Well-known internationally for their films and publishing, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill began their professional partnership as filmmakers in 1963, their first foray into film production being a series of independent short films on child arts and crafts for ABC Television. In 1969, they travelled to London on a two-year fellowship from the Australian National University and, after returning to Australia, undertook a series of lecture and screening tours to promote an appreciation of avant-garde film. For these exhibitions, they showed their multi-projection and film-performance work.
Due to its non-commercial nature, much of the Cantrills's enormous output of work (more than 140 films and film-performance works) has been produced and exhibited by the filmmakers themselves. In this respect, they have been interested in exploring both the process of filming and the audience perception of visuals, with a particular fixation upon the use of landscape in order to create a national identity. Their films vary in duration from two minutes for Zap (1971) to 148 minutes for In This Life's Body (1984). They are also represented in several film collections, including those of The Royal Film Archive of Belgium, Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek (Berlin), Deutsches Filmmuseum (Frankfurt), Musée National d'Art Moderne (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), New York Museum of Modern Art, PRÉA (Avignon), The British Council, and the National Library of Australia. Their films have been shown at the Centre Pompidou and The Louvre in Paris and the New York Museum of Modern Art, as well as other art museums and film festivals.
