chapter four: the future*fall conference and the institutional rise of post-modernity

 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.

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“What for the moment has supplanted modernity, has fashioned for the time being the day after? What occasions this newer than new, more up-to-date than the present? Has history lost its form, charmed now by an impossible novelty, already on the way out?” [107] Alan Cholodenko, 1984. 

The show goes on … ‘L’Eight’ series of late night screenings

In January, Titmarsh continued to tour The Independent Super 8 Films From Australia program funded by the AFC. He screened the films in England at the London Filmmakers Coop, as well as the Magazine Hotel in Leicester and the West Surrey College of Arts in Farnham.

In March 1984 Warner and Hutak established a partnership with Dendy Cinema in a series of late night screenings called the L’Eight series. Over the next three years there would be eight of these programs. It was an incentive for filmmakers to produce films and have them screened all year round rather than just for the annual festival in November. It was also a very concerted attempt by Warner to get the films out of the pubs and art units and into cinemas other than the AFI’s headquarters at the Chauvel in Paddington.

“That was before there were any late night movie screenings in Sydney and they were quite successful. And now there’s late night movie screenings everywhere. We got the cinema to give us a percentage of the doortakings which wasn’t very common in those days.  I bought the film festivals up to Brisbane (‘From The Sky’ program] and we took them to Melbourne as well. We had been screening things in places like a coffee shop up the road here, places like Art Unit, pubs that kind of thing” [108] Gary Warner, 1990.

These programs were curated by different members of the Group and highlighted the Group’s film work. Films from Hilyard, Warner, Titmarsh, Frost, Marine Biologists, Cummins and Lowing as well as other Sydney and Melbourne filmmakers. It was still very difficult to get super-8 distributed and exhibited. The first two L’eight were held in March & September with over 100 people attending the second program. [109] In June Super-8 screenings were held at the Sydney Film Festival along with a special forum. [110]

The Readers … the Group’s experiment with publishing

In May, as part of the Group’s publishing commitment the first of a series of Film Readers, the Group produced the Super 8 Film Reader. The Reader featured the ‘phenomenon of Super 8 articles’ that had been printed in the media, particularly Filmnews. In a very important sense this compilation acted as the beginning of a construction of the first public history for super-8 in the 80’s. Hutak, Warner and Frost provided the distinctive layout fro the publication.  

Virginia Hilyard and Gary Warner produced The Super Eight Reader No. 2: Filmmakers Notes. [111] It concentrated on the highlighting the production and politics of super-8 scripts and acted as a ‘good insight into how filmmakers developed and expressed their plans for films schematically’. [112] Dynamically illustrated by Hilyard this Reader is a true cut-up presentation of the Groups’ film ideas and theoretical positionings, with contributions by Mark Titmarsh, Virginia Kirkwood, Stephen Cummins’ Breathbeat (1984), Anthony Foot, Andrew Frost, Virginia Hilyard, Gary Warner and Michael Hutak. This sponsored publication of Readers, and the film articles contained within them, reflected an institutional growth in the promotion of arts and film culture, which itself reflects a growth in the discipline of Film Studies.

The affair continues…

Titmarsh still tried to lobby for adequate office space in 2/146 Bourke St, Darlinghurst as well as three full time wages to carry out the Group’s activities. To this end he submitted a detailed proposal, with a budget of $30,000 (cut back from $70000) to Frank Maloney and Viki Molloy at the AFC in March [113] and a meeting was held to discuss the proposal in April. [114] Nothing came of the discussion. In June the group received $4,775 from the AFC for insurance, an audit and equipment purchase – 2 Super 8 projectors, 1 Canon Super 8 camera, sound motorised Super 8 editor, metal block splicer, 2 Agfa splicers, amplifier, external speakers, screen and cabinet. 

Another letter was sent in August after Hutak was notified that the Group would probably only receive $15,000 for the year; Hutak states that ‘it would not be possible to maintain the basic operations’ on $15,000. [115] In November 1984 the AFC provided an operating grant of $15,000. [116]

In December a note was sent from Murray Brown (AFC) stating that ‘publicity for the 1984 festival appears to be very badly coordinated with no common artwork or logo, and starting times differed from publication to publication. The Super 8 Film Group should look at possibility of employing an experienced person to handle publicity for future events’. [117]

Event Four: Futur*fall: Excursions Into Post*Modernity Conference

26-29 July:  University of Sydney (also Artspace, Surry Hills; Jamison Street Cabaret Restaurant, City; Sydney College of the Arts, Balmain; Bondi Pavilion Theatre, Bondi; Women’s College, University of Sydney)

Organised by Alan Cholodenko, Ted Colless, Elizabeth Gross and Terry Threadgold, the Futur*fall: Excursions Into Post*Modernity Conference was a much anticipated event. The highlight was the appearance of the French post-modern theorist Jean Baudrillard, as one of the two invited Guest Speakers (the other was Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak an Indian literary critic and post-colonial theorist). He delivered a talk titled ‘The Year 200 Will Not Take Place.’ [118] Baudrillard’s public profile in Australia had been steadily increasing with the publication of many of his works in Art & Text, Tension and On the Beach. [119] This conference event crystallised the understanding of post-modernism in relationship to many aspects of visual art practice, including Super 8.

“Baudrillard was the keynote speaker, on his first visit to Australia, and there were lots of other [speakers] with post-modern concerns in literature, film theory, fine arts, architecture and economics. It wasn’t until Future*fall that the post-modernism term then spread throughout the city and the east coast of Australia. It became a more structured way to talk about contemporary phenomena. Suddenly the same thing was happening not only in super 8 but film, painting, sculpture, music and rap music, and scratching and mixing and DJ turntabling. Everything seemed to be reflecting everything else in the same mode of quoting and appropriating and sampling, and breaking things down and rebuilding them back up”. [120] Mark Titmarsh, 2007.

Opening the conference on the Thursday night there were films by Caputo, Burchill, Hutak & Crawford [121] and on Friday evening the Super 8 Film Group presented a program with films by Stephen Cummins, Virginia Hilyard, Anthony Foot, and Gabrielle Finnane, Jennifer McAmley &  Janet Burchill. [122] On Sunday Adrian Martin and Gerard Hayes gave a talk on ‘The Eighties (If we took a holiday)’ whose synopsis presented a brilliant summary of the 80s:

“ Different stories .. of this present are circulated – on the one hand, the eighties as wholesale regression, sell-out, return to conservatism, terminal amnesia, aestheticism – on the other hand, the eighties as rebirth, revival, multiplicity, rediscovery of pleasure and heart .. We have our own version … we are stranded and jaded in the middle of a dozen crossovers: from sweet white pop to dance mania soul, from collectivity to subjectivity, from materialism to romanticism, from disco to breakdance, from irony to authenticity, from amateurism to professionalism, from avant-garde to pop culture”. [123] Adrian Martin, 1984.

Futur*fall also marked the end of post-modernist thinking and the phenomenon of the commodification of cult-pop personalities whose lineage included Barthes, Lacan, Foucault and Krosteva. Critics, such as Adrian Martin, even questioned Baudrillard’s credentials in the critical role as ‘theoretician of film’ accusing him of being a pop culture commentator with poor rhetoric and a ‘thundering nihilistic posture.’ [124]

“In a way Futur*fall was sort of the end of the whole series of activities I think. Art & Text, Tension, On the Beach, those kind of journalists and major, major brains like Paul Patton, people like that who were really, really skilled in that discourse, still young and unaffiliated as well who were just going, going at publishing ventures and so on so those sort of people, Meaghan Morris and then us On the Beach crowd, the Tension crowd and then this other more kind of authorised Art & Text journal.

If one goes back into 1980-84 and tracks all of the writing, all of the discourse, all of the art production that was going on there its really strong and its partly to do with the size of Australia and at that stage its kind of cultural, its professional and cultural scene was small enough for a bunch of maybe 15 people to have a serious impact on it and that’s what I think happened, 25 people who were just working very hard with those ideas, very hard and very creatively and very diligent, what’s the word, in a very skilled way, you know, good writing, good art, good public lectures, good public discourse going on in a way where it defined a lot of the artistic practice in Australia but in a way where also a lot of people from outside started to pick up the publications and it became evident that there was just a momentary hotspot of really interesting aesthetic and political, philosophical work going on”. Ross Gibson, 2007

Event Five: The Fifth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival

Chauvel Cinema, Paddington Town Hall, 249 Oxford Street Paddington, November 1-18 1984

In June [125] funding was again sought from AFC for the 5^th Festival, including extra screenings in Melbourne, and for the first time a screening of the Festival in Brisbane’s Centre Cinema. The format of the Festival was to be changed from three evenings and afternoon sessions to four evening sessions, as the afternoon sessions had suffered poor attendances.  An increase of 10 participating filmmakers was also proposed. As usual there would be a speaker on both the Friday and the Saturday nights. [126]

The Fifth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival was held on 15-18 November at the Chauvel, and then at the Glasshouse Theatre in Melbourne on 22-24 November and Centre Cinema in Brisbane in December.  The catalogue design was cheaply done with a very rough cut-and-paste aesthetic with quasi-religious and post-colonial overtones. 

The programming for the festival was still very anarchic with the curation of the program still very much determined by lack of time and resources on the part of the S8FG. Work was done voluntarily, amidst a very heady Sydney scene of college, pubs and post-punk music. Choices for programming were made ‘after watching many films night after night in the early hours of the morning’. [127]

“This selection of film, as in previous years, is the result of a fairly gruelling period of viewing and assessment. Most of the films arrive on or after a deadline and so cannot be given as full a consideration as they deserve. Consequently the demands of the situation make it very difficult to stay sane and lucid let alone turn up a consistent programming structure. … We are showing 60 films of the 120 submitted” [128] Festival program notes, 1984.

Sixty films were shown of the one hundred and twenty submitted. On each night there was a talk, with Ted Colless conducting a forum on Super 8 filmmaking as well as talking generally about the screened films with filmmakers and audience, and Andrew Preston giving a talk on ‘In and out of Super 8 from Warhol to Orwell and back again’.

Jean Baudrillard’s influence was clearly visible in the festival screenings with at five films his ideas. These include Rolando Caputo’s Futur*fall – where the sidewalk ends (1984) that directly references the Futur*fall conference, swinging from parody to serious glibness. In its own film noir narrative, the film quotes and maps Hollywood and cinema, especially Jean-Luc Godard’s highly influential Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy caution (1965), a film that itself referenced the ‘kiss-kiss-bang-bang’ films [129] such as Bernard Borderie’s La Môme vert-de-gris (1953). Interestingly Godard originally wanted Roland Barthes for the role of Professor von Braun in Alphaville … (1965). [130]

Film Four: 
Cruisin’ for a bruisin’ – a programme for radicality
Frankie Goes to Avalon – Michael Hutak & Ben Crawford
(1984) Colour Sound 13:00 mins

  

Hutak and Crawford’s provocative film Cruisin’ for a bruising’… is a film/mock documentary about “the anti-nuclear madness”, querying the paranoia of the anti-nuke movement. It could just as well be translated to today’s environment where an ‘anti-global warming madness’ could also be said to prevail. 

The film is in the form of a mockumenatry with Crawford on camera and Hutak doing pop vox interviewing a range of people present a gathering of Speakers at the Domain, a Sunday ritual of people’s orators hopping on their soap box and exercising their right to speak.  The trick, is the question, ‘What people are going to do to stop the anti-nuclear madness’?

People respond to the question like they haven’t heard it. More like they’ve heard the question, ‘What are you going to do to stop the nuclear madness?’ Nearly everyone misses the clever twist and answers, in their own affirmative, “Yes, we have to stop this nuclear madness”. One woman gets it and suggests that people should listen more carefully to what is going on. A few others see through the art college bravado and become openly hostile, hence the title, Cruisin’ for a bruising’ …

The film quotes Foucault more than Baudrillard; it has substance and warns us about the dangers of rhetoric whether it be from the political left or right. The film dares us to call it clever, especially with the psuedo-arrogant, cigarette smoking Hutak as interviewer, so laconic and smart-arse. Some critics thought it ‘not quite clever enough’, [131] but it is clever, in its brave attempt to challenge the politically correct and in its ability to be transferred to other issues. It’s only modern equivalent would be Larry Charles’ Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006). 

Michael Hutak, who had studied a Communication degree at UTS went on from Super 8 filmmaking, to become a professional journalist, and made an AFC funded documentary, Moral Fiction (1994) that featured appearances by Helen Demidenko and Don Watson, Keating‘s speechwriter. [132] Moral Fiction (1994) could be seen as an extension of Cruisin’ for a bruising’ … as it uses’ realist, mass-media codes of address to tell a lie: that the world-view the filmmaker currently holds is the world-view that currently prevails’. [133]

1984: Australian Super 8 film first screenings in Sydney from Sydney Super 8 Film Group

Sydney Film Festival: Super 8 ... Dendy Cinema 30 June 1984 
Toss a bone to the dog in yourself (1984) ... Anthony Foot
Not aspirin (1984) ... Terese Davis
Work in progress (1984) ... Victoria Kirkwood
Saving day light (1984) ... Virginia Hilyard
Red dogs are coming (1984) ... Debra Petrovitch
Untitled 1984 (1984) ... Stephen Cummins

L’Eight 1 ... Dendy Cinema 21 September 1984
"...or..." (1984) ... Emmanuel G.
Imitation of life (1984) ... Mark Titmarsh
Landscape 1 (1984) ... Richard De Souza
Futur*fall – where the sidewalk ends (1984) ... Rolando Caputo
Black box (1984) ... Richard De Souza & John Hoey
Blue movie (1984) ... Stephen Cummins
Touch action (1984) ... Gary Warner
Hold back the dawn (1984) ... Virginia Hilyard

The Fifth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival ... Chauvel Cinema 15-18 November 1984
Breathbeat (1984) ... Stephen Cummins
The Theorem of Pythagorous (1984) ... Gary Warner
Dreams never end (1984) ... Bill Mousoulis
Motorbike ad (1984) ... Glenn Pead
A suspect filmmaker (1984) ... Rowan Woods
Episode 1 (1984) ... Ashley Barber & Sarah Cottier
Mob (1984) ... First Fast Food Films & Mr Knott
Inside ya guts (1984) ... Peter Mackay & Wayne Snowden
Sarah (1984) ... D. Jaques
Anonymous (1984) ... Lionel Doolan
A porpoise in the modern age (1984) ... The Marine Biologists
Hometime (1984) ... Mary Peek
The open window (1984) ... Robin Gold
Teenagers (1984) ... Stephen Harrop
Marco Polo in Metropolis (1984) ... Adam Boyd
Stills! (1984)  ... Glenn Fraser
J.C.The Jewellery-Case (1984) ... Bill Mousoulis
Each day begins with you (1984) ... Tyler J. Coppin
Chromacity (1984) ... Kurt Eggers
Displacements (1984) ... Ruby Davies & Johanna Trainer
Young guy, young gal (restless heart / I just want you / 1,2,3) (1984) ... Geoff Weary
To tear a star from the sky (1984) ... Anthony Foot
The disco-mixers (1984) ... Paul Fletcher
PO (1984) ... Ben Wrigley
Alpha time technology ecology (1984) ... Glenn Stace
The ascent of Jesus 1984 (1984) ... Shayne Higson & Tony Coleing
Shiin (1984) ... Merilyn Fairskye
A film in which a word appears – from time to time, enigmatically and without warning (1984) ... Andrew Frost
U.M.N. (1984) ... John Hoey
Puppy II (1984) ... Andy Nehl
The anecdote, the hunters, the telephone, the rocking chair, the kitchen, the television (1984) ... Shan Short
TV dinner (1984) ... Geoffery Boccalatte & Julian Morgan
A sequel to a young man gets on Countdown (1984) ... Astrid Spielman
Continuity!? (1984) ... Russell Lake
Untitled (1984) ... Philip Fleming
Store (1984) ... Gary Warner
(The) taking (of) place (1984) ... Daniel Staten Robinson
Dead dog film (1984) ... Victoria Kirkwood
Colour box (1984) ... Simon Cooper
Streetwise (1984) ... Glenn Fraser
Untitled (1984) ... Lionel Doolan
Keep looking down (1984) ... Michael Hutak
The man from Mars (1984) ... Kym Sansovini
Untitled (1984) ... Merilyn Fairskye
A designed nightmare (1984 ... Kathy Smith
Love Homer – Rova Roma – Hemi Hubba – Mercedes Mash (1984) ... Virginia Hilyard
A decoupage of the breakfast montage sequence from (of) Citizen Kane (1984) ... S. Hare & J. Marshall
Guerilla art force as standing October 1984 – 70 metre dance mix (1984) ... John Cooper & Paolo Garofali
The undecided relation (1984) ... Gary Lorn
The miracles of Hilda (1984) ... Chris Windmill
Cruisin’ for a bruisin’ – a programme for radicality (1984) ... Frankie Goes to Avalon (Michael Hutak)
The Marine Biologists (1984) ... The Marine Biologists

Super 8 ... Dendy Cinema December 1984
Sink or swim (1984) ... Virginia Hilyard

1984: Major Events & Screenings

Super Eight Reader No. 2: Filmmakers Notes, Super 8 Film Group (publication).

January
Independent Super-8 Films From Australia, London Filmmakers Coop, England.

Independent Super-8 Films From Australia,Magazine Hotel, Leicester, England.

Independent Super-8 Films From Australia, West Surrey College of the Arts, Farnham, England.

February
A Festival Selection, Canberra Filmmakers Cinema, Canberra.

More Than A Still Life, Graphic Arts Club, Sydney.

1 March
l’eight, Dendy Cinema, Martin Place, Sydney.

April
Dead Doors Talk, Brisbane Independent Filmmakers Cinema, Brisbane.

May
Super 8 Film Reader, Super 8 Film Group (publication).

Mark Titmarsh, “La galaxie Super 8 – Cannes of the Super 8” Filmnews May-Jun 84 (article).
 

The Fifth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival Program, 1984.
 

12 June
Super-8 Screenings & Sydney Film Festival Forum, Dendy Cinema, Sydney.

26-29 July
Futur*fall: Excursions Into Postmodernity conference, University of Sydney (also Artspace, Art Unit, Jamieson Street, Bondi Pavilion.

September
From The Sky, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

21 September
l’eight 2, Dendy Cinema, Martin Place, Sydney.

  

Footnotes:

[107] Cholodenko, Alan. Ted Colless, Elizabeth Gross & Terry Threadgold (eds). Futur*fall: Excursions Into Post*Modernity [conference program], University of Sydney, July 1984, cover.

[108] Warner, Gary, Unpublished interview by the Ben Crawford, 1990.

[109] AFC File 85/16 (1). March 11 - Note (from John C to Murray Brown): 100-120 people attended L’eight 2 screening but publicity limited, could and should they advertise more broadly, ‘No Frills was mentioned in at least one film – part of the terrain already’.

[110] S8FG File 84/1

[111] Super 8 Film Group. The Super Eight Film Reader No. 2: Filmmaker Notes, Super 8 Film Group, Sydney, 1984, pp. 34

[112] Titmarsh, Mark. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.

[113] S8FG File 84/1

[114] Ibid.

[115] Ibid.

[116] Ibid.

[117] AFC File 85/16 (1)

[118] Cholodenko, Alan. Ted Colless, Elizabeth Gross & Terry Threadgold (eds) Futur*fall: Excursions Into Post*Modernity [conference program], University of Sydney July 1984, p.20

[119] Tension July/Aug 1984, p.13.

[120] Titmarsh, Mark. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.

[121] Cholodenko, Alan. Ted Colless, Elizabeth Gross & Terry Threadgold (eds) Futur*fall: Excursions Into Post*Modernity [conference program], University of Sydney July 1984, p. 5.

[122] Ibid, p. 7.

[123] Martin, Adrian. ‘The eighties (if we took a holiday)’, in Cholodenko, Alan., Ted Colless, Elizabeth Gross & Tery Threadgold (eds). Futur*fall: Excursions Into Post*Modernity [conference program], University of Sydney July 1984, p. 24.

[124] Martin, Adrian. ‘Review: The evil demon of images by Jean Baudrillard &  Future*fall, Baudrillard’s visit’, Filmnews June 1987, p.13.

[125] AFC File 85/16 (2)

[126] AFC File 85/16 (1)

[127] Super 8 Film Group, The Fifth Sydney Super 8 Film Festival 1984 [program notes], Super 8 Film Group, Sydney 1984, p. 2

[128] Ibid.

[129] Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965), Internet Movie Data Base, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058898/trivia (cited 24 November 2007).

[130] Ibid.

[131] Preston, Andrew. ‘The Fifth Annual Sydney Super 8 Festival’ in Filmviews 123 (1985) p. 52 

[132] Titmarsh, Mark. Unpublished interview by the author, 2007.

[133] Australian Film Commission, Searchable Film Database, http://www.afc.gov.au/filmsandawards/filmdbsearch.aspx (cited 24 November 2007).