Cinema Papers no. 29 October-November 1980 (2025)

OCR

film its elf

“Shooting on film somehow
shapes your thinking about the event.
I’m as influenced as any
member of the audience by the scope of
Ifilm. And, somehow, deserve

0 o 9 _ .[...]o with it, although I think it
is more to do with the mental limitation
of the director—not the mediums.

As for Eastman color film
that has to be the big event of films. ”

Peter Cellier
Fre[...]

Where did you start,

Roger, and how do you come
to be supervising the feature

opticals department at
Colorfilm?

It go[...]s to
George Humphries, London. I
started there in the neg cutting
department, and doing all sorts
of jobs, learning all the
laboratory procedures. Then I
went to Canada, Tor[...]a year in Canada,
I came to Australia to work on
the Tony Hancock series that
was being made out here.
Unfortunately, he died on the

' first week of the series. So
because there wasnt a lot of
cutting w[...]to
opticals full time. Then I came
to Colorfilm.

The year in Canada must
have been interesting. They
h[...]sed to do a
lot of release prints of features
for the States, it was cheaper for
them.

Let's talk about opticals
work. Could you briefly
explain the process?

There are two areas in
Colorfilm’s opticals department,
makeup and printing. Makeup
is the actual translation of the
effects required onto a print. To
do that, the makeup operator
must be able to visualise the
effects the editor has in mind.
\7x7hen we get the cut work
print, the edge numbers are
recorded and sent to the neg
department, and the negative is
extracted from the original
camera rolls. It’s graded, and
sent back to us. Each scene is
matched to the cut work print,
and cued according to the
required optical. This is all laid
out on a makeup timing sheet,
which sets out in frames the
desired effect and how long it
should run for. That cue sheet

funny

opticals are

then goes down to the printer.
This is a slow process — you’re
prin[...]ple
exposures, you've got to keep
going back over the same piece
of film. Ifyou’re a frame out, its
history, and the jobs no good.

So all the opticals are
printed in the optical V
department. Do you have
special printer[...]hine with two projector
heads, one mounted behind the
other so you can run negatives
in one and your hi—con mattes
or titles in the other. This makes
it a lot easier for re—positioning,
zooming of the other image,
re—positioning a title, or just
en[...]to
Colorfilm, what can I expect
optically?

Given the right material to
start with, there's nothing we[...]That’s terribly
important, preparation. One of
the things I try to get clients to
do is come in and talk the
opticals over before they get into
expensive shooting, and find out
when they’ve shot it the effect
they want isn’t going to work.

You’d[...]wn to
Melbourne when they were
cutting to discuss the opticals.

part about .
th

0”

it says

There[...]they weren’t quite
sure if theyd work. Sol saw the
whole fine cut down there,
which is a good thing, I got a
feel for the film. \X/hich is
important for matching the
opticals to the mood. Anyway,
theres some places in Harlequin
where they looked at the edited
work print, and decided some
scenes needed[...]added a
streaky sunset sky, and storm
clouds over the house.

I didn't notice it.

No. The good opticals are
the ones you dont see. There
are about 70 in Harlequi[...]ich
most people wouldn’t notice.
Then there was the client who
wanted a special optical for a
commercial. They wanted two
guys — one on each side of the
frame — facing each other, swing
in together an[...]they
should shoot it. They brought it
in, great, the effect worked. If
you can get people to shoot
things with the opticals in mind,
it works better. You know, if
t[...]just wont work.

How else can an editor
help get the opticals he wants?

By clearly marking work
print[...]it. I
think a lot of editors leave things
out on the cut work print that
they should put down. For
exa[...]ee.”

Avoid serifs?
Yes! Night shots tend to be
the worst for titles to be over.

Can you see any radical
changes in the business of
opticals in the future?

Well, a lot of things have
gone over to videotape,
especially commercials, mainly
because of the speed. But I
think the advent of the CRI has
made a difference — with
opticals being[...]ike that.

VVhat makes Colorfilm a
special lab?

The people. They place a
lot of importance on skilled[...]as an individual

thing, and he can be assured of
the result.

35 Missenden Road,
Camperdown, Sy[...]

Philippines

El Film and Video Producers

El l6/[...]St

Melbourne

(' Tel: (03) 347 5166

KEM the sophisticated German
editing system has proved it[...]n.

KEM now introduces versatility and
economy to the Australian film
industry.

F ILMWEST, the sole import agents
in Australia and Asia can supp[...]35mm picture
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The KEM RS8-16 8-plate twin pic
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KEM & FILMWEST, the state of the
art.

For information and appointment[...]

At Air New Zealand we still[...]y
and that’s why we have ‘Freedom
Fares’ to the USA.

‘Freedom Fares’ are our normal
First Cl[...]rs see your travel agent or ‘-
Air New Zealand. The

Tom Ryan 332
Philippine Cinema: Hollywood oi the Pacific 334
Lino Brocka: Interview 338
Manuelsde[...]iew 340

Ian Stocks
Stephen Wallace: Interview The Making: 352

Barbara Alysen 341
Features
The Quarter 312
1980 Sydney Film Festival

Susan Derm[...]n
News 349
Ron Casey: Interview

Scott Murray 350
The Last Outlaw

Ian Jones 352
Production Survey 355[...]ter Beilby 370
Production Survey 374
Film Reviews
The Club

Keith Connolly 377
Hard Knocks

Almos Maksay 378
Manganinnie

Virginia Duigan 380
The Tempest

Brian McFarlane 381
Slippery Slide and Do Not Pass Go

Keith Connolly 381

Book Reviews

The Korda Brothers
Brian McFarlane 382 The C|ub

Recent Releases - .
Mervyn R. Blnns 383 ReV[...]Papers is produced with financial assistance from the Australian Film Commission.
Antony I. Ginnane. To[...]al Assistance: Maurice Perera. Articles represent the views of their authors and not necessarily those of the editors. While every
D999" and I-3Y°'-"3 Keith R[...]and materials supplied for this magazine, neither the Editors nor
Admiflisifafioni NimiTY J3m95~ SGCTEWFY3 I-'53 MaW'|eW5- L09 4099198 CONGSPOHGOMI D8V|d the Publishers accept any liability for loss or damag[...]itelbaum.

reproduced in whole or in part without the permission oi the copyright owner. Cinema Papers is
published every[...]Front cover: Jack Thompson in Bruce Beresford’s The Club.

Cinema Papers. October—November — 311

EQUITY

1. Ginnane

The latest development in the Equity
dispute over the use of foreign actors in
Australian films has bee[...]relocating his
$6-$10 million production, Race to the
Yankee Zephyr.

In a press statement Ginnane said:

“Equity’s current policy means the

death of any possibility of an inter-

national[...]t shoot overseas. But
my company's position, like the

South Australian Film Corporation's,

is that we will not film another

production in the country until

Equity's restrictive ruling has be[...]ring dif-
ficulties with Equity for some time. On
The Survivor, Ginnane tried to import
four overseas a[...]s time of almost no production.
Not surprisingly, the technicians union
(the ATAEA) is presently challenging
Equity’s policy[...]n
Fitzpatrick, business and legal affairs
head of the South Australian Film Cor-
poration, said the SAFC was switching
from features to television pr[...]y more
features. As this came only two days
after the SAFC’s Breaker Morant won
10 prizes at the 1980 Australian Film
Awards, Fitzpatrick’s remarks were met
with great disappointment.

One of the reasons for the decision
was the problems caused by Equity's
new policy. Since ove[...]ed (except in “excep-
tional circumstances”), the SAFC felt
restricted when going about raising
mon[...]y was
usually dependent on foreign stars
being in the package.

Paradoxically, the need for foreign
investment has become even more im-
portant following the announcements
by the Treasurer, Mr Howard, that
several avoidance schemes used by
producers would be closed. The private
investors on Breaker Morant, for
example, recently had their claims dis-
allowed by the Government. As Fitz-
patrick said, “Where are w[...]With only Peter Weir's Gallipoli in
production at the time of the 1980
Australian Film Awards, many
observers are w[...]eligible next year. One possibility is
Fortress, the second venture of Mur-
doch and Stigwood's R & R[...]n a novel by Australian
authoress Gabrielle Lord, the film is a
“contemporary psychological thriller
concerning the kidnapping of a
schoolteacher and her pupils from a
small country school". The executive
producer is Hilary Heath, while the
writer and director are expected to be
named soon[...]rector Claude Watham will be in
Australia to film the Ken Quinnell
screenplay. The film, about a prisoner
who pretends to be blind t[...]ming production
is Tony Patterson's Centrespread, the
story of “an innocent girl's rise to fame
in the world of nude modelling".

On September 22, the Australian
Film Commission published its invest-
ments and loans for August-July. The
biggest was the $413,708 for Puberty
Blues. Adapted from the novel by
Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey by
producer Joan Long, the film is to be
directed by Bruce Beresford.

CENSORSHIP

On September 19 the Attorney-
General of South Australia, K. T. Griffin,
banned a film already passed by the
Commonwealth Censor, Lady Duck-
manton. The film, Sweet Sweetback’s
Baadassss Son, had been[...]ruling of a commonwealth
decision not only raises the possibility
of a break-down in the state-federal
agreement on censorship (Queens-
land having already opted out some
time ago), but places the film's
importer, the Adelaide Film Festival, in
a highly awkward position. As George
Anderson, president of the Festival,
said, "It is clearly a return to censor-
ship in its worst form.”

Griffin acted after seeing the opening
scenes of the film where the 12 year old
hero makes love to a prostitute in a
brothel. Griffin felt the scenes contra-
vened the Prohibition of Child Porno-
graphy Act, 1978, and[...]is, of course, merely making
political capital as the Adelaide Festival
is only open to those over 18, and the
film's “R” certificate makes it
impossible fo[...]tect
children”. if Griffin is upset over use of
the boy in the film, his concern is 10
years too late.

Other censorship news is the
banning of Die biebesbrief einer Portu-
giesischen nonne by soft-core director
E. Dietrich, and the American porno
film (presumably in its ‘soft’ version),
Taxi Girls.

Only one film (Island) ventured the
vagaries of the Films Board of Review,
and came away with its “[...]y
chopping up films for classification.
This time the cuts averaged 32.75m or
86 secs.

GUT REACTION IS NOT
ENOUGH

Part of the 1980 Sydney Film Festival
was an audience-and-panel dis-
cussion on film criticism. John Fox
reports:

The Sydney Film Festival forum on
film criticism turn[...]e six critics
in search of identity and criteria. The
panel on stage comprised David
Robinson (The Times), Kevin Thomas
(The Los Angeles Times), Chris Pettit
(ex-Time Out), B[...]ation
Review), John Hinde (ABC) and John
Labsley (The Sun-Herald). When asked
to explain the difference between film
criticism and film review[...]ling to make a distinction be-
cause they claimed the two were not
easily separated.

Under pressure, t[...]con-
tinuing body of work with a historical
bias (the language of which is some-
times pretentious and[...]ntertaining and important consumer
guide in which the reviewer tries to get
peopleto see the films he likes. Most of
them considered themselves to be re-
viewers, yet wearing the same hat as
Kenneth Tynan, Andrew Sarris and
Gavi[...]itics.

What are your criteria? asked voices
from the auditorium. They were re-
luctant to answer becau[...]as
cited as a film that, ‘‘looked terrific at
the time but bloody awful when you see
it again later[...]se a reviewer/critic tends to be
hired because of the person he is, not
because of his criteria for film criticism.

But what are your criteria? de-
manded the voices. The panel side-
stepped into critical method: we re-
spond to the film and then analyse and
justify our response; we meet the film
on its own terms; we develop a re-
flexive s[...]has neither
an aesthetic nor a social function.

The forum ended with an unsatis-
fied audience and an uneasy panel.
The general feeling was that pro-
fessional and commi[...]incing way, or else convey more
persuasively that the questions are
over-simple.

FILM INDUSTRY UNIONISM

1. Australian Film Awards

The 1980 Australian Film Awards
presentation was held on September
17 at the Regent Theatre, Sydney, and
televised nationally by the ABC. This

was the first telecast in a four-year deal.

arranged by[...]r, and Alan Bateman, director of
entertainment at the ABC.

Compered by Graham Kennedy, and
using a num[...]esenters, along with
American actor Kirk Douglas, the
broadcast was a return to the small
screen after the Australian Theatrical
and Amusement Employees Associa-
tion had effectively black-banned the
telecast in 1979.

The ATAEA claimed its protest was
against Channel 9's[...]e broadcasts, but
it has never been explained why the
Awards telecast was halted, while
numerous other outside broadcasts
were not interrupted.

The AFI had planned to try again with
the Nine Network this year, but Damien
Stapleton, federal secretary of the
ATAEA, indicated to the AFI that his
union would block the telecast unless
Channel 9 employed only paid-up
u[...]ad no inten-
tion of telling its employees to toe the
union line.

Caught in a stalemate, the AFI con-
templated shifting to Channel 10
(Channel 7 has the Sammys), but there
was no guarantee that the ATAEA
would not take a similar stand. The
result was a deal with the ABC, which
had telecast the Awards in 1977. (The
rating was a surprisingly solid 23.) As
ABC techn[...]little chance
of union action. And in announcing the
ABC deal, Foster said:

"For the first time the Awards

presentation has security of tenure in

r[...]can only enhance public identity and
awareness of the events."

However, subsequent events turned
this[...]concern.

On Sunday, September 14, crews
went to the Regent Theatre in George
St, Sydney, to begin construction of the

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I wish to order Cl copies of The New Australian Cinema at $Aust.14.95 a copy. Post[...]Philippines China. etc.) Surface airliit to the UK., German
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The demand placed by the ATAEA

was that all union members employed
for the Awards presentation, whether
by the Regent, ABC or AFI, should
receive a 100 per cent loading over and
above the standard rates. This was for
work covering the set-up, rehearsal
and presentation of the Awards. This
meant an ATAEA member working on
that Sunday (and there was only one)
would get four times the average daily
rate (i.e., double double time).

The rationale behind the demand, as
outlined by Stapleton, was that since
the 1980 Awards was a live presenta-
tion as well as[...]o jobs. What Stapleton didn't explain
was why all the set-up and rehearsal
time should be seen as two jobs as well.
The AFI, represented by assistant ex-
ecutive directo[...]and Stapleton finally agreed to a
loading only on the presentation. An
agreement was then signed.

Had the above agreement not been
reached, and the picket continued
throughout Sunday, the Awards would
again have been cancelled. Interest-
ingly, the AFA are the only film awards
where rank and file union members are
eligible to vote. Unfortunately, the irony
of that situation seems to have been
missed.

2. ATAEA

On September 1, the Melbourne
Freelancers’ Committee of the ATAEA
held a meeting over Equity’s new
policy.[...]a
reduction in work for local film tech-
nicians, the committee wrote to Uri
Windt at Equity in the hope of resolving
the issue.

when Bob Alexander of Equity
replied, calling for union solidarity, the
ATAEA decided to take the matter to
the Disputes Committee of the ACTU.
There the matter rests.

The main concern among Mel-
bourne technicians is producer Tony
Ginnane’s decision to move Race to the
Yankee Zephyr to New Zealand. Gin-
nane has been[...]of technicians on
features and his opting out of the local
industry has hit Melbourne crew
members very hard.

3. Musicians Union
As well as the Americarl. Screen

Actors’ Guild strike there is the
American Musicians‘ Union strike. In an
attempt to circumvent the problems
this has caused in the U.S., several
American producers have con-
templa[...]ready
visited Australia to see if he could
record the scores for three films at
Armstrongs in Melbourne. (The scores
have been composed by Marvin
Hamlisch, Lal[...]om
Scott.) Berres said he was highly
pleased with the recording here of Basil
Poledouris’ score for The Blue Lagoon.

Many local musicians were very keen
to take the opportunity and further their
overseas experience[...]es to act
as musical co-ordinator. Unfortunately,
the Musicians’ Union of Australia felt
differently and said such work would be
regarded as strike-breaking, as the

American union had asked its
Australian counterp[...]made without consulta-
tion with union members. (The Federal
secretary of the Australian Musicians‘
Union was overseas at tim[...]ns are upset over their
union's decision and feel the American
actors‘ strike is not related to local
issues. As Brian May said, “What has
the American union ever done for us?"

SORFIENTO

“The Encounter with the Australian
Cinema” —— to be held in Sorrento, Italy,
on October 11-18 — will be the biggest
festival of Australian films staged
overs[...]but short films and
documentaries are included.

The earliest film to be shown is
Raymond Longford’s The Sentimental
Bloke, made in 1919. The most recent
are Stephen Wallace's Stir and Bruce
Beresford’s Breaker Morant.

The Encounter forms part of an
ongoing series of annual festivals
entitled the lncontri internazionali del
cinema. Each year the Italian
organizers honor the cinema of a
nation or group of nations with an
lncontro (Encounter) in Sorrento. The
1980 Encounter is entirely devoted to
Australian films.

Selection of the films is made in
consultation between the Italian
organizers and a special national
committee. The only restriction on films
to be shown is that the[...]My Brilliant Career, Picnic at
Hanging Ftock'and The Last Wave,
have been excluded.

The Australian participation in the
1980 Encounter has been organized by
the New South Wales Film Corpora-
tion. The Italian organizers, headed by
lncontri director, Dr Gian Luigi Rondi,
approached the NSWFC more than two
years ago. Paul H. Riomfalvy, chairman
of the NSWFC, is honorary president of
the Encounter and David Roe, the
NSWFC’s production and marketing
consultant, is the president of the
Australian organizing committee.

The Italian organizers expect more
than 170 journalists and critics to
attend the Encounter; most will be
Italians, but others will come from the
rest of Europe. On the final night, the
Italian organizers will present the
Vittoria de Sica Awards to Australian’
filmmakers and actors. Rondi
announced in May that the major award
will go to director Peter Weir for hi[...]ducers have so
far accepted invitations to attend the
Encounter.

NFT WORKSHOPS

The National Film Theatre will be
hosting a series of[...]filmmaker
Rolf Busch, who recently did a stint at
the Film and Television School, is ac-
companying a s[...]of a
Good Life.

Ed Buscombe and Paul Willemen of
the British Film Institute, and Tony
Kirkhope of The Other Cinema will also
be visiting Australia. Kirkhope is to
meet local filmmakers and discuss the
problems associated with alternative
film distrib[...]op on television, and Paul
Willemen will speak on the history of in-
dependent cinema in the 1970s.

FILM CONFERENCE

The 2nd Australian Film Conference
will be held from November 24 to 28 at
the Nedlands College of Advanced
Education, Perth. Overseas speakers at
the Conference include Professors
Stuart Hall, Brian[...]be and Mark
Nash.

People interested in attending the
Conference can contact the Secretary,
Department of Communication
Studies, N[...]Ian McPherson

Ian McPherson, administrator of the
Sydney Film Festival, died of cancer on
August 22. McPherson was a prime
force in organizing the first Sydney
Festival in 1954. He later became
tr[...]68
to '71.

In 1977, McPherson became director
of the Travelling Film Festival which he
helped establish as an annual touring
event.

His contribution not only to the
Festivals, but to the art of appreciating
cinema, will be greatly missed.

Jan Dawson

As the last issue was at press, I learnt
the sad news that Jan Dawson had died
in London.

I first met Jan during the 1975
International Perth Film Festival. She
had been on the selection committee
since 1974 and this year, as one of the
assistant directors, had come out to
visit the Festival. One of her selection
coups was Louis Ma[...]ge in
lengthy, sometimes vocal, debates,
often to the amazement of a largely
staid Perth audience.

Jan[...]ow, that Jan would write for
what seemed to be at the time a fairly
obscure journal, and for an appalli[...]sidered
Cinema Papers to be very fortunate.

Over the years, Jan contributed
many reviews, interviews ([...]dam. In
1977, Jan also became our chief critic
at the Cannes Film Festival. (Her 1980
report was printed in the last issue, as
well as a characteristically insig[...]st in German
cinema (she was working on a book at
the time of her death), Jan became an
authority on di[...]Werner Herzog.
In her role as a press officer for the
Berlin Film Festival, a position she held
for sev[...]o visited Australia in 1976 to
write a report for the Australian Film
Institute on its information reso[...]me interested in Australian
cinema and was one of the few over-
seas critics who chose to look through
the euphoria of our renaissance to the
films themselves.

Jan's contribution to the state of
world film criticism can never be
ignore[...]incisive,
witty writing. Not once have I read an

THE QUARTER

article by her and not come away re-
w[...]mooted tax changes:

Two recent announcements by the
Federal Treasurer, Mr Howard, aimed
at curbing what the Government
considers to be tax avoidance, have
ma[...]producers to
raise finance for Australian films.

The first announcement affected the
state film corporations, and may deter
them from[...]ing a production out
of distributors’ advances. The second
announcement affected all investors
who ha[...]ecourse’ basis to invest in films.

On June 24, the Treasurer fore-
shadowed amendments to the Income
Tax Assessment Act 1936-79 to
counter avoidance through the exploi-
tation of the privileged income tax
status of tax-exempt bodies[...]ng taxable income from
individuals and companies. The
exempt body gets little benefit from
the income because it is required
under the tax avoidance arrange-
ment to give to the individual or

company (or an associate), but in[...]orm, consideration that is

more or less equal to the amount of
the income, less a fee for its

‘services'."

One e[...]hat in any such scheme entered
into after June 24 the income derived
by such a bodytrom participation in the
scheme would be taxed in its hands at
the maximum rate of personal tax
(currently 50 per cent).

The various state film corporations
are tax-exempt bodies. The announce-
ment therefore appears to make it
impra[...]appointment as a
head distributor of a film, with the right
to receive as its commission the
advance payable by the commerical
distributor, in return for making
available an equivalent amount of
finance for investment in the
production. (For the producer, this
structure had the advantage of
ensuring that the distributor's advance
was not treated as taxable.)

On August 4, the Treasurer fore-
shadowed further anti-avoidance
amendments to the Income Tax Act,
which are to apply retrospectivel[...]l lose their expected
tax deductions as a result. The
Treasurer said,

“The Government has decided that

the income tax law should be

amended to deal with fu[...]x avoidance in which
taxpayers do not really bear the

expenditure for which they seek a

deduction, th[...]relation to

paper losses generated in respect of
the production or marketing of

films . . .

“Some of the latest tax avoidance
schemes of the ‘expenditure recoup-
ment' type aim to secure deductions
under either the general deduction
provisions of the income tax law,
section 51, or under the special
provisions relating to investments in
Australian films, for amounts
formally expended in the pro-
duction or marketing of a film or in
the acquisition of a copyright, licence
or int[...]

Fred Raphael, who wrote Two
For the Road and The Glittering
Prizes, and Dennis Potter, who
wrote Pennies From Heaven, which
is the best thing I’ve seen on
anybody ever. Also, Tom[...]and William Goldman, who wrote
Butch Cassidy and The Great
Waldo Pepper.

Most of all there is Ingmar
Bergman, who has had the Shakes-
pearian courage to do it all:
comedy, tra[...]r states, analyses of
Marxism and bedroom farces. The
best single screenplay in existence,
in my humble view, is Smiles of a
Summer Night.

I think Bergman knows the way
in which the screen is limited, and
unlimited. And when I see Wild
Strawberries for the 20th time it
fills me up and makes my day, the
way Yanks or Shakespeare’s best
play, Henry IV[...]fe or
emotions, his whole way of
behaving — or, the true, calm
reflection of a whole historical era,
the way Newsfront should have
been and wasn’t; the way Yanks
and Amarcord were.

The film was big enough to be as
abundant as this, and we have a
duty to serve this abundance, even
in the one house on theThe great unheeded law of the
recent Australian cinema is that
good films make[...]liant Career,
Mad Max and Breaker Morant did.
And the less-good films, that in
theory should have made money,
like Tim. The Odd Angry Shot,
Eliza Fraser and Ned Kelly, all l[...]ofit, and
its not budgetary limits, but
quality.

The only apparent exception to
this is Cathy’s Chil[...]ant
Career, with unknowns, will make
it.

What is the script development
arrangement you have with the New
South Wales Film Corporation?

I have to do 1[...]given dates. I get $7000 for each
script, and if the NSWFC wants to
buy one, they must pay an addi-
tional $12,000 within 28 days of
receipt of the second draft. After
that. they can do what[...]

How many of the scripts have you
finished?

Two, and three more[...]do you feel about collabora-
tion?

It used to be the only way I could
work, because only the guilt
induced by somebody else would
make me finish a script. I have now
improved to the point where I can
write on my own. But collabora-[...]aire:
you get an intense, emotional
intimacy with the person you are
working with, and, when you are no[...]dibility, but we must
try. Unfortunately, most of the
good on-line directors here have
obsessions of th[...]often waste two years trying to get
something off the ground. I don’t
believe anything is worth that[...]ts them to a
stage where they are worth doing. If
the first draft is terrible, I don’t
believe there[...]ible exceptions like Stir, which
had to cope with the inexperience of
the writer, but there is a lot ofgood
money thrown after bad — to the
lucky.

Yet your scripts appear to have

benefited from you having had the
opportunity to visit locations . . .

316 — Cin[...]_ _ ..
-«'43 : ‘~r

“Unfortunately, most of the good on-line directors
here have obsessions of th[...]often
waste two years trying to get something of the
ground. I don ’t believe amithing is worth that[...]tive producer?

I would like to impose my will on
the casting, and watch-dog the
script. I also wouldn’t mind inter-
fering in the publicity, which in
Australia is usually dreadful[...]them guilty” —
what more can I say?

I think the problem is that you
can work with a director or a[...]se two roles to have any
artistic satisfaction in the film
business. And when they do — as in
the case of Woody Allen, Billy
Wilder or Sylvester St[...]d script every
full stop and comma contributes to
the total effect. You can’t rip out
100 pages of Da[...]e, we were
instructed, three days before
shooting the great Whitlam
sequence, that all references to

Whitlam had to be cut out of the
first third of the film. Apparently,
this was so that the NSWFC could
pose as though it hadn’t been
appoi[...]ing Whitlam wasn’t all that
serious, but losing the references to
him destroyed the structure of all
the scenes in which those references
occurred — and that may have been
five or six. As a result, the first 10
minutes of the film was wrecked,
and the film will lose money.

I don’t see how these c[...]aren’t
sacrosanct — I prove that every
day of the week by collaborating —
but I do know more abou[...]nd
structure, than somebody who is
not skilled in the field.

There was another case on
Maybe This Time which illustrates
the present plight of the writer.
There was a scene where Fran and
Stephen are in a restaurant over-

looking the harbor. It’s a nervous
scene: the old boyfriend wants to
divorce his wife and marry Fran. In
the original script, he says, “Luna
Park down there[...]ch they didn’t have to,
anyway. So they changed the line
on the day to “Sydney Harbour.”
And she said, “I k[...]e fools.

Then again, as Chris Haywood
rowed into the flood-ridden Mait-
land hall in “Newsfront”,[...]r self-criticism than any
of us civilians. It’s the producers
and directors to whom I object.
They ha[...]art has been written for a

particular actor, but the actor
wasn’t available?

Yes, on Maybe This Time where
we replaced the coquettish Jack
Thompson with Mike Preston. It
al[...]was speci-
fically Jack’s part ——- as was the
part played by Gerard Kennedy in
Newsfront. I thi[...]y good
brothers, but you scarcely knew
they were, the way the film was
ultimately cast.

I think correct casting is a hidden
factor in the success of a lot of
films: Satyajit Ray says it i[...]er Vs Kramer — it wouldn’t
work. It has to be the two who
played it.

How do you see the future of the
local industry?

The thing I fear most is this
multi-national obsessio[...],
to go. I fear it because it is inef-

“It’s the producers and directors to whom I object
T[...]

I know it would have been econo-
mically s[...]undly believe
that success would not have lain in
the way ofthose directors, or in the
history of those countries’ films,
had such int[...]inism that I
recommend. If you. look carefully
at the cast of Breaker Morant you
will notice, to your a[...]s, as well as Edward
Woodward. So it is not where the
actors come from, but how well
they can be seen t[...]matter
of whether it rings true.

People mistake the shadow for
the substance. They think that
Hitchcock succeeds because of the
major events in his films; he suc-
ceeds because the minor events in
his films are so believable. The
reactions of service station attend-
ants and hot[...]exist and make money un-
less you are doing it in the context
of science fiction. All mid-Atlantic
film[...]u get uneasy experiments, like
Ingmar Bergman’s The Touch,
made in English with Elliot Gould.
It was[...]ions like Blow Up and Zab-
riskie Point, in which the directors
and the writers leave behind what
they know and attempt t[...]know.

We are, for better or worse, in-
volved in the nation in which we
grew up. You can’t hope to fool the
world by merely putting quotation
marks under the chief works-of
other nations. You have to try to[...]sonalities are
very few in number, partly because
the publishing industry has always
been very weak and[...]aking films like Manhattan, as
well as films like The Electric
Horseman.

There was a superstition, for[...]t starts at $1
million.

Most people don’t want the lower-
budget, indigenous films to
disappear. But do you see that
happening?

If the script is good enough I
believe it will be made.[...]bad films will be made or
attempted, but I think the good
scripts will get through. I think
there is e[...]—budget filmmaking is
Equity’s restriction on the use of
overseas actors in films which
receive gov[...]hat only bad films will
be attempted, but I think
the good scripts will get
through I think there is
enough shame left ”

I am in favor ofit, and the reason
is this: if, say, Saddlesore and Blue
had been made, and, as was in the
budget, James Coburn had been
paid $750,000 and G[...]stie. He offered me $3000 and
a free trip around. the world,
together with a week in a cottage in
Wales[...]would have been delighted with a
free ticket, and the sense of high
life. But, I probably would have
shown up in the snow, and she
would have said, “Look, Warren
ha[...]ould
you come back in August?”

Some people see the move towards
internationalization as a reaction t[...]sappear . . .

I think that is a bit like blaming
the Arabs for the fact that we are
putting up the price of our own
petrol. It is a snow job by greedy
men who would rather fly a plane
around the world and have a drink
in Los Angeles with Lee Ma[...]t.

There is one other reason, too,
which is that the film industry has
no natural enemies: there is no[...]by
government bodies. So, it is nice to
see that the NSWFC has bitten the
bullet and gone to more or less 100
per cent fund[...]lti-
national kinds of films will be made,
though the overseas stars will be of

Cinema Papers.[...]

second rank. The films will fail, and
the experiment will die as heartily
as did the false nostalgia which
preceded the true nostalgia films.

People get bees in their b[...]lly silly one, too,
because it hasn’t worked in the
past. There have been about 20
such films and the[...]at Hanging
Rock, and that didn’t make money
on the international charisma of
Rachel Roberts.

The situation is terribly fluid at
any time, and by some stroke of
luck the U.S. Cavalry arrives each
year. Last year it was[...]You feel good to be Aus-
tralian for a while, and the crisis
passes and the pain goes.

You can’t underrate the effect of
things like the AFI screenings,
where people do detest the
Ginnane-type films, and do quite
like the Australian films. And I
think shame can be played upon
them; rhetoric can be marshalled.
Sure the danger is there, and it is
most potentially there when the
successful — like the McElroys —
subscribe to it. But I think it will[...]You Spare a Dime?. He suggested
they insert into the footage enacted
sequences about the lives of the
cameramen. This was an excellent
idea.

Now, it w[...]chard
Neville. So Elfick took Neville’s
name to the AFC, who said that
Neville didn’t have credits[...], a great Australian
flood and so on. This led to the first
draft, which more or less became
the final film, though it took 10
more drafts to get back to the
original.

Eltick became nervous and said,
“We want more details.” So, I went
away to the library for a day and
looked up old advertisements, and
wrote in things like the soundtrack
on the radio. I also worked closely
with Howard Rubie, who had been
a young cameraman at the time of
the Maitland floods. Howard at

318 — Cinema Papers, October-November

“Then, the long attrition of cuts began. I finalbi
wouldn’t make any more, and they brought in the
auteur of Skippy behind my back. I became
irritab[...]ut
he was dislodged from this respon-
sibility by the genius of Phil Noyce
who determined he should dir[...]Elfick to this end.

Then, we did another draft, the
third, with Noyce. It was the best,
and was used by Elfick to either get
the money, or raise the smell of it.
Then, the long attrition of cuts
began. I finally wouldn’t make any
more, and they brought in the
auteur of Skippy to write behind
my back. I becam[...]and
threatened to go to court, and all
that.

In the meantime, I got most of
the actors I had written parts for,
though only by the accident of their
doing the best auditions. I
remember narrowly nudging out o[...]I was stunned when Newsfront
was repeatedly voted the best film

at the Cannes Film Festival by
overseas critics, and I a[...]ined recently
that it hadn’t been nominated for the
Academy Award . . .

Well, I complained too. But[...]arbitrary budget figures are
stupid. Think of all the trouble that
derived from Elfick’s arbitrary
budget of $507,000, or whatever it
was. The film could have been
made for $650,000 or $670,00[...]l form, and I don’t think
anybody alive prefers the film to
the big fat script.

The unbelievably great, powerful
and cuddly David Puttnam believes
that you should decide on the film
you are going to make and then
make it, whatever it costs. I think
that’s fair. The old rule of “half a

loaf is better than no bread” no
longer applies.

I think the arrival in town of the
twin Mephistopheles, Murdoch and
Stigwood, has be[...]tual way of making a
film looks a little silly in the light of
their prudence and reason. They
too would like to make a film under
$1 million, but the idea of setting a
budgetary limit of, say, $350,0[...]r a budget, but you can’t write it
and then say the budget is going to
be no more than this.

How do[...]ood film. It
should be as good as Yanks — i.e.,
the moral history of a nation for 10
years —— and[...]ellent glimpses from that
history, but it’s not the thing itself.

I think the flood scene is terrific,
and the acting is very good. There is
also something about the shooting
style which was very Australian;
something about the honorable vul-
garity of the time was beautifully
encompassed in the visual style. I
don’t think it was accidental,[...]explain what it was, but it was
what moved people the most. These
were our fathers, and they weren’t[...]I was stunned when Newsfront was repeatedly voted the best film at the
Cannes Film Festival by overseas critics,[...]

Peckinpah in Pat Garrett and
Billy the Kid gets the squalor and
the heroism of the story, as in
The Wild Bunch. Noyce gets the
ordinariness and the specialness of
the people in a similar way in
Newsfront.

How do you feel about the decision
to film “Newsfront” partly in color[...]be able to make a black and white
film, which was the ideal. So I
worked out points where it could
chan[...]ifferent ones.

I think black and white is one of
the many ranges of cinema, and it
should be used. And[...]Anderson in If, and
whoever he was in A Man and a
Woman — it works sensationally
well. The classic use of this tech-
nique was in The Wizard of 02,
where the world is dull, and O2 is
colorful.

Black and whi[...],
except when it is .closest to black
and white.

The magic of the screen — the
silver screen which people came out
to in the ’30s — was due to the fact
that it was different from life in a
way peo[...]ve much trouble getting
“Maybe This Time” off the ground?

It took five years. We offered it
to[...]d
they hated it.

Eventually, Annie and l re-read
the script and found it was no good
at all. I then re-wrote it with a
punch line. and bullied the
NSWFC, which was a bit uncertain
about its commer[...]Morris,
Helen Morse or Wendy Hughes,
and Judy was the only one with
buck teeth and, therefore, the only
one with any hope of not looking
resolutely beautiful all the time. I
still think she looks too beautiful to
have these problems, and the
correct choice would have been
somebody like Anna[...]which is a
considerable achievement. She will
get the Best Actress Award, I am
sure. A couple of times,[...]Gill where I would ask
questions like, “What is the most

BOB ELLIS

obvious children’s film one[...]y, after
30 seconds of thought, he came
back with the obvious answer,
which was Ginger Meggs. And
being[...]Then McGill went away
and after a close study of the phone
book came up with something
called The Children’s Film
Corporation. This turned out to[...]versations subsequently
became confused.

I wrote the script and it was
funded on the first draft because it
was so good. But Yoram did[...]re
grasp of English. We had conversa-
tions along thethe quality
of the chivalry and competence of
Sir Lancelot’s sword[...]der-
land?” and he replied, “I haven’t
seen the film.” This nonsense went
on for a long time.

Anyway, once the script had been
funded. Sexton demanded ll8
major[...]ause in my contract,
but I was then confronted by the
AFC’s new lawyer who said my
contract meant I had to make the
changes. So I took a deep breath
and made them, word for word for
what they asked. The result was so
ludicrous that they didn’t call me
for six months and I presumed the

Concluded on P. 386

Cinema Papers. Octob[...]

On September 17 at the Regent Theatre,
Sydney, the 1980 Australian Film
Awards were announced. The presenta-
tion, produced by Ric Birch, directed b[...]ed by Graham
Kennedy, was televised nationally by the
ABC. The first in a four-year deal with
the ABC, the 1980 Film Awards seemed
at last to have reached the standard long
sought by the organizers, the Aus-
tralian Film Institute.

The winners of the 1980 Awards were:

INDUSTRY AWARDS

Best Film: Br[...]Cinema Papers, October—November

Parer, Bird of the Thunder Woman. Bronze
Medal: Tom Cowan, Peter Butt, No Such Pla[...]aymond Longford Award: Tim Burstall

To report on the 1980judging processes
and give an overview of the year’s film
output, Cinema Papers sent Brian
Sheedy to the Awards screenings. Here
is his report:

The Australian Film Awards have been run by
the Australian Film Institute since 1958. The
presentation night, usually in September, is
preceded by months of work, part of which is the
screening of entered feature films to AFI
members[...]Adelaide and
Perth.

To be eligible for entry in the feature category
a film must be narrative in form[...]e of a minimum one week at
least one month before the presentation date.

AFI members who, like myself, are not direct-
ly engaged in production can vote only for the
Best Film Award. Only industry professionals
are[...]ex-
ample, only editors are eligible to vote for the
editing award.

The competition is run according to strict at-
tendan[...]folk” go along because it is a
good way to test the new vintage in one burst, to
compare tone, mood,[...]us years. This year no one
seems very optimistic: the climate is politically
frosty and financially dry. And where have all
the big names gone? Bruce Beresford is there,
but an[...]ll and Peter Weir brings only
silence — gone to the U.S. everyone?

And how will the films compare with the hal-
cyon years of the middle and late ’70s?

1976 Caddie, The Devil’s Playground, Picnic at
Hanging Rock

1977 Don’s Party, Mad Dog Morgan, The FJ
Holden, Storm Boy

I978 Newsfront, The Last Wave, The Chant of
Jimmie Blacksmith, Mouth to Mouth, The Get-
ting of Wisdom

1979 My Brilliant Career, Mad Max, In Search
of Anna, Tim, The Last of the Knucklemen

Except for Breaker Morant, no one seems to
know anything about the films that lead us into
the l980s. Directors’ names such as John

Honey, Pe[...]n a fruitless search of Cinema Papers indexes:
is the honeymoon really over?

Last year there were 17 f[...]1976 and 15in 1975. This year there
are only ll.

The stalwarts who stick out the entire
program have a certain stoic fraternity about
them. The front-line people, the actors, are easy
to recognize; so too are the addicts who seem
never to miss a screening of anything, anywhere.

There are also the “back-room” people, the
backbone of the industry, who seemingly exist
only in the credits. Over the sandwiches and cof-
fee, courtesy of the AFI, one might meet a
freelance editor, an art director from a commer-
cial house, or a designer from the ABC — or a
teacher or critic. In this atmosphere of
camaraderie everyone tries to be generous about
the film just screened, praising its successes, ex-
cusing its failings. This year, the excuses seemed
just a little strained.

My season[...]Scott’s Mystery Island, a children’s
story of the conventional, deserted-island-
adventure type, co[...]erwater photography. It is
never possible to take the danger to the children
seriously, and they are burdened by such leaden
and banal dialogue that the happy ending seems
more than they deserve.[...]social worker for a straight life as a model. All
the odds are against her: blatant double stan-
dards, vengeful cops, old mates from Winlaton
and the birds of prey of the fashion and model-
ling worlds.

The film in part picks up a thread from Mouth[...]

Most of the money goes to a struggling
progressive school, the balance to “expenses”.
Their lack of interest[...]leaves one in no doubt that their real motive is
the thrills.

Except for a few moments near the end, the
pace never lets up and there isn’t a spare shot or
a loose word in the entire 92 minutes of the film.
It’s exciting and very funny — the gang escapes
from their big job along a jetty, with half the
looted guests, bemused and in night attire,
follo[...]y time she takes it out, but it’s only there on
the soundtrack — she ignores it and so does the
camera.

Chris McGill’s Maybe This Time is a se[...]y respon-
sive emotional and political chords. In the wider
context of Supply bills being blocked, a snap
election and the consequent change in govern-
ment, Fran (Judy Mor[...]fil-
ment through her relationships brings her to the
end of a “wasted” four years with the arrogant,
married, high-level public servant, Stephen (Bill
Hunter).

The possible avenues open to her include
returning to the boy-next-door, Alan (Ken
Shorter), becoming sexually involved with her
boss the academic, Paddy (Mike Preston),
adopting an indep[...]buying her
own house, or going overseas to join a woman
friend. To the detriment of herself, and the film,
she takes them all, turning a Crossroad into a
peak—hour intersection with no traffic signals.

The film becomes episodic, able to portray
Fran’s anguish but too crowded to explore the
reasons for failures except through the failings of
the men with whom she is involved. Her ap-
parent powerlessness in relationships, however,
is in keeping with the personal and political im-
potence which haunts the film.

John Honey’s Manganinnie is the first feature
film to be backed by the Tasmanian Film Cor-
poration and is an auspicious beginning.
Manganinnie too is about a woman’s search —
that of a black Tasmanian woman for her

murdered people and her collapsed culture. She
is the keeper not only of the firestick of her tribe,
but also of the fire mythology, its rituals and
ceremony.

This,[...]who goes volun-
tarily with her on her journey to the coast in
search ofher race. She finds only death[...]er power — fire — is un-
wittingly usurped by the child who steals a flint
from a white man.

She goes back to the inland, returns the child
and dies. The child’s father pledges her a decent
(European) burial, but the child ensures her
proper conduct to the spirit world by putting the
torch to the shed in which the body lies.

It is a slow, but moving film, a filmmaker’s
answer to the illustrated lecture that was The
Last Tasmanian. Manganinnie, in essence, tells
the same story, but in a way which will survive in
the memory long after the high-minded moraliz-
ing of its predecessor is fo[...]med previously in Love Letters from
Teralba Road, the film which introduced both to
most filmgoers. Whi[...]Bryan Brown. It is longer
and more ambitious than the first, but less suc-
cessful; the claustrophobic atmosphere of the
gaol where the action takes place stifles the film.

Back in prison after three years out, “C[...]f earlier
bashings at Garunga Gaol which followed the
non—violent protest he had instigated. He is
de[...]keep his nose clean, but fails; he
thus inspires the only action which he believes
will work.

The rising tensions in the gaol are not
mirrored in the film which, although it succeeds
in maintaining a degree of tension, fails to build
it to the necessary climax. The failure of the riot,
as political action and as cinema, is followed by
the inevitable bashings, but we have seen it all
before.

Ian Barry’s Chain Reaction adopts the 50-
minute television drama formula — a puzzlin[...]o 92
minutes.

Malign authority is out to silence the dying
man who can tell the world of danger from a
nuclear waste treatment pl[...]’t mind bending his
flashy, customized unit — the world is saved.

Ross Dimsey’s Final Cut is a s[...]er television news-
cameraman boyfriend who seize the chance to
make a film about a sinister impresario[...]rn
home movies to real death (“snuff”) films. The
pair gets involved in this freaky scene, first on
his luxury yacht and later at his apartment.

The best part of the film is the closing caption
which assures the audience that any resemblance
to any person living, etc., is purely coincidental
— the film’s only laugh.

Inna Monnt.
Winner of almos[...]ma Papers and elsewhere.

And now for my vote for the Best Film. For
polish and performance: Breaker Morant.
Beresford and the South Australian Film Cor-
poration apparently haven’t been told that the
honeymoon is over and went ahead and made an
exce[...]m difficult material.

For sheer entertainment of the thrills-and-
laughter variety: Touch and Go. I ho[...]nd for poignancy, honesty and grace:
Manganinnie, the one we’d all like to forget.*

Cinema Pa[...]

T O

“The major reasons to make a film are
to move people e[...]ing movie. I am
interested in gut level reaction The
American cinema is a kind of lean, hard,
story-or[...]ure is. Scott Fitzgerald, who’s probably
one of the greatest writers that the country
ever produced, had a piece of paper on hi[...]acter.’ And that’s
what I think is best about the American
cinema There’s a kind of muscular,
vi[...]ing sense to [it] that I feel is
best embodied in the work of Raoul Walsh,
D. W. Griffith, Ford, Hawks, Wellman . ..
It’s what the American people and people all
over the world expect from the American

cinema . . .”
(William Friedkin)‘

Few films in recent years have been accom-
panied by the level of anger that has attached
itself to Cruising. Even before the completion of
its location shoot in New York, the protest
against the film in the American gay press was
intense, admirably organized and effectively
used to focus attention on the repression of
homosexuality which seems embedded within
our culture. Similarly in Australia, in the weeks
preceding the film’s release, the campaign
against Cruising was underway, citing the ac-
tivity abroad as sufficient indication that “this
film could be a health hazard”?

The view of the film as “calculatedly vile and
threatening in all of its ‘messages’ ”’ has been
taken up by the film reviewers in the press,
creating an unprecedented harmony with thethe film. Yet little close con-
sideration has been a[...]October-November

- M R

Y

Much has been said in the
cause of sensationalism
about Cruising, but little
serious commentary is
available on the film. To in
part rectify this situation,
Cinema Papers publishes the
following critiques by Tom
Ryan and Adrian Martin.
The articles were written to
complement each other, the
authors sharing a respect for
Cruising, though pu[...]as aroused such fury. Most attempts to talk
about the film, even in the most basic descriptive
terms, are characterized b[...]attention to
detail, passionate assertion taking the place of
the terms of rational argument. One of many
examples[...]of Vito
Russo’s comments from Gay News:

“All the gays in the film live in filthy rat-trap

hotel rooms. When Pacino makes love to his

girlfriend, the background music is a Bach
cantata. When gays have sex, the music is
violent, discorded [sic] hard rock.”‘

Disappointingly, only the few reviews that
have endeavored to defend the film have
offered any detailed examination of it‘, and,
interestingly, all of these seem to have come
from the gay press. As yet no serious analysis
has appeared elsewhere, and even the journals
devoted solely to film have yet to produce their
discussion of Cruising.

As far as I can gather, the terms of the
hostility to Cruising are several. That its
repre[...]life is inaccurate,
or else that it is limited to the activities of a
fringe group (the latter point is endorsed by a
disclaimer at the beginning of the film). That it
is a badly-made film which is clum[...]narrative confusions serving as
ample evidence of the filmmakers’ incom-
petence. That its ‘messag[...]o produce
a general animosity towards gays and to the ad-
vancement of gay rights, perhaps even provok-
mg a wave of violence against homosexuals.

The last objection cannot be countered, any
more than[...]an “innocent”

4. Campaign, No. 54, p. 5.
5. The best example I have come across is a review by Scot-
tie Ferguson in The Advocate (U.S.), April 17, 1980.

The other objections are best discussed
through an an[...]l strategies, any
attempt to condemn or to defend the film is
doomed to the realm of surface impressions,
which reflect more upon the speaker than
anything else.

i‘rr3r1’k

Cruis[...]director,
William Friedkin. Its narrative adopts the struc-
ture of the investigation tale, as its central
character, Steve Burns (Al Pacino), seeks out a
killer in thethe security of his place in
the world.

Cruising can also be identified as an inter-
section for several other generic modes: the
‘film noir’, the “gothic horror film” (Friedkin’s
label) and the ‘psycho’-drama. A dominant
visual element of the film is darkness: in the
emphasis on a world ofnight—time activity and in
the recurrent fades to black which are used as
punctu[...]h sexual activity
occurs. This is most notable in the first murder
sequence, but also at those times when Burns has
been picked up. The use of darkness and the
fades to black seem to be Friedkin’s strategy
f[...]literal representation of sex
between males, with the effect that the specific
details of homosexuality are rendered am-
biguous and linked with the general sense of
threat. Dar-kness in the ‘films noirs’ insistently
serves the function of suggesting hidden aspects
of the human psyche, dangerous sides to the
human personality that are a threat to order, to
what the dramatic contexts of these films wish to
assert a[...]ss
seems consistent with this: murder, sexuality, the
S & M bars, and the police on patrol all being
bound together in a cy[...]er.

Yet what is particularly interesting here is the
way “normality” is set against this ‘film n[...]darkness
and light, or black and white. Instead, the

The crippled Captain Edelson (Paul Sorvino). Cruising[...]their first scene together
when Edelson describes the dangers attendant
upon Burns going undercover, are gradually and
powerfully subverted.

The police in the film do not reflect any order
against which to set the chaos of the S & M
world — in fact, they are linked with repression,
which is shown to produce corruption (the patrol
cops who terrorize homosexuals), impotence[...]ration, is powerless to act except in accord
with the bureaucratic strictures of his depart-
ment) and brutality (again the patrol cops, but
also the savage interrogation of the suspect who

could have been exonerated by a simple print
check).

The film insistently draws connections

The New York fringe world of S&M. Cruising.

between the police and the S & M underworld —
both function and are relate[...]off as precincts; both form an
uneasy alliance in the attempt to find the killer
— each becoming a distorting mirror of the
other. This can be seen especially in the presence
of the giant black, clad in jock strap, who assists
the police with their interrogations. But a key
motif of the film, that of the predator, binds the
two worlds inextricably together. The ritual of
the pick—up finds its distorted reflection in the
police who cruise the S & M hangouts either as
participants or as victimisers of the men there.

All of this provides the framework for the
‘psycho’-drama whose centre is the character of
Steve Burns. Having accepted the assignment to
“disappear”, he assumes an identity which
allows him to mix with the crowd who inhabit
the film’s netherworld, a process which mirrors
that of the killer, Richards (Richard Cox),
whose daylight “innocence” conceals his night-
time menace. The film here produces, and
sustains, a conventional[...]ued become reflections of each other.

Throughout the film, the medium long-shot is
used to create an uncertainty[...]rities in dress and physique further accen-
tuate the point. The sequence where Richards
first notices Burns’ presence outside the apart-
ment house where he lives employs the shot-
reverse shot to encourage a sense of their
inter-connectedness, and the final confrontation
between the two men extends this. As their
cigarettes lie smouldering side-by-side (a
cutaway close-up), the two men move off to their
ritual of battle, Burns[...]med with identical
knives, they face each other.

The ambiguity which results from this is
usually link[...]ording
to a common code, but on opposite sides of the
law. Cruising is no exception to this, but it shifts
that ambiguity into the realm of sexuality. Burns
and Richards find their self-image threatened by
homosexuality — each lives in the shadows of
father figures to whom they have somet[...]sexual instincts.

Burns is initially depicted in the customary
fashion of the cop hero as a confirmed
heterosexual. “There’[...]by lyrical music,
producing a sharp contrast with the hard rock
that dominates the rest of the soundtrack.
However, as Burris penetrates further into the

to-' -

Steve Burns (Al Pacino) a[...]

foreign world of the black leather and singlet-
clad homosexuals, what[...]ssured, and when he
returns to Nancy’s place in the evenings, the sex-
ual rapport the two had seemed to share is
replaced by shots of his desperate lungings, and
as she “comes down” on him the music is dis-
placed by more threatening tones. Only in the
film’s final sequence is it suggested that the
lyrical music has been emanating from a record
player in the living-room, pointing to the
characters’ assertion of romantic love, a notion
which the entire film calls into question.

Burns’ return[...]linking of him with “that trash”
who frequent the S & M bars is clearly in excess
of the provocation. The security of his sexual
identity has vanished, and the film’s final
sequence underlines the potential destructive-
ness of the resultant insecurity as it becomes a
possibility that Burns himself is a new killer on
the loose.

The shift from the initial reading of Burns, as
an audience identification figure who is to lead
us into the S & M world and who will thus
provide us with a secure perspective from which
to judge the action, produces a significant
narrative disturbance in the film. Many of
Alfred Hitchcock’s films provide[...]dience response (nowhere
more effectively than in the shift of response to
the Scottie Ferguson/James Stewart character
in Vertigo), but few lines have disturbed the
narrative position of the hero as traumatically as
Cruising.

Within the structure of the proprieties of the
film’s “normal” world, in his role in the police
force and in his relationship with Nancy,[...]his
function, and he can act accordingly. This is the
world which, like the ego, asserts order and
represses anything which threatens that. In the
film’s ‘other’ world, he ‘disappears’, merging
with those around him in the night streets and
bars, sharing a physical resemblance with so
many of the S & M set that it often requires a
close—up to recuperate his place (to save him)
and to restore order to the progression of
the narrative.‘ This is the world of the Id, which
asserts chaos, which is unrepressed, an[...]world which produces
insecurity in those bound by the rigid in-
dividualism of the ‘normal’ world.

Cruising makes no claims to[...]ocumentary realism. Its particular style draws
on the tradition of narrative realism, though it
often s[...]so to break its
rules. Its constant subversion of the viewer’s
customary fixed and secure position in relation
to the clarity and order of the narrative
underlines the film’s central concern with
insecurity. It is i[...]most
effectively a horror story, for it confronts the
complacency that celebrates order, and replaces
the fixed with the ambiguous.

Formally and thematically, Cruising i[...]rbs, and its intelligence deserves
much more than the naive controversy that has
surrounded it to date. k

6. In many ways the narrative order is also strained in a
fashion most uncommon in the commercial narrative
cinema to which Friedkin exp[...]. For example, temporality is rendered
asunder in the sequence where Richards meets his father
in the park: dressed in the same garb as he had been wear-
ing in the previous sequence in his apartment, which is
stri[...]logic, he goes to his father.
It is only later in the film that we learn that his father has
been dead[...]Another example, designed to
produce disorder, is the ‘open’ epilogue to the film where
Burns returns to Nancy‘s apartment.[...]lity, Cruising is notable firstly
for bringing to the commercial cinema images
never before seen there: the leather set, sado-
masochism, pick-ups. This is not to say these
images are any ‘truer’ than those of the charm-
ing effeminates of La cage aux folles: truth is
never the issue. There is not a homosexuality, an
essential[...]ultural positions.
It can never be separated from the meanings and
connotations it carries.‘ And it i[...]here is possibly a sophisticated argument
against the film (certainly, it has yet to be
made). It might[...]thing dark, monstrous,
abnormal, even evil, given the gothic style
Friedkin employs. And, being at leas[...]ion not as
constructed but as natural, evident to the eye —
“That’s what the gay world’s really like.” People
respond to f[...]r they are:
middle class? heterosexual?) react to the film,
what attitudes it evokes or bolsters in them. For
the moment, the question of Cruising’s impact
and its effects will be put to one side, and first we
must understand the film itself.

Cruising is essentially about aggression. To
claim. as Vito Russo did in Gay News, that the
film “indicates that gay life makes one violent[...]ysis provides a useful and needed correc-
tive to the simplistic assumptions of a polemic like Noel
Pur[...]pp.ll5-ll9. I79.

l\/IARTIN

violent and the possible reasons why. Cruising is
not a right-win[...]iety has a need to kill them.

A few minutes into the film, two cops are
shown travelling the streets in their patrol car.
One of them, DiSimon[...]s dressed as women,
pull them up and harass them, the scene cul-
minating in one of the cops ordering the most
vocal gay to give him head. When this is about to
happen, the shot racks focus to show the killer
going into a bar to find a victim. What is[...]ggression towards his wife
is re-directed towards the gays — because both
homosexuals and ‘liberated’ women pose a
threat to the social and sexual order. What the
killer is about to do is only an extension of this
first aggression; he is, paradoxically, on the side
of the ‘law’.

Cruising examines a patriarchal, or ‘phallo-
cratic’,'society, in which the power invested in
men by the law expresses itself through a
valorization of male sexuality, the penis.’ The
film consistently links power with virility: in the
scene just mentioned, the gay is told to suck the
cop’s ‘night stick’; the harassing cops are called
‘hard-ons’; the killer’s spermless ejaculation is
referred to as ‘shooting blanks’.

However, it is not only the police who are im-
plicated in this association of virility with power.
Certainly the most provocative aspect ofthe film
is the way in which it refuses to romanticize its
gays on any level: they are not presented as the
poor victims ofpatriarchal tyranny. In fact, they
help to perpetuate its ideology.

The whole ‘leather set’ scene is based on a
glorification of phallic power —- witness the
Nazi regalia, the wrestling magazines, and most
particularly the police uniforms. This is

Concluded on P. 392

2.[...]ion on Cruising, is not
accepted by a majority of the Gay Movement.

On the other, there are those who believe in maintaining[...]lians. Its success depends on its difference from the “treadmill” of
American-type product.

While[...]en held for some time, it was primarily action by the
Actors and Announcers Equity Association of Australia that made the issues public. Up until
1979, the producer of each film made in Australia negotiate[...]y with Equity. That
changed in November 1979 with the incorporation of the Film Actors Award 1979, which resulted
from negotiations between Equity and the Film and Television Production Association of
Australia. One thing the Award did was establish penalties for the use of imported actors: e.g., if
a foreign actor is used, each Australian actor in the film receives a 25 per cent loading.

At its incorporation, the Award was generally applauded, but enthusiasm wan[...]when
producer Tony Ginnane ran into problems with The Survivor and then producer-director
Richard Frank[...]r overseas stars.
Equity, which gives a ruling to the Immigration Department as to an actor’s standing, refused on
the grounds that two of the four actors were not of “international standing”.

Ginnane took Equity to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, but Justice Robinson
ruled that Equity had the right to determine “international standing” and Ginnane lost.

The Roadgames case was different, with Franklin claiming that the Melbourne branch of
Equity gave him permission to bring in Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis, but the Sydney
branch, after an objection was lodged by a Sydney actress, changed the decision.

But the real bone of contention was yet to come: Equity’s “Defence of Employment Policy”,
also known as the “new policy”. This bars the use of overseas actors in any Australian film wit[...]ceptional circumstances”. Several producers saw the move as
the death knell for a faltering industry; others felt it would ensure the continuation of a film
industry of which Australi[...]It is still too early to see what lasting effects the new policy will have, but already Ginnane,
Austra[...]ic producer, has stopped working in Australia and the South Australian
Film Corporation has threatened not to make any more films until the policy changes.

Given the importance of this and related issues, various pe[...]sman; a statement by Errol

Sullivan, chairman of the F&TPAA (features division); and an interview with[...]art of an ongoing debate which may well
determine the future of the Australian film industry.

Cinema Papers.[...]

But Canada neighbours the U.S.
and historically Canadian film-
going tastes have been the same as
American. Canadian films are not,
at pre[...]iences. Surely it is economically
sounder to make the sort of films
that Canadian audiences want to
see, rather than the sort some people
think they should see . . .[...]that
an Australian film ind‘ustry?”, during the
I980 Sydney Film Festival.

326 — Cinema Papers[...]Wi ndt

Uri Windt, assistant general secretary of the Actors and
Announcers Equity Association of Australia, is the
spokesman on Equity’s policies in the feature film and
television areas. Here he discusses with Scott Murray the

There is a quote in Variety from
the Canadian Minister of Interior
Affairs screaming outrage at the
fact that films are using Canadian
locations where the street names
have changed, and where New
York yellow cabs have been
imported into Toronto. The
Government itself is saying, “This
is outrageous.”

This kind ofeconomics of scale is
all about the Canadian govern-
ment subsidizing American multi-[...]is supposed to be
grossing millions of dollars in the
U.S., yet it is alleged that the nett
return to the Australian Film Com-
mission is in the mere tens of
thousands of dollars. It has ended
u[...]lions. Perhaps it just reflects in-
experience in the film industry . . .

But Picnic at Hanging Rock
came at one point in the history of
the industry, and Patrick a long
way afterwards. If,[...]have
been some very serious heartburn
going on in the AFC boardroom.

The second point you made -
that we ought to give people what
they want — is very much akin to
the argument that takes place about
television. Why i[...]ople basically happy
with what they are getting?

The short answer for that, and
the best analogy that I have heard
in relation to tel[...]nable option

that people have before them.

Now, the argument that says
since Canadians don’t know w[...]r sustaining an econ-
omic proposition which rips the
country off.

That’s not what they are saying.
They are claiming that the jump
from what Canadian audiences have
traditiona[...]t a vast economic in-
frastructure where you have the ex-
hibitors and distributors in a vert-
ically-i[...]resources and a
global set—up. Industries like the
Australian and Canadian are
knocking from the outside trying to
get in. Outlets are tied up and[...]with loaded dice; you
are always one step behind the 8
ball.

It is not as ifthe Australian and
the American industries are com-
parable. You are dea[...]in-
ancial and infrastructural re-
sources, while the other battles on
its own. To that extent, the kind of
industry we have, which churns out
10 to 20 films a year, is just not in
the race to compete with the razza-
matazz. We are swamped in terms
of product.

Now to really get an under-
standing and a feel for how the ex-
hibitors and distributors respond to
Australi[...]ere was a fair-
ly strong dearth of production in
the U.S., Australian films were
virtually responsible for the cash
flow among the exhibitors in Aust-
ralia. They were desperate, a[...]ralian films were
shelved to one side.

Obviously the big American in-
dustry could dwarf the small Aust-
ralian in an open-market situation,
if it wanted to. But is there not some
way the two industries could link
together? Take a film like “The
Blue Lagoon”, which has so far
grossed $30 million in the U.S. It
has an Australian co—producer, and
is the sort of film Australians could
make with America[...]we are rapidly reaching a
crunch situation, where the in-
dustry as a whole needs to make a
decision ab[...]on. There
are two options, it seems to me.
One is the concept of inter-
nationalizing the film industry.
Tony Ginnane and Richard
Franklin[...]lms and so on. This
means wanting to compete with the
Americanized concept of film-
making on its own t[...]and liquidity. But it would be
very much akin to the Canadian
and British experiences — and
there is a question mark about the
ongoing-ness of that kind of in-
dustry.

The second clear option relates
to making films that[...]hich are distinct
and identiliably different from the
American treadmill that will give
the Australian films a notch in the
marketplace, that makes it worth-

Now, if the economics of sus-
taining this second option exis[...]e security. You
can control your destiny, because
the sources of funds and the
audiences you are cultivating -
being Australian — are there. You
get a return on the effort that has
been spent within the Australian
community.

Now, is there going to be[...]e. What pro-
ducers are complaining about is
that the private funds which sup-
plement the public funds are
becoming progressively elusive. It
is driving them to desperate means
to try and get the balance of money
to make up the budget. They would
like us to believe that what t[...]lve any fundamental com-
promise of themselves or the Aust-
ralian filmmaking industry. But
this is where the crunch comes: “Is
a fundamental economic and
cu[...]on those producers?”

When you look at some of the
propositions that are put up to us, it
seems to m[...]one this without any
widespread discussion within the in-
dustry, and certainly with no pre-
liminary discussion with the group
of people they are asking to make
the most severe compromise,
namely the actors. In that com-
promise for foreign money, l[...]ity
of filmmakers, operating within
Australia, to the Australian com-
munity and to their fellow creati[...]here are three areas that
concern us in regard to thethe importation of artists subject to the following:

1. Where a film is wholly or partly f[...]e a film is privately funded. Equity will approve the importation
of artists subject to the following:

(a) The Artist is of internationally recognized merit and ability. The
criteria of judgment in particular, but not exclu[...]k over a period of at least five
years (except in the case of juveniles);

An equal number of Australia[...]tralians in advertising and

promotional events;

The imported artist does no work other than the film for which

he/she is contracted;

The production company enters into an agreement with the

Union relating to the above conditions and terms of engagement
(including rates of pay); and
(f) Where a film is produced under the terms of the award, an

absolute limit of two imported artists be placed on any one film in
all but the most exceptional circumstances.

6. Television Pr[...]n under clause E1, E2 and E3)
Equity will approve the importation of an artist where the following condi-

tions are met:

Any production funded solely by the ABC will not be permitted
imports except in exceptional circumstances;

The Union is satisfied that there is a legitimate reason for the use of

an imported artist;

No more than one imp[...]rmitted except under

exceptional circumstances;

The artist is of international status;
) An equal number of Australians receive at least the same billing as

the imported artists;

The imported artist does no work other than in the television pro-

gram; and

The production company enters into an agreement with the Union
relating to the above conditions and terms of engagement (including

rates of pay).

These conditions are subject to the overriding proviso that Equity will not
approve the importation of artists for Australian-made “soa[...]owed to happen de facto.

We were then faced with the
dilemma of what sort of cir-
cumstances were acce[...]were well
attended. Two things stood out: one
is the need for a certain amount of
flexibility, and the other is that
people resented being displaced by[...]in considering these feelings,
we have looked at the prospect of
saying that “exceptional cir-
cumstances” means (a) somebody
can’t play the role satisfactorily in
Australia, or (b) somebody[...]don’t know if it is
quotable at this stage, but the whole
industry knows about Julie
Christie. We have said “All right”,
and that sets the peg. We will have
a look at each test as it comes.

Has Christie been approved under
(a) or (b)?

Under the international dis-
tinction and merit qualificati[...]has been put to
us. It is not a real proposition. The
real proposition is that producers
aspire to using the big inter-
national star who will put bums on
seats. The problem is that they
can’t afford them.[...]

or John Travolta before they hit the
big time, it would be Christmas."

Producers tell[...]lion
dollars if they use actors who are
geared to the cable market in the
US. They will be given two or
three names, of whom the pro-
ducers and directors have not heard
much, but for whom they only have
to pay $50,000. So thethe capacity of the
industry as a whole —— and by that I
mean our actors will get the chance
to be more than a taxi driver in a
film — then that is a big respons-
ibility on the producer.

Your analysis would certainly hold
in[...]French or Italian
actress because he feels she is the
only person right for the role. Would
that application be looked at under
the term of “exceptional cir-
cumstances”?

Yes i[...]to you that this
is not what has been put to us. The
proposition ofimporting Jamie Lee
Curtis for Roadgames had naught
to do with the notion of a special
creative surge that was flying
through the producer’s veins at the
time.

So you have deliberately left the
definition of “exceptional cir-
cumstances”[...]d an
impassioned filmmaker . . .

That’s right. The reason for using
“exceptional circumstances”[...]e would like to import them.” If
we had dropped the “exceptional
circumstances” and said blankly[...]ing to
do, by establishing such a policy, is
that the more loony propositions
get filtered out before[...]ward manner,
and we want to be able to sit across
the table with cards open.

There was an item recently in ‘The
Age’ which suggested that British
Equity might retaliate against the
new Australian Equity policy. How
do you view suc[...]-
dustry, needs to develop its own
defences. What the British have
done, by and large, is to defend their
television to the death. They
recently upped the minimum quota
requirements of British content on[...]on from 86 to 88 per
cent. They have also dropped the
Commonwealth exemption, put-
ting Australians with the rest of the
world.

But what retaliatory action are
they goin[...]ia, in a highly-privil-
eged situation because of the new
policy, and then go overseas to
greater profi[...]they are
imponderables. lt hasn’t happened

“The proposition of importing Jamie Lee Curtis for Roadgames has naught to do with the

notion ofa special creative surge ..

. through the producer’s veins.” Stacy Keach and Curtis

in[...], and are you oing. to
sacrifice an industry, and the
potential for a Judy Davis to get a
role in My Br[...]else?

What concerns me is that there
is, within the industry, an ap-
proach to problems of creating
e[...]ich get adopted as
truisms. For example, there is the

truism that imported actors put‘

bums on seat[...]an in Break of Day.
Where is it true‘? Where is the
evidence?” I mean, it’s not there.

You have spoken of the re-
sponsibility of filmmakers in Aust-
ralia wh[...]hat responsibility?

Let me step back in history. The
way in which the film industry’s
latest renaissance developed in[...]h other up, of
marching shoulder to shoulder into
the new nirvana.

Now for five years, for a range of[...]d Some of them are pre-
dictable. and some lie at the feet of
the in terms of historically
wrong decisions made at its in-
ception. The crunch has come and
what is being put up now. in philo-
sophical terms. is: “If the industry
is to survive. we can no longer
sustain[...]have to step asitfle."

Now it justiiappens to be the fad
at the moment that actors should
step aside. At some oth[...]Fads move, fads
change. Instead of being united. the
industry has become very ego-
centric around the survival of the
producer. The»vr.est be damned.

This fundaental change in at-[...]ve that
there is another way.”

How much has the AFC been re-
sponsible for that? i

l don‘t see[...]n ap-
portioning blame in a particular
direction. The crisis is a fiscal one,
and it has come on different organ-
izations in different ways. For
example, the South Australian
Film Corporation operates[...]

I mentioned earlier historical
errors. One of these was the various
funding bodies’ moving into only
one aspect of the film industry,
leaving the other two key areas —
exhibition and distributi[...]sts. This has meant a
fairly unholy marriage with the
people who have been historically
responsible for the death of the in-
dustry once already. That people
couidn’t see the inevitable crunch of
that situation coming seems[...]Surely that
suggests that, to a degree at least,
the exhibition and distribution net-
work is interest[...]ralian films, if they think they can
compete on the marketplace?

It is a question ofchoice. If they[...]hey
don’t have a choice, then they will
support the Australian Film in-
dustry.

Again, you have to remember the
historical context: 1976/77 was the
aftermath of the Whitlam era.
There was a great deal of national-[...]in that direction. Also, they
had been up before the Trade
Practices Commission and got a
fairly savag[...]in, they had to
be seen to be actively supporting
the film industry. Coupled with that
was the dearth of material from the
U.S. So why wouldn’t they be

involved in such[...]choice, why
wouldn’t they get out of supporting
the Australian film industry? Take
these past two years. They released
five, or was it six, films in the July-
August period last year, in Sydney
anyway. That is five or six films at
the deadest part of the year. Well,
you could say that was an accident,
b[...]released four or five
films this year in exactly the same
way. Now if that is not guaranteed
to kill the Australian film in the
marketplace, I don’t know what is.

Could it not perhaps reflect on the
quality of those Australian films?

It may, But[...]reflect
pretty wilful economic manipu-
lation of the industry.

You mentioned government funding
bodie[...]ibition?

That’s a good question. I can’t
see the answers necessarily from
where I sit. I don’t have all the data
in front of me. I really don’t know
how be[...]it's
reasonable to issue a call to have a
look at the government’s strategies
in regard to this. Previous calls
have taken place. There was the
Tariff Board in 1973, which con-
demned the exhibition and
distribution monopoly. So did the
Trade Practices Commission, with
the Venturini decision.

l am not optimistic with the
present federal government, but if
you have a sym[...]nt you have lots of con-
cepts you can play with. The Labor
Government, for example, had a
concept of d[...]d, it
would have provided an exhibition
chain for the various government
funding bodies.

As new technology evolves, the
government funding bodies and
statutory bodies ou[...]not a question of handing
pay television over to the ex-
hibitors/distributors on one hand,
or to the commercial television pro-
prietors on the other. We will be
looking at the cable/pay set-up as a
publicly-funded proposition, and
one into which the film industry will
have a direct conduit.

A lot[...]nt on a continuation of
government involvement in the fiim
industry. The policy of bringing in
more and more overseas acto[...]eople, as
being a necessary step in preparing
for the time when Australian govern-
ment money stops. What’s your re-
action to that argument?

The new industry cliche is that
subsidization per se is somehow
bad. and doubly bad in the film in-
dustry. It seems important to pierce
tha[...]ltural form that each
country ought to sustain in the way
enormous amounts of money are
used to sustain[...]l
forms, like ballet and opera. I
understand that the Australian
ballet company has recently re-
ceived[...]act, subsidization
ought to be seen as a right of the in-
dustry.

The other thing to do, in this time
of nervousness about government
cut-backs, is look at what the in-
dustry costs the federal govern-
ment. We feel there should be an in-
crease in the levy that is imposed on

the overseas remittances of ex-
hibitors and distributors. They are
part of the industry, and they ought
to make a contribution towards it.
Now, the last figures I saw quoted
involved a $46 million[...]nt. That’s
roughly $5 million. That’s roughly
the government contribution
towards the AFC.

If, as I believe ought to happen,
the money from that levy ought to
be pooled and re-funneiled into the
industry, instead of going straight
into consolidated revenue, then the
AFC would cost the Government
nothing. So where is the heavy price
that the Government is paying for
what is its greatest international
prestige-winning showpiece?

Succumbing to the psycho-
logical terror of people saying that
the Government won’t subsidize
forever, and that we[...]roat
in two different ways. Firstly, you
diminish the G0vernment’s sense of
responsibility towards the industry
as a whole; you make them feel free
of their commitment.

Secondly, by making the kind of
cultural compromises that we are
talking[...]ose that international
prestige-winning aspect of the
Australian film industry.

Given that you feel there is a need
for the industry to come together
more — shoulder to sh[...]ou go about
doing it?

Two things. One relates to the
sensitivity people have to the re-
quirements of others. If nothing
else. our po[...]e are at least saying that
actors are involved in the film in-
dustry. As well, producers are

C[...]

portunity to celebrate what is good
about the Australian film industry,

rather than being at d[...]ment’ per-
mission, to create a celebration of

The film producers served a log
of claims on us. They[...]etting more
meaningful negotiations as a result.

The second possibility is one of
people getting together more, so
that there is some sense of belong-
ing to the one industry. Con-

the Australian-ness of the film
industry at the next opening of an
all-Australian film. We plan to
close off George St and run the
showbiz party of the year. At least
it will provide people with an op-

each other.

The Award [see Box 2]

Where did the

Award come from?

hours a week, and halve the pay. I
suspect it was an ambered claim,

much like when we ask for $3000 a
week.

initiative for the

Continued on P. 389

Box 2: The Award 0 .

The sections of the Actors Feature Film Award 1 979 relevant to this discussion are:

31. Rates of Pay

The artist's rate of pay shall be determined in the following manner:

A. Process of categorization
(a) The producer shall, prior to engaging members of the Union,

supply a statutory declaration stating the following:
in Production credits:
Iii A list of p[...]stralian completion guarantee.

C. Minimum Rates

The minimum rates of pay set out hereunder shall be paid by the
producer to the artist:

side the scope of this Award in accordance with the provisions
of clause 3.

status who will be grant[...]e of production, production super~ (1) Engaged by the week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..[...]ion manager, production associate; (2) Engaged by the day ........................... ..$63.00
(2) A li[...]mpanies and their residential (3) EnQ,39,ed b3’ the h0UF fol’
status who will be granted presentati[...].......................... ..presents Engaged by the week..... 4320
production” Engaged by the day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..$35[...]................................... ., ('”) by the Week _ _ - I I ‘ ’ _ I . ‘ I ‘ I “$167.[...]................................... .. Engaged by the day........ .,............$42.1O
“Production in[...]l distribution or release credits; (I) Engaged by the hour ............................................. ..$6.85
(ii) Completion guarantee: the nature of persons or company (fol 3 mm|mUm Of ‘[...]tus, providing (where applicable) (ii) Engaged by the day ............................................ ..$45.5O
the completion guarantee, and 4 ‘ Provided that when the producer is shooting a location
(iii) Overseas actors: the name and country of origin of all sufficiently distant from the availability of Actors’ and
actors not residing[...]ralia members then,
other than rolling billing at the conclusion of the film. subject to the Union's agreement, the following shall be
(b) The producer shall seek approval from the Union for the impor- F’a'd: ‘
tation of overseas actors for[...]international distinction and merit. (engaged by the day) ................................ ..$32_2O
(c) The producer and the Union_may, by mutual consent, designate (b) categmy B
af5Fie°'f'e°3°1at(e9§"'Y to the mm’ "°tw'""5ta"d'”9 the p'°V'S'°"S Excepting in relation to Extras and Stand-ins, 25 per cent addi-
° C a”5 * tional to the rates set out in paragraph (a) above, plus 12‘/[...]ns cent for each additional imported artist after the first.
Films shall be categorized as follows: (C)[...]d (if applicable) Australian completion tional to the rates set out in paragraph (a) above plus 12‘/2[...]e. cent for each additional imported artist after the first.
Category B: means a film with total Australian creative control, (d) Films not falling into the definitionslisted inthis clause are out-

Errol _SulliVan, chairman of the Film and Television Production
Association of Australia (features division), looks at the Equity
debate from the point of View of the producer.

In some respects, Equity’s policies[...]ependent producers.
We are certainly committed to the con-
cept that films which have secured
public in[...]p-
ment moneys) should restrict, but not
exclude, the use of foreign creative
talent, including writers[...]ol.

In addition, if some formula for
restricting the amount of foreign talent
in productions could be[...]ch are
totally privately financed (a handful
over the past five years) should not
suffer any more restr[...]ilms shot in Australia,
even if that means taking the film
outside the ambit of the arbitrated
award for Australian films. Tony
Ginna[...]ble to make inter-
national films in Australia in the same
way that The Earthling was made here
and that Warner Brothers[...]ion
and marketing costs have risen sharply.
Below-the-line costs have roughly
doubled. Examples of our successes
from the past, which are totally Austra-
lian, take on a d[...]ed with
diminishing box-office returns to all but
the mega films. Yesterday’s successes
are now formu[...]generated by projects with
marketable elements in the key creative
positions.

We have, in Australia, o[...]with a restricted use of
overseas talent and, at the same time,
recognize that this talent may be
virt[...]notions inherent
in Equity’s position, that if the film is
all-Australian it will better represent
A[...]culture (whatever
that means), seem untenable. Is The Last
Wave with Richard Chamberlain less
Australian than Mad Max? Were the
scores of spaghetti Westerns (with all
Italian co[...]h a mix of production will maintain
jobs and keep the public money flowing.

Any contraction to the sole produc-
tion of subsidized art films[...]

In this frank interview, by Tom Ryan, lea[...]discusses working in Australia and his
concept of the international actor.

How did Bruce Beresford come to
choose you for the part of Harry
Morant?

Bruce had seen a lot of my
television work and the film Wicker
Man. He felt I was the one to play
Breaker, and put the idea to Matt
Carroll who agreed. They then
found that I had this extraordinary
resemblance to the man, which
spurred them on even more. I was
then sent the script.

Did you accept at that point?

No. The script wasn’t finished
and I think there is a great danger
in accepting anything until you
have seen the final form. Other-
wise, you can make terrible
pe[...]s, Bruce sent me a draft which
was much closer to the final one. I
thought it was great.

What sort of director is Beresford?

The keystone of his direction. as
with all the good directors I think,
is that he encourages you to
contribute to the part, even to vary
the way it is written. He is a very
clever director a[...]sm,
but that changes to admiration and
support in the course of the shot . . .

I am glad you got that, because it
was very important in my mind.

I was trained in the school of
reacting and, in fact, acting is about
reacting. That is the most impor-
tant thing actors should be taught.

The above interview was originally broad-
cast on 3RR[...]a question
intelligently if you don’t listen to
the question. Therefore, you cannot
possibly act unless you give all your
attention to the person with whom
you are acting.

If you take the really top actors
and watch their reactions, and[...]ing to listen,
but actually listening.

Obviously the techniques of an
actor are developed over the years
and vary for different roles. One
wouldn’[...]comedy series. There, you have to
bash it out all the time, with as
near—perfect timing as you can get.

One thing that has struck me about
Australian films is the absence of

IJ

this “reactor actor”. When the per-
formers are the focus of attention
they are mostly fine, but when they
become part of the background they
have nothing to offer, or else th[...]actor, or was that some-
thing you contributed to the part?

Firstly, I’ll take you to task
about tha[...]act. But you cannot do any kind of
performance if the script is not
there. The first and basic require-
ment of any form of entertain-
ment, and certainly film, is that the

script has to be good in the first
place.

In the courtroom scenes in “Breaker
Morant” you say very little. In fact,
it is Jack Thompson, Bud Tingwell
and the others who do the talking.
Yet it is your reaction that seems to
control our emotional response to
what’s going on. Were the scenes
directed around you consciously?

Morant is the catalyst: he is the
reason the whole thing is going on
in the first place. He is a very bitter
man, so. of course, you show the
bitterness through that man,
through his reactions. Judicious
reaction—shots provide the thread of
tension throughout the scenes in the
courtroom. This is the choice of the
director.

There were, of course, other
reaction[...]as doing. A‘
director watches a rehearsal, sees
the way a particular actor is react-
ing to somebody else, and thinks,
“Oh great, that tells my bit of the
story here, so l‘ll get that reaction
shot.” This builds up into ajigsaw
puzzle. which is the film. All I do as
a film actor is listen.

I spen[...]hat was my

job. You don’t stop acting because

the camera is not on you, espe-
cially in a scene, or[...]at
five-minute take, which is .lack’s
appeal to the court.

The more you talk about acting
and reacting, the more I know that
what I was taught is true: that[...]ing, focusing not just for yourself,
but for all the other actors. What
you do on set. or on a stage, is only
a part of the whole. If you go out
and say, “This is my show", or “I
am the great I am”, you already
have destroyed whatever is going to
happen. You have totally des-
troyed the writer, the director. all
the _other actors and yourself. That
is not what I am[...]ctors are basically about.

Occasionally, you get the odd,
twitty big-head, but it is very simple

There was no discussion as such,
because when Beresford came to
the project he had already mapped
out the overall plan. What do you
do with a courtroom drama? You
have to go outside the court. How
do you go outside the court? Well
you obviously do it in flashback or[...]whereby you go back-
wards and forwards in time. The
director’s great problem thefe, of
course, is to make sure that the
audience is swept along by‘ the
story, and that can only happen if
the audience understands where it is
at any given time. And that is
where, I think, the genius ofa man
like Bruce Beresford comes into

play.

I kept thinking throughout the film
that maybe it shouldn’t have moved
outdoors till the end. Perhaps the
end sequence would have been more
overpowering had the film been
claustrophobic to that point . . .

Yes, but the vast number of
people who watch entertainment do
not go to the theatre. Therefore,
you have to deal with the kind of
expectations they are going to bring
to y[...]ind of
claustrophobia.

You are a man who goes to the
theatre a lot, therefore you know
the genre. You have the feeling for
this. But the audiences which go to
films are used to being taken
outdoors. Today is the age of
outdoors location filming.

The International Actor

You are probably aware that[...]this?

To start with, all Equity groups
are only the sum total of us, the
actors. And whatever Australian
actors decide, wi[...]ears, along with a
number of actors in Australia, the
US., and Britain, to have the true
internationality of actors recog-
nized. doc[...]d,
and put into our rule books. Grad-
ually. over the years, this has begun
to happen. Occasionally, ou[...]you
know. Don’t forget, there are few
places in the world that English-
speaking actors can work. And[...]ment finance, in
“exceptional circumstances”. The
onus is on filmmakers to show that
nobody in Australia could play that
part and that the overseas actor is
really a star . . .

But there[...]ralian actors
will be allowed to work in films in
the US.

Over the past five or six years,
there has arisen, at long last, a
breed of Australian actors, second
to none in the world. Now where do
such actors extend their craf[...]top Australian actors
will want to make films in the US.
They will want new experience, new
types of s[...]ard—and-fast ban,
without things being taken on the
merit of a particular situation, that
the Americans are going to say,
“We don’t mind no[...]a. Of course we will
welcome you Australians into the
US.”

So, we will find the situation
where our countries are totally
closed to the possibility of actors
being able to move about. And
actors are the most easily moved
about.

A part ofthe history offilm is the
movement of actors from one
country to another in[...]mes it’s going to be Aus-
tralia’s turn to be the country that’s
making films; sometimes, God
wil[...]e about
their craft. It can’t possibly work
for the good of Australian actors.

I think there is conn[...]condly because
without a particular overseas star
the film will not be marketable, or at
least as mark[...]ll I wouldn’t know very much
about that side of the business, but
my reaction to that is balderdash,[...]d simply about actors.

I have travelled all over the world
and have worked and talked with
many actors[...]y love. I know perfectly
well that 90 per cent of the actors I
have talked to, over the 33 years I
have been an actor, have been cry-
ing[...]in each other’s countries,
without undercutting the in-
digenous actors concerned.

I am angry, in retrospect, for the
Australian actor, because up to 10
years ago this[...]onally is, used by a few actors
from Britain, and the odd one from
the U.S., to make a killing.

They come here to make a
packet and then get the hell out of
the country. That has happened in
our country too, in the days when
American musicals came over to
B[...]

Ian A. Stocks reports on the film industry in The Philippines, a country for long in the shadow of its one-time
colonizer, the U.S., but now showing a fierce independence. This is reflected in much of its cinema, particularly

the films by award-winning director Lino Brocka.

Manila lies about 6“ north of the equator, so
it is hot most of the year. But it was early spring
when I arrived, the tourists were flooding
through, and every night the Luneta, the large
park in the centre of a rather level city, was
packed with people enjoying the milder weather.

In his city office, Eddie Romero was putting
the finishing touches to the promotion campaign
for Aguila, his latest film. It is the most expen-
sive film made in The Philippines, with a budget
of almost U.S.$1 million. It is also the first ef-
fort in recent times at a national epic, a film
which spans four generations and looks at the
experiences of an important family through
many d[...]ilipino history.

Romero has been making films in The Philip-
pines for nearly 40 years — for local release and
on contract for American producers — so the
technical aspects of film don’t worry him too
m[...], as for any producer, is
whether it will take at the box—office — and see-
ing he wrote, directed and produced the film, he
has more at stake than most. But Romero is
relatively unconcerned as he organizes the many
previews which will precede’ the launch of his
film.

Aguila is just one of the 200-odd local films
that roll out of the Filipino labs each year, and
which compete for the three or four playdates a
week for films in the local language, Tagalog.
Sometimes harsh, but bea[...]id filmgoers. There are more
than 7000 cinemas in the three main island
groups, and the total admissions a day
throughout the islands is slightly less than two
million. Of the[...]ilm. So, it is a
buoyant market, hardly dented by the impact of
television and staunchly loyal to the local
product.

The Government’s interest in the film industry
is social as well as financial, since it reserves the
right to be shown all scripts before production
([...]Various incentives are fed back to producers, but
the industry is very much self—supporting and
exist[...]hunted out. Large finance com-
panies have joined the fray, and one big com-
pany has made a long-term[...]when I left Manila.

Other sources of finance are the stars
themselves, usually by deferment of fees in

Opposite: scene from Eddie Romero’s Aguila. the most
expensive film made in The Philippines.

return for a big part of the box-office take, and
investment by theatre owners[...]rre Rissient, a French publicist-director, to
get the films of Lino Brocka some European
festival expos[...]. 338.) It was never said to me openly, but I had
the feeling that this resistance to Filipino films

was seen as a form of racism by the Western
countries.

Having now seen a fair collec[...]overseas, aided by a certain European
quality to the style of relationships and spatial
settings. But the market needs to be proved and
this will require s[...]a lot of
patience and persistence. Aguila may be the film
to spearhead a Filipino entry into European and
international markets.

In many ways, The Philippines can be seen as
an enclave of European consciousness in Asia,
while sharing the exotic conditions and lifestyles
of the South-East Asian area. Providing that
world interest in films continues at about the
same level, it seems that Filipinos have the talent
and expertise to supply international film[...]ulture and ‘elite’ cultural pursuits. Rather, the
scene is of amalgam and adaptation, in which
the total population shares. According to a re-
cent report from The Philippines Motion Picture
Association, filmgoing is more or less constant
across the entire social scale (it averages
about 90 per cent attending films regularly),
although the A and B groups (the rich) show
more preference for foreign films than the C, D,
E and F groups (the rest), who prefer local
language product. So, in[...]does more
than any other cultural medium to weld the
country into a social unity.

In the main, though, there seems little
evidence of a co[...]n interest in it, but a financial experi-
ment in the 1970s proved the futility of making
films for which there was no s[...]2,000).
Sometimes, due to conflicting bookings of the
major stars, production may stretch over many
mon[...]firiirsfz

A few days after I arrived in Manila, the price
of motor fuel was hiked 50 per cent, to 4.5[...]es are a
fraction of ours it is a punishing blow. The
foreshadowed film stock price increases had also[...]cent). So, it is no wonder that on
most features the retake is a luxury, all rushes
are in black and w[...]ions on equipment have always
been stringent, and the basic shooting kit is an
Arri IIB or llC, sometim[...]eave behind a flatbed for his company to
buy. But the sound studios seem adequate and
the mixing suites have the latest Magnatech
equipment. Similarly, the LVN Studios process-
ing equipment, designed and[...]rooms,
sound transfers, mixing and everything but the
splicing tape thrown in. This seems less of a
bargain when you are told that the editor also
does the neg-matching, in less than optimum
conditions. The old Australian myth of the
footprint on the negative is an accepted fact in
Manila. Sparkles, scratches and cement splice
marks flash past the screen on all productions,
even something as big[...]best to
utilize finance. What this means is that the
average Filipino producer probably makes five
to six films on the finance Australians would use
to make one film of the scale of Cathy’s Child.
In addition, the Filipino producer probably sup-
ports a staff of[...]hnicians, not to speak of lab and
theatre staff.

The image of the Australian producer getting
one or two films ever[...]in
an office waiting for receipts, or a nod from the

Cinema Papers. October-November — 335

In about 30 minutes we were at the location.
A crowd of about 500 pressed against the fence
around a small frame liouse, straining for[...]t as they saw her at a
window, and surged towards the fences.

Shooting hadn’t started, the director was not
there and the camera crew were setting up lights.
Velasco expla[...]g rarely starts in
Manila before one o’clock in the afternoon.

The stars, who are essential for the success of
most films, know their power and can refuse to
get up in the morning. So shootings are tactfully
scheduled to suit them, not the budget. And, as
was the case of the film we were seeing, the star
was also the producer, so little leverage could be
exerted.

N[...], of
course, simple box-office insurance, pulling the
film through the crucial first week when it must
take money or be put off. The stars, in their
mystical relationships with the public, and
therefore the exhibitors, are the kings and
queens of the Filipino industry.

Finally, with a full-fledged roar of excitement,
Nora Aunor appeared, the director, Lino
Brocka, materialized and shooting began.
Rudimentary by Australian standards, the
equipment seemed adequate, with the possible
exception that the camera was completely
unblimped and no attempt wa[...]also sparse
and, although a generator was in use, the light
output was very low. It was further diminis[...]stralians
would find essential. Lighting fill and the general
ambient lighting level was achieved more[...]cement than power. By about 10 p.m.
a shot was in the can, and it looked like being a
long night.

rirflrfi

At 6 p.m. the following Friday night, in a
large hall which was[...]en, two port-
able projectors had been set up for the first pre-
view of Aguila. About 5000 students from
various colleges and universities watched as the
three-and—a-half hour film unreeled. Despite
help from Velasco, the Tagalog dialogue was
mystifying to me, the seats hard and the projec-
tion image dim. However, the audience watched
with rapt attention. This was something new for
them, too. Later, Romero gave me a copy of the
script, and I found it good, with witty dialogue, a
nice pace and definite unwillingness to shirk any
of the issues: American economic imperialism,

-336 — Cinema Papers, October-November

the pre-martial law period, sex and even incest in
large and powerful families.

The performances were good, ranging to
excellent, and the photography (by award-
winning cameraman Mike de[...]concern, and these
faults are freely admitted in the industry. Large
scenes were tackled with elan, and a mass battle
between Huks (guerrilla fighters) and the
Japanese was a tour de force. Similarly, the
depiction of Muslim society, and a minority
group[...]axon ones is in their sheer depth of personality,
the recognition of personal motivation and
character, in performances and script, so that
the character is presented in his or her milieu,
with full subtext and characterization. The
performances in Aguila are no exception: the
characters live and breathe, and there is little
posturizing.

The majority of Filipino films, of course, do
not pos[...]a preview of
Miss X, a creditable attempt to show the plight
of Filipino women in Europe who are forced[...]t of 1,300,000 pesos (about $170,000),
it starred the foremost “bold” star, Vilma
Santos, noted for[...]e in dramatic rape scenes with a
Dutch actor. But the production does neither her
nor the basically accurate scriptjustice; The low-
budget restrictions, the technical inexpertise
(once again in the area of lighting) and poor
coverage by director Gil Fortes let down a
basically viable concept. Yet no doubt the loyal
fans of Miss Santos will gather in droves to see
this latest offering, which at least has the merit
of dealing with a social problem.

rtrtirfr[...]d by
veteran producer-director Cirio Santiago. In the

Watching the execution of this type of
product, it is hard to escape the conclusion that
such films merely feed the maw of an insatiable
audience, which is quite content to see their
favorite stars (supported with all the fervor of
football heroes) in some sort of vehicle.

Well, Hollywood films in the 1940s and 19505
were certainly like that, and ins[...]ng a
star system to support their local industry, the
Filipinos have learnt the lesson well. This
initiative is further supported[...]ts throes.

So it was not surprising to encounter the many
and varied references to film culture, in

meetings, discussion and surveys, and the
recognition of a need to develop a Filipino
character through the medium of film. The
artistic concerns, whatever their realization, are
in the forefront of discussion. Filipino producers
seem genuinely concerned in improving the
cultural value of their product, and the many
battles fought with the Board of Censors to
extend the range ofpermitted expression seem in
part aesthet[...]has
fought a personal battle to make films about the
great mass of Filipino life. Ifthis means showing[...]ons, exploitation and inequality,
then Brocka has the determination to push his
views at the risk of censorship or outright bans.
Other directors also see the need to propound
social messages in their work and express
frustration at the unspoken pressure to stay on
the light side.

However, there are encouraging signs, largely
as a result of representation to the First Lady,
Imelda Marcos, by the PMPPA. There are also
moves to re-constitute the Board of Censors with
fewer retired military men[...]athered
momentum for its playdate, and a visit to the

PHILIPPINE CINEMA

well-equipped studios of LVN, owned by the de
Leon family.

LVN used to be the biggest of the local
language production companies; it was started in
1947 by a woman known affectionately as Doria
Sisiang. At its hei[...]services. In
1975, it re-entered production when the
grandson of Dona Sisiang produced his first
film, Itim, which won the Asian Film Festival
award for_Best Film in 1978.[...]to go into his third.

Like studios everywhere in the world, LVN
suffers a continuing battle against rising costs,
the increasing value of real estate, which must
be in demand for shopping complexes or
housing, and thethe one sound stage, and a profitable
commercials production agency, also run by the
family, takes up the slack.

ikfiir

Other interests took me south for a few days,
so I missed the opening of Aguila. Eddie
Romero was beaming modestly when I saw him
next, and it seemed like the whole industry had
heaved a sigh of relief. Aguila had started well,
and was set to become the biggest-ever Filipino
box-office success. Already it was outgrossing
Moonraker, the season’s best film.

The proponents of quality films for the
Filipino masses have scored one important
point:[...]red me) and a wealthy financier
had turned up at the last preview.

iiririk

On my last night in Manila I was invited to a
board meeting of the PMPPA. In the neo-
colonial luxury of thethe board welcomed their new lady
president, Madame Maceda. In a speedy and
decisive meeting, the outgoing president, Joseph
Estrada, handed out cash incentives from the
President of The Philippines — a noble
institution which the Producers and Directors
Guild of Australia could well adopt — and the
evening business began.

High on the list was the business of theatre
bookings. Local producers wer[...]eek to prepare prints and
publicity. Any delay in the release incurred a
penalty, payable to the exhibitor. However,
there was no reciprocal compe[...]make things more equitable, it was suggested
that the penalties to producers should be cut.

Also, it was decided to release films through
the PMPPA Marketing Committee. That way,
the producers could get thethe Australian industry 10 years
to arrive at,[...]

Brocka’s latest film, Faith Healer, is the story of an addicted film fan who falls in love w[...]f his earlier films, it has run into trouble with the Board of Censors, which disapproves of his
dealin[...]elop
this style I manage a number of
workshops in the theatre.

First, I get the actors to do a play
as if for the stage, and then for the
cinema. Finally, we videotape it. In
this way, my actors learn to adjust
or tone down their style for the
benefit of films.

Through my activities in theat[...]an audience
for a truly national theatre. So far
the efforts have been successful,
with all our season[...]apacity
audiences. Often, there are queues
around the block before a per-
formance.

Theatre is very ex[...]e they are under much more
intense scrutiny [from the Board of
Censors].

Lead actress Nora Armor and director Lino Brocka during the filming of Faith Healer.

All your films are se[...]films about rich
people in rich settings because the
budgets won’t allow it. It is hard to
find extras who can look rich;
professional models have to be

The crew rests during a break in filming.

338 — Ci[...]an’t film a large
party. Again, I am filming in the
slums.

Your recent film, “Jaguar”, appar-
ently had some difficulty reaching

the Cannes Film Festival . . .

Yes, I had trouble getting Jaguar
to Cannes, so I went to the appeals
committee and said, “What you are
seeing is the physical city, and it
embarrasses you. You are not
trying to see the humanity that is in
my films: that’s what I am trying to
show. You are missing the soul of
the film.”

What I wanted to show is how
this man,[...]ground, has so many problems in
trying to get to the top. Really, I
was trying to make a positive stat[...]ourselves to some busi-
nessmen who provided half the
capital. In the end, we let the

Producers now get in touch with
me to wri[...]down,
and if that is okay we go ahead and
finish thethe cost of production, and
this means a lot of prepa[...]post-
production, dubbing and music.

Do you see the survival of cinema in
The Philippines based on high
volume low-budget film[...]content and
acting, but which never lose track
of the commercial side. People still
think that I make f[...]ilm because I
know it will make enough to
recover the capital. ‘

On my present film, I told the
producer I would do it for half my
salary, and that I would only take
the other half if the film recovers
the money spent on it. And to get

back that capital, I’ll try to get the
film into a foreign market. But no
matter what, I’ll keep to the budget
of 850,000 pesos.

What is very important[...]at
is a stupid film and it made money.
Therefore, the audience is stupid.”
So, they give audiences hu[...]and a little
bland. It projects no real ambience.
The technical polish of your films
shows that there i[...], we don’t have that here. I
watched a class at the Australian
Film and Television School
studying the lighting of a living
room, and they had terrific[...]ke films like an
amateur cook. We are tasting all
the time to see if it is right, and the.
films have a particular flavor that
I‘d like t[...]g that is
distinctively our own. We try to
choose the best in all the world. i:

PHILIPPINE CINEMA

Mllllllfl
III IEIIN

Manuel de Leon, father of the young director Mike de Leon, has been
involved in[...]ough his company
stopped production 20 years ago, the de Leon family still owns
laboratories, studio eq[...]ests are construction and real
estate, which form the basis of his company's income. He is also a
founder member of the Asian Film Festival.

De Leon begins this interview, conducted by Ian Stocks, by
discussing the change in judging patterns at the AFF in recent years.

Rivalry has always been very
keen, even from the early days. But
the original format was that two
delegates from each[...]Recently, however, everything
has soured due to the machinations
of producers who want the prestige.
Australia has recently entered. and
my[...]can improve things.
I certainly hope so, because the
Asian market is a big one for films.

I don’t know if this is true for
Australian films, though, because
the oriental filmgoer will not easily
identify with your actors and
actresses. You are also up against
the Chinese producers who have
theatres scattered thr[...]he was
making films in Hong Kong at a
time when the average budget was
very low, but he decided to risk big
money, like with Aguila here, and it
choked.

In The Philippines we have a big
audience; per capita, Manila is one
of the hottest places for show-
business. People go to films because
it is the cheapest form of entertain-
ment.

How many of your stars come from
showbusiness? The two worlds seem
to be connected . . .

Some start off making records
and they are invited into the films,
but it’s not usually the case. We still
have a lot of unprofessional people.

What is the concept of ‘‘bold’’ stars?

Usually, it is the personality of
the actress: they are ready to “bare
all”. Well not all, but they have the
wet look, you know.

Censorship is very strict, and
before you can make a film, you
must have the script approved.
Then, before you can screen it h[...].

Brocka directs a scene from Faith Healerras the crowd watches from behind the wooden
ence.

Manuel de Leon, one of the influential figures in film production.[...]

Yes, because the film showed life
in the slums — but that’s real. We
are a poor country, yet they want us
to show the world that we are very
affluent.

The Italians were the first to
make very realistic films, like
Bicycle Thieves. That was the
renaissance of the Italian film.

Do you have this problem in
Australia?

Mainly in the area of funding, where
projects are put up to var[...]ment was try-
ing to establish some sort of past.
The awards at the Asian Film
Festival had an Aboriginal basis,
for example.

I liked the speech of your
Minister who said, “Whether we
l[...]aps we
have a clearer responsibility to
relate to the other people in the
Pacific . . .

Well, there is no denying the fact
that Australia is white, and isolated
in a sea of Asians. But I suppose
most of the films you make are for
export to Europe.

We stil[...]ake a
careful study before we did some-
thing for the Asian market . . .

It is a tremendous potential,[...]here. You still
haven’t been able to break into the
American market. You have had
some good reviews, but the films
have only limited releases. at

lllllllll Slllllfls

Vilma Santos is one of the highest-paid female stars in The Philippines. She specializes in “bold” roles,
and at the time of interview one of her newest films, Miss X, was about to open in Manila. it is the story of a
Filipino girl hired for domestic work overseas, who finds herself in the clutches of a pimp and drug dealer.

Santos’ latest production is Mrs Jones, by the veteran producer-director Cirio Santiago. The story is that
of a girl who comes from an obscure background and makes the big time as a dancer. It was while on
location fo[...]d actress, and when I
was 13 I made two films for the
First Family (President Marcos
and Imelda Marcos) which was a
dramatization of their story. I
played the role of Amy, the eldest
daughter of the First Family.

When I was 16 the fad came for
musical hits. Finally, when I was
20[...]ing a dramatic
actress.

So you didn’t start in the music
business . . .

No, but I did make a record for
the sake of the fans. I won’t do any
more though, because I pre[...]rking as
an actress with people, as well as
being the producer, people treat
you as the producer and not as an
actress. That bothers me.

Do you have script approval?

Yes. First I read the script, then I

Billboard for one of Vilma Santos[...]340 — Cinema Papers, October-November

ask for the director and leading
man. I approve them all.

Li[...]rently you don’t like to start
working early in the morning . . .

No, I am an insomniac and
usually[...]e start at 1 or 2 p.m., and
finish at 10 or ll in the evening.
Sometimes, however, we work
through the night. If we do that, we
don’t have anything scheduled the
next day.

Do you ever do research to help
develop a role?

Only if the role is very nice, or it
needs character.

Have y[...]on “Mrs
Jones”?

Not so much, because I play the
role of a dancer. I have already
made a film wher[...]ue Queen,
which was a big success], so it is
much the same.

Have you worked in other Asian
countries?[...]ug McClure,
Katharine Ross and Ricardo
Montalban. The title was the
Longest 100 Miles, and it was made
for internatio[...]recognized. I
have to get all my dresses sent to
the house and then I select them.
My shoes, too.

I love my profession very much.
The only thing is I don’t have any
privacy. I am pu[...]ease
everybody, and it is really hard.

How about the future?

Right now, I am not producing
any films,[...]t another one immediately
after that. Probably by the end of
March I will leave to make another
one in Los Angeles. So, I don’t
have any plans for production at
the moment. 1-

Vilma Santos, the highest-paid “bold" star in The Philippines.

I think the NSWFC had heard
about the prison film and were
interested in it, but that was on the
assumption it was only going to
cost $200,000. Th[...]ther conditions
it would have been knocked back.

The film began as a Prisoners
Action Group project. How did you
become involved?

The PAG came to me. I was told
that Tony Green [producer of the
PAG’s first two films: Prisoners
and Maximum Security] wanted to

c.

.J ‘..,
ta

tir.

Before the release of “Stir”, Stephen Wallace was best
known as the writer and director of “Love Letters from
Teralba Road”, arguably the best one—hour drama made in
Australia. The script was written at Film Australia, where
Walla[...]a
writer. Film Australia had intended to produce the film as part
of a series, but ultimately shelved[...]ove Letters” was being edited, Wallace attended
the Australian Film and Television School as one of the first
four participants in the one-year scriptwriting course. Since
then, he has made another short film, “Conman Harry and the
Others” (featuring Bryan Brown), and “Stir”[...]produced by Richard Brennan,
“Stir” examines the build-up of tension and ultimate con-
frontation[...]begins by discussing how he became involved with the project.

9

have a good look at me, and my
films. to see if I was the right
person to direct the film.

We then had a meeting at which
we talked about the concept of the
film, and whether it should be a
documentary or t[...]uld be dramatic

and follow one character through
the riots.

When I asked who was going to
write it, T[...]ook at his writing to
see if he could write.

Did the PAG want to make the film
collectively?

Some did. Certainly, it was g[...]y. I didn’t
feel it was going to work. Finally,
the NSWFC refused to deal with

anyone other than myself and Bob.

But the PAC was involved with the
film in the end?

Lee Whitmore was the produc-
tion designer and there are a lot of
PAG members in the film. There

were advisers on set all the time.

Where does the PAG stand now in
relation to the film?

It has a percentage and, al-
though it hasn’t any legal owner-
ship, it has very strong links with
the film.

The spirit of Stir is Tony Green.
Bob wrote the script and I directed
it, but Tony was the driving force

Cinema Papers. October-Nove[...]

Did you always have Bryan Brown
in mind for the lead?

Yes. Actually, I was the first to
use him in a film. He was ap-
pearing in a play, Here Comes the
Nigger, at the Black Theatre.
[Written by Gerry Bostock, and
now[...][director of
several short films] took me to see
the play while we were casting for
the main role in Love Letters. I
hadn’t been able t[...]ite right. Sandy was really
keen for Bryan to get the part, but I
felt he wasn't right.

After the performance Sandy
introduced us, and I asked him to
read the script and then do a test.
He did and Richard Bre[...]tired of
him?

Well, if people are sick of Bryan,
the public doesn’t know. I was a bit
worried about[...]n Stir,
but who else is there? We started
work on the film two years before
shooting it, and in those two years
Bryan appeared in many films.

You made the main actors take part
in a clown workshop, which most of
them disliked. What was behind

that?

The ambitions I had for the
clown workshop didn’t come out. I
was hoping for a really relaxed style
and great spontaneity.

Many of the actors resisted the
purpose of the workshop and I
realize now that you can’t thrus[...]take and I almost
alienated some of them. I think the
idea was right, but the way I went
about it was wrong.

What about the rest of the work-
shop?

The clown workshop ran for four
days and the rest of the workshop
for three weeks. Looking back, I
think the whole workshop was too
long. It ended up being ma[...]en,
Kevin Storey and Bob came along
and talked to the actors, and took
them through the experience of
being in prison: what it was like to
be in a boys’ home, how they were
ordered about, the humiliation, the
searches, how prisoners react to
each other. They[...]-
ing enough extras in South Aus-
tralia, despite the unemployment
problem?

We had a lot of trouble be[...]a town well
away from anywhere else, and most
of the extras had to come from Port
Pirie. We couldn’t[...]cut, so we had to lose them.

Haven’t a lot of the extras been in
prison?

Yes. There is one sequence where
five guys front before the governor,
and three of them have each done
more t[...]ilm in 35mm.
Did you find many problems in
making the transition from 16mm?

The difference between the
gauges is that the 35mm camera is
not as fluid as 16mm. We also had[...]t taking responsi-
bility for all that money, but the
cost never occurred to me. I hadn’t
originally[...]ssibly
have made it for less. And when it
came to the crunch, I was too in-
volved in making the film to worry
about the money.

Did you overshoot?

I think the ratio was about II to
l, and it was supposed to be l0 to 1.
So we only overshot a little.

The camerawork in “Love Letters”
makes a lot of use of the zoom lens.
Was “Stir” a big change of style?[...]variation in color, worry you?

It did, although the prison had
very beautiful brickwork. You are
always inside the prison and it is
claustrophobic, so I wonder if t[...]men
in it. [There is one, a television
reporter]

The other problem I faced was
trying to make a film a[...]advisers
and I kept making mistakes, like
leaving the locks off the doors.
There was one scene where I
originally had the warder (Max
Phipps) having a cup of tea while he
was talking to one of the prisoners.
Bob went off his head and said,
“Pri[...]tea
while they are working. They are as
bored as the prisoners and they
are not allowed to do that sor[...]en
doors? What do they say to each
other?

One of the actors who played a
warder told me that he[...]

I treated the warders exactly like
their characters because the[...]ng process.

Did you consider having any
women in the film, as girlfriends for
example?

Yes. At first there was a woman
social worker and another woman
character in the film, but they
weren‘t good characters and were
dropped. Even up until the second
last draft there was a sequence
where Chin[...]ied
about her as a character.

When we had to cut the budget I
cut her scene out as to have kept it
wou[...]rom Adelaide. We re-
placed it with a scene where the
prisoners receive letters.

Did the strong language in the script
bother you?

No, but it did worry the sound re-
cordist. After about the third week
he said, “Look Steve, I am just an
o[...]it.” He told me he
wouldn’t see it because of the swear
words.

It’s obvious the language is going
to be a bone of contention, but
that’s a decision we made.

Was the NSWFC worried about the
language?

Yes. They thought it wouldn’t
sell t[...]seas.
In fact, that was their biggest worry
about the film. But, once we made
the decision, the NSWFC backed
us all the way.

Prisoners use a certain kind of
language because they are bored:
it’s just bravado. The point of the
film isn’t the language — it’s much
more political than that — and if
you appreciate what the film is
about, you forget the language. But
even the ex—prisoners objected to it
when they read the script. They felt
we were showing prisoners in a bad
light. In the end, it was up to Bob to
decide whether to leave it in, and he
is the authentic ex-prisoner.

One other worry would be that
people might object to the use of
four-letter words, and then query the

wisdom of government investment

Well if people start to compare
Stir with the riot at Bathurst gaol
—-— which occurred unde[...]ued that we were given
government funds to attack the
Liberal party.

With films that have a social
mes[...]. they walk around and it looks
quite casual, but the underlying
violence is obvious.

Prison is an ext[...]are locked up in cells for 14 or l8
hours. It’s the sheer boredom, the
frustration, that’s destructive. It’s
like a[...]at Stir and think
everything looks all right — the
prisoners are walking around; they

STEVEN WALLAC[...]every day —
but if a prisoner dares stand up to
the system he gets bashed and
thrown into the really bad places
which Raymond Denning [NSW
prison escapee] has spoken about.

We didn’t show the observation
section at Grafton or Katingal at
Long Bay. But we have prisoners
being taken off all the time —
shanghaied in the middle of the
night — and you don’t see where
they go, but[...]e. We wanted to have lots
of black prisoners, but the film isr1’t
about Aboriginal prisoners. At
Bathurst — the gaol that Bob was
in — the people who rioted were
mostly white. Apparently the
Aboriginals didn’t want any part of
the riot. They said it was a white
man’s riot and, according to Bob,
went off to another part of the gaol.

We should have had more black
prisoners, b[...]ck people in gaol. We tried to
get Aboriginals on the set, but there
were no blacks in the district. We
did get one guy for a day, but he
didn’t want anything to do with it
and left. So the film isn’t repre-
sentative in that sense.

Are you suggesting an alternative to
prison?

No, the film doesn’t suggest one
and I don’t know of[...]ened before, in
every gaol. But in a way that’s the
point ofit: if the content ofStir was
new, people would say it was a[...]s a lack of under-
standing that causes riots and the
film is meant to increase under-
standing. Bob sa[...]ere will be
bigger riots, with hostages taken
and the moment hostages are taken
there will be bloodshed and warders
will be killed.

The reasons for making Stir were
social. It wasn’t[...]y, although I identify
thoroughly with everything the
prisoners wanted.

It’s not a heavily-political film
because you don’t see what hap-
pens to the prisoners later. You
only see what happens at the gaol
and have to draw your own con-
clusions.

On the other hand, we hope it’s
entertaining enough for people to
see just as a film. That’s why the
NSWFC backed it; I don’t think
they were particularly interested in
the prison issue. A-

Cinema Papers. October-N[...]

if the last possibility is developed, then
the cut in seating could well provide the
long overdue moment for a review of the
notion of a single, homogeneous film
festival audience, and of the cor-
responding assumption that it is possible
to[...]satisfy most of its
members.

It seems to me that the Festival has
remained a little too long with a notion of
audience formed in the days of the much
smaller Rose Bay Wintergarden, and that
prog[...]ar, possibly because of a notice-
able paucity in the quality of available
‘middle-ground’ films from which the
Festival mainly draws, more people
seemed to be a[...]bag when you know you’ll
want to throw out half the candy?

There are some good films, to be sure,
within the ‘Festival-sate’ area that has
emerged —- the European film of senti-
ment and sensibility, wit[...]gs and ‘operatic’ resolutions. In
fact, it is the (art) film equivalent of
opera in the music or theatre world, with
many of the same attendant assumptions
about class, education[...]start, they are not necessarily
representative of the most interesting
films of 1979-80, the films that most test,
enrich or expand assumption[...]f they can be said to be marginal
films, they are the most thoroughly
institutionalized of marginal fil[...]be argued to constitute a
genre, sharing many of the conventions,
motifs, plot situations and thematic[...]audience.

Secondly, by all reports of Cannes in
the past two years, it is a peculiarly banal
and ener[...]lmmaking at pre-
sent, and getting worse. Perhaps the
French, who specialize in it, are too pre-
occupied with the phase of striking
expansionism and neo-colonialis[...]nomy (such as
armaments, and nuclear technology).
The strongest feeling getting through in
films like M[...]al Journey),
and even L’amour en fuite (Love on the
Run) is one that is very dissociated from
present realities, a kind of faint anxiety
that the neuroses of greed and con-
sumerism may have an a[...]344 — Cinema Papers, October-November

Thirdly, the nausea that they begin to
produce is an effect that is greater than
the sum of its parts. it is easy to exag-
gerate about how far the Festival is
numerically dominated by these films (in
fact, they are the largest sub-category of
films on the program, rather than the out-
right majority). But it is difficult not to feel
that the Festival sets them up as a staple
and yardstick of taste.

Fourthly, the more films that are in-
ciuded (from any area), the less out-
standing the sample will tend to be, and
the less representative or exploratory the
Festival will be in terms of world film.
Third Wo[...]nema;
documentary has been minimally pre-
sent in the past, and although the special
documentary feature of this Festival
began to redress the neglect, it didn't risk
very much, sticking mainl[...]mentary forms familiarized by
television — with the exception of Jean-
Pierre Gorin’s Poto and Cabengo.

Could it not be possible for the Festival

The geisha house accountant prepares for bed with a y[...]ell as keeping faith
with its implicit dictum (as The Sydney
Film Festival) to celebrate the diversity of
good and interesting tolerance-testi[...]ch permitting subscription to a
part, rather than the whole, of the series,
as the present Red/Blue/Gold system
does, so that it would be possible to sub-
scribe to part or all of the main series.
Evening sessions could concentrate on
what i have described as the ‘Festival-
safe’ area of films, while interme[...]nee or afternoon sessions
could be used to repeat the best-
received films from the other two series,
at a greatly reduced price, for[...]have to admit that when you
start to give each of the films individual
attention, more than just a few[...]re ni ari
(Vengeance is Mine), Radio On, Zerkalo
(The Mirror), Heartland . . . well that's a
little more than ‘just a few’ that worked at
the time and have worked on since.

Shohei lmamura’[...]izophrenic ex-
perience: it simultaneously scares the
audience in a pretty visceral way with its
brutal[...]ne into a fairly
analytical frame of mind through the
pleasures of its handling of chronicity.
gradually disordering itself out of
documentation of the real Enokizu (Ken
Ogato), murderer in cold blood,[...]which almost all given con-
cepts about Japan are the ghosts, the
ashes that cannot fail to earth but freeze-
frame above the city.

It is, in some ways, a companion-piece
(10[...]traditional
meanings (they literally travel to ‘the end
of Japan’) with the expiry of their
traditional contexts.

The Boys father is close kin to lma-
mura‘s Enokizu, the grotesque logical
end of an absolute patriarchy w[...]n shorn
of almost all its traditional meaning, in
the world of private submission to cor-
porate profit[...]eling and appalling dis-
sociation from feelings. The schizo-
phrenia of the experience is finally the
fi|m’s most pervasive subject-matter.

The most interesting thing about
Helma Sander’s Ger[...]n a kind of ‘autobiography’ of her
mother, in the decade of war and after-
math in Germany, and allegory -
allegory not of the heavily-announced
Die blectrommel (Tin Drum) variety, but
of the inescapable meanings kind,
finding the marks of a human life that
correspond with frightening exactitude to
the historical stigmata on the German
nation.

The film looks at women, mothers
and daughters, during the war, and sets
up in its very title, a rasping con[...]Helene (Eva Mattes),
grows strong and separate in the sheer
adversity of giving birth and surviving
bli[...]liberation’
forces. What she can’t survive is the psy-
chic stress of a return to married life in
the suffocation of the post-war period.

At the heart of the film is the Grimm
fairytale she recounts to her daughter
(Hel[...]ugh a forest lit-
tered with relics of war. It is the story of
the maiden betrothed to a stranger who
complai[...]

The telling of the story was neither ex-
cerpted or hurried. its gra[...]a-
tion as they travelled back towards Berlin
and the return to ‘peacetime marriage
marked it out as a set-piece of even
deeper allegory than the rest of the film,
so that the effect of (male) war was to the
body of German women as the symbolic
order of patriarchy is to the body and life
of women, generally, in this darkest of
fairytales. So when Helene returns to
Hans, whom the film never ‘blames’ for
the war or its devastations on their life, it
is a re[...]uffocation and
paralysis, that becomes literal in the
facial nerves of one side of Helene’s face.

in[...]on, all
of her teeth are pulled (to ‘correct’ the
problem) but the paralysis remains, hid-
den under a black veil th[...]side of Helene’s face — making her dis-
play the ‘stigmata’ of the partition of Ger-
many.

in the final, almost unendurable move
of the film, Helene enters the bathroom
to gas herself, as Helma whines hope-
lessly at the locked door. After an aeon
of time, long after the melodramatic
moment has passed, Helene does walk
out to touch Helma, but as the voice of
the filmmaker explains, her mother never
really came back from her locked room,

again.

Much as l admire the technical
mastery and visual riches of Volker
Sch[...]e that Germany, Pale
Mother cuts more deeply into the heart of
the matter of Germany and especially the
unlivable aftermath of the war. (The only
other film I have seen that reaches the
same subject-matter, of the unlivability of
the specific contradictions of postwar
Germany, is Je[...]own cleverness in creating cathartic im-
agery of the pre-war and wartime period,
and its obscene contr[...]ecessarily in-
ventive, at least when set against the
ground of Sander’s film. It is inventive in
its allegorical grotesqueries to the point
of detachment; unlike Brecht‘s analysis
o[...]epic, Tin
Drum does not finally resound in any
of the crucial interstices of history, ex-
cept tinnily in one of its own, energetic
creation.

I remain amazed at the vitality of the
film, but i grew increasingly bemused
with its allegorical trajectory away from
history and into the separate space of its
brilliant solutions to pro-filmic problems.

' The two films from the approximate
and exact Middle East, sum (The Herd,
Turkey) and Salehale bolande bad (Tall
Shadows of the Wind, Iran) deserve dis-
Cussion together, not ju[...]and appeals
to mystery and fear of mystery, while The
Herd takes a consciously Marxist model
of analysis of some of the same kinds of
mystery — especially the ‘two countries’
notion that Francesco Rosi’[...]oli (Christ Stopped at Eboli)
also explores, that the peasantry (or
nomadic tribes) constitute a differ[...]to that of metropolitan Italy, Turkey,

or Iran. The points of contact and colli-
sion between these two worlds are
catastrophic for the rural one, and barely
acknowledged by the metropolis.

So, in Zeki Okten's The Herd, the
nomadic family bringing their sheep to
Ankara are[...]heir epic train journey is a
gradual catastrophe, the first point of
contact with the predatory city economy:
the sheep are poisoned by travelling in
freight cars polluted by DDT, stolen by
brigands who throw them from the mov-
ing train and arrive in less-than-market-
able condition.

The melodramatic sub-plot of the
mute woman, Berivan (Melike Demirag),
hated by her father-in[...]ng of kidney dis-
ease, is sometimes at odds with the rest
of the film. While she is an extra-

ordinarily powerful presence on screen,
the scenes of rage that she excites seem
distressingl[...]we meant to
see her mute suffering as symbolic of the
plight of women (a very easy symbolic
step to make in a Moslem country) or the
nomadic people in an industrializing
Turkey? The sub-plot remains essentially
detachable and, given that it is wearing to
move endlessly through the monologue
of male hatred and contempt for silent,[...]making
no reference to it. Its shots of holes in the
ground full of voices and senseless giggl-
ing, and its final inscription — “The sea is
jealous of the well from which you drink”
— heap enigma on a[...]ously unexplained story. in a remote
walled town, the town's bus driver (and
link with the cities) draws some of his
own facial characteristics onto the blank
face of a scarecrow when his bus was
stalled: the scarecrow inexplicably
begins to exert a potent influence over
the townspeople. It even stomps through
the town, and finally kills its non-
believing creator.

The finest thing in the film is the sense
it creates of remoteness, estrangement
and[...]e open to seizure by any
widely-shared belief, in the landscape
and lives of these people. Even time, in
the film, is filled with a sense of vacancy
and indet[...]der if Iranian audiences would be
so impressed by the sense that such
spaces and time intervals are habitable,
and that the price of inhabiting them
seems to be the sacrifice of reason, and
submission to what is said to be the case.
is this the real political allegory of the
film, rather than trying to turn the
scarecrow into the Shah or Khomeini,
seeing the frightening tractability of the
peoples consciousness and its over-
rapid cultiva[...]soft, and its true centre was
its nostalgic end: the tearful, rainy, soft-
focus farewell of the peasants to the
good doctor. The romantic impres-
sionism of umbrellas haloing the
peasants’ faces and rain on the car win-
dows blur the issues that the film had
inspected in its course.

Finally, it seems that the film has been
always directed towards the pathos of its
and, rather than to the ironies of Levi's
opening reminiscence, in which he
acknowledges that he has “let down” the

Zeki Okten‘s The Herd, a Marxist analysis of the two worlds of peasant and metropolitan Tur[...]

Levi (G[...]who is sentenced to
political exile in Lucania in the remote
south (beyond even the reach of Christ’s
long shadow in ltaly, he imag[...]n Lucania, his
eyes open as if to an alien world, the
‘other country’, of the peasantry, in which
women are a feared species, pigs are
treated annually by faith surgeons, the
priest is perennially drunk since his
entire cathedral slipped away in a mud-
slide. and the young boys go off at ran-
dom, as if taken by a rare exotic disease,
to fight in Abyssinia or to live on the other
side of the world in the U.S.

Rosi asserted that Levi, in Lucania,
‘‘will feel more strongly the weight of age-
old injustices and will go all the way back
to the heart of these injustices", butwhile
the film may see to some of these roots, it
seems tha[...]ies, or Picasso-
esque (blue period) paintings of the
haunting faces of the peasantry. in the
end, it's a middle-class trip, motoring out
and leaving the peasants under glass,
spotted with rain, retreating regrettably
into the distant past.

Tony Luraschi’s The Outsider was
another film with political subject[...]way from its
own consequences — particularly in the
wholly gratuitous American grandfather
sequences,[...]deal with IRA
resistance in Northern Ireland, and the
murderous logic with which it pursues its
underst[...]istricts into
almost dangerously-stylish icons of the
politics of Belfast.

Bernardo Bertolucci’s La[...]io On may well be dis-
cussed together because of the in-
teresting polarities they establish in
terms of what i have described as the
‘Festival-safe‘ film. La luna is like an
adult-cartoon version of the ‘operatic’
saga of sentiment in overblown color and
outrageously affluent settings.

The operatic element is made literal, in
that Jill Clayburgh plays a trans-Atlantic
prima donna. and the oedipal concerns

ii

Christopher Pettit‘s[...]usually lie buried in this kind of film
(perhaps the master-work for the art film
and the soap opera is Hamlet) are
pushed to the foreground. its resolution
by means of a chord (o[...]l moon) really works, just as opera
does, despite the fact that the plot has
gross exaggerations, unnatural coin-
cid[...]or, event,
emotion, meaning and even story. it is
the negative impress of the form which
La luna pushes to its logical and con-[...]fyingly cut short
by change of shot. It is one of the most in-
teresting uses of music in film for some[...]n John Carpenters latest muscle-flexing exercise. The Fog.

346 — Cinema Papers. October-November[...]brother's death; he meets three or four
people on the way, but finds out nothing.
His journey reaches an end when the
car’s intermittent refusal to start recurs,
on the edge of a quarry; he leaves it with
i<raftwerk's “Ohm Sweet Ohm" playing in
the cassette deck, and catches a train
back to London. It is the winter of 1978,
the coldest in Britain for decades.

Pettit’s film is very much in the genre
of industrialized road films established
by Wim Wenders, particularly in lm lauf
der zeit (Kings of the Road), in much the
same way that Claude Chabrol works in
the genre of ‘Hitchcock’; but like Chabrol,
Petti[...]ghtly alter its resonance, for his own
purposes.

The biggest single disappointment
with Radio On is that it remains at the
level of a (visually and aurally
fascinating) tinkering with the aesthetics
of the form. Where Wenders' film
provides complex conceptual and
emotional work for its audience, as well
as the perverse black and white
pleasures of the cities and their road
connections, Pettit’s fir[...]eir close
relatedness.

Yet it must be noted that the overlay of
Wenders’ Germany on Pettit’s Britain
(through the photography of Martin
Schafer, Wenders’ assista[...]ndscape. I don't mean
to imply that Pettit copied the look of
Wenders' films (the compositions he
achieved are far more decentred, and
dangerously close to the edge of the

frame). It is more that the overlay of the-

outside ‘genre’ onto the British winter of
'78 releases much unexpected vi[...](Elephant God) and Junoon (A

Flight of Pigeons), The Mirror, Kung
shan ling yu (Raining in the Mountain)
and Mourir a tue-late (Scream from
Silence), but find that most have been
adequately discussed in the review of the
Melbourne Film Festival (Cinema
Papers, No. 28, pp. 232-36, 286-89, 302).
This leaves The Fog, which opened the
FesfivaL

I was disappointed at the thinness of
the material in this ghost thriller about
the revenge raid of a crew of sailors,
massacred 100 years ago, upon the in-
habitants of the town established with
their booty. I can't deny the effectiveness
of John Carpenter‘s seemingly intuitive
knowledge of cutting and soundtrack,
and the enjoyable terrors of the glowing
fog full of steel axes and undeterrable
ghosts, but The Fog begins to seem fairly
quickly like the same fright, over and
over, a prolonged exercise[...]enter's superb skills flexible.

Susan Dennody

The frontiers of film were not signifi-
cantly nudged forward by the features at
this year's Sydney Film Festival, exc[...]panning shot
of astonishing assurance, a sign of the
mastery of movement to come. Unlike
Miklos Jancso[...]essions of personal
feeling. Whether gossiping in the
dormitory, socializing in canteen and
dance hall[...]stablished as individual human beings.
Thus, when the film's central process is
complete — the transformation of a
human being into an inhuman political
stereotype — it is all the more appalling.

Zbigniew Zapasiewicz as Jerzy, the contemporary Icarus, in Andrze] Wajda’s Rough Treatment.

Set in Hungary in 1948, the brilliant
career of Vera, a young nurse, begins
when she criticises publicly the way the
hospital is run. Considered to be
promising mater[...]in a three-month Stalinist in-
service course at the end of which,
during a general session of self-cr[...]communist", she
says, "because I feel humanity."

The irony is fierce: Vera has rejected
conscience, do[...]tival established nothing
else, it was clear that the days of poor
roles for actresses are over.) Her V[...]a spiritually deformed
creature.

This warping of the human spirit is at
the heart of another impressive
Hungarian film, Bizal[...]probably, as “Trust".
lstvan Szabo, a guest at the Festival
which showed four of his features in a
r[...]ws his-
torical events forcing people together."

The events are the round-ups of
suspects by the fascists during the last
few days of the war in Budapest. The
people are a man and a woman, both
fugitives, who are obliged to pose as
husba[...]ly, frightened
and confused, each reaches out for the
security and comfort the other could
provide. Their relationship develops into
love, but the worm in the bud is in-
eradicabie suspicion: even at the height
of passion the man wonders if the
woman is really a Gestapo agent. He
knows this is a sic[...]of deep
concern to Szabo, At that time, he said,
the Left underground had to capitalize on
this lack o[...]ould
they get into power, what would happen
then? The answer to his question is in
Angi Vera, and he is clearly pointing to
the undercutting of security in the
Stalinist era. But more than that, he is
making a universal statement about the
dangers of a moral disease, and he dis-
agreed with a member of the audience
who suggested that only a Hungarian
could properly appreciate the film. He
wanted to make his message strong
because “the world is more and more
made up of people who didn't have to
queue for water."

All this is a heavy load for the film to
bear, and it shows in the second half
where the infinite riches in a little room
are withheld from the fearful, haunted
lovers. It is rather too schematized to
allow a fully credible, growing relation-
ship, or the subtlety or irony of his latest
film, Der grune vogel (The Green Bird). It
is thin in characterization (although the
beautifully judged and sensitive perfor-
mance by lldiko Bansagi makes the ‘wife’
totally convincing) and there is a dis-
proportionate amount of time spent in
and on the bed. The first half of thefilm is
more sure-footed as it e[...]r: an informer in every
queue for bread or water; the fascist
sympathies of the ostensibly harmless
old couple at the house; the danger in a
stray word, a photograph, a letter.[...]gh Treatment) is a triumphant tour
de force about the fall of a contem-
porary Icarus. A scene in a den[...]ucial to an appreciation of
Wajda‘s intentions. The dentist ashes her
cigarette, adjusts her spectacl[...]bout with a
casual indifference to her patient in the
chair. He can do nothing but sit there and
submit[...]tooth, without anaes-
thetic and with unconcern.

The patient is a celebrated television

journalist wh[...]ew offend
Authority: there is something rotten in
the State and he is extracted. He finds
that he no lo[...]. It
is a process of bewildering pain.

Reversing the method of his equally
powerful Czlowick-marmuru ([...]to show more than one
time tense simultaneously. The man
whose self-confident and successful
image appears on the television screen
in a kind of ‘‘This is Your Life" show (and
is thus permanent on videotape) is not
the same man who watches his recorded
image: he is already changed; the image
of ‘now’ is already ‘then’. There's[...]screens of past and present.
Similarly, where is the life of the man
whose biography he has written and is
defendi[...]ixed on paper, but it is being re-
interpreted at the very moment when it is
being presented.

In a sce[...]y and
strength, he talks to his estranged wife at
the kitchen table; the marriage is here,
now, alive in their remembered[...]in their
nervous desire to keep it going, but at the
same time they know it is gone; they are
present[...]tirely reaction shots
and foreground close-ups of the hands
of witnesses), lies are effortless and
casu[...]can
fight no longer, say no more — only
shrug. The fall ends with a charred body
in a burnt-out room[...], but not merely of a con-
spiracy, or a fault in the stars. He is a
flawed hero and the centre cannot hold.
A deeply felt and disturbing film which
shows Wajda in magnificent form.

The younger generation of Polish film-
makers includes Krzysztof Kieslowski.
His Camera Buff is concerned with the
act of filmmaking. His central character
is a hap[...]r him as it
sustains him, an irony anticipated in the
deceptively simple and telling image
which opens the film: a bird of prey
tearing at a chicken. This hint of Tantalus
is serious, but the tone of the film is light.
The playing is relaxed and good-
humored, the direction deft and
unforced. It is a film with so[...]s it with wit
and wonder, clarity and precision.

The Poles were apart from the French,
who apparently prefer to look at life and[...]on-
sequential games. L’amour en fuite
(Love on the Run) is Antoine Doinel and
pretty maids all in a[...]ith himself: much depends
upon whether you are in the mood to play
or to watch.

Picking the flashback is, no doubt,
interesting to those who have followed
Doinel through the earlier films and who
wish to place the extracts from them. For
my part, the pleasure of revisiting The
400 Blows was tempered by disappoint-
ment that T[...]rong now as they were then.

One critic finds it "the rare sort of film
which is perhaps analagous to l[...]ore”. Maybe — at least, it draws
attention to the printed word: the hero
has written a novel and long passages
are re[...]e Dubreuil’s Ma cherie (My
Darling) begins with the birth of a baby
and then jumps forward 16 years to the
mother, and now adolescent daughter,
discussing the pros and cons of pills and
coils. The following 90 minutes (a very
long hour and a half[...]ity for
feminine, not feminist, illumination, but
the potential is not realized. Very little
hap[...]

Production is under way on the first
13 episodes of the Grundy Organiza-
tion's new prison drama series Punish-
ment. The series is expected to go to
air on the 10 Network later this year.

No doubt inspired by the success of
Prisoner, locally as well as in the U.S.,
the new series is set in an all-male
prison called Longridge. The U.S. in
particular are interested in a male-
version of the Prisoner series.

Included in the cast are entertainer
Barry Crocker, Brian Wenzel[...]Julie McGregor and
Michael Smith.

Crocker plays the prison superinten-
dent, with Preston and Smith as in-
mates. Punishment will also feature
one of the rare television appearances
by Mad Max star Mel Gibson, who is in
the first two episodes.

Production designer Darrell Lass has
based the prison set on a cell block at
Parramatta Gaol, the maximum
security prison on the outskirts of
Sydney. The executive producer of the
series is Bruce Best.

with established internati[...]ainly be of-
fering Punishment for sale overseas.
The international sales of Prisoner
placed the Grundy Organization in the
unique position where it could afford to
continue producing the series even
without local financial support.

Pro[...]econd major project ~— 13 one-
hour episodes of the new police drama
series Bellamy, starring John Stanton
in the title role — a tough cynical police
sergeant investigating major crimes.
Written by- Ron McLean, the series is
being produced by Don Battye.

It is expected to air, on the 10
Network, early next year.

China Buying

“The Chinese want specials and
series with an element[...]evision programs for China.

According to Stuart, the most pop-
ular television show in Peking is the
American fantasy series Man from
Atlantis. They a[...]a earlier
this year and hoped to sell programs to
the Chinese. But on arrival he was
handed a list of television and film
programs that thethe city's two channels are
on air only three hours a[...]s. Finance is
also limited.

Stuart hopes to sell the Chinese
Australian-made programs, but says
he'll[...]tion of
1000 million, China promises to be one
of the world's biggest television
markets as it develops in line with the
communist country’s westernization
program.

Nu[...]971 and won several television
awards, was one of the first series to
tackle down-to-earth and intimate[...]After 12 months of negotiations,
Harmon has sold the series idea to the
NBC Network in the U.S. Production
has already started on a pilot,
scheduled for screening in the U.S.
later this year.

The Americans,- according to
Harmon, are taking the basic format
and changing the characters.
Meanwhile, Harmon is working on a
sci[...]lm, to be
titled Tomorrow Today.

New Prank Show

The Nine Network has commis-
sioned a 60-minute pilot[...]e McCabe
Productions. Titled Catch Us if You
can, the show is loosely based on
candid Camera.

A team o[...]ractical
jokes and pull stunts on celebrities and
the public.

There will be prizes to participants —[...]public
embarrassment!

Appearing as pranksters in the pilot
are actor Robin Stewart -(Timeless
Land and[...]Gray and Channel 9 musical
director Geoff Harvey. The host of the
show is Geoff Stone, of Nine’s inventors

progr[...]ey Think of Next.

Geoff Raymond.

ABC News Deal

The ABC has signed a deal with an
American public broadcasting network
for the exchange of news and current
affairs material. The deal was
negotiated by Ed Baumeister of
WGBH-TV in Boston, which produces
the nationally-telecast News at Ten for
subscriber te[...]crambled
by a device fitted to television sets.)

The deal was motivated by the
Americans’ desire for better coverage
of the South-East Asian region.

New Markets

Brisbane‘s Channel 9 is making in-
roads into the South-East Asian market
with sales of locally-pro[...]ore, Hong Kong and New
Zealand. A major factor in the sales is
the low cost of the programs.

Naturally, the more markets that
become available to locally-produced
programs, the cheaper they can be
sold, which then opens up even more
markets.

Video Slow to Go

The. home video boom so widely
predicted for Australia could be a long
time coming.

Growth in the market has been so
slow that several major U.S. companies
involved in the marketing of pre-
recorded programs, such as top box-
office films, have deferred involvement
in the local market for at least 12
months.

Home video[...]own a
VTFt unit — of these, 25 per cent are of
the Philips or U-Matic 3/4 inch format,
widely used i[...]in terms of other world markets,
Australia is not the most attractive sales
prospect for home video manufac-
turers. And this is one of the reasons
for slow growth.

Supply of machines is limited
because production is geared for the
major markets — the U.S., Britain,
Europe and Japan. Rapid technological
change also means that just as the
latest models are reaching Australia,
new and improved models are rolling
off the production lines overseas.

According to Melbourn[...]ed Video
Action: “A lot of people havejumped on
the video bandwagon only to find it has
no wheels”.

The fact is, home video is a
technological advance that Australia
hasn't quite worked out what to do with.
The cost of the equipment makes home
video strictly a luxury item for most
households, and the available software
— pre-recorded tapes — is[...]sports coup that has left
commercial stations and the ABC red-
faced and flat-footed.

Gyngell has secured rights to a
number of major world soccer events
for the Independent and Multicultural
Broadcasting Service, of which he is
chairman designate. The telecast will
begin in October on Australia's fif[...]e on United Nations day,
October 24.

Included in the deal is coverage of
the European Cup series, the national
Philips Soccer League matches, the
British F.A. Cup Final, European, South
American and American league games
and possible joint coverage with the
ABC of the World Cup in Spain, in
1982.

This extensive coverage of soccer is
expected to gain the IMBC a large
audience, and not only among[...]

RONSCASE

TELEVISING
THEOLYMPICS

When did the Seven Network get the
telecast rights to the 1980 Olympic
Games?

We signed the contract in the last
week of April, 1977, but
negotiations had be[...]to be a pool arrangement,

;with a combination of the
commercial stations and the ABC.
This was the way the Olympics had
been covered in the past, even at
Munich when there were only two
stations in the pool (the ABC and
the Seven Network).

There was, in fact, a meeting
where the networks agreed that,
with the ‘ABC, there would be a
pool coverage of Moscow.[...]already negotiating in
Moscow. So, we approached the
Russians and asked them to discuss
any negotiatio[...]’t know whether it was a
bid situation, or what the other net-
works did. The Russians never
referred any of those negotiations[...]throughout Australia automatically
become part of the deal?

Yes. When you have a major
program, like the Olympics, it is
usual to offer it to them.

Also on the same telecast were the
five members of the Arab Broad-
casting Union . . .

That was because of con-
venience in using the Indian Ocean
satellite, which they can pick up
from their ground stations. They
took all the Australian material
from us, and also a little fo[...]most situations,
and their own in others.

Before the Olympics, what was
Seven’s position regarding the
political opposition to Australia’s
part[...]

Were you confident that the
situation would be resolved in the
athletes’ favor?
I No, because you never know h[...]hings will go. It
would be impossible to estimate the

, amount of pressure on the members

of the Olympic Federation. As it
turned’ out, there was only a one-
vote difference.

Was there also pressure on the
station?

There was some persuasion, yes.

How did the affiliated stations react
to the situation?

Each station made an individual
decis[...]s no contractual
situation with any of them.

Had the athletes not been allowed to

go, would the telecast have gone
ahead?

Probably, but not withthe same
scope. What was overlooked in
most of the stuff said about us was
that we had a contract, not only
with the organizing committee in
Moscow,’ but with the Inter-
national Olympic Committee. And
quite apart from the financial
stipulations of that contract, there
was a requirement for us to televise
the Games. As it was, we televised
for considerably f[...]ast?

About twice as many. We would
have extended the evening telecast,
and probably doubled the early
morning ones. .

C
Was there a minimum commit-
ment, in terms of hours, in the
contract?

No. So, I don’t know how much
we wou[...]ve to make that decision.

It is interesting that the
Japanese, who had no athletes at
Moscow, actually[...]e did. We took
47 people and they took 72.

Given the division of feeling within
the Australian community, was
there also dissension a[...]casters who were just interested in
broadcasting the event. From a
policy point of view, all we wanted
was to present the Olympics as the
Olympics, with no overtone
comment. By letting the public see
them as they were, people could
make up their minds.

The only exception to that would be
the opening night’s commentary,
when you expressed some hopes for

fairness in the judging by Soviet offi-
cials. That is not a comm[...]an’t recall saying that speci-
fically towards the Soviet judges,
but there have always been
problems with judging in the
Olympics. This is particularly true
with sports l[...]ls.

One can go back to 1960 and
Rocky Gatellari, the Australian
boxer, who got a terrible decision in
the quarter final. And the guy who
got the decision went on to win the
gold medal.

How do you rate Moscow in terms
of c[...]re probably
less than at Montreal. Still, some of
the decisions, especially in the
boxing, were unbelievable. There
was also the dust-u at the finish of
the gymnastics an the diving, and
there were the situations where
there were only Soviet referees, like
on the triple jump. But there is
nothing special or unus[...]So, if I said something along
those lines during the opening
night, it probably reflected the
tenseness in the period leading up to
the Games. It would have only
taken some serious malfunction, or
a serious error by a judging panel,
to set the whole thing in a very, very
bad atmosphere. As it turned out, it
didn’t happen.

Were you surprised by the amount
of coverage given to the dubious
decisions in the Australian Press?

Yes.

What is your personal fe[...]you just can’t,
Some countries stayed away from
the Melbourne Olympics in 1956
because of the Suez Canal
problems and others because of
the Soviet presence in Hungary. It
happened in Montre[...]and had played football with
South Africa — all the African
nations stayed away. There is even
a possibility that the Africans may
stay away from the Common-
wealth Games in Brisbane, which
would be[...]top them.

I think Lord Killanin’s attitude
was the right one. He led the
Olympic movement through its
most serious crisis, on a very simple
philosophy: the Olympic Games are
awarded to a city and athletes[...]e. There is no com-
pulsion on anyone to attend.

The signing of the agreement in Moscow. Ron Casey, general manager o[...]of ATN-7 Sydney (front
rig t .

How do you think the public’s com-
prehension of politics and sport has
changed since the Games?

I don’t know. I have only been
back a s[...]ortunity to gauge public
reaction. But by reading the
thousands of letters we have
received, I think the public accept
the fact that it might have been a lot
of political t[...]would have been very
difficult to achieve because the
charter of the Olympic movement
is very strict. You can’t, for[...]that.

How successful was Seven’s cov-
erage of the Games?

In terms of public acceptance
and the pleasure it gave a lot of
people, I think we can feel more
than satisfied.

Given the disappointing amount of
revenue, how expensive an[...]n?

Expensive.

One writer in ‘TV Week’ sug-

The gymnastics stadium.

gested that Channel Seven’s buying
program would be cut back because
of the cost. Is that true?

No, there is no evidence to[...]king a
loss as ultimately worthwhile in
promoting the image of a sports-
orientated station?

With hindsight yes, because
people did watch, accept and enjoy
the Games. But we weren’t too
certain of that when[...]it.
We were stepping into an unknown
area, where the results, and the
public reception, were completely
unknown.

What is the position regarding
broadcast rights for the next
Olympic Games?

We haven’t thought about t[...]to more technical aspects,
what were you given in the way of
facilities at Moscow?

We had a three-came[...]t: two crews and two
units.

Continued on P. 386

The yachting harbor at Tallin.

Cinema Pape[...]

In the vocabulary of film, epic is a danger-
ous and often misused word. But, filming the
life of Ned Kelly, you confront a story which
has, literally, epic qualities.

The huge, logistical problems posed by an
accurate reconstruction of the 1870s become
a secondary consideration. You are dealing
with a subject that has gripped the Australian
imagination in a unique way for exactly a
century. The challenge is to bring Ned Kelly
to life as a norm[...]achieve an
intimate portrait without trivializing the
conflicts which shaped the fate of this
remarkable man.

Apart from the manifold traps in portray-
ing Kelly’s character, the pure scale of the
story has always presented a problem.
Dramatic treatments have tended to fall
between the stools of incident and character,
simply because 90-odd minutes isn’t enough
time to cover the essential events, and
adequately handle the huge gallery of people
who played significant roles. It’s hardly co-
incidental that the Kelly story prompted the
worlds first full-length feature film.

In the past, the solutions have been to
combine characters, places, even incidents, to
reduce the complexities of character and plot,
or to concentrate on only a part of the story.

Left: John Jarratt as Ned Kelly.

Twenty-odd years ago, Tim Burstall’s
projected Man in Iron feature was based
solely on the events of Glenrowan.

Bronwyn Binns and I,.had wo[...]ing
to meet each other) and were acutely aware of
the scale problem — one of the rocks on
which Tony’s project scraped its bottom. '

To us, the television mini-series offered the
perfect medium for the Kelly saga, effect-
ively breaking the initial time barrier and
providing the chance to tell the story without
compromise on historical and dramatic
levels.

We had just completed Against the Wind
and used this budgeting and logistical
yards[...]e budget.

That was February, 1979. As we cleared
the decks after Against the Wind and began
our run—up for The Last Outlaw, Pegasus
Productions comprised two people -
Bronwyn and myself. ideally, the series would
be on air in 1980 — the Kelly centenary year.
Allowing 10 days shooting a[...]n’t be finished by
this date, so we had to face the discipline of
detailed pre—planning, making pre[...]ers, extras, livestock
and major props.

Early in the year we recruited our
producer, Roger le Mesurier (then
completing production of a spectacular New

THE LAST OUTLAW

Lewis Fitz—Gerald as Tom Lloyd: at the bush forge, making

the Kelly Gang’s armour,

Zealand series, Children[...]Binns, who had
been production manager on Against the
Wind. Tom and Roger worked from our
breakdowns while we progressed the scripts.

Art director Leslie Binns and wa[...]

downs and scripts as. they came to h[...]production concept was basically that of
Against the Wind — an initial shoot of
perhaps a week on di[...]equence on locations within 50 km of

Melbourne.

The concept entailed some compromises
in terms of aut[...]But, economically, there seemed no
alternative.

The location surveys were discouraging.
We all knew the look we wanted. And we
weren’t finding it. After an unsuccessful trip
around the Macedon-Woodend area,
Bronwyn, Les Binns and I decided that we’d
have to push out further — to the Broadford-
Seymour district 100 km from Melbourne —
and cope with the travel problem as best we
could.

That same week, Tom Binns began talks
with the Seymour Shire Council and reported
that he felt t[...]television series being filmed
in their area. And the ball was rolling . . .

In an almost bewildering[...]sited Seymour, met Shire officers
and also gained the enthusiasm and support
of the Australian Army’s District Support

' Group based at nearby Puckapunyal.

Between them, the Shire and the Army
could help solve many of our problems and
suddenly, the all-but-fantastic idea of
shooting the series on a location 100 km from
Melbourne, was b[...]ing and feeding
a cast and crew. of nearly 60 for the four-
month schedule, and setting up complete
pos[...]ss to superb exterior
locations, it would give us the chance to shoot
virtually all our interiors in the actual
buildings — a huge creative bonus.

We leased a two-storey barracks complex
from the Commonwealth for accommod-
ation and catering, re[...]rops store, and found perfect
key locations‘ on the handsome, 8OQ ha
property of local grazier, Berni[...]o build our town
complex (a dazzling composite of the seven
towns we needed as backgrounds for our
series), the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Kelly homesteads,
the Byrne and Sherritt huts, and the
Glenrowan Inn.

The valley of the Goulburn, the Tallarook
Ranges, and the Mount Disappointment
State Forest would provide o[...]tors, George Miller and
Kevin Dobson, werejoining the fold. George
had been a very early appointment, initially
to direct all eight hours. But, as he realized
the scale of the project, he suggested that a
second director should take two hours off his
plate. The choice of Kevin Dobson was
unanimous.

Eventually, in the course of production,
Kevin directed another two hours, so that he
and Miller ended up sharing the load equally.

The contract for the series was negotiated
with the Seven Network in the positive‘ and
enthusiastic atmosphere that had character-
ized our dealings on Against the Wind. When
we had to set a sale price of more than $1
million, they didn’t quibble. We realized we
were on the limit that an Australian network
could afford, ye[...]ile pre—production was
advanced, beginning with the renovation and
re—instatement of the barracks building and
amenities, then moving on to the cutting of
bark and bush timber needed for our se[...]Horsemaster John Baird started buying
mounts for the Kelly Gang and gathering
saddlery. Props, firearm[...]was
packing up along racks in a temporary home
at the Viaduct Theatre, construction had
begun on the old Kelly homestead, and the
cross streets of our town were laid out and
graded. As bricklayers were starting on the

Kcll_\'s rlIl..‘.l IIICIIHCIIK at the Old f\lC”.‘(IUl’f‘|C (Eu-Jl bclurc hir. L[...]Kelly (John Jarratt) about the get his revenge on Wild

Wright (David Bradshaw).

nucleus of the town, the last script was
completed.

At the beginning of February, we flew the -

Kelly Gang and a crew to Forbes in central
New South Wales, for two days’ shooting at
the‘Lachlan Vintage Village. This gave us the
plains terrain we needed for our Jerilderie
scenes — to be integrated with the main street
of 1879 Jerilderie, which was being built at
Seymour.

The following week, the Gang worked with
dialogue coach Frank Gallacher a[...]quickly.

A few people were totally dedicated to the
project, most worked well, the apparently
inevitable handful of ego-trippers and[...]st made-
to-order range of weather conditions for the
phases of our story, superbly handled by
lighting[...]roduction at
Seymour as editor Phil Reid finished the film.
At this stage we wrapped up in Seymour and[...]their work.

As I write this, we are waiting for the last

answer print from Atlab; the last sound mix ‘

has just been completed by David Harrison,
working at the Crawford mixing suite. Brian
May has composed, ar[...]tunning score, recorded by Roger Savage
at 'AAV.

The Kelly town has been demolished, the
Army has moved into the barracks, the
factory has been sold, the props are scattered,
the wardrobe is literally in mothballs.

Pegasus Prod[...]been one hell ofa 20 months. But if we
have told the Kelly story as it deserves to be
told, the[...]

Based on the play

by . . . . . . . . .[...]t a
Greek family in Australia. To be televized in
the Greek language.

THE THREE SEA-WOLVES
(Greek language)[...]. . . . , . . . . . . . . Peter Benardos
Based on the play

by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..B.[...]is: A contemporary comedy in
Greek.

SERIES

THE AUSTRALIANS ,

Prod. companies. Peter Luck Produc[...]r .. . . . . . , . . . . . .. Ron McLean
Based on the original idea

by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]Synopsis: A police action series centred
around the activities of Detective Steve
Bellamy, filmed primarily in the inner city
areas of Sydney.[...]. . . . . . . . . . . Eleanor Witcombe

Based on the novel
by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..Mary G[...]nopsis: A family-orientated drama series
based on the Billabong books by Mary
Grant Bruce.

CORAL ISLAN[...]1)
Synopsis: Based on R. M. Ballantyne's
novel of the same name.

GREEN HILL

Prod. c[...]y sketches, animation and music, all
occurring on the half-real. halt—tantasy
“Green Hlll".

THE LAST OUTLAW

Prod. company . Pegasus Productions lor
the Seven Network

Producer . . . . . . .[...]ton (Kate Kelly),
Tim Eliott (Steele).

Synopsis: The story of Ned Kelly,

OUTBREAK OF LOVE

Prod. comp[...]. . . . . . . . . . .. Howard Griffiths
Based on the novel

by . . , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]eil Wilson

Music performed by George Dreyfus and
the West Aust_ Symphony

Orchestra

Mixer . . .[...]A Iight—hearted look at Mel«
bourne society in the year leading up to
World War I.[...]PUNISHMENT

Prod. company .The Grundy Organization
Dist. company . . . . . ..Cha[...]. . . . . . . . . . . . ..Julian Pringle
Based on the original

idea by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]ris Mcouade,
Robin Stewart.

Synopsis: A study of the lives of inmates
and warders at a large co[...]

THE SULLIVANS

Prod. company .,..Crawford Producti[...]m Baker),
Vikki Hammond (Maggie Baker).
Synopsis: The continuing story of an
Australian family during W[...]...Crawford Productions
Dist. company . . . . . ..The Seven Network
Producer . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]set in an Australian inter-
national airport and the many crises faced
by the people who ,work in it.

356 —— Cinema Papers. October-November

THE TIMELESS LAND

Prod. company . . . . . . . .[...]. . . . . . . . . . . . .. Peter Yeldham
Based on the novels , , . . . . . .. The Timeless
Land. Storm of Time,

No Barrier

by Ele[...]. Peter Collingwood, Brian
Hinselwood.

Synopsis: The series spans New South
Wales from 1765-1811, depicting the lives
of a group of convicts and settlers. against
the background of Governor Phillips at-
tempts to understand the Aboriginals and
the conflicts with the military.

A TOWN LIKE ALICE

Prod. company . . .[...]. . .. Rosemary Anne Sison,
Tom Hegarty

Based on the novel
by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , , . .[...]. . . . . . . _ _ . _ . . . ..Brian Bansgrove

The Timeless Land

Boom oper[...]Synopsis: A World War 2 romance.

WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE

Prod. company . Shotton Productions[...]. . . Eleanor Witcombe.

Michael Jenkins
Based on the novel

by . . . . .. . Sumner Locke Elliot[...]Wallace
(Honor), John Howard (Archie).

synopsis: The story of a group of people
whose lives, through t[...]everal ways —
from love to murder.

Water Under the Bridge

Level 5 (Balcony Level)
The Place

Toorak Vic. 3142

Tel: (03) 240 0506

Pers[...]division of FIANK ELECTRONICS PTY LIIVIITED

for the HIRE or SALE
of LIGHTING for
ENTERTAINMENT[...]

United States

The prolonged strike by the American
Screen Actors Guild, designed to force
f[...]by producers and
studios, has seriously disrupted the film
industry worldwide.

Many sister unions internationally —
especially the musicians (including
Australia) — have joined the strike in
seven countries.

This longest-ever shu[...]de exhibition plans have been
thrown into chaos.

The 10-week strike has also closed
down the production of television series,
and the networks are frantically trying to
prop their pro[...]televi-
sion show has stopped shooting because
of the strike but, there are some excep-
tions — overs[...]ven features were allowed to
continue shooting in the U.S. when
producers agreed to comply with any
gains acquired by the ASAG during the
shut-down and subsequent negotiations
with producers.

New York is as hard-hit as Hollywood
by the strike. Besides current production
estimated at a[...]res worth $40 million are under
review because of the union strangle-
hold.

Among New York shutdowns are Peter
Yates’ Eye Witness (formerly The Janitor
Doesn’t Dance); Peter Bogdanovich's
The[...]lligan‘s
Rich and Famous; Jeremy Paul Kagan‘s
The Chosen; and Amy Hecker|ing's My
Kind of Guy.

Films elsewhere in the US. halted
through the strike include Backroads,
being directed by Martin Ritt, and The
Border. Tony Richardson‘s latest ven-
ture. Other directors affected by the
strike are George Romero, Knightriders;
Frank Roa[...]Maker; Lewis Teague,
Alligator; and John Barron, The Girls