Happy 40th (and 75th) Birthday, Dear Cinémathèque John Hughes November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque The Melbourne Cinémathèque is a beacon, always has been. Not that I’d know. It was in early 1971 when I first met Robin Laurie, Sasha Trikojus and Bert Deling, all of whom had, in the late 1960s, been involved ...
The Russian Doll and Skripov the Spy: ASIO’s Legal Resident (1963) and Peter Butt’s Final Rendezvous (2020) John Hughes April 2020 Feature Articles Within the archive meaning exists in a state that is both residual and potential. The suggestion of past uses coexists with a plentitude of possibilities. Unpacking Peter Butt’s film Final Rendezvous (2020) a...
Australia Daze (Pat Fiske, 1988): Questioning Nationhood John Hughes October 2018 CTEQ Annotations on Film “Centenaries are strange institutions often with complex purposes (sometimes) wonderfully simple minded.” – C. J. Clarke “This 80-minute comedy – well it is funny most of the time – is an entertaining and a...
Tom Zubrycki’s Amongst Equals (1986-1991): A Perennial Work in Progress John Hughes October 2018 CTEQ Annotations on Film Amongst Equals has never been released, and while several iterations found their way to the screen in the early 1990s, the film has yet to be completed. Instead, wrecked and stranded on a reef of competing impe...
A Work in Progress: the Rise and Fall of Australian Filmmakers Co-operatives, 1966–86 John Hughes December 2015 Australian Film History Film co-ops were born out of necessity – both economic and political. During the 1960s and 1970s, avant-garde and experimental cinema, “expanded cinema” and varying strands of independent filmmaking sought to g...
Still Life, Slow Cinema: My Life without Steve John Hughes April 2015 CTEQ Annotations on Film An essay film, staged as a short drama deploying a first person, diary film narration over exquisitely designed object oriented “still life” tableaus, Gillian Leahy’s My Life Without Steve (1986) was a sensatio...
Indonesia Calling: Joris Ivens in Australia John Hughes July 2009 MIFF Premiere Fund/Post-Punk Dossier, Special Dossiers The new feature documentary scheduled for release at the Melbourne International Film Festival this year, Indonesia Calling: Joris Ivens in Australia, revisits the making of the 22-minute, 1946 documentary ...
