AustLit

'The inspiration for Diasporas of Australian Cinema emanates from the diverse range of films dealing with diasporic experience produced in Australia over the past century. The vital relationship between migration and the moving image is often melancholically invoked, as in films such as Michael Bates' acclaimed short film The Projectionist (2002), in which a projectionist traipses through Sydney's darkened laneways as haunting memories flash across the surface of city buildings. Sergei Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem Isle of the Dead accompanies this 'gallery of ghostly visions' that includes images of migrant workers, a 'woman in pain', a 'man in despair' and refugees who have been forcibly displaced (Much Ado Films 2002). Using the live-action animation technique of 'Pixilation', these poetic images render urban Sydney an uncanny space, while at the same time hinting at both the animated origins of cinema and the imminent death of the cinema projectionist - a last vestige of modernity. The Projectionist exemplifes the ways film can evoke memories of things past, but shows how it can also be a way to make sense of the present and to imagine the future. In this case, the migrant projectionist's origins are never named. He is the modern Everyman who embodies the traumas of the twentieth century, and the subsequent cultural formations that have developed within a specifcally Australian context. While these images haunt the projectionist, they are also liberating as they are cast out and shared with others, a diasporic visibility that becomes part of our collective memory.' (p15)