A WOMAN OF OUR TIME
“A WOMAN OF OUR TIME”
I'm finally able to release a digital copy of this film which I completed almost fifty years ago. It was first shown publicly at the “Mind’s Eye” Cinema in Spring St., Melbourne… the Melb. Co-op theatre, about 1972.
Tessa Spooner, General Manager of La Mama Theatre, had this copy made so the film could be exhibited at La Mama Theatre's "War - Rak" celebration event Saturday evening, 11/12/21.
Following is a commentary which John Cumming intended to present at the screening but John was side-lined by an exposure to Covid so he could not attend the screening. That was most unfortunate as John has done a lot of research on the film to date.
A Woman of Our Time is a unique portrait of a renowned author, Myra Roper, social commentator and educationalist and a role-model for a whole generation of Melbourne women, made in 1972 by pioneering Australian independent filmmaker and film educator Peter Tammer.
Born in England, Myra Roper moved to Australia in 1947, at 36 years of age, to serve as principal of the Women's College at The University of Melbourne. She is fondly remembered as a mentor to many young women. In 1960 Myra left the university to pursue a public life that influenced the course of Australia’s relationship with China, the development of national cultural institutions, adult education and, especially in the media, the status of women. Peter, whose father was Lebanese, entered filmmaking as a young, second-generation migrant worker and emerging filmmaker in the almost exclusively male, Anglo-Celtic domain of film production in early 1960s Melbourne. In his first job as a library assistant at the State Film Centre of Victoria, he adapted 16mm film-checking equipment for the purpose of editing his own short films.
Both Myra Roper and Peter Tammer were engaged in cultures of community enterprise and cooperative action. When they met around 1969, Peter was a young freelance editor. His client work included campaign advertisements for Gough Whitlam’s progressive and soon to be elected Australian Labor Party. Myra needed help to edit 16mm footage she had filmed, to illustrate her lectures on Communist China. Accounts from both Myra and Peter indicate that some men in positions of authority could and did go ‘out of their way’ to foster their emerging talents as writer and filmmaker. In the absence of policies, guidelines, training, and professional development programs, it appears that the simple and expansive sociability of peers, employers and informal mentors was critical to the induction of these new entrants to their respective fields. Peter has said that when he explained to Myra why he saw her as being worthy of such a film he felt that she was thinking in her natural humility … “Oh but I’m not that interesting”’. In her first book 'China - The Surprising Country' she writes of her recovery from self-doubt with reference to a stereotypical and gendered self-image as a ‘misguided female’ and an alternative, gendered image of herself as an ‘enterprising woman on an unusual venture’. Myra encountered several male allies who recognized and affirmed that alternative image. Peter was one of them. Sadly, however, most of the difficulties facing women that Myra identifies in this film persist. She and this little film are still of our time.
During the 1960s, student arts organisations at The University of Melbourne and a vibrant immigrant Italian community in the inner suburb of Carlton stimulated a burgeoning post-war art, theatre and film scene. Carlton soon became a social destination for young people, including students from the new outer-suburban Monash and La Trobe universities and technical and teachers colleges across the state. Its share-houses, cafés, cinemas, and small new theatres became a focal point of cultural activity around the anti-war movement, feminism, and an internationally engaged effort to develop Australian culture independently of colonial influence and British and American commercial interests. By 1971, when Peter and fellow filmmakers officially incorporated the Melbourne Filmmaker’s Coop (MFC, 1968-1976) a wider movement for cultural experimentation and the democratisation of media was also underway in print, radio and community video. The Coop films were notable for their diversity of form. Peter’s filmmaking was, and continued to be, literally experimental. As an artist, he has never repeated himself but has sought to push into new dimensions of what film can be, structurally and spiritually.
With A Woman of Our Time, two committed non-conformists provide a unique, unadorned window on early 1970s Australia, inviting comparison with the status of progressive ideas in filmmaking and gender politics today. The film brings into sharp relief the lack of progress towards gender equity in general, and in Australian film production specifically, both in terms of the diversity of on-screen representations and with regard to entrenched gender imbalance in many professions. It is a personal work, rather than the work of a producer, a director, and their ‘crew’. Out of necessity and enthusiasm Peter conceived, organised, did most of the cinematography, the sound, all the editing and even the negative matching for this film.
In his several unique portrait films, and A Woman of Our Time in particular, Peter explores the idea that a film about someone can, in a painterly and poetic sense, be turned to modernist portraiture (think Cubism) rather than being locked to the narrative logic of biography. Peter frees himself from the documentary routine of ‘talking heads’. The central organizing principle is neither narrative nor rhetorical – it is dialectical. A Woman of Our Time engages its viewer-listener at the level of ideas and emotions: ideas about power, sex and gender, about representation and about filmmaking; emotions of love, compassion, respect and dignity. All this is achieved while being playful with images, with sound and with the subject. The film threads images and sounds together densely into a rich tapestry that encompasses and interweaves the everyday, world historical events and a whole complex of political, philosophical and aesthetic concerns and ideas. This little film is sensitive and dense, the result of a rich working relationship between Myra and Peter and of the richness of their creative engagement with the world.
As often happens with independent films that avoid sensation and adhere to no tradition, genre or orthodoxy, A Woman of Our Time ‘fell between the cracks’ of programming categories and fashions. After a short season at the Co-op theatre in 1972 it had no public screenings. In 2018, Melbourne’s Artists Film Workshop held a retrospective of Peter’s films. For me this film was a revelation. Together with his Flux (1970) it revealed a level of innovation, especially in its editing, that I believe is of historical significance in world cinema. The screening at La Mama Theatre presents a wonderful film about someone who despite the passage of fifty years remains a woman of our time.
John Cumming, 11/12/2021
Sources:
Cumming, J 2014, The films of John Hughes : a history of independent screen production in Australia, The moving image: number 12, 2014, Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM).
Roper, M 1966, China: The Surprising Country, Doubleday, New York.
Roper, M 1989, Myra Roper interviewed by Amirah Inglis [sound recording], Recorded from May 4-5, 1989 in Canberra.
Roper, M- 1973, Myra Roper interviewed by Hazel de Berg (sound recording], 1973 July 16 <https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-220874394/listen>.
Tammer, P 2011, Early Days interview by John Cumming and Richard Leigh, Kyenton.
If anyone has experience in Wikipedia, there is an article about her. It would be good if this film was included and possibly a link added, if you want it public and openly accessible.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myra_Roper
Enough material for much longer feature documentary, but in my opinion it is much more attractive this way - as doc cine experiment with unpredictable multi layers overlapping... and, according to the main subject this is the work of a true gentleman... I like it Peter. Congrats...
ReplyDeleteThanks for you suggestion Aleksia, and for your congrats Darko. It has been a wonderful thing in my old age to find that this little work of so many years ago still strikes a chord with so many people today. It has had a very long "dormancy" in which it was never shown publicly between 1972 and 2018. Of course a huge 'thank you' must go to Chris Luscri and Bill Mousoulis who brought it out of retirement. Thanks all round!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing a link to this interesting work, Peter. I have enjoyed watching it. I am, however, a little saddened that our Government seems to have developed very little in their approach to femininity, if at all, from this era.
ReplyDeleteWonderful commentary by John Cumming which reflects the way I feel about Peter's film, although I did not know many (indeed most) of the details John supplies. I'm not surprised to find he regards Peter's editing style(s) in this and other films to be of historical significance to world cinema. A wonderful piece of work made during a time when making such films was far more difficult (technically speaking) than it is with the digital tools of today.
ReplyDeleteDavid, I'm very flattered by all the good things John has mentioned about the film, and Myra especially, and even silly old me.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it amazing that if Chris and Bill had not shown the film at AFW in April 2018 the film would be almost entirely forgotten! I'm so glad they put on those two screenings at that time. They have done wonders for all of us independent local filmmakers.
Thanks you too Emily. You have not told us yet how your documentary shoot went, so I hope it was very good for you.
ReplyDeleteWhat can we say about "our" government Emily. What a bunch of dopes they are.
But don't you get a sense that the ship must be sinking? Why else would all the rats desert?
Yes fascinating doco Peter, and I did enjoy John's review. I watched the film *then* read the review. Some notes as i watched:
ReplyDelete< Did we ever once see her speaking to camera as to the audience of the film? No. B-roll becomes A-roll. A continuous montage of ideas and streams of consciousness of and about the subject. it adds to the complexity rather than the simplicity of the character which gives the feel of a degree more authorship back to her rather than a narrower view that might have existed as an outside observer. It invites me to find out more who she was and why she was the subject of a film rather than handing this to us directly here. That has a real appeal to me. >
The reading a bit more about the working relationship you had with Peter, it made more sense. There must have been many months of trawling through material to put all this together. A lot of work now with non-linear editing, but how much more so then! Loved the shots of urban Australia mixed in, and the wash of other moments... the whole 25mins is really a mental journey into another world - familiar yet so different.
And finally, my eye caught one of John's references: "Tammer, P 2011, Early Days interview by John Cumming and Richard Leigh, Kyenton". Really?! What ever became of that little piece. Did it ever become a 'piece'? I'd love to see!
That "Early Days" material still exists Richard, who knows what might ever become of it? You know I had good intentions to do something with it, but as they say, "Hell is paved with good intentions".
ReplyDeleteI deeply appreciate your comments Richard.
pt