Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Elora and Egbert

I'm sure you will all know why I'm sharing this around again.

Last time I shared it I was on Facebook, but now two years later, it still has currency.

DRAWN TOGETHER by

A new offering from one of our friend's pens:

Monday, March 27, 2023

Who would have to courage to be a whistleblower?

ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle faces trial after immunity defence fails

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/27/ato-whistleblower-richard-boyle-face-trial-after-immunity-defence-fails

ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle’s court case a ‘Shakespearean tragedy’

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/ato-whistleblower-richard-boyle-s-court-case-a-shakespearean-tragedy-20220723-p5b3zv

Background on Boyle’s case

(taken from AFR article by Adele Ferguson)

None of this helps Boyle, who hit the headlines in April 2018 when he turned whistleblower in a joint media investigation with The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC’s Four Corners, which revealed that his area of the ATO in Adelaide had been instructed to use more heavy-handed debt collection tactics on taxpayers who owed the ATO money.

Months before going public, he followed protocol and did a public interest disclosure to the ATO. It was investigated by the ATO and rejected. He then went to the ATO watchdog, the Inspector-General for Taxation.

In 2018, I was working on an investigation into the ATO for The SMH, The Age and ABC’s Four Corners. Boyle came forward because he was worried about what was going on in the Adelaide unit with small businesses and garnishees.

A garnishee is a tool that allows the ATO to seize funds from the bank accounts of taxpayers who had been assessed to owe the ATO money, sometimes without their knowledge.

Boyle’s testimony and evidence included an email sent out by an ATO team leader in May 2017 to a dozen workers in the Adelaide office saying, “the last hour of power is upon us ... that means you still have time to issue another five garnishees … right?”

During that period, there was spike in the number of garnishees issued in Adelaide.

I couldn’t sleep, and my health spiralled into what I describe as a devastating situation.
— ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle

Emails and calls flooded in, and it sparked several investigations that resulted in both sides of politics announcing policies to improve the lot of small businesses when they are dealing with the Tax Office.

Against this backdrop, Boyle was charged in January 2019 with 66 charges, including telephone tapping and recording of conversations without the consent of all parties, and making a record of protected information, in some cases passing that information to a third party.

Boyle had no personal gain speaking up. He always maintained he was doing it because he believed it was the right thing.

Boyle vindicated

Two months after charges were laid, the inspector-general released a report that vindicated Boyle, finding that “problems did arise in certain localised situations for a limited period, particularly so at Adelaide’s local ATO site”.

Then in April 2019, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman found the ATO’s use of garnishee notices was “excessive”.

A Senate inquiry was launched into the ATO’s investigation into Boyle’s disclosure to examine why the ATO had dismissed his claims. It found the investigation to be “superficial”.

Former senator Rex Patrick, who was on the Senate committee, says he would have preferred the word “botched”, and says the findings of the committee should have been enough for the attorney-general to stop the prosecution.

In June 2019, Boyle broke his silence and did an interview with me, where he explained the stress he was under living with the charges, the financial challenges of not working and his battle with depression.

“I’ve had some dark moments. It’s taken a huge toll on my mental health. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t sleep, and my health spiralled into what I describe as a devastating situation.”

******************************************************************************

This is yet another leftover from the time of the LCP domination of Federal Politics between 2013-2022.

It coincides with the period we also know as ROBO DEBT which was put in place by the same Government and pursued with lethal cost against thousands of innocent Australians, some of whom were so overwhelmed that they took their own lives.

In the same period Bernard Collaery and "Witness K" were pursued relentlessly by the same Government... the total cost to the taxpayers of Australia:

"legal bill for the Collaery and Witness K cases on 7 July, the date on which the Collaery prosecution ended, was $5.148m."

What a price we pay for the misdeeds of our politicians.

While all those people hounded for Robo Debt suffered and even took their own lives as a result of the injustice wrought upon them, some of the politicians who set it in place still sit in Parliament on good salaries or have retired on phenomenal superannuation packages.

I could paste in a few mug shots here but I simply can't bear to see their faces.

You all know who they are.

Sunday, March 26, 2023

SPLICE HERE: A Projected Odyssey, from Heather Bertrand.

Hi Peter,

I went to the FVFS meeting yesterday and they showed us Splice Here: A Projected Odyssey.

https://m.imdb.com/showtimes/title/tt7498372?date=2023-05-07

I want to take Mum to see it, but I think you would love it too.

And maybe it could be a short blog entry but I don't have time to write one.

Heather.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks Heather,

I think our friends can get an idea of the film by watching the trailer in the link you've sent us.

It looks like a very professional production.

In the argument for "film" versus "digital" I'm not a film purist.

I've arrived at a point in my life where I don't like going to see films with audiences in large theatres. I feel trapped there.

I also love the new digital technology which is giving me opportunities I never had with the film medium. I'm not missing the cost of Kodak's film stocks, nor the cost of laboratory processing and printing and all that.

But I do realise that many others including a lot of our friends are film purists and don't like the way digital has replaced movies produced and screened via film.

Perhaps this blog will encourage a good discussion of the issue?

Thanks for sending the link Heather.

Saturday, March 25, 2023

A screening of a restored copy of my friend John Ruane's film "Queensland" on Tuesday night at Thornbury Picture House:

From Bill Mousoulis and Chris Luscri

This month, finally, after first being programmed in Covid-lockdown times, we are happy to present John Ruane's first major film, QUEENSLAND, his Swinburne/VCA graduation film, but an ambitious graduation film! A realist classic, it stars John Flaus in his first major role, launching a great acting career for him. A truly SPECIAL Q&A with both Johns, Ruane & Flaus. And a beautiful HD Restored print by Ray Argall. Get in quick for these tickets!

Tuesday, March 28, at 8:10 pm:

Queensland

John Ruane, 1976, 52 mins,

Q&A with John Ruane & John Flaus, moderated by Jake Wilson

One of the quintessential, widely acclaimed Australian films of the 1970s, John Ruane's superb Queensland builds upon the structures and possibilities of the miniature to ultimately craft something more mysterious and radically open-ended.

Featuring the indomitable presence of legendary actor John Flaus, Ruane adeptly uncovers the peculiar sense of everyday drudgery and quiet desperation to indelibly capture what the director has called a ‘vanishing breed of Australians’. (Chris Luscri)

More info on the film and the screening:

http://www.pureshitauscinema.com/unknown_pleasures.html#20

Venue is Thornbury Picture House, 802 High St. Thornbury.
Screening starts promptly at 8:10 pm
House prices apply - $19.50 / $15.50 / $12.50.
BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL, tickets available for purchase on this page:
https://thornburypicturehouse.com.au/film/st00002022/

--
Bill Mousoulis

"Cinema Reborn" 2023. From my friend Geoff Gardner

Five years ago I was honoured that the newly-formed festival "CINEMA REBORN" opened with my film "The Nude In The Window", a portrait film about Paul Cox and his life work.

Geoff Gardner has been a long time supporter of my work and for that I am most grateful. His great support has given me strength in times when my fortunes were very low. Today Geoff sent me this:

Hi Peter,

Here's the trailer for Cinema Reborn 2023 which goes on at the Ritz from 26 April-2 May.

As the person who made the first ever film to be screened at Cinema Reborn, your film about Paul Cox was screened way back in 2018), I’m sure you continue to follow our fortunes.

The trailer was made by young film-maker James Vaughan, a very active member of our Organising Committee and it uses the remarkable solo piano music by Oleg Karaivachuk which features on the soundtrack of Kira Muratova’s 1971 film THE LONG FAREWELL.

Muratova was a Ukrainian director who worked in the Soviet Union. The Long Farewell was banned until Gorbachev’s Glasnost era started some 16 years after the film’s production. We think this may be the first time the film has been screened in Australia. We have received some exceptional programme notes about the film by Adrian Martin and we’ll publish those shortly.

Programme and notes:

https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/festivals/cinema-reborn-2023

https://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2022/12/cinema-reborn-december-newsletter.html

Best,

Geoff Gardner

Friday, March 24, 2023

From Maria Korporal: New exhibitions in Berlin, in Italy, and elsewhere

Dear friends, between the end of March and the beginning of April there are some interesting exhibitions coming up, to which I am pleased to invite you.

BERLIN

• March 31 – April 2, 2023: “finally a bit of animation!” Japan meets Berlin – exhibition and screening, Medienwerkstatt bbk Berlin. The Media Workshop celebrates the farewell of Lioba von den Driesch, the contact to the Japanese artist Yasuto Yura, organizer of the independent film festival “VIDEO PARTY”, and the new media lab with a screening and an exhibition.

On display will be a wealth of animations of various kinds from Japan and Berlin, among which my installation / video book Invocation of the Stone

CALCATA

• April 1-16, 2023: Uovo d’artista, group exhibition curated by Marijcke van der Maden at Il Granarone, Calcata VT, Italy.

I participate with my new video The Mind’s Egg, with sound art by Edoardo Pistolesi Somigli.

BOLOGNA / ONLINE

• March 30-31, 2023: Arte-fatti contemporanei / BILtrepuntozero, Bologna in Lettere.

International video art and video poetry exhibition curated by myself, in collaboration with Enzo Campi, Italian poet and founder of the festival Bologna in Lettere.
Online event with premiere on the YouTube channel of Bologna in Lettere

Thursday 30 March
20.00 h “The Left Hand of Darkness” – Sara Bonventura (Italy)
20.30 h “danse01” – Mark Klink (USA)
21.00 h “The Background World” – Melissa Faivre (France-Germany)
21.30 h “Where are you going Arthur Rimbaud?” – Slem (France)

Friday 31st March
20.00 h “Essere U” – Emanuele Marsigliotti (Italy)
20.30 h “Il canto del pensiero errante” – Silvia De Gennaro (Italy)
21.00 h “ABODE” – David King (Curator) – film di Kunal Biswas (India), Anna Grigorian (Armenia-Canada), Camelia Mirescu (Italy), Hiroshi Atobe (Japan), Debjit Bagchi (India), Rrose Present (Spain), David King (Australia), Serge Maslov-Szymarski (Stateless)
21.30 h “Specchiatura” – Maria Korporal (Germany)

Updates on the festival’s NEWS page

Other current exhibitions:

• March 22 – April 10, 2023: Dedicato all’acqua, exhibition at Il Mitreo Iside, Rome, with my video Underwater Desert with music by Shiri Malckin

• April 7-20, 2023: streetside cinema – a/perture, Winston-Salem NC, USA, with my video S.A.D. on a poem by Ilaria Boffa
... and more

Maria Korporal

Saturday, March 4, 2023

Munch and me and "enhancement" of photographs

My fascination with images by Edvard Munch started with "The Scream". Sometime ago I got bored with that work.

After all it is one of the most repeated works in the world, often printed very badly with not so close colour rendition.

Then while in New York in 1985 I became entranced by his lithographic work when some pieces were on show at MOMA in a collection covering 400 years of woodcuts and lithography from Durer to Munch.

Then I went off and bought a big book on his life and work.

Then I saw Peter Watkins' superb documentary of Munch's life.

Then I discovered Munch's photographs.

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait ‘à la Marat,’ Beside a Bathtub at Dr. Jacobson’s Clinic, 1908-09.

This astonishing man used photography much of his life. In the image above, he is obviously in a bathtub, playing out a version of his fascination with Marat's murder by Charlotte Corday.

He repeated many themes such as this one all his life, always pursuing some sort of finality to his search... was he ever satisfied?

Another image which he was obviously haunted by was "The Sick Child" which often featured in his sketches, his paintings and his lithographs, which he corrected with many "modifications" and repositionings.

But all these things kept drawing me back to his photographs in which he investigates himself. His selfies! It's crazy to use this term when we know how terrible "selfies" can be as they are used in this modern world. Munch's self portraits, whether photographed, lithographed or painted, are deep investigations of his own psyche, for want of a better word.

In his photos he records his moments of joy in the sun at the beach, his reflective moments when alone, his experiments such as in the bathtub, and his ruthless objective realisation of his advancing decrepitude.

I think he also fancied himself as a Nordic warrior

without any armour to protect his sword!

But the photograph which haunts me most is this one

Self-Portrait, Somewhere on the Continent II

By Edvard Munch - Google Art Project: pic, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38105396

A few years ago I tried to play with this image and Bill Mousoulis helped me create a "mirror" from the photo which we used on Facebook:

As you can see there are serious blemishes such as the circles near his head, which must have been in the original image I downloaded at the time, but they are not in the large single image above.

It was just a little game I was playing imagining what Edvard might have been thinking at the time he created his selfie "somewhere on the Continent" in a rented room, or hotel room, alone, and contemplating his private thoughts. We all have them don't we? But we don't all do something concrete with the thoughts we have.

Recently this image has been coming back to me more and more and I have played with it using Topaz to enhance it, not doing selective things such as brushing out scratches or processing marks... just sharpening and noise reduction:

I've found that all "enhancement" changes the nature of the image you are working on: you can get it sharper, show more detail, less grain or noise, but it changes the mood of the original. Sometimes dramatically, making people seem like carton characters, carboard cutouts.

So I try to keep the enhancement down to very small adjustments. In this particular image I'm not really concerned about the scratches, the processing marks, or the negative dirt. I don't wish to change it from the sepia, although normally I'm not drawn much to sepia.

If you compare his face in closeup with the original, you can see his features are certainly sharper, his nose is extremely prominent, more defined, but I don't mind that because his expression doesn't seem to be altered.

In some of my other efforts at restoration of old images I found that by pushing the enhancement too far you change the character of the person... the AI makes them less like people and more like cartoons of themselves.

Now let's go back to Edvard's painting and lithographs.

When you think of his huge repertoire you might not think of Munch as painting a work such as this:

I had no idea he painted anything like this until I bought the big book I mentioned earlier. It was one of only two such images I could find anywhere at that time

but eventually I did find some others:

There really are quite a few of these and they cover many themes he repeated all his life, including his self-portraits:

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait, 1926, The Munch museum, Oslo, Norge

His lithographs also exert a huge influence in my life. I love Black and White! I love classic movies in pristine B&W prints.

Some recent restorations such as "The Third Man" and "A Touch of Evil" show those films as they have never been seen since first released.

Similarly for B&W photography from the masters, and there are so many of them.

But there is something really special about lithographs!

And then there is "The Sick Child"

Munch worked this theme over and over, in sketches, paintings and lithographic plates. From the sequence Peter Watkins presented in his film on Munch one gets the impression that this experience of the illness and death of his sister was so deeply troubling for Munch that he could never let it go.

"The motif of the sick adolescent girl is based on Edvard Munch’s memories of his sister Sophie, who suffered from tuberculosis and died at the age of 15. Tuberculosis was a constant threat, both in society and in Munch’s family, and there was no cure – his mother died of the disease when the artist was five years old."

https://www.munchmuseet.no/en/our-collection/the-sick-child/

I tried to create a tribute to Munch six years ago on the theme of "The Sick Child". It was my first try at doing something like that, also one of my very earliest experiences of sourcing from the internet. I made many mistakes at that time, but I'm just not up to redoing it or making a better version.

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Valise, 1906.

I've decided not to try to "enhance" this image in any way. If there are any blemishes or imperfections, and there certainly are, but I like it just as it is.

So now I leave you with these thoughts to pursue as much as you like... you will find the man with a valise left us plenty to explore.

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait ‘à la Marat,’ Beside a Bathtub at Dr. Jacobson’s Clinic, 1908-09.

https://www.wmagazine.com/gallery/edvard-munch-photography

https://www.munchmuseet.no/en/our-collection/the-sick-child/

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait, 1926, The Munch museum, Oslo, Norge