experience of the city within a rapidly changing cultural context, the films offer the opportunity to reflect on the tumultuous ‘60s and ‘70s, informing us of who we are and the interconnections between culture and place.

 

Telling our own stories is essential, which is what characterised the films and made them important. National Sound and Film Archive historian Graham Shirley states that in the early 1960s “…the feature industry [in Australia] had flickered to the point of extinction…” [1]. At this time the films being shown in mainstream cinemas where overwhelmingly English or American.

[new paragraph]

With this underground movement in Carlton, we began to relate our own experiences again on film. The Carlton films, while never commercially successful, contributed to the renaissance of Australian filmmaking and culture. Many of those involved went on to work in the commercial sector and perhaps most important, the films began to free up ideas.

Phillip Adams [2] notes that by the 1960s Australian culture had “atrophied” and had been like this for the last half century (61).  He titles a chapter about the re-birth of the commercial Australian Cinema, “The Cultural Revolution”.  Up until then anyone who wanted to do anything culturally or intellectually interesting went to London.[3] According to filmmaker Nigel Buesst, “… Melbourne in the sixties was … a fairly boring city … we wanted to make films that might change that”. [4]

 

Brian Hodsdon, in discussing the French national cinema, writes that the New Wave films “Mark[ed] the advent of a new modernism into mainstream film narrative, the French New Wave challenged a national cinema aesthetically and re-jigged it structurally”[5]. Despite borrowing these aesthetics and structures from the French New Wave, the Carlton films remained uniquely Australian. By exploring inner-city life in Melbourne, the stories revealed the experience of navigating stifling conservatism and new ways of thinking and being.

 

While there was immense interaction between the filmmakers – interchanging roles as director, actor and editor on each others films – the cultural activity wasn’t confined to filmmaking. Carlton theatre groups and the staff and students at Melbourne University were also frequently involved.George Tibbits represents this cross-cultural pollination. Aside from acting in Brian Davies’s The Pudding Thieves, he’s also a composer, architect and academic.

 

Many of those involved on the films were also at La Mama and The Pram Factory including Sue Ingleton, Graham Blundell, Peter Cummins, Jack Hibbard, to name a few. The Melbourne Uni Film Society funded many of the films and there was an interactivity between the Architecture Student Films made at the time and the Carlton group.

[new paragraph]

Brian Hodsdon calls this movement the Carlton Ripple, which I like – to a point. The French New Wave dwarfs these dozen or so films in an international context, but in a Melbourne or Australian context, without being nationalistic, these films started to tell our stories again. Though not everyone’s experience was related, because the film presented an outsider’s underground view, the Carlton New Wave helped initiate something we still experience today. Apart from being culturally significant, the Carlton Films also constitute a magnific filmic experience.

 

Perhaps their legacy illustrates why shoe-string, underground films should be given funding support?

 

[1] In the Australian Cinema: “Chapter 1 Australian cinema: 1896 to the Renaissance” Graham Shirely

[2] There was a film group in Sydney formed in the mid ‘60s called Ubu Film; this group tended to make experimental films while the Carlton group where more narrative based (Brian Hodsdon).

[3] In the Australian Cinema: “Chapter 3 The Cultural Revolution” Phillip Adams

[4] Carlton + Godard = Cinema: An Interview with Nigel Buesst by Jake Wilson

[5] The Carlton Ripple and the Australian Film Revival by Bruce Hodsdon

END

The Carlton New Wave @ ACMI

The Carlton New Wave
Over the next month our Australian Perspectives’ mini-season The Carlton New Wave brings to you a series of avant-garde films made here in Melbourne’s inner-city. Guest blogger and co-curator Louise MacKenzie explains why these films from the ’60s and ’70s are significant to the revival of the Australian film industry.
http://blog.acmi.net.au/index.php/2013/08/the-carlton-new-wave/

CARLTON NEW WAVE @ ACMI