CINEMA REBORN - Two classic pieces of Melbourne independent film-making YACKETY YACK (Dave Jones, 1974) and IN THIS LIFE'S BODY (Corinne Cantrill, 1985)

Cinema Reborn has a special focus on the history of the Australian cinema. All told there are five programs devoted to some of the key landmarks of the Australian Cinema over the last fifty years.

Two selections warranting special attention are products of Melbourne independent film-making from the 70s and 80s.

In programming these films we are paying additional homage to the work of the Library of the University of Technology Sydney which agreed to fund the restoration and digitization of the two films. UTS Lecturer in Screen Studies Margot Nash instigated the projects and supervised their restoration and digitization. Now here is an opportunity for Sydney cinephiles to see these two remarkable films.

In the early 1970s, Dave Jones (aka D.B. Jones) was lecturing in the Media Centre at La Trobe University in Melbourne. A thoughtful, polite, reserved man and a Canadian specialist in documentary filmmaking, he suddenly surprised all his colleagues and students by directing one of the most outrageous and idiosyncratic feature films ever to emerge from Australia. That film was Yackety Yack and if you click on the link you can read Rod Bishop’s notes on the film. Rod was Assistant Director on the film and went on to produce a number of films as well as becoming CEO of the Australian Film Television and Radio School.

Screens on Friday 4 May at 11.45am.

Corinne Cantrill and her husband Arthur made over 150 films together for over thirty years. In 1985 Corinne made one of the most extraordinary pieces of filmed autobiography, a monumental record of her own life titled In This Life’s Body.

In the notes on the film which you can find if you click here Corinne writes: “I wanted to trace the story of my life through all the photographs I could find.  I borrowed my childhood photos from my parents, and these were a revelation — they told me so much about myself and my childhood.  I had not expected mere photographs to be so ‘telling’.  They were a trigger to memory, many forgotten experiences re-surfaced.

In the Oxford Companion to Australian Film Ina Bertrand called In This Life’s Body “an autobiographical masterpiece”

Screens on Monday 7 May at 3.00pm