Sunday, December 28, 2008

chapter three: beyond alphaville, the super 8 film group works towards it first festival


This history of the Sydney Super Eight Film Group was initiated as a response to the commissioning of an organisational history by d/Lux/MediaArts (d/Lux), a screen and media arts organisation committed to supporting the development, engagement and experience of Australian screen and digital media culture.
 

The organisation was founded in 1982 as the Sydney Super 8 Film Group; in 1990 it became the Sydney Intermedia Network and finally, in 2000, d/Lux/MediaArts. The history draws on an archive of material that existed as printed ephemera, publications, artwork, diaries, photos, super 8 film, video and digital media, which together tracked the development and evolution of experimental screen media in Sydney dating back to 1981. The history examines the screening, production and promotion of amateur art-based super-8 filmmaking in Sydney from 1981-1990, with primary reference to the Sydney Super 8 Film Group.


 **********************************
 
“This is a reverie about films … and I announce my particularly obsessive condition neither in the name of nostalgia for pre-theory, pre-academy days, when ‘Australian film culture’ wasn’t even an imaginable phrase; nor in the name of post-theory ‘perversity’, playing the deadly, beautiful card of subjectivity like one from the heart”.[71] Adrian Martin, 1984.


Beyond Alphaville, the Super 8 Film Group works towards it first Festival

On 11 November 1982, as a result of forum at the Third Sydney Super 8 Film Festival, around 30 people turned up for a meeting at Alpha House in Newtown, including filmmaker Gary Warner. The Super 8 Collective became the Sydney Super 8 Film Group (the Group).[72]

The Group now consisted of around nine core people[73] (the ‘infamous six’ being Gary Warner, Virginia Hilyard, Michael Hutak, Catherine Lowing, Andrew Frost and Mark Titmarsh) planning began, centring on the annual festival, as well as setting up distribution and production facilities at the make-shift office.[74]

“It was a scene there that grew in sophistication as long as the technology was viable. In that first year, the 3rd Super 8 Festival of 1982, we published a notice in the festival catalogue asking people to come to a meeting to discuss the viability of an organisation, a bit like a filmmakers coop for Super 8, aimed at everything from production and distribution to exhibition and publications. We held the meeting one night during the festival and quite a few people came. We arranged to meet another time a few weeks later at Alphaville, one of those big warehouse buildings on King Street in Newtown. It was still a run down industrial building that was being used for artist studios, very different to the new kind of gentrified Newtown”.[75] Mark Titmarsh, 2007.

The Group compiled and curated packages of super 8 films that could be shown in Sydney venues such as Artspace,[76] Kartoon Kafé in Newcastle and the Graphic Arts Club, as well as placed interstate at One Flat Exhibit in Brisbane, the Media Resource Centre in Adelaide, Praxis in Perth, Glasshouse Theatre in Melbourne and ANZART in Hobart. ANZART was an ‘encounter between over 50 new Zealand and Australian artists expressing the ‘total diversity of visual and audio mediums’[77] including a Super 8 Film Festival of 30 films from around Australia organised by the Group.

“We used to organise screenings at places like the Trade Union Club and Art Unit artist run gallery, performance studio spaces, which there used to be a lot more of in those days. We used to organise screenings mostly of our own work and people we were connected to, contacts in Melbourne, lots of odd film-like doll animation films, sub genres at that stage of the game”.[78] Gary Warner, 1990.

Event two: The ‘Independent Super 8 Films From Australia’ overseas touring program

In August Mark Titmarsh had written a letter to Victoria Treole (Cultural Events Officer, AFC) asking for assistance in taking a package of films to Belgium and Germany in late 1983. Some of the films recommended were Wendy Chandler’s Concerned with something else (1982) and Role (1982), Phillip Bannigan’s Three views of t.v. (1981), Aris Kartsonas’ Marathon (1982), Michelle Riley’s Misogyny (1982), Mark Titmarsh’s Undercurrent (1982), Geraldine Crumpton’s Happy birthday colour t.v. (1982), Stephen Harrop & Stephen Fernley’s Down Diablo Way (1982), Stephen Harrop’s Square bashing (1982), and Michelle Luke’s Le oussin sur le herbe (1982). The filmmakers came from Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle and Adelaide[79].

By October 1983 an Independent Super 8 Films From Australia[80] touring program had been compiled by Mark Titmarsh, with the help of Janet Burchill and Victoria Treole from the AFC. There was an accompanying twenty-two-page catalogue.[81]

The catalogue's introduction to the Independents … program highlighted the concept that super 8 had ‘virtually no recorded history ’excepting those from the last three years and (in de rigour Titmarsh style) proceeded to exalt the medium of super-8, including its manifesto of radical incompetence; “Super 8 has had an irresistible effect on predetermined notions of film theory and practice”.[82] In the same breath Titmarsh thanks the AFC for the last 12 months support in distribution, production and exhibition.

The first section of the tour took place in December, when Titmarsh screened the films in Vienna, Florence and Paris. At the beginning of the trip in November, Titmarsh attended the Film Statt Berlin festival at the Arsenal Cinema in Berlin and was exposed to the ‘hardcore-post-punk-new-wave-everybody-is-doing’[83] Berlin super 8 film scene that was very much centred on its music. While Titmarsh was in Paris he also set up an interview with the French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard that was later published[84] in On the Beach magazine, coinciding with the Futur*Fall conference at Sydney University in July 1984.[85]

Event three: The Fourth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival
Chauvel Cinema, Paddington Town Hall, 249 Oxford Street Paddington, November 15-18 1983

Money was sought for the fourth Festival from the AFC, and the Group received $2620 to run the Festival.[806] Sponsorship of $1000 was also gained from AGFA for the production of the festival program, that resulted in double page advertising spread, extolling the benefits of Agfa Moviechrome film.[87]

The catalogue designed by Gary Warner had high production values, with a brilliant blue wrap-around cover and exciting and vibrant cut-ups with Xeroxed and photocopied images taken from popular culture, as well as finely-tuned hand drawings from Warner. The Festival catalogues were an essential part of the Super 8 Group subculture, representing a ‘visual magazine’ of the films being screened.

“We used to share design responsibilities to design the catalogue. I did the first 1982 one, and then Gary [Warner] did the next one and Andrew [Frost] did the next one and so on. We used to share design responsibilities in the production of the catalogue. We also did a whole series of Film Readers as well as the Festival catalogues and posters, all of which demonstrated a post-do-it-yourself-new-wave aesthetic”.[88] Mark Titmarsh, 2007.

This was the first Festival that was coordinated to be also screened in Melbourne directly after the Sydney Festival. Fifteen films opened the festival on the Thursday night, culminating in David Nerlich’s epic 45 minute Killing time, ‘A tragedy in 4 dimensions. A story of two self appointed messiahs of the post apocalypse and its time to kill time to kill time to kill time … etc.’[89] After the screening Kate Richards, who had just returned from her stint at the Bristol Filmmaker’s Co-op in England, gave a talk on super 8.

“I was involved in the London Filmmakers Co-op, in a group called Women in Moving Pictures. In that middle 80s the political imperative was getting work on screen; women’s work on screen and Indigenous work on screen. The co-op movement in the UK was a grassroots movement; there were lots of strong filmmaking co-ops. The time that I was there was also the time that BBC Channel 4 was initiated and moved towards setting up more co-ops to produce for broadcast”.[90] Kate Richards, 2007.

On the Friday night eighteen films were shown followed by a talk by the film critic Adrian Martin titled ‘My life at the movies’ which was later published in On the Beach (1984) and in the Super Eight Film Reader (1984) as ,‘My life goes to the movies’.[91] The talk was a homage to the cinephile, a sublime reverence to the sheer joy of viewing film:

“This is a reverie about films … and I announce my particularly obsessive condition neither in the name of nostalgia for pre-theory, pre-academy days, when ‘Australian film culture’ wasn’t even an imaginable phrase; nor in the name of post-theory ‘perversity’, playing the deadly, beautiful card of subjectivity like one from the heart”.[92] Adrian Martin, 1984.

Nineteen films were screened on the Saturday afternoon and concluded on Saturday night with wine and cheese, after the screening of another seventeen films, which made a total of sixty-nine films over the whole Festival.

Dialogue four: The landing of post-modern art writing in Sydney - launching of On The Beach magazine

In early 1983 the On the Beach magazine came together a bit like the Super 8 Film Group, a ‘group of friends forming around a particular bundle of cultural interests’. There was Lindy Lee, Ross Gibson and Mark Titmarsh from the first Super 8 Collective, as well as Mark Thirkell and Sam Mele, both studying studying philosophy and literature at Sydney University. Mele and Thirkell acted as the editors of the new Sydney based magazine. The magazine shared an office with the Super 8 Film Group at 64A Wigram Road, Glebe.

Principally what I thought we were interested in was the application of these new energising & renovating ideas that were coming mostly through from arts and journalism, mostly out of Roland Barthes and also some of the British stuff that was mashing up culture.”[93a]
Ross Gibson, 2007.

The new magazine aimed to provide an outlet for local writing in the areas of philosophy, literature, visual arts and popular culture, with a policy to encourage innovative critical approaches to contemporary cultural phenomena.[94] It was an application of new ‘energising and renovating cultural ideas’ mostly coming out of the writings of Roland Barthes and British ‘cultural studies’ so brilliantly captured in Dick Hebdige’s landmark 1967 publication, Subculture: the meaning of style.[95]

The first issue[96] contained work on the new phenomenology, ‘natural’ codes in Australian cinema, violence and the ‘surficial economy’ of the visual arts. There were also two specific articles on the super 8 subculture, one from Ted Colless, ‘Super 8: The phenomenon turned eventful’,[97] and the other from Mark Titmarsh, ‘Super 8: From Poseidon adventure to Atlantis Effect’.[98] The first couple of issues were self-funded. It then received funding and lasted for four years. It was the magazine version of the super 8 festival![99]

On The Beach was a kind of mish-mash of fairly revved-up theoretical and critical writings. It was trying out a lot of those ideas that we all encountered in French theory but it also just people who were interested in how writing works, a bit like the way Roland Barthes wrote. People were asking; how do you get these really interesting big ideas and get them into a framework where the prose is really interesting, where there is sort of intrigue in the essay, where the big idea comes in as a surprise. That idea of a new paradigm was sincerely felt and I remember that when I first encountered that sort of work in London and it was a whole other way to figure things out that was very exciting. In retrospect it was part of the whole punk thing, having total freedom to write. It was a privileged freedom”. [100] Ross Gibson, 2007.

On the Beach was formed both in opposition to and in alliance with Art & Text, already up and running in Melbourne, as was Virgin Press and later in the year Tension. It was frustrating for eager arts writers in Sydney as it would probably take at least three months to get an article published in Art & Text, and there was no cutting-edge arts publishing coming out of Sydney. There were excellent writers in Sydney like Jenny Kaye, Chris Burns, Helen McAllan, French filmmaker Marguerite Duras as well as Mele, Thirkell, and Gibson.

“It had a conflictual union [with Art & Text], supportive and competitive at the same time. We were all trying to say something about what was going on in contemporary art and to define the strong sense of a new mood, a shift from structuralism to post-structuralism and post-modernism. Trying to get a read on culture in general, from Hollywood cinema to studio painting”.[101] Mark Titmarsh

On the Beach went for thirteen issues. The initial five members of the magazine’s editorial collective lasted for around three years, then Titmarsh and Lindy Lee, and finally for the last two issues just Titmarsh. At this point there was still another year’s funding left, so having put the word out for new blood, just as Richards and Collins had done in 1981 for the Film Festival, Catherine Lumby and David Messer put their hands up to edit the last three issues.

The affair continues…
In November Gary Warner writes a letter to AFC Review of Cultural Activities Policy in a submission for funding of $30,000 to set up an office for the Group.[102] In July an application is also submitted the to NSW Premiers Department, Division of Cultural Activities for a Cultural Grant of $2555 for ‘Film and Video’ screening as part of next years 5th Sydney Super 8 Film Festival in 1984. On the 5 December the Division of Cultural Activities approves of $1000 towards the Fifth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival.[103


Film Three:

Westworld story
Catherine Lowing
(1984) B&W / Colour Sound 8:00 mins

Westworld story starts completely black with a mock-religious voiceover: “A planet more blessed than this one – and yet in its uncontrollable insanity the human race seeks to destroy this shining jewel – this blessed sphere which men call earth”. A new wave beat remix of Give Us the Night starts up and we see a early 80’s downtown skyline of Sydney including Fays department store and the camera points directly at a dissolving cloud obscured sun. A knife and very hip, leather-clad women with audiotape and Walkman player climbs onto hip rooftop-80’s Sydney with Rockabilly girls dancing and super 8 scene people partying.

Westworld story is the first part of a trilogy that Catherine Lowing made during 1984 and 1985. Knife In The Head, Spooky (1984) (“You must never go down to the end of town of you don't go down with me") and Shooting Day For Night (1985) ("A wandering- amidst social and historical, seeking the remarkable in the world.") complete the trilogy. The film exemplifies the growing influence of music videos since the launch of MTV in 1981. The first MTV Video Music Awards were in 1984.

“There is very little distance between the actors in the film and their everyday lives. The style of the film attempts to capture a mainstream look, which not only belies the so-called inadequacies of Super 8 but also allows the position occupied by the film to masquerade itself as universal and objective. The film makes reference to traditional narrative and stereotyping but is constructed to appear more like promotional videos. This serves to deconstruct the original and reflects my intention of saturating the mainstream and not celebrating an obscure marginalised aesthetic.”[104] Catherine Lowing, 1986.

Lowing tried to make clear that the aim of the trilogy was really to make women visible in films, instead of worrying about the representation of women in film and articulating feminine desire. Westworld story, for Lowing, drew on video clips and traditional narrative. The one thing that is supposed to disturbing about the film is, that even though the overall look of the film is like a lesbian film, the women depicted are mainstream. First of all, she wanted women to identify with the film:

“I started from the premise of not wanting to specifically make a feminist film but the fact that its made by a woman comes to the film. Instead of worrying about representing women the way it is patriarchal. The important thing is saturating the mainstream. I try to make the film look as mainstream as possible not only to belie the fact that they are made on super 8, to dispel the notion that you need a lot of money to make a professional looking film, but also because I like the idea of saturating the film with women and entering the mainstream.”[105] Catherine Lowing, 1985.

Lowing was very interested in the subcultures going on around Sydney particularly groups like rockabilly and dance cultures and the lesbian S&M scene, which Knife in the head, Spooky examines:

“I’d met some women from a lesbian S&M group and they told me how they were constantly being criticised by other feminists for copying aggressive male behaviour etc. The group saw what they were doing as exploring the limits of defined sexual behaviour, in particular those imposed on women. (Two of the actors in the film are from this group). Knife in the head, Spooky was about the inadequacies of the prohibitive feminism which also objected to pornography priori”.[106] Catherine Lowing, 1987

"Her films were more structured by her relationship to some kind of music culture rather than the television screen, but it was similar in that post-modern drive, to pulverise the culture around you and reconstruct it in some way. Either just to wilfully destroy it or rebuild it for some particular obsessive purpose. Catherine went on to making TV productions for SBS and is now in the States working on that part of her career".[106a] Mark Titmarsh, 2007.

1983
March
Ted Colless, ‘The phenomenon turned eventful’. On The Beach autumn 1983.



1983
March
Mark Titmarsh, ‘Super 8: from Poseiden adventure to Atlantis effect’, On The Beach autumn 1983.



1983
17 March
Super 8: By Popular Demand, Artspace.



1983
24 March
Super 8: New Films, Artspace.



















Story about a woman who … was trapped in a sociological nightmare
Angela Chambers
1983

‘Self explanatory’.

The Fourth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival Program, 1983.

1983
8 July
Sydney Super-8, One Flat Exhibit, Brisbane.



1983
27-28 August
Out Of The Closet: The Best of New Super 8, S.A. Media Resource Centre, Adelaide.



1983
30 August
Physical Films, Trade Union Club, Sydney.



1983
October
Independent Super 8 Films from Australia, Touring Program.



1983
October
The Medium is the Message, Praxis, Perth



Cine-romance,
Rolando Caputo & Juan Davila
1983

‘Cinematic inversion of the photo-romance; a series of two shot tableaux that suggest a narrative sequence. Here the marketability of the couple fails and the film ends in an inexplicable bathroom murder’.

Independent Super 8 Films From Australia, Touring Exhibition Program, October 1983.

1983
3-5 November
The Fourth Sydney Super-8 Film Festival, Chauvel Cinema, Paddington Town Hall.



1983
28 November
Film Festival Extras, Artspace, Sydney.



1983
November
Film Statt Berlin, Arsenal Cinema, Berlin, West Germany.



1983
November
‘Hangover’ Art Bunker, Trade Union Club, Sydney.



1983
December
Midnight To Dawn, 2MBS Benefit, Graphic Arts Club, Sydney.









S.G.H. (Something’s Going to Happen,
Andrew Frost
1983

‘Attempted reconciliation between sound and visuals’.

The Fourth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival Program, 1983.

1983
December
Independent Super-8 Films From Australia, Lang Gallery, Vienna, Austria.



1983
December
Independent Super-8 Films From Australia, Zona Gallery, Florence, Italy.



1983
December
Independent Super-8 Films From Australia, Imagine Gallery, Paris, France.



1983
December
Film Statt Berlin, Arsenal Cinema, Berlin, West Germany.



1983
December
Super-8, Canberra Movie Makers, Canberra.







Anti-nuclear rally, July 2nd 1983,
James Kerr
1983

‘In Fremantle W.A., U.S. Warship signals the shore as people reveal their odd opinions. No Nukes!’.

The Fourth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival Program, 1983.




1983: First screening of Australian Super 8 films in Sydney at Sydney Super 8 Film Group screenings

By Popular Demand Artspace 17 March 1983
Role (1982) Wendy Chandler
Happy birthday colour t.v. (1982) Geraldine Crumpton
Concerned with something else√ Wendy Chandler

Super 8: New Films Artspace 24 March 1983
Rockets against the reds (1983) Sean O’Brien
Hursts opinion ride (1983) Janelle Hurst
Problems (1983) Andrew Frost
(Cat and mouse) trap (1983) Michelle Riley
Love (1983) Kath Morgan
Mort City (1983) Tony Assness
Fame (1983) Gina Roberts
Sunspots (1983) David Curbden & Peter Masters
Shriek of the mutilated (1983) Mark Titmarsh
82 am (1983) Patricia Brennan
Outline (1983) Mary Jan St. Vincent Welch
The arrival / The orchestra (1983) Decay House Films

Seditions Trade Union Club
23 April 1983
Sink (1983) Rowan Woods

Interstate Super 8 Artspace 17 May 1983
Electronic berserk (1983) Phillip Bannigan,
Cine-Romance (1983) Rolando Caputo & Juan Davilla
Life, be out of it (1983) Phillip Bannigan
Manless (1982) Maria Kozic
Going west (1983) Andrew Davie

Physical Films Trade Union Club
30 August 1983
Thief of Baghdad (1983) Serge Hillaire
Report my signals (1983) Decay House Films
S.G.H. (Something’s Going to Happen) (1983) Andrew Frost
Butterflies welcome spring (1983) Richard De Souza
Film (1983) Peter Hamilton
Permanent change (1983) Richard De Souza &Tanya Gillot
Oh God Dog (1983) Tony Coleing & Shayne Higson
Night of the living dead (1983) Mark Titmarsh
Public fitting (1983) Tim Johnston
Groove Club (1983) Peter McPherson
Body language (1983) Tim Johnston
B and W.F. (1983) Virginia Hilyard
Conditions of illusion (1983) Chris Snee
Mighty real (1983) Astrid Spielman
The house (1983) Richard De Souza

The Fourth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival Chauvel Cinema
3-5 November 1983
Hunters and collectors (1983) Simon Cooper
They shoot werewolves, don’t they? (1983) Paul Fletcher
Trashcansaction (1983) Built-In Ghosts
Beached (1983) Geraldine Crumpton
The big eat (1983) First Fast Food Films
Penta/gone (1983) Kate Richards
Impromptu perform (1983) Ruby Davies & Stewart Dunlop
My life with Freddy (1983) First Fast Food Films
Frank Birrell – the movie (1981) The Marine Biologists
I saw the way she looked at you (1983) Michael Hutak
Killing time (1983) David Nerlich
Power and passion (1983) Kathy Smith
Machine of the year (1983) Anthony Foot & J. Marshall
Frogs (1983) Neil Poulsen
Caprice (1983) Anonymous
Café ole! A mocca opera (1983) Philippa Nolan
Hand in glove (1983) Jenny Ward & Lucy Hall
Day in the life of an Arcturian Mountie (1983) David Nerlich
The explanation (1983) Chris Windmill
Astro=Nought (1983) Duncan Anderson
Hypoglycemia revisited (1983) Andy Nehl
Flesh and fantasy (1983) Jane Stevenson & Adrian Martin
At our selection (1983) Institute of Super-8 Film Culture
A young man gets on countdown (1983) Astrid Spielman
Milk and ice (1983) Renata Cross & Mitzi Goldman
Framed again and before (1983) Mary Jane St. Vincent Welch
I’m Donald Duck (1983) Kate Richards
The power of K9P (1983) Adelaide Animation Group
Locked in (1983) Andy Nehl
Physical film (1983) Geraldine Crumpton
Performance window (1983) One Flat Players
Suburbia (1983) Richard Dent
Anti-nuclear Rally, July 2nd 1983 (1983) James Kerr
Alice (1983) Danielle (Dany) Cooper
Footy (1983) Peter Mackay
Garbage in, garbage out (1983) Kurt Eggers
Are the rich really different? (1983) David Sutherland &
Nancy Sutherland
Close Roxby down(s) (1983) Bronwyn Holland
Solid bloke (1983) Peter Mackay &
Margaret Wertheim
The listening (1983) Neill Gibbie
Never in a million years (1983) Michael Hutak
Meltdown (1983) David Nerlich
Self portrait 1979 (1983) Kim Beissel
Japanese girl (1983) Duncan Anderson
Untitled (1983) Michael Wood, Martha Wood & Chris Brannigan
Rainbow chug bandit bomb girl (1983) Anthony Foot
2000 mix up (1983) Virginia Hilyard
Park (1983) Janelle Hurst
Beach (1983) Janelle Hurst
Slow start (1983) Michael Dean
If looks could kill (1983) Arts Theory Productions
Story about a woman who… (1983)
was trapped in a sociological nightmare (1983) Angela Chambers
Cut and run (1983) Emmanuel G.
The blind pay well (1983) Emmanuel G.
When you think of a truck follow it (1983) A. Vandermeide & T. Stammers
Learning to read (1983) Michael Dean
Horse telescope (1983) Michael Buckley
Swell (1983) Angela Zivkovic

Super 8 Festival Extras Artspace 28 November 1983
Pupunya (1983) Tim Johnston
The art is justified (1983) Simon Robbe
Escape to nowhere (1983) Milton Reid
? (1983) Patrick Gibson
Clouds (1983) Michael Power
ITZI (1983) Marcus Berger & M. Hoy
15 – 0 (1983) Robert Weatherby
Linz Omera (1983) Unknown
Working capital (1983) Sue Maslin
The imagining (1983) Niel Gibbie
Untitled (1983) Stephen Cummins


Martin, Adrian. ‘My life goes to the movies’ in Super 8 Film Group (eds), Super Eight Reader, Spot Press, Sydney, 1984, p.15
Titmarsh, Mark. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.
Warner, Gary, Unpublished interview by the Ben Crawford, 1990
Titmarsh, Mark. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.
Ibid.
Visual Art Cent Ltd, 11 Randle Street, Surry Hills
ANZART program, dLux Archive.
Warner, Gary, Unpublished interview by the Ben Crawford, 1990
AFC File 85/16 (1): On the 12 September Victoria Treole (AFC) had written a letter to Yvonne Clarke (Cultural Exchange Section, Dept of Foreign Affairs) requesting them to contribute $1750 for Mark Titmarsh’s travel to Brussels to attend the International Super 8 Film Festival and Berlin to make contact with Gegenlicht 8mm Filmverleih Film festival, also adding that the AFC was willing to contribute $2298 for video transfers and publicity
dLux Archive.
Titmarsh, Mark. (ed) Independent Super 8 Film From Australia Programme Notes, Spot Press, October 1983
Titmarsh, Mark. (ed) Independent Super 8 Film From Australia Programme Notes, Spot Press, October 1983, p. 2
Titmarsh, Mark. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.
Ibid.
Ibid.
AFC 85(16)/1: On 26 June The Super 8 Film Group (Mark Titmarsh) wrote a letter to Director CDB (Murray Brown) of the Australian Film Commission in application for financial assistance in staging of Fourth Sydney Super-8 Film Festival planned to be held 3-5 November 1983. On 21 July the AFC commits $2000 to 1983 Festival, and on 16 August a further $620. The budget for the 1983 Festival includes advertising in Sydney Morning Herald, Filmnews, Art and Text, On the Beach and Magazine. Also speakers fees of $50 each, filmmakers honorarium of $10 each. In September the AFI agrees to also take the Festival to Melbourne the week immediately following the Festival with a 80/20 split in profits to the S8FG. This decision results in Gary Warner taking the Super 8 film screening package to the Longford Cinema, Melbourne in November.


dLux Archive: On 1 September Gary Warner writes a letter to AGFA requesting sponsorship of film stock for filmmakers for films being produced for the Festivals. On 14 October R. Lines (AGFA Marketing Services Officer) replies with an enclosed cheque $600 for sponsoring the Festival programme but unable to assist with film stock sponsorship.
Titmarsh, Mark. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.
Super 8 Film Group, 3rd Sydney Super 8 Film Festival 1982 [program notes], Super 8 Film Group, Sydney, 1982, p. 6.
Richards, Kate. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.
Martin, Adrian. ‘My life goes to the movies’ in Super 8 Film Group (eds), Super Eight Reader, Spot Press, Sydney, 1984 pp.15-18 and Martin, Adrian. “My life goes to the movies’, On the beach No. 3/4 summer/autumn 1984.
Martin, Adrian. ‘My life goes to the movies’ in Super 8 Film Group (eds), Super Eight Reader, Spot Press, Sydney, 1984 p.15
Titmarsh, Mark. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.
dlux Archives file: S8FG 83/2.
Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Methuen, London, 1979.
Mele, Sam & Mark Thirkell (eds) On The Beach, Autumn 1983.
Colless, Ted. ‘Super 8 - The phenomenon turned eventful’, On the beach No. 1 autumn 1983.
Titmarsh, Mark. ‘Super 8: From Poseidon adventure to Atlantis effect’, On the beach No. 1 autumn 1983.
Titmarsh, Mark. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.
Gibson, Ross. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.
Titmarsh, Mark. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.
dLux Archive.
Ibid.
Lowing, Catherine. ‘Follow the sun’ in Follow the Sun Programme Notes January 1986, p.7.
Off Air Magazine No. 2 - Section 2: The people behind the festival: The Super 8mm Film Group (1985). Gary Warner, Catherine Lowing, Andrew Frost and Victoria Kirkwood elaborate on the Film Group, the 1985 festival and the Super 8 situation.
The Imagined Body program, 1987.

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