AT LONG LAST!
WHY DID IT TAKE US SO LONG TO GET TO THIS DAY?
Each night as the audience entered the theatre I sat on a chair backstage, the red curtain wide open so I could see them and they could see me. It was a Zen thing, as in we are the same, I’m watching you as you watch me. Twenty years since I last performed I had six nights of a solo show.
The lights went down and a film clip started, I removed my top and stepped on stage in just a pair of whitefront underpants mirroring the male in the film and removing them when he removed his. The clip ended, the lights went up and naked I turned to face the audience revealing my gender affirmed female form.
When I had retrieved pictures from my childhood I was struck by my serious and direct gaze into the camera dressed in my white confirmation gown. I started to have feelings of dread and anxiety, thinking it was due to having to perform, but when I had some angry dreams and cramping calves I realized I was dredging up some old trauma, even though the show was mostly comedic!
The mechanics of performing solo for sixty minutes were complex and amazing. As the evenings passed my mind and body became more and more open and alive, I was playful and felt happy. I had closed up and become smaller over the Covid years and wondered if poor old Melbourne was similarly afflicted.
How do we get our joy back, and our inner child. Jokers, Fools and Artists play a vital role. They prick the serious bubble and lead us back to life and laughter.
At the start of the lockdowns I thought we should have a Minister for Morale and a dedicated TV channel screening nonstop music, dance, comedy and art to keep us buoyant.
The Butterfly Club should be commended for enabling artists with little money to get in front of an audience and be creative. From our percentage of ticket sales the director, lighting/multimedia technician and myself received $150 each for devising, rehearsing and performing the show.
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Recently my friend Tom sent me a digitised version of a film he completed in 1982.
Sweet Dreamers
(1982, 82 mins, 16mm, drama)
Until this movie was digitised by the NFSA the only copy Tom had available was a poor quality videotape full of all the usual videotape baddies such as excessive 'noise' in the images. Now we have this vastly superior copy to view.
When the film was first released Tom received quite a lot of negative comment. For any filmmaker this is hard to come to terms with, it is extremely dispiriting. After the passage of forty years Tom now sees the film very differently from the time in which it was created.
SWEET DREAMERS WEB.mp4 from Tom Cowan on Vimeo.
Here are some notes I received from Tom:
"SWEET DREAMERS"
Seeing it again after so long, I now find myself very proud of my most critically derided and unsuccessful movie. "SWEET DREAMERS" – I made it forty years ago. I was unsatisfied with it at the time, not just because it was slammed although that hurt, but because it had changed so much from the original fine careless conception. It was called "I CHING ON A DOUBLE BED".
It was to be improvised from whatever direction the I Ching advised of the lovers.
Then, following the monster success of my "JOURNEY AMONG WOMEN", every obstacle by the bureaucrats was put in the way of an even more experimental movie such as this idea. To get the funding which had already been recommended by the real film-makers on the assessment panel of the experimental film fund, I had to conform to the conditions set out by people who had no real production experience.
The proposed experiment of an ‘in the moment’ development in the progress of the central relationship, even as it was being filmed, was radical (thinking about it now). But these bozos at the film commission stipulated that I had to write a script to get the funding. So I was required to distort the very basis of the proposal which had been given a tick by film-makers.
Eventually after about two years of wrangling, I got a small grant of $25,000 which was later changed to investment funding. NB: at that time experimental film funding was being changed to investments:
"Experimental film-making must be controlled, this is not the seventies!”
With all the delaying, that fine careless experimental idea became bogged down and the movie became very conventional in production. I didn’t have the joie de vivre to pull off my original conception. I was disappointed with myself for letting the film bureaucrats wear me down. It was twenty years before I attempted another movie as Bruce Hodsdon reported in his fine piece about not well-known film-makers. There was one nice review by Steve Wallace in Film Review at the time.
It's a film about the hopes and dreams of the seventies when so much seemed possible. How dare we hope so naively was a problem for the critics. They contended that the male character is unrealistic in his dreams and chauvinist. But that’s not so unrealistic: it is rather an essential struggle which the couple try to face. The script is low key and I reckon: it is not the very small budget but the pacing and being too locked-off for an independent movie that was a problem.
The performances are interesting. Sue Smithers was better than a French actress from a nouvelle vague movie. She acted well and she’s lovely. Richard Moir was very generous in agreeing to a role in such a low budget effort and he does a fine job. Bryan Probyn did a beautiful job as DoP and it is nice to look at. He went on to shoot ‘Far East’ for John Duigan when I was not available and did a better job than I could have done. The ingenious music by Brett Cabot makes me proud of him. I’m sorry he left Australia.
TOM
For our Armchair Travellers who reside in Melbourne, a post about a show Kim Miles is putting on soon now.
There was a post here about one of Kim's films a couple of weeks back, so you may have seen that.
Kim's show, playing soon is called
Altar Boy to Girl
I personally really love Kim's film work. Here is an essay I wrote about her a few years ago -
http://www.pureshitauscinema.com/profiles/miles.html
She is also a visual artist with a great style, and a performer too, so in ALTAR BOY TO GIRL, she will present an hour of talk, performance, nudity, and her art, at the renowned Butterfly Club for 6 nights, Jan 10 to 15.
There are $28 discounted tickets if kimticket is typed into box office page.
Butterfly Club info page - https://thebutterflyclub.com/show/altar-boy-to-girl
Facebook event page - https://www.facebook.com/events/581515543154551/?ref=newsfeed
Kim Miles' blog - https://digitalartbang.com/
Cheers,Many years ago I taught an eager young fellow named Richard Leigh.
That was a vintage year in 1997 when he was one member of my documentary class of 10. At the time I had no idea we would still be friends in 2022, but here we are.
Now Richard has created a little flick about his own group of friends, a few nice people who have kept up with each other since their high school days about 35 years ago, give or take.
Get Back to Glenn & Jills' from Richard Leigh on Vimeo.
The story behind this little video is that recently these guys have been going for extended bike rides together between Xmas and New Year's day. A further story behind this little video is that I bought a GoPro action camera in May 2021 and my showing it off to my friends led to Richard buying one for himself.
What do I mean when I call it an action camera? Well, it seems to have been mainly designed for people who live active lives, jumping out of planes, riding mountain bikes on perilous tracks, even venturing under the sea. Also people who do Bungee Jumping and other exciting things which I'm not at all likely to do, so why would I need to use an action camera from the quietude of my living room and my comfortable armchair?
Aaah well, that's because I'm going to use it for a project which is not really an "action" type activity. I'll share that project with my friends later this year, but for now it's a badly kept secret... the armchair traveller has taken a few steps out of his comfort zone, not too far mind you... you will just have to be patient.
Thanks Richard for sending us this lovely record of your recent expedition with Bruce, Peter and Glenn, a sparkling tribute to a group of fellows who have kept touch with each other since they were at high school, and who most likely will do so for many years to come.
PT
Last Saturday evening at the Eastend Cinema in Adelaide Bill had a successful screening of his most recent film My ...
