AustLit

'I remember seeing Clara Law's film Floating Life at the Sydney Film Festival in 1995. I was charmed and amused by its particular take on suburban Australia, moved by its musings on the quest for a sense of home. And drawn to its sense of poetry and design. I re-visited other films by Clara Law. The almost breathtakingly beautiful Temptation of a Monk (1993) and the intriguing Autumn Moon (1992). I spoke with Clara recently about her new film, The Goddess of 1967.' (Author's introduction)

'Perhaps the best word that describes the distinct quality of Clara Law's latest film The Goddess of 1967 (2000) is postmodern. Unlike any other contemporary Australian feature-filmmaker, she betrays an astute, experimental attitude to the medium, an inclination to gather and juxtapose markedly different people and places and disparate cultural meanings (the outback, machine and modernity, the city) and a strong interest in states of transition, dislocation, and isolation. In Goddess, a blind girl "B.G" (Rose Byrne) and Japanese man "J.M." (Rikiya Kurokawa) journey through the Australian outback in a Citroen named 'Goddess' toward a 'heart of darkness' or primal, originating point that ultimately sets the soul of the young blind girl free. Intermittently punctuating what is essentially a forward-journey-back-in-time are flashbacks of the past, mainly of B.G.'s past but also J.M.'s, a Roland Barthes quote, and advertising footage and statistics celebrating the superiority in design and manufacture of the Citroen. However, despite the postmodern sensibility and sophisticated experimental play with sound, music, camera work, colour and the landscape, ideas of character and story remain essentially conventional and clichéd throughout Goddess, producing a strange mismatch effect throughout the film.' (Author's introduction)

'Shirley Barrett's first film, Love Serenade (1995), featured one of the most memorable characters in recent Australian cinema: the burnt-out radio announcer Ken Sherry (George Shuksov), a long-nosed, grizzled '70s throwback with a taste for Barry White songs and a hilariously sleazy line in seductive patter. About halfway through the film, the two sisters competing for Ken's affections (played by Rebecca Frith and Miranda Otto) make an extraordinary discovery: on either side of Ken's ears are strange openings that resemble gills. Ken Sherry, in other words, is not just a fishy character. In some mysterious but literal sense, Ken is a fish.' (Author's introduction)

Editor's note: In this interview, Jane talks freely about the series and what she hopes it will achieve.