A New Book on French Cinema by Australian Film Critics - FAR FROM THE MASTERS: EXPERIMENTATIONS IN POST-NEW WAVE FRENCH CINEMA

 Cinema Reborn stalwart supporter Philippa Hawker is a contributor, along with seven other Australian film critics, including another stalwart supporter Jake Wilson, to a new book on French Cinema published by Melbourne-based Index Press.

 

FAR FROM THE MASTERS: EXPERIMENTATIONS IN POST-NEW WAVE FRENCH CINEMA Edited by  Conall Cash and  Corey P. Cribb. 

 

Philippa has sent through some early critical reactions to the book.

 

Jacques Rivette

“From the metaphysics of Le Pont du Nord and the relation of Racine to L’Amour fou to the rich diversity of Marc’o’s career, not to mention the challenges of Jeanne Dielman, this is a compact illustration of the unrecognised brilliance and sheer liveliness of the best Australian film criticism.” 

— Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic at the Chicago Reader 1987–2008

Agnes Varda

“French filmmakers who emerged in the ’50s and ’60s (including Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda) collectively proclaimed in 1967 that they were, in every sense, “far from Vietnam.” In Australia today, a like-minded group of film scholars and critics declare that they are geographically far from France, and especially far in time from its glorious Nouvelle Vague. So, their curiosity and intellectual inventiveness fastens, by identification, on the intriguingly “belated” phenomenon of post-New Wave French cinema: that loosely bundled generation including Chantal Akerman, Marc’o, Maurice Pialat, and Patrick Deval—without forgetting the post-68 experiments of Varda, Jacques Rivette, and François Truffaut—who forcefully questioned the limits of cinema and opened new ways of thinking and feeling. Far from the Masters is an indispensable assemblage of superbly written, inquisitive, and trail-blazing essays.”

— Adrian Martin, Australian film critic far from Australia

 

Maurice Pialat

“What does it mean to come “after”? Far from the Masters is a book marked by two belated arrivals: first, the generation of French filmmakers who emerged in the wake of the nouvelle vague, figures like Maurice Pialat, who extended and contested the work of his still better-known precursors; and second, a group of Australian critics who, two decades into the twenty-first century, took a collective look back at that earlier moment. Out of this temporal décalage, new perspectives open—not only on some of the most important French filmmakers of the era, but equally on a present moment of cinephilic community.”

— Erika Balsom, Reader in Film Studies at King’s College, London

 

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Happy 11th Birthday to and from FILM ALERT 101

Vale David Stratton 1939-2025

Happy Birthday to Film Alert 101. This blog started up in November 2014. Since that time there have been 3177 posts and, allegedly according to the stats kept by the blog itself 2,321,193 page views. Over the last twelve months the page views have exceeded 708,000. The highest viewed post over the last 12 months may perhaps be a surprise to many, myself included, but it was signposted as an Open Letter to Bill Mousoulis about Angie Black’s THE FIVE PROVOCATIONS. It was posted way back on 13 September 2018 and I cant really explain why it would continue to be so favoured. If you want to read it  click here  

The highest page views of all time have been recorded for a fiery piece from the late David Stratton who, back in August 2020 took serious exception to MIFF caving in and withdrawing the film THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN from its line-up. David’s piece click here  followed an earlier one by Tom Ryan, also in the top ten of all time click here and both of them led to a strong response from critic Karl Quinn which is also in the Top Ten. click here Nothing like a bit of film festival controversy, as I discovered when, way back in 2016, I published what was for a long time the most read post, a piece by Tony Rayns about the state of the Busan Film Festival and the sacking of its then director click here 

Here’s Tony’s final paragraph of that one.

“I had very little first-hand knowledge of the “dark days” under military governments in Korea (my first visit to the country was in 1988, when the worst was over), but I know from Russia, China and Singapore amongst other countries how authoritarian governments work. They don’t believe in debate and don’t tolerate opposing points of view. Their first instinct is not to meet opposition with counter-arguments but to silence it. When Busan Metropolitan City Council tells BIFF not to screen a documentary that’s critical of the government, it’s a textbook example of an attack on free speech and an impulse to silence opposing voices. Apparently Korea’s right-wing politicians haven’t noticed or understood the changes since 1993. Apparently they are nostalgic for the “dark days” of censorship, of silencing dissenting voices and of strict social control. I’ve always thought that Korea has a very bright future, and I’ve said so in public many times, but the pig-headed political tactics of Busan’s city council mark a step back into the past. It makes no sense to me.”

 

Sentiments that are still relevant all over…

 

Over the last twelve months the following people were contributors and I thank them all: Janice Tong, Rod Bishop, Bruce Hodsdon, Barrie Pattison, Tom Ryan, David Hare, John Baxter, Joel Archer, Frank Shields, Pat Fiske, Adrian Danks, Michael Organ, Ray Edmondson, James Vaughan, Bruce Beresford, Alena Lodkina, Peter Tammer, John Timlin, Barrett Hodsdon and Zac Tomé.

If you click on any of the names above it will take you through to one of their contributions.

Vale Ken Mogg - Peter Tammer's tribute to one of Australia's finest film scholars

 Vale Ken!

(Reprinted from Peter's Blog The Friends of the Armchair Traveller)

A farewell to muffin@labyrinth

Last week I received this sad note from Inge, a close friend of Ken Mogg:

Dear Peter,

Just a sad note that our friend Ken Mogg passed away yesterday, 2nd Feb
2023.

He had been in and out of hospital with breathing problems, was  not
eating properly,
and had gone into a care home just recently, maybe a week or so ago.
His sister rang me and said he had passed away peacefully yesterday.

I hope you are well.

Love -- Inge.

Ken and Inge made the effort to attend a screening when some of

my films were shown at the AFW workshop some years ago.

(Photo taken by Bill Mousoulis) 

So many years have passed since I first met Ken at film screenings at the Bughouse in Carlton, the MUFS screenings and Melbourne Film Festival screenings in the late sixties. 


We got to know each other better when we shared an office for about a year at Melbourne State College, 1974.


We shared a great enthusiasm for the works of many directors but foremost was our love and admiration for Hitchcock. In those early days I sensed Ken was more avid than I, but we were only getting to know each other. He assisted me greatly when I arranged screenings of a number of Hitch’s movies at the Bughouse for our students, a sort of mini film festival, I think we showed seven films over a few weekends, courtesy of Gordon who owned that theatre and was the projectionist.


Then I left Melbourne State College. We went down our separate pathways! There was a long hiatus in our friendship which only started up again about 2009. 


Between 2009 and today we exchanged thousands of emails and sent each other copies of films and books we loved. The ratio was more from Ken to me rather from me to him… he was extremely generous to me. Sometimes I would mention a title of a book or film I loved, and what do you know… a copy would arrive in the mail a few days later! I mentioned to Ken a film I had not seen for many years, “Rogue Male” with Peter O’Toole in the leading role, from the novel by Geoffrey Household. Coming all the way from London and totally unexpected a brand new copy of that novel arrived in my letterbox about ten days later.


Today, I want to concentrate on just a few instances from our many exchanges. I have chosen two films which we both considered masterpieces by Hitchcock, but which are not his best known works.

I had first encountered “The Wrong Man” with Henry Fonda and Vera Miles at a MUFS festival many years before and decided to include it in the festival I was arranging for the students at Melbourne State College. I mentioned to Ken that Godard had written a superb monograph about this film and as he usually did, Ken discovered that old review from Cahiers du Cinema and gave it to me.

Many years later we exchanged thoughts about this film via email. Here’s a response I received from Ken in 2012:


Dear Peter -

I looked at the three bits of THE WRONG MAN you advocated. All of them very impressive.


1. The finger-printing (at about the 38½' mark in my DVD copy). This segment seems to derive from the processing-of-the-criminal early in BLACKMAIL - a remarkable sequence that Bill Krohn feels may have influenced Lang's M. Both those early films imply an impersonal dimension in their respective blown-up images of fingerprints. TWM picks up on the 'impersonality' but handles it in a small-scale way that is moving. The key is Manny's impassive face, even as he co-operates in his own immolation.


2. The handcuffing and the trip to gaol (at about the 51' mark in my DVD copy). Again Manny's stunned face is the crux. Re the prison van, you may think of the lines from 'The Waste Land': 'Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,/ And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.' Remarkably, that passage comes immediately after, 'Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,/ A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,/ I had not thought death had undone so many' - which, mutatis mutandis, seems the inspiration for two passages in NxNW (the crowd, shot in washed-out colour, flowing down the subway at the start of the film; and the 'visual quote' of the Everett Shinn mural in the Oak Bar showing a foggy New York of bygone days, another 'Unreal City' not unlike the present one, the film implies).


3. Final scene in the sanatorium between Manny and Rose (and a nurse) (at about the 1hr40½' mark in my DVD copy). Very affecting. Manny (literally at one point) reaches out to Rose but is rebuffed. Rose remains immured for now in her sense of an implacable, overwhelming injustice that is not personal ('It's nothing you've done'). The last shot (frame-capture attached) before Manny retreats with the nurse back out into the corridor runs a long 47", implying the finality of the moment for now (the film is ending). It includes (n.b., no cut) Manny's backing-off remark, 'I guess I was hoping for a miracle'. Yet the mood is never less than poignant and affecting. Special note relevant to editing ... At least two elements of this scene may be said to pre-echo PSYCHO. (1) Rose clutches herself throughout, as Marion does in part of the PSYCHO 'parlour' scene. (2) When the nurse enters in the left background at the start of the shot, saying, 'Your husband is leaving now, Mrs Balestrero', it's startling, like the entrance of 'Mother' in the left background when Marion is in the shower, facing the camera. Only, of course, instead of the staccato passage that then follows (PSYCHO), we have the long-held single shot I've described (TWM). This is relevant to editing precisely because it only goes to show how much at Hitchcock's mercy (like the rest of us) the editor is, because the ultimate effect/affect is a combination of innumerable elements that Hitchcock controls and pre-plans - editing is only one of many elements. The editor (again like the rest of us) may feel he/she is pretty much free to respond to the scene, but that response is actually, and largely invisibly, dictated by the director, a very charming and benevolent person but a dictator nonetheless!


(n.b., Marion, you could say, clutches herself primarily for warmth - ironic in the context of the film which becomes progressively chilly - although what she is warming herself against may, in part, be given a 'psychological' interpretation. In Rose's case, her self-clutching is more indicative of her withdrawal inwards, such that her psychiatrist had earlier said that she was 'on the other side of the moon someplace'.)


(n.b., too, Rose in this near-final scene of TWM, just described, is in a near-equivalent position to Norman in the penultimate scene of PSYCHO, and is depicted not dissimilarly. Norman 'wears' a blanket for both warmth and to suggest his withdrawn state; and, like Rose, he 'converses' in a seemingly direct and cogent way ('They're probably watching me now') while his actual distance from present reality is patent.)


Am I moving towards some sort of overview of how editing may 'work' in Hitchcock, and be seen by him? I'm not sure, but I must hope!


Later.

Metta - KM



The next film I wish to raise in this context was “I Confess”. We both held this film in very high regard.

In our exchanges which took place over a few weeks, Ken shared many of his discoveries about the sources for the script and he also introduced me to his friend Dr. Ted Price. Now I had become entangled in an infernal triangle. 


The deep knowledge which these two shared on all of Hitchcock’s work and many other great directors was far beyond my limited capacity… they were bookworms whereas I am not. They were scholarly as I am not.


Between the two of them I was introduced to so many thoughts and judgments of which I was totally unaware that it was like being back at University, except that it was my private university with two fine teachers at my disposal.

One email gives a sample of Ken’s thoughts on “I Confess”:

Dear Peter -

On 2/10/2015 10:12 PM, you wrote:

"Some films do not stand up well after numerous viewings, but I'm pleased to tell you [I CONFESS] is still a very rich experience for me. Despite the fact that I am not at all religious and have left Catholicism and its trappings way behind me, the dim distant past, the film still, works for me quite well, very well indeed."

Thank you so much for this observation, your email as a whole, and your several other emails lately that I have not responded to. 


On I CONFESS. I have long thought that Father Logan (Monty Clift) was using his obligation re the sanctity of the confessional to shield him from having to open up to Larrue (Karl Malden) about his relationship with Ruth Grandfort (Anne Baxter). And this is confirmed in a book I have just looked at, by Richard Blake, S.J., on six Catholic directors. Here's Blake:


As Larrue drags Logan into the case and questions him about Ruth, Logan extends the boundaries of the seal beyond its legitimate scope. He uses it to avoid answering potentially embarrassing questions about his relationship with Ruth. In his refusal to cooperate with the authorities, he is using the seal to manipulate Larrue, just as Keller had used it to manipulate him. (p. 62)


Had you noticed that? And, speaking of the murderer Keller (O.E. Hasse), how much sympathy do you feel for this refugee, with his wife Alma (Dorothy Hasse), from Germany? The couple are clearly very isolated in French Quebec, a long way from their home; and even at the end, I find the shambling figure of Keller to be quite affecting as he and Logan face off (Larrue looking on, with armed policemen ready to fire) in a hotel ballroom in front of a stage that offers the trapped man no escape. Yes, I know that Keller has been shifty all along, at least since his attempted robbery that went fatally wrong; and now, at the end, he has just shot his wife and is threatening Logan. (The talk between Keller and Logan is about their both being 'lonely'.) Yet I find this comment by Blake to be, well, one-sided, inadequate:


Keller, the German refugee, inevitably reminds audiences of the dozens of cold-blooded, calculating Nazi spies that populated American screens during the war and postwar periods. He is guilty, and the film does nothing to arouse sympathy for him. (p.61)


True, or not? One last observation for now. Blake seems so set on running down Logan (and also Ruth) for not being perfect, that he seems to me to miss a couple of things. Logan, who was awarded the Military Cross for outstanding bravery, clearly is a figure of the highest rectitude, which Hitchcock expresses by repeatedly giving him an unwavering forward motion (leading to that expressive moment when he literally bumps into the sacristan, i.e., Keller, in the church, and simply out-faces him). This is contrasted with the moral decline of Keller, planting evidence (a bloodstained cassock) and almost taunting Logan to keep silent (as Keller knows the priest is bound to do) - yet somehow I still see Keller as a person, not just a figure of evil. (I wish Blake had allowed this.) Also, re Ruth, had you noticed something (not noted by Blake): until nearly the very end, when Logan is exonerated (and Ruth turns to her husband, saying, 'Take me home, Pierre'), she seems to secretly harbour the romantic notion that, just possibly, Logan had still loved her so much that he had indeed murdered the blackmailer Vilette to protect Ruth's reputation?


(Similarly, in THE WRONG MAN, Rose has a moment when she must face up to - or anyway voice - how she suspects Manny may indeed have held up the Associated Life office. She tells him: You could be guilty, you could be.')

So big thanks again for your email, Peter, including this bit:

"I love the intelligence Hitch brings to his films, regardless of the choice of themes, the content, the people he hired to work with on different occasions, including writers, actors, composers. His films are very rich and densely packed, intricate, many faceted. And "I Confess" is no exception."

Looking forward to your answers to the couple of questions I've posed above!

I hope you're well.

Good cheer - KM


The two emails I have chosen give you a glimpse of the many faceted mind of our friend Ken. They both show how wide-ranging his research was, how interrelated his complex observations of films were and a sense of his endless enquiry. I always felt that his emails were too complex and dense for me to take apart and concentrate on individual themes in response.

Another film I owe much thanks to Ken for was “The Man Who Knew Too Much” , the original version, 1934. I basically knew nothing about this film until Ken sent me a copy and I really loved it. But there are so many exchanges on so many films. And books! And politics! And octopuses! 

When Ken discovered that I was fascinated by the intelligence of octopuses he sent me copious notes which he had researched to assist me with any writing I might have done about those astonishing creatures. Sadly I have not followed up his fine research with any fine writings on the subject, but we did swap a lot of information at the time.


And then there was Schopenhauer. Well Ken tried very hard to get me engaged in the work of “Schop”. But he failed in this endeavour. I was into philosophy when I was at Uni, and shortly after that. I had read quite widely but not wide enough for Ken, because I had overlooked Schop. This was very sad for Ken because he had placed Schopenhauer on the highest pedestal and I seemed unable or unwilling to come to the party, or to genuflect at his altar. We can’t all be readers of everything, can we? There’s too much on offer and we must make choices, but on this matter I disappointed Ken and there was nothing I could do about it. 


We had much more luck with cricket! We both had a long and abiding delight in following this wonderful colonial game which the Brits had gifted to us, spread throughout their colonies, between all the ravaging and savagery and plantations and ripping off of artefacts which were dutifully sent to museums in the British Isles. When our adored leading cricketers were caught in the act of ball tampering in South Africa Ken and I were utterly dismayed, as were so many Australians… it was a huge shock to us that our heroes could be so stupid and unsportsmanlike. 


The range of subjects we covered was much wider and far more extensive than I have mentioned… I can only give you a glimpse. I don’t want to waste any of your time or of my own fading energy on our altercations over the years concerning Trumpo the clown or the brilliant strategical mind of Putin!


It’s too demanding for me to syphon through more than two thousand email exchanges between us over the past 14 years, so I hope these few examples of Ken’s responses will indicate something of the breadth and depth of Ken’s interests, the different perspectives he drew on in assessing each film. But it was not only in the case of Hitchcock’s films that Ken offered such powerful judgement. This leads me to his efforts in working with Dr.Ted Price who he introduced to me about ten years ago. 

https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2013/book-reviews/back-to-freud-superbitch-alfred-hitchcocks-50-year-obsession-with-jack-the-ripper-and-the-eternal-prostitute-a-psycho-analytic-interpretation-by-theodore-price/

Ken also assisted Dr. Ted greatly with some other projects. Dr. Ted had written some notes for his students on the film “The Passenger” by Antonioni. Both Ken and I shared a love of this film and we both thought Dr. Ted should refine his “student notes”, get them into better shape for an article for publication. NOT AN EASY TASK! Dr Ted was getting very grumpy and didn’t think it needed improvement, but Ken persisted and worked him round. He also arranged for the revised piece to be published in Senses of Cinema. This might sound like a small effort, but it took many months to achieve the final result. My part in this process was trivial, I merely supported Ken in his endeavours to get Dr. Ted to make the necessary changes, and thankfully Ken won the day!

 

https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2015/feature-articles/michelangelo-antonioni-the-truth-about-the-passenger/

Once again by being involved in this endeavour I learned more about the film than I could ever have imagined.

These few examples are merely additional to what others will have to say about Ken’s life work in  thinking and writing about cinema. I was so pleased to be able to send his paper on Vertigo to Geoff Gardner just before I gave Facebook the flick. Because Geoff took this on there are copies of the Vertigo piece and other items by Ken on Film Alert 101.

http://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2020/12/considering-alfred-hitchcocks-vertigo.html


http://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2021/06/hitchcocks-trouble-with-harry-ken-mogg.html

Because of Ken having introduced me to Dr. Ted, I was able to introduce Dr. Ted to Geoff and that resulted in Geoff posting some fine articles by Dr. Ted:

http://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2017/08/federico-fellini-secret-meaning-of-his_10.html

http://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-truth-about-limelight-dr-theodore.html

As you can see, for me it was like mixing in the big league trying to keep up with these guys. I’m a simple film buff, not at all serious when you compare my lazy ways with their scholasticism and their considered thoughts on so many works by so many directors.


I hope that any friends who would like to add their own personal recollections to this valedictory will take the opportunity.

Vale Ken,

Peter Tammer

Tina Kaufman offers up her books on film and her collection of crime fiction to good homes.

The board of Filmnews.
Tina Kaufman (front and centre)

Tina Kaufman has been a cinephile and an avid reader all her life. Now she says its time to downsize the collection she has accumulated over a lifetime.

She has a large collection of books and magazines on film but isn't up for the task of compiling a list. Instead she proposes that people contact her and arrange to come and look her collection over and take away what they want. It's a generous offer.

And just in case books on film are not your bag Tina has a large collection of classic and modern crime fiction. She suggests you bring one or more boxes to take the treasure away.

In case you need a reminder Tina was the editor of the Sydney Filmmakers Coop monthly newspaper, Filmnews for seventeen years. The newspaper covered all aspects of screen culture, policy and practice. Tina also wrote for various screen publications including Metro magazine and the online publication Screen Hub. She was a board member of the Sydney Film Festival for 25 years and a founding member of the Film Critics Circle of Australia and is now an honorary life member of both organisations. She is also the author of Wake in Fright (Currency Press)

If you are interested you should contact Tina at tinakaufman@optusnet.com.au

Vale Colin Bennett - A valued film critic at the Age in Melbourne, friend to many and a serious contributor to the development of an Australian film industry

It sometimes takes the test of time for us to appreciate the lives and contributions made by a very few people who genuinely made a difference. 

I first encountered Colin Bennett's name when my mother decided to add The Age's Saturday edition to our weekly newspaper deliveries. That added it to The Sun, the biggst selling newspaper in Australia, the Sporting Globe, and The Herald, the biggest selling and most respected afternoon newspaper in Australia. The latter was a broadsheet no less. They both employed high quality journalists - most memorably E W Tipping, Keith Dunstan, Frederick Howard and Alf Brown. Times have changed.

As someone who spent a lot of time in his mid-teen years going to the Padua, the Western, the Liberty, The Empire, the Plaza and the Alhambra - all within walking distance or a short tram or bus ride, a revelation then occurred when each Saturday there would be a long essay in the The Age Literary Supplement devoted to such matters as film censorship, an Australian film industry, the Melbourne Film Festival or the offerings at cinemas I'd never been to - The Australia, The Savoy, the Curzon, the Brighton Dendy. 

Still I just read about these things apart from bravely venturing all the way into the city by tram and dodging school sport to see, on Bill Hannan's additional recommendation Satyajit Ray's The World of Apu.

It wasn't until I got to university that I started to see all those films and do all those things Colin Bennett got us excited about. Then he0 turned up at a MUFS night season to see something or other and I was more than a bit in awe. Things got trickier then because the university film societies of the day were all trying to seek out the films that Cahiers du Cinema wanted us to see - Hawks, Hitchcock, Ford, Raoul Walsh, Jerry Lewis.

Colin was much more sympathetic to the left-wing humanism of Sight & Sound with its focus on Brit and other realists, Bergman, Bunuel, the daring Poles like Wajda and other dissenting voices from Eastern Europe, the famous Russians like Eisenstein.

But from those times in the 60s through to 1980, the moment when Neil Jillett manouevred Colin right out of The Age and the standards instantly dropped, you never stopped reading him and never stopped being impressed by the fervour with which he espoused the causes of Australian film-making (notwithstanding the bagging he gave Tim Burstall's Two Thousand Weeks), the ending of the Menzian nanny state where idiot Liberal Ministers used to make fools of themselves banning books and films at the direction of the Chief Censor the fabulously nicknamed One-Armed Dick Prowse. (One Ministerial dope even got up in the Parliament and lamented how he had make a decision to ban the Kama Sutra and "it had placed him in a very difficult position").

Colin covered it all, provoked arguments, advanced causes, remained supremely affable, sucked on that pipe of his and was never deterred. I hope when he left the Age and left film criticism he did it with a sense of pride and achievement because he had earned that over two and half decades.

Back in 2016 I published a piece on this blog called Remembering Colin Bennett. Peter Hourigan added his thoughts.. When I read it again the memories flooded back. You can read it if you click here. That caused a minor flood. Contributions were received from Adrian Martin & Rod Bishop, Scott Murray, Michael Campi & Bruce Hodsdon, and Richard Brennan & Brian Kavanagh. Colin responded here. Click and go through to the memories

Peter Hourigan, Colin Bennett, NFSA Melbourne office, 2017

Then back in 2017 Peter Hourigan and I were able to sit down and record some of Colin's memories. Later that year I described it as the moment when hopefully I made my peace with the legendary Colin Bennett. An interview with Colin by Peter Hourigan and I for the NFSA’s oral history program provided the opportunity to say sorry for the very shabby way his departure from The Age was ignored by the Melbourne Film Festival all those years back in 1981. The interview and the discovery (and publication) of Colin’s memoir (on this blog) were highlights not to be forgotten.

If you are curious about the memoirs then click on this link

People have been sending things to me and posting things on Facebook. Here are the first couple. I'll post more as they are received,

From film-maker Phillipe Mora: That is sad news indeed. Colin was an early friend of my family. When Melbourne was a cultural desert in the Fifties my parents and Colin were the kind of intellegentsia that congregated and created modern Australia. His distinguished family and deep cultural knowledge made him the important critic in the creation of the Australian film industry. Hanging out at the Balzac and Mirka cafe he met all the nascent players in the arts. Personally he was very encouraging to me as a baby film maker.  He was the un-Les Patterson and he was sorely needed. His contribution is uncalculable.

Adrian Danks Posted this on Facebook: Very sad to hear of the death of the extraordinary Melbourne film critic, Colin Bennett, after a very full life. He left reviewing in the early 1980s, but his tenure at THE AGE in the 1950s, 60s & 70s is one of the great runs of any Australian film critic & set the stage for wonderful periods there inhabited by Adrian Martin & Jake Wilson (though I still have a grudge with Bennett for leaving too early & leaving us stranded with the appalling Neil Jillett for 15 formative years). I hardly read any of Colin's reviews when they were first published - by the time I was an adult he was gone by a few years - but have rediscovered his writing over the years. He was the central figure (along with Sylvia Lawson) in the recent essay I published on Bergman's reception in Australia. His writing always demonstrated a deep knowledge of overseas opinions & trends but was never beholden to them - he would have been such a lifeline during an era when the patterns of film distribution & exhibition in Australia were idiosyncratic at best (& where important films were often censored). I've also just finished a final draft of a book on international production in Australia (with Verevis) in which he appears more than any other writer of the time under discussion (1946-75). He was always a supporter of the local industry, but also - essentially - an astute critical voice. In some respects he was a symbol of the strength of film culture in Melbourne; always sensitive & alive to the film he was reviewing & always questioning of received wisdom. Having read many of his reviews & longer pieces in recent times - he was kinder to the epochal elements of Kramer's ON THE BEACH than I would have been, but his long review said so much about the time & space of its release in Melbourne - a collection of his work would make a fascinating read. I never met him, but wish I had - a critic's critic who was a trusted & sophisticated voice for a mainstream paper (that's always been a rare thing).  

Further comments welcome. Send them to filmalert101@gmail.com and they will be published.

The Film Group issues its second online publication titled KEEP YOUR.... Table of contents and link below...

KEEP YOUR... KEEP YOUR... KEEP YOUR...   This edition of The Film Group Monthly Reading was written on the stolen-never-ceded lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri, Gaibal & Jarrowair peoples.  The Film Group is a collaborative film screening and online publication project. We aim to facilitate screenings and conversation around local and international moving image works, with a focus on experimentation, documentary, underground film and ethnographic projects.    Contribute to an issue of the film group   Subscribe to receive Monthly reading from The Film Group and updates on future events.   Contents:    La Soufriére Greta Balog   Day in the Life Mardi Reardon- Smith   A Chat with Emele Ugavule Georgia Wilkinson-Derums   Inside Looking Out, Outside Looking In Angelica Waite   10 films to watch and something else to read   Sincerely, The Film Group. View the full publication by clicking here