'Welcome, dear readers, to Issue 109 of the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. True to our spirit, the contributions herein are wide-ranging, sharp and timely, starting with a 16-text dossier (guest-edited by Barbara Creed and Cristóbal Escobar) on cinema and the nonhuman. As Creed and Escobar compellingly write in their introduction, “humankind’s invention of the myth of human superiority, based on the exclusion of other species and their needs … has led to the seemingly insurmountable problems of the 21st century such as global warming, climate change, the explosion of the human population and species extinction. In order to address these issues, it is crucial to re-think all forms of cultural, social and political representation from film to the arts and new media.” The articles and interviews in this dossier attempt to do just that.' (Editorial introduction)
'Expanded from his 2020 short of the same name, The Moogai is writer/director Jon Bell’s allegorical horror film about the Stolen Generation – the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families between 1910-1970 because of Australian governmental policy. This point is made in the opening scene when First Nations children must run and hide from two cops who have come to collect them. However, one child, hiding in a cave, is caught by The Moogai, a “boogeyman” that steals children, as her young sister Ruth (Aisha Alma) helplessly watches.' (Introduction)
'The following interview with Marie Craven originated from an online interview after a film class viewing of a program of her films as we moved out of Covid. The Zoom transcriptions of that event were trawled and expanded upon by myself and Marie into a more succinct mapping of a journey through her creative work. What motivated me has been her processes of re-invention through the different cycles of media she has been enmeshed in and the creative communities she so productively engaged in, all shifts that reflect changes in the media landscape. Craven has re-invented herself into the present through these media shifts over the last 40 years through Super-8, 16mm, 35mm, music and the digital web.' (Introduction)
'Written by Patricia Cornelius, one of Australia’s most celebrated playwrights and a Windham-Campbell prize winner, the micro-budget Melbourne feature Shit began life as a play (2015), with its powerhouse cast of three – Peta Brady, Nicci Wilks and Sarah Ward – all on stage for the show’s entirety. Their characters Sam, Billy and Bobby, respectively, it emerges, had all been complicit in the perpetration of a horrific and wanton crime; throughout the show, they attempt to come to terms with the grim fate that likely awaits them, while ruminating over how their hardscrabble lives, marked by unrelenting, underclass struggles, were never destined to amount to anything.' (Introduction)
'Shot in late 1972 and released at the Melbourne Filmmakers Co-op in mid-September 1974,Dave Jones’ Yackety Yack is one of the key films made in that transitional period between the relative “void” of homegrown Australian feature-film production in the 1950s and 1960s and the “renaissance” that gathered steam in the mid-1970s. It opened to minimal fanfare in that pivotal year, a 12-month period that saw unprecedented commercial success at the Australian box office through films like Alvin Rides Again (David Bilcock and Robin Copping), Stone (Sandy Harbutt), Petersen (Tim Burstall), Barry McKenzie Holds His Own (Bruce Beresford) and Number 96 (Peter Benardos), but also saw the arrival of such prescient, independent, socially engaged and less audience friendly works as 27A (Esben Storm), Between Wars (Michael Thornhill) and, more playfully, Yackety Yack.' (Introduction)
'It is July and Richmond are teetering on a spot in the top eight in the Australian Football League (AFL), a sport that is akin to a religion in Melbourne. It’s an average high of 13 degrees and the chilly southerly wind whips my face every time I venture outdoors. In a city like Melbourne football is the glue that binds people together during its coldest months; it’s an irrefutable salvation against the oppressive weather. I check social media and see some friends partying in heatwave-ridden Europe. I begin to wonder what it must be like to have the most desirable weather at the same time as having the greatest antidote to winter – football. Such a quintessentially paradoxical hypothetical could only be considered in a city like Melbourne where the yearning to leave is most immense during winter. Such is the dilemma of Doug (John Flaus) and Aub (Bob Carl), who are the main characters in John Ruane’s gritty social-realist film titled Queensland from 1976. They are two hard-edged men that work in factories, drink at the pub and walk around the streets of Melbourne telling bad jokes and forgettable stories.' (Introduction)
