Two years ago!

Almost two years ago I was experiencing a very bad time with my Facebook account. It was also a period when Facebook took aim at the whole of Australia by denying coverage even to our nation’s emergency services.

Facebook news ban stops Australians

from sharing or viewing 

Australian and international news content

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-18/facebook-to-restrict-sharing-or-viewing-news-in-australia/13166208

At the same time my friend Darko Duilo whom I met via Facebook, and whom most of our friends know from his Facebook days, was placed under a 6 week ban, which subsequently became a “ban for life” from Facebook!

I don’t know and I don’t think Darko knows why that came about, what terrible sin had he committed? what it was that he had done which fired them up so much?

So for many reasons, including all of the above, I decided to give Facebook the flick, just as I gave the Catholic Church the flick many years earlier: I excommunicated myself to save them the effort of having to excommunicate me.

That led me to make an new effort with a few friends like Darko, David King, Fred Harden and many others, to use Blogger as a platform for a group which followed what I had tried to do for the two years previously on Facebook.

And in my own opinion it has succeeded much better than I had reason to hope for. I think a number of our regular readers might agree with me, although I’m sure it can be improved.

Because I hope it will continue into the future I’m keen to draw in new people to take up the reins and become authors and admins, but many of our friends seem to be too shy.

So today I’m posting one of the films which was “removed” by Facebook when I was a regular contributor. I never found out what it was which caused the removal of that film. There is a single image in the film which gives a clue, and I think you will all be able to spot that one. But it might have been something else.

The film I’m talking about is “George and Needles” which was made by students at Swinburne F&TV School, long before I joined the teaching staff.

 

Geg Dee (dir.), DOP., 

Donald Featherstone, 

Sound, John Walton, 

Editing Ivan Hexter

It was a student “exercise" film which was most likely shot in a day, and which has become a cause célèbre of independent low-budget filmmaking from Melbourne in the early 1970s.   

The only reason I can share this film with you is because our friend Nigel Buesst was wise enough and caring enough to have a private copy struck while he was a Lecturer at the college in those days. So my post includes the copy Nigel gave to me and now we can pass it on to you. Most of you would never have seen it, and perhaps not even have heard of this film. 

I’ve also decided that in the next few weeks I will post other titles from the past. Some of these may have been posted previously on this blog, but others will just be old favourites I care to celebrate and to share with my friends.

I also hope that some of you may feel inclined to post similar works which have impressed you from whatever medium or period.

pt