Cirrus@Austlit

'The conversations I kept hearing about the TV version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – in the media, on social media, at gatherings – started to irritate me. About how it could happen: it’s not that farfetched; America is on the brink of a totalitarian regime and Australia’s not far behind; it happens to women all around the world already you know, especially in those countries where women are not allowed to drive.' (Introduction)

'Literary festivals are complex beasts. They’re simultaneously social spaces, cultural projects and political platforms. As providers of entertainment, drivers of tourist revenue and exercises in government branding – think ‘Melbourne: City of Literature’ – they cop flak for their commercialisation.' (Introduction)

'Joan of Arc was naive, a holy fool – if she wasn’t in secret extremely shrewd and pragmatic. The saintly ‘voices’ she claimed to hear were schizophrenia – if they weren’t ergotism, or epilepsy, or purely a rhetorical device. She cross-dressed for practical reasons – if it wasn’t due to some religious idiosyncracy, or to protect herself from rape, or an issue of gender identity.' (Introduction)

'The Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF, 14–17 September) is dedicated to cinema that challenges conventions, screening films that are narratively, stylistically and, perhaps, morally transgressive. Stefan Popescu, the Festival Director and Program Director, is passionate about broadening the cinema that people have access to. ‘Pushing the boundaries and challenging is really important’, he says. ‘I try to push our audience’. For its eleventh year, the festival is bookended by two Australian premieres that Popescu contrasts as ‘PG versus bordering on X’. On opening night, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher bring The Found Footage Film Festival here for the first time, showcasing the strange discarded videos they have been collecting for almost twenty years. The festival ends with Kuso, which gained a reputation at Sundance for being so disgusting there were mass walk-outs.' (Introduction)

'Once, I was a contender. Now, I’m not so sure.

'L played the Talking Heads to me for the first time last night and I cried it moved me so much; this is not your beautiful house, this is not your beautiful wife. I don’t even have a house or wife, but it already feels like I’m gonna get both wrong.' (Introduction)