AustLit

'Outside of small research studies and articles that have appeared in academic journals, there is an absence of in-depth contextual work around personal filmmaking in Australia. This roundtable, featuring six key figures working in this space from the 1970s until today, has been sparked by a recognition of this absence, and seeks to shed light on the subject of autofiction and the implications of personal filmmaking in Australian independent film practice.' (Introduction)

'A chook enters the frame. A black cat evades the lens. An animated panther won’t be denied. In 2021, these are the figures that lurk on the outskirts of conscious thought in the days after I eject Ronin’s DVD of Breathing Under Water (Susan Murphy Dermody, 1991) from my laptop. 30 years have slipped by since I first viewed this film on a cinema screen with an audience of indie-filmgoers. The memory of being part of that audience — lulled by water and voices, darkness and whimsy, movement and pause — resonates with and is shadowed by the spectre of ‘last days’. In 1991 Dermody’s film evoked the destruction of life on earth by masculine technoculture, the eclipse of human time by the digital and a feminine quest (embodied by Beatrice, Maeve and Herman) to find another way. In 2021, despite the climate emergency, the digital eclipse of cinema and a global pandemic, what the film evokes most strongly, for this writer, is the passing of a milieu defined by an ethos of indie-filmmaking, film thinking, film activism. I take this special issue of Senses of Cinema, then, as a space in which to pause, remember and reflect on a moment of experiment in Australian feature filmmaking, and to revive interest in Breathing Under Water as a female quest, an essay film, an autofiction and a mode of self extraction. '  (Introduction)

'Saidin Salkic is a Bosnian-Australian filmmaker whose recent prolific output includes Waiting for Sevdah (2017, 40 mins), Silence’s Crescendo (2018, 41 mins), The Shocking (2019, 27 mins) and The Human (2020, 48 mins). This discussion focuses on Silence’s Crescendo, a relentless and minimalist experimental horror chant, and links it to related national and international experimentation, trauma and surveillance capitalism.' (Introduction)

'Gillian Leahy’s 1986 film, My Life Without Steve, is a story of solitude, pain and obsession, of raw emotions elegantly presented and endlessly interrogated. It begins with an exterior perspective, an image of sunlight on water. The camera moves slowly and gracefully from outside to inside; thereafter, the film is essentially an interior vision of some kind: a first-person narrative, an anguished, irritable, unsparing, self-centring contemplation.' (Introduction)

'As this dossier shows, there is a rich and long history of personal filmmaking in Australian independent cinema. The films that belong to this tradition are disparate in many ways, but all are sincere in their conviction that the personal counts. After years of making a mix of films, including those that blur fiction and documentary, independent filmmaker Bill Mousoulis made My Blessings (1997), a formally austere yet honest and soulful diary film. Shot on 16mm, with meagre funds but a clear and abundant vision, My Blessings spans six days in the life of young female filmmaker, Jane Friedman (Marie-Louise Walker), as she awaits the outcome of a script funding application. On the cusp of becoming an established and recognised filmmaker (no longer simply ‘emerging’), there is a lot riding on this outcome for Jane.' (Introduction)