Sixty Years of International Art Cinema - Bruce Hodsdon continues his series - 6 (35) Eastern Europe - East Germany - Konrad Wolf, Frank Beyer

The DEFA generation

The postwar formation of the sole production company in the East, the state-controlled DEFA, was officially founded as a Soviet company in1946.  It was set-up at the ex-UFA studio at Potsdam-Babelsberg with a traditional studio structure modelled on pre-war UFA and Hollywood. The immediate postwar years saw the production of several enduring classics most notably Wolfgang Staudte's anti-Nazi thriller Dit Mörder sind unter uns / The Murderers are Among Us (1946) filmed prior to the setting  up of the DEFA studio, made with the permission of the Soviet occupiers after the Americans and French had refused permission. Stylistically Staudte re-employs expressionist lighting in the tradition of pre-Nazi UFA . It was released in the GDR in 1955 and the Federal Republic in 1971.

A major DEFA success at this time was Ehe I’m Schatten / Marriage in the Shadows (1947) directed by Kurt Maetzig, his first feature tells the story of a couple, actors being driven to suicide by the Nazis because she is Jewish. It was shown to an audience of more than 10 million across the then all four military sectors of Germany.  Erich Engel directed Affaire Blum (1948) based on an actual crime committed in the early 1930s when the state authorities covered up a murder by blaming it on an innocent Jew.  Staudte’s Der Untertan / The Kaiser’s Lackey (1951) for years banned from screening in West Germany, is adapted from a novel by Heinrich Mann, a biting satire on the German petit bourgeoisie. The promise of these postwar years at DEFA “under rather liberal Soviet supervision” ended around 1950 when the Soviet film officials handed DEFA over to German Stalinists after the foundation of the GDR. Film production reached a low point in 1952. A Communist Party conference proclaimed a new doctrine to intensify the methods of ‘socialist realism’ using ‘positive socialist heroes’  and dealing more with the problems of the working class movement.  Few such films were actually produced DEFA preferring to follow a policy of presenting the GDR as the inheritor of the German cultural tradition by adapting classic dramas and famous fairytales and also entering into a series of co-productions mainly with France  (Bock 628).

Konrad Wolf

The Soviet Thaw of 1956 following Krushchev’s denunciation of Stalinism, encouraged an emerging  generation of German directors to find new ways of dealing with contemporary and anti-Fascist topics. Bock identifies the most important of this postwar DEFA generation as Konrad Wolf (1925-82) whose Jewish father, a doctor and well-known author, Friedrich Wolf, was an outspoken Communist Party member in Germany from 1928. Konrad left for Moscow with the family in 1934 to live in exile where, as a naturalised Soviet citizen he served in the Red Army during the war and began studying film in Moscow in 1949.  He started directing at DEFA in the 50s. Following the Soviet crackdowns in Hungary and Poland in 1956 Wolf was one of the critics of Ulbricht’s regime in East Germany, maintaining faith for more democratic developments (Liehm 260). That he managed to hold his position seems based on the intent of the authorities not to incur further loss of creative talent in the postwar years.

Wolf’s first popular success was Lissy (1957) based on a novel written in the 30s by F.C. Weiskopf, the portrait of a working class girl set in one of three main categories of subject put to the severe test of political correctness: a film set in the 30s and the rise of Nazism. Wolf’s screen adaptation remains close to the novel in conveying a psychologically convincing portrait of fascism’s appeal to the petty bourgeoisie in the careful treatment of milieu and atmosphere. His deployment of montage has its origins in his early training in the Soviet Union coupled with a documentary quality in compositions arising from his familiarity with Italian Neo-Realism (Silberman).

Lissy

In place of genres there were categories of subject based on the past: films about the 30s and the rise of fascism; films about the war and immediate postwar years; films about contemporary GDR society. DEFA also balanced heavy-handed ideological content by filming more suspense dramas and comedies.

Wolf’s fourth film, Sonnensucher/  Sun-seeker (1958), filmed during the post-Stalinist thaw, is a bleak portrayal of the lives of German and Russian uranium miners in the late 40s in a neo-realist inspired style. It was withdrawn just prior to its premiere and was not officially released until 1972.  The reason for its banning had nothing to do with the style or content of the film but, typical of the GDR’s political subservience, at the time of the film’s opening the Soviet Union called for the banning of nuclear weapons (259).  

Sterne/Stars (1959), co-directed by Wolf with Rangel Vulchanov, is the story of a Nazi officer who falls in love with a Greek Jewish girl while escorting prisoners to a prison camp in Bulgaria. It was “exceptional for its poetic depiction of a small Bulgarian town in wartime […] For the first time in an East German film, feelings take precedence over the prejudices of the time.” (Liehm 263).  Stars won a Special Jury prize at Cannes and was widely distributed internationally.          

“A paradigmatic DEFA treatment” of Jews by the Nazis, the remake of a 1938 Soviet film, Professor Mamlock (1961), based on a play written by Wolf's father while in exile in France in 1933, the story of an apolitical professor who takes up the anti-Nazi cause too late. In the Liehm's view Mamlock is well below Wolf's best work, to which he seemed to concur, although it was a modest box office success. When asked why he remade the film Wolf said he thought the central focus was not the persecution of the Jews but the destiny of a liberal intellectual forsaken by his class.

Der geteilte Himmel/Divided Sky (1964) from a ‘new novel’ by Christa Wolf (not related to the director) was rewritten for the screen by Konrad Wolf working with the author in the culmination of his earlier efforts to find a new narrative form in telling the novel’s story of lovers separated by the border of the two Germanys. Using flashbacks interwoven with images of the present, Wolf put together fragments of the heroine’s conversations, memories, and introspections in which the psychology of a divided country the fundamental theme in the book, “yields primacy on the screen to social argumentation” (Liehm 267). Wolf’s treatment aroused controversy about the acceptability of formalism versus a more conservative classical style of storytelling.

Frank Beyer

Bock notes that “some of the most interesting stylistic approaches were to be found in films that dealt with the Fascist past, a field that was politically correct” (629). Frank Beyer (1932-2006), a graduate of the Prague Film Academy, took “a more human approach” to his fictional filmmaking by concentrating on sentimental aspects of stories in which human destinies were melodramatically presented while political aspects were at times even relinquished altogether from the script as in Beyer’s debut Zwei Mutter/Two Mothers (1957).  He followed this theatrical style with a Spanish Civil War story, Five Cartridge Cases (1960), tracing the theme through the lives of five people. He used expressionistic techniques to evoke the atmosphere of pre-and post war Germany in Koningskinder / Invincible Love (1961). The influence of the new Polish and Czech cinemas was evident in Beyer’s Konigskinder /Royal Children (1962). He then made several anti-fascist films, the stylistically experimental Star Crossed Loves (1962) and Naked Among Wolves (1963), a classic anti-Nazi DEFA drama set in Buchenwald concentration camp, a story of prisoners risking their lives to hide a Jewish boy.  

The closing of the East-West border in August 1961 marked by the construction of the Berlin Wall, resulted in a short-lived hope amongst artists and intellectuals in the GDR - especially those favourable to socialist ideals - for more freedom to criticise internal social and economic problems (ibid). Frank Beyer hinted at economic difficulties in a comedy Karbid und sauerampfer/ Carbide and Sorrel (1963). Other directors were working on new critical films in November 1965  when the crackdown came initiated by Party Secretary Walter Ulbricht’s letter to Kurt Maetzig criticising his film,The Rabbit is Me (1965), and calling for opposition to deviations from the party’s ideological orthodoxy. The attack was concentrated against voices calling for a more liberal cultural policy. A number of new films were criticised by the Plenary Session of the Central Committee that ostensibly “sullied the first German state of workers and farmers.” As the Liehms put it, “none of [the ‘rabbit’ films] found their way into movie theatres, and all that was left of the DEFA’s 1965-66 season was a pile of rubble.”

The Rabbit is Me

Almost the whole of DEFA’s production team was accused and indicted for ‘scepticism’ and ‘subjectivism’. The top executives at DEFA were removed and some directors careers were destroyed. Konrad Wolf resisted, formulating notes for discussion raising the question : “What now?…If all our films dealing with contemporary topics are wrong- then something must be wrong with the ideology - clear logic!” DEFA retreated into making Indianerfilme’ (‘Red Indian films’) “showing how native Indians were suppressed by greedy white Americans - some even containing allusions to the Vietnam war” (Bock 630).

Beyer was obliged to take up a new career in tv production and theatre after Spur fer Steine/ Track of Stones (1966)  because he failed to conform to the myths surrounding the “heroes of socialist labor.’’ Even though Beyer played down the hypocritical character of a careerist Party secretary as it was portrayed in the best selling novel, after a successful opening the film was withdrawn “for distorting the image of our socialist reality” (Liehm 361). He returned to feature filmmaking in 1975 with his greatest critical and popular success, Jakob der Lugner / Jakob the Liar. “Because of its subject (a poetic tale of life in a Jewish ghetto during the Nazi era) the film was turned down by the Moscow Film Festival but became East German entry in the Berlin Festival, the first ever to compete in the West (Liehm 361).

 

Jacob the Liar

An autobiographical testimony Ich war neunzehn / I was Nineteen (1968), based on Wolf's wartime experiences as a German-born Soviet soldier in Germany during the last days of the war invites the construction of questions and answers on identity; Nineteen and Stars, established Wolf's international reputation. All his films in this decade plus Mama Ich lebe / Mama I'm Alive (1976) deal either with the Nazi past or the formative years of the GDR, made with Wolf's ability to dramatise great historical moments with social and political changes focused through individual subjectivity  (Leonhard 61).

All the leading DEFA directors, including Wolf, ran into problems with contemporary subjects. They reacted by turning to the 'safe' topics of anti-fascism or disguising politically controversial contemporary themes by employing literary classics or the biographies of artists as a means of exploring the conflict between the individual and society. Wolf directed the historical epic Goya or the Hard Way to Enlightenment (1971) in fulfilment of a long standing  intention on his part to film a parable of the artist’s destiny in society. Goya is adapted from a novel which focuses on the Spanish artist's personality as he asserts himself against opposing social forces – monarchy, church, revolution. It was given maximum funding in a co-production with the Soviet Union employing  actors and technicians from eight countries to achieve 'artistic quality’.The tendency towards a Hollywood epic for international and box office success was far removed, aesthetically speaking, from Wolf's small scale films in historical settings. Silberman comments that Wolf took the opportunity in Goya to also “explore the historical and psychological limits of an artist in exile echoing the novelist Feuchwinger's own experience in political exile and Wolf's own practical knowledge of the effect of constraints on the imagination in the GDR.”

Wolf continued the theme of the artist in society with a Kohlhaase screenplay but in a very different mode in Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportsplatz / The Naked Man in the Sports Ground (1973), based on the life of one of East Germany's most important sculptors Werner Stötzer in an episodic satirical tragi-comedy free of stereotypes in alluding to the Nazi persecution on the Jews alongside the often unsuccessful daily struggle of the artist. The aesthetic differences between these two films and and also between them and Solo Sunny (1979) are striking. The latter is about the problem-driven life of a nightclub singer, focusing on the individual and what art means to her. Rather than serving society, she struggles for a balance between professional and personal needs, her art offering the possibility of self-realisation.

Solo Sunny

Silberman concludes that Wolf's sensitivity to the past in much of his previous work adapted to the needs of East Germany in the present, is further shaped by his collaboration with talented writer Wolfgang Kohlhaase beginning with I was Nineteen. Kohlhaase had already established a reputation for successful scenarios about the problems of youth. They controversially decided, if only superficially, to return to what Silberman refers to as the 'action mode' of Lissy, Wolf's first popular success.  For Solo Sunny (1979) they chose a contemporary protagonist but with a dramatic but open-ended plot and characterisation involving the rhythms of performance, her unhappy love affair and attempted suicide. This “barely conceals the intrinsically episodic character of the dramaturgy developed by Wolf over the preceding twenty years.”  On its release the Party immediately reacted, not by imposing censorship but by demanding in the official press a more positive view of 'socialist society'. This alarmed and convinced Wolf, in his words, “of the need for debate on immediate, real, everyday life in the present which is full of conflicts and questions.” Solo Sunny, a success with audiences in both East and West Germany, seemed to signify a turning point in Wolf's career in a more relaxed political environment only to be cut short by his premature death.

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Marc Silberman “Remembering History: The Filmmaker Konrad Wolf” New German Critique 49  Winter 1990           

Sigrun D. Leonhard in Post New Wave Cinema in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union ed. D Goulding 1989 

Mira & Antonin J Liehm The Most Important Art East European Film After 1945  1977 pp.259-71, 359-68                       

Hans-Michael Bock   “The DEFA Story” The Oxford History of World Cinema  ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith 1996  

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Previous entries in this series can be found if you click the following links

 

Sixty Years of International Art Cinema: 1960-2020 - Tables and Directors Lists to Accompany Bruce Hodsdon's Series

 

Notes on canons, methods, national cinemas and more

 

Part One - Introduction

Part Two - Defining Art Cinema

Part Three - From Classicism to Modernism

Part Four - Authorship and Narrative

Part Five - International Film Guide Directors of the Year, The Sight and Sound World Poll, Art-Horror

Part Six (1) - The Sixties, the United States and Orson Welles

Part Six (2) - Hitchcock, Romero and Art Horror

Part Six (3) - New York Film-makers - Elia Kazan & Shirley Clarke  

Part Six (4) - New York Film-makers - Stanley Kubrick Creator of Forms

Part Six (5) ‘New Hollywood’ (1) - Arthur Penn, Warren Beatty, Pauline Kael and BONNIE AND CLYDE

Part Six (6) Francis Ford Coppola: Standing at the crossroads of art and industry

Part 6(7) Altman

6(8) Great Britain - Joseph Losey, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Richard Lester, Peter Watkins, Barney Platts-Mills

6(9) France - Part One The New Wave and The Cahiers du Cinema Group

6(10) France - Part Two - The Left Bank/Rive Gauche Group and an Independent

6(11) France - Part Three - Young Godard

6(12) France - Part Four - Godard:Visionary and Rebel

6 (13) France Part 5 Godard with Gorin, Miéville : Searching for an activist voice

6(14) France Part 6 - Creator of Forms - Bresson 

6 (15) France Part 6 - Creator of Forms - Jacques Tati

 6 (16) - Part 6 - Creator of Forms - Carl Th Dreyer

6 (17) - Italy and Luchino Visconti

6(18 - Italy and Roberto Rossellini - Part One

6(19) - Rossellini, INDIA and the new Historical realism

6(20) - Rossellini in Australia

6 (21) - Italy - Michelangelo Antonioni

6 (22) - Italy - Federico Fellini, Ermanno Olmi

6 (23) - Italy - Pasolini, Rosi

6 (24) - Interregnum - Director/Auteur/Autoren

6 (25) West Germany

6 (26) - Alexander Kluge Part One

6 (27) - Alexander Kluge Part Two

6 (28) - The Young German Cinema: Reitz, Schlondorff, von Trotta

6(29 ) West German Cinema - Fassbinder

6 (30) West German Cinema - Straub & Huillet

6(31) - New Spanish Cinema

6 (32) - Bunuel in the 60s

6 (33) Nordic Cinemas - Bergman and Widerberg

6 (34) - Scandinavia - Sjoman, Zetterling, Troell

   

A Conversation with documentary film-maker Tom Zubrycki - Zac Tomé talks to Tom about the forthcoming screening of KEMIRA:DIARY OF A STRIKE (1984) + HOMELANDS (1993)

 

One of Australia’s key figures in documentary, Tom Zubrycki (above), has recently restored the films Kemira: Diary of a Strike (1984) and Homelands (1993). Cinema Reborn, alongside OZDOX and the Randwick Ritz, are doing a special one night screening of these underseen yet key documentaries to Australian film history. Kemira (1984) documents a miners strike responding to the mass closure of mines that swept through the nation in the 1980s. Homelands (1993) is one of the first Australian documentaries to tackle the struggle migrants face settling in Australia. Focusing on the Robles family, it’s a tender and honest account of the tensions one faces between redefining, and returning to, a home nation. Tom generously chatted to Cinema Reborn about the choice behind restoring these films, the challenges of documentary filmmaking, Australian film history and more. 

TO BOOK TICKETS FOR THE SCREENING ON SUNDAY 8 DECEMBER AT 5.00PM AT THE RANDWICK RITZ CLICK HERE

What motivated you to restore Kemira (1984) and Homelands (1993) out of the dozens of films that you've made? 

Well, one reason is because I looked at the pathetic nature of the video file which was transferred from the one inch telecine. In those days the quality of video transfers from 16 mm was pretty poor, so I just wanted to have better copies of these films so that they’re a more accurate representation of what the films would have looked like when they were originally projected. I put a little bit of money away every year to do it and I've got a friend down the road who's an extremely good restorer. 

Ray Argall

It was Ray Argall?  

Yes. He's restored many films by filmmakers of that period. Most recently Pat Fiske’s film on Fred Hollows For All the World To See (1992). Ray accesses the original negative (A&B rolls) from the NFSA who make a fresh telecine and then he does the picture grade.

And do your other films from a similar period also have the issue of quality as a result of being transferred from film to video? 

Yes Friends & Enemies (1987) and Billal (1996), which was the last film I made on 16mm. From then on, I shot tape – DV, DVCAM  - older technology than what's available now. Working in 16mm, there's a certain discipline involved, because it was expensive working in film, and I had to cover the story in as small a ratio as I could. As small as 20 to 1, while 200 to 1 is more common these days for an observational doc. 

Kemira:Diary of a Strike

You just got odd short ends of film stock from other filmmakers if I’m not mistaken when you started on Kemira?
Yes, exactly. There was no time to apply for funding. The story was unfolding in real time and I just had to cover it as best I could. Filmmakers those days often kept short ends of un-exposed camera rolls, so I had some generous donations. Plus my own savings which allowed me to keep filming through the strike and beyond.

It’s interesting because Homelands (1993) seems to be shot on both 16mm and video?

True. Maria had her own video camera and she was recording scenes for her family and friends as well as for the Salvadorean community in Melbourne. So, it was a very interesting process - me shooting her, and her shooting me. It’s like she was making her own film inside mine.

She seemed to be hyper conscious of the power of film, and then she kind of put that on you. It was as though she was aware of the fact that a documentary, or film in general, is this ‘marker of truth’. Because that seemed to be what she was trying to do at the end there - to tell her kids what was really going on in her marriage, and film seemed to be the avenue for that rather than just a verbal dialogue. 

Certainly. That was the case and at the same time she was wanting to embarrass her husband. So in a way she was using it as a technique of asserting control in the relationship. I think you can take it further and say that the whole process of making Homelands (1993) was like a psycho-drama because it amplified the issues in the relationship that were already there, and possibly quickened the process of trying to resolve them.

Homelands

Would you put that down to Maria’s filming or yours?

I think it was a complicated mixture of the two really, because my presence in the film definitely altered the chemistry, and it became a complex series of interrelationships: me and her, me and Carlos, and the three of us together.

She seemed very determined in her ideals, and it was almost as though part of that idea of settling in Australia meant having a stable family. Of course, it was also out of care for her kids, that she wanted Carlos to be in their lives. She was a heroin figure of sorts though and it made her captivating to watch. 

I agree. But people have different reactions. Some viewers are drawn towards Carlos’ story, and feel sorry for him.

Homelands

I’m curious about an interview you did with ‘The Age’ for Homelands (1993) where you spoke about wanting to separate yourself from the history of anthropological filmmaking. Do you feel that there's any kind of collision between this desire to make films about people and culture, which is arguably the case for both Homelands (1993) and Kemira (1984), and then that desire, at the same time, to separate yourself from that tradition?

I think what I was referring to was visual ethnography - standing back with the camera and just observing and recording, and not getting involved in any way with your subjects. As a counter to that I was quite influenced by what was happening in the US in the mid 1960’s with what was called ‘direct cinema’, or ‘cinema verite’ by others. Early pioneers like Pennebaker and Leacock were following action, editing without commentary, but still having a point of view. The Maysles Brothers were in my mind the prime exponents of this style because they combined observation with character development and story. A major influence for me was Salesman (1969), where the Maysles really got into the lives of their subjects and kept on coming back to them over time. It was an inspiring film for me, and it dictated the style which I adopted for Kemira (1984). I took it a step further with Homelands (1993) where my unseen presence was more apparent than implied. I decided then that I had to insert myself into the film through the voice of a first-person narrator. I found that incredibly challenging.

Do you think shooting in 16mm as opposed to video made any difference to what became the final film?

Well, I'll get back to what I said earlier about working in film. Working in 16mm had a discipline attached to it. You were limited by the amount of film stock you had allocated in your budget, so you had to constantly think through what you were going to be shooting next. You were always trying to predict what might happen with your subjects, and with the ongoing story. After a shoot I used to always jot down the scene descriptions into a notebook, transfer them onto cards, stick the cards up on a pinboard and see what patterns emerge. You could say I was writing the script simultaneously as I was shooting the film. This discipline stayed with me in subsequent films shot on tape, where I brought on my editor – the brilliant Ray Thomas – quite early in the piece to make a scene assembly to help me work out the direction the story was taking. Doing this saved time and money and I didn’t have to pester my participants with more filming requests.

Is that intuition guided by the fact that you're forming relationships with these people around the film, whether it be Maria in Homelands (1993) or Ngaire in Kemira (1984). Because in both films you're clearly conscious of this question.

I chose Ngaire because she appeared to me one of the more vulnerable of the group of women keeping vigil at the pit-top. She really wanted to tell her story. It's as if she had this weight on her shoulder which she wanted to let go. She told us about company cars driving past her house harassing her, and her children not understanding why their Dad couldn’t come home. I felt that for Ngaire the strike was going to be a life-changing event, and so it proved.

On my first meeting with Maria and Carlos I knew straight away that the film was going to be a story of their relationship as a couple. I understood what Carlos wanted, which was desperately to return to El Salvador now that the civil war had just ended. I understood what Maria wanted too, which was to stay with her girls, and to settle the family into quiet suburbia. Their relationship was pulling in different directions and it was augmented by the fact that Carlos had a lousy job, while Maria felt satisfied and fulfilled with hers. 

From what I understand you always try to show the films to those who were in it before picture lock.

Yes, and every time you do that as a filmmaker, you feel like your life's on the line because you have given your subjects the power of veto. That’s always been my practice. However you’ve been filming for several months, and up to that point there’s been a lot of trust on both sides, so you hope they feel that they will be satisfied that you’ve represented their lives fairly and accurately, and hope that they’ll acknowledge the result – warts and all. It’s a tricky thing because you’re also conveying your own perspective as the filmmaker. 

Kemira: Diary of a Strike

Is there a desire with making these films that you would like to incite some kind of change? Even though Kemira (1984) ends with a certain disappointment, do you feel that just documenting it is enough?

One of the reasons for making Kemira (1984) was to amplify the voices of people who were the victims of these larger economic and political forces that were beyond their control. In those days coverage of industrial relations was poor and restricted to brief news reports. I felt a strong sense of responsibility towards the people I was filming with, that I could elevate their voices to a wider public. The role of a documentary filmmaker is to give deep and layered accounts of what’s going on. That’s what makes documentaries so different to current affairs journalism.

In Kemira (1984), the Women's Auxiliaries movement is vital to the strike and also Ngaire is the main protagonist. In Homelands (1993), Maria often highlights the treatment of women in the Salvadorean community.  Could you speak about the role of women in both films? Was it a conscious focus of yours, because it does add to that political edge, considering the role that women were playing at that time in various movements, but maybe weren't being celebrated for their work. 

Oh totally. I think that's one reason I decided to focus more or less on women being the key ‘characters’ in the films. At the time I was making Kemira (1984) stories of women in the union movement had rarely been represented in films – either narrative features or documentaries. The Women's Auxiliary is an important feature and very much the backbone of any strike action in a male dominated industry like mining. With Homelands (1993), I wanted to acknowledge that often women tend to develop and excel themselves in their new host country at a much more rapid pace than the men do. 

Was there a public response to the focus on a migrant story, and additionally one that centred on a kind of positive edge to a female success story? 

Yeah I think there was. Just looking at the reviews of the film and also the stories around the film that appeared in different papers. But I also felt that Maria felt comfortable in telling her story to others. I think she talked to the experiences of a lot of other migrant women by actually exposing the issues around her relationship. The film went into educational distribution for quite a long time. Which to me, is a good sign because it covered issues which were not commonly aired about the migrant experience. There’s an expectation that people coming from a war-torn country would settle in Australia and would love their new homeland, but in fact the situation is much more complex than that. People don't necessarily settle easily. They settle with difficulty, and if they're a couple they react differently. The process can be bumpy and messy.

Kemira (1984) begins with archival footage, I believe from Hewers of Coal (1957), and Homelands (1993) also starts with some kind of archival material. Can you talk about that choice?

With Kemira (1984) it was a homage to those earlier films made by the Waterside Workers Film Unit, specifically the film Hewers of Coal (1957), which has very explicit footage that highlights the hazardous nature of coal mining in Australia and what it's like for people who are part of that industry. We fashioned the opening sequence of the film from this footage to be underscored by original music from composer Elizabeth Drake. Elizabeth wanted to actually feel that experience of being underground to get the inspiration for the score, and through the union we found a way for that to happen. In the case of Homelands (1993), I licensed appropriate footage from a stockshot library. I organised to have it colourized optically. I wanted to set the scene of the civil war and underscore it with music – same way as I did with Kemira (1984). 

At the end of Kemira (1984), there's a credit given to the Creative Development Branch of the Australian Film Commission. If I'm not mistaken, the financing secured through them was given to you after you'd shot the film. There are a lot of conversations about that period in Australian film, and how there seemed to be a larger pool of funding. As you're a producer as well as a director, I’m curious if that kind of funding would be accessible to documentary filmmakers wanting to make a film of a similar subject matter or similar political relevance today?

Well, there was certainly a larger pool of money, in relative terms quite a bit larger, and there weren’t as many filmmakers applying for those funds. What was new and unusual about Kemira (1984) was that it was assessed after it was filmed on the basis of three rolls of film that were actually printed from the negative. Because that's all I could afford. It was a gamble on my part that the Film Commission would support it. One of these rolls featured the storming of Parliament House, an event that had national repercussions and was already being inscribed in history. They recognised the importance of the story and gave me a production grant to complete the film. Back then it was very unusual, but these days it's very common for people to shoot a considerable portion of their films while they're trying to, at the same time, secure funding. This happened on a recent film I produced, The Carnival (2023). The filmmaker Isabel Darling had already been shooting the story for 5 years before I came on board. We eventually obtained a pre-sale from SBS. By that stage the film was already halfway through the edit!  

It’s quite counter-intuitive to funding models considering that part of the premise of a documentary is that you do have to be open to whatever might happen. 

Yeah, that’s right. If you feel you've got the makings of a good story you just have to go and start shooting. Broadcasters and investors don't want to take too much of a risk, particularly of these films that are observational in style, because they don't quite know the ending. Makes it frustrating for documentary filmmakers who are following an unfolding story using an observational documentary approach, and that’s why so few such films are made these days.

While we’re talking about that period in Australian film, considering you made the documentary Senses of Cinema (2022) with John Hughes I'm curious about your relationship to the filmmakers co-ops. They were obviously a vital part of the resurgence of Australian film culture. Did the co-ops and the culture that came out of that time have any influence on you? To what extent were you involved with them?

It did, because you felt that there was a sense of community there, that you were with other people who shared the same values and the same interests. Identity politics was also very strong at the time. People were always meeting up with one another at social events and at the Co-op cinema. Plus there was a lot of skill-sharing going on. There was this sense that we were carving out an underground independent sector that was running alongside the more commercial sector, but with not very much contact between the two, though Gillian Armstrong was one exception. Being part of the Co-op certainly did influence me, there's no doubt. It made me feel that I wasn't isolated, even though each one of us had our own films to make.

Just to finish off, what do you see is the future of Kemira (1984) and Homelands (1993)? Do you have any ideas of where you'd like to see them screened?
Well, they're actually currently being distributed by Beamafilm. I think eventually though I'd like to make them freely available on YouTube. I just want them to be around and for people to know about them and for future generations as well. These films are part of this country’s lived history and also in the history and tradition of documentary filmmaking in Australia. Hopefully they’ll be written about and argued about – and become part of our cultural memory.

That's the whole point of restoration, right? Is kind of keeping that cultural memory alive.
Yeah, exactly.