CINEMA REBORN - Countdown - A recommendation from Australian film-maker Phillip Noyce and a memoir from Amanda Holmes Tzafrir - THREE IN ONE (Cecil Holmes, Australia, 1955)

 

We have one feature film and five short films as our Australian film selection at Cinema Reborn 2021.

The feature film is THREE IN ONE made in 1955 and finally screened in Australia in 1957. It had a troubled history of exhibition including being rejected by the Sydney Film Festival Committee on political grounds. If you would like to know more about Cecil Homes and the history of the film you can find it on CINEMA REBORN WESITE.

 

THREE IN ONE Is a landmark film. It has not been shown on television for over half a century and has never been released on video, DVD or any streaming site. Cinema Reborn will be screening a 35mm archival print preserved in the collection of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

When we approached Australian film-maker Phillip Noyce and asked him to look over the 2021  program and select a favourite among them, his answer was simple “THREE IN ONE – UNDER RECOGNIZED AUSTRALIAN CLASSIC”.

Cecil Holmes daughter Amanda Holmes Tzafrir has also sent through a touching message about her father. It was originally intended to be delivered before the screening last year but Covid’s intervention has preventedthat.

 

Nevertheless here is what Amanda would like to say to audiences about her late father, his life and work.

 

“Quixotic, rebellious and drawn to trouble, Cecil Holmes belongs to a rare breed of radical adventurers who never give up. With a prodigious knowledge of the world, always a sharp eye in search of a story. He covered Hiroshima after the bomb. New Guinea on the brink of an uprising, Timor in the last days of Portuguese rule and Darwin laid waste by a cyclone. Narrowly escaping death squads in Mindanao, when writing his last book. His drive to make films and write screenplays, took him to Moscow, Peking, Budapest, New York and Hollywood, although back home in Australia he struggled to make ends meet.

 

Father, in your concrete office under our old tropical house where it was coolest, I sat quietly observing. The smell of stone, unfiltered 'Camels', carbon paper and rum pleasant in the humid air. Sitting tall at a well-beaten typewriter. The steady purpose of a humanist writing about mans inhumanity to man. I mused how the typewriter kept working after years of cigarette ash falling between the keys. Another lit one rests precariously on the lower lip as smoke hypnotically ebbs and flows, never drawn into the lungs. You stop to look up in thought, a brief adjustment of the black-rimmed glasses, a smile forms, clicking keys continue into the night. When the heat became oppressive we floated off East Arm in overly warm seawater, uncaring about watery predators. And never missed an opportunity to go to the pictures and talk about the film walking home. The backyard 'poets corner' with tree stumps and a few beers yielded visits from Douglas Lockwood, artist Yirawala, Don McLeod, Justice Dick Ward, Frank Hardy. Then away again to the wild places; Always to find dispossessed people struggling to survive and find justice in far flung places, to the great cities of the world, to the films and their makers, meeting actors, to writers and poets, to the battlers. 

 

“One of his favourite quotes – 'While there is a lower class I am of it. While there is a soul in prison I am not free.' - Eugene Debs.

To Book Tickets JUST CLICK HERE