The Two Johns: The Films of John Hughes: A History of Independent Screen Production in Australia, by John Cumming Jake Wilson July 2016 Book Reviews Aspiring filmmakers in Australia and elsewhere stand to learn a lot from John Cumming’s The Films of John Hughes, not least about how to deal with funding bodies. An innovator in documentary and adjoining field...
What Happened To Billy?: David Gulpilil on Mad Dog Morgan Jake Wilson July 2015 Special Dossier: Focus on David Gulpilil at MIFF 2015 It’s December 2014, and I’m researching a book on the 1976 bushranger film Mad Dog Morgan – one of the best Australian films of the 1970s, a far-out antipodean Western directed by the much underrated pop surrea...
A Touch of Flaus: Encounters and Impressions Jake Wilson October 2014 John Flaus Dossier When I think of John Flaus, my mind goes back to an evening ten or 15 years ago, when Fitzroy’s Erwin Rado Theatre hosted a rare revival of Salt of the Earth – an independent, communist-backed drama about a str...
Days of Future Past: Albie Thoms’ Polemics Jake Wilson March 2013 Albie Thoms Dossier I met Albie Thoms only once, in 2009, when the Australian Centre for the Moving Image revived his 1969 feature Marinetti – an avant-garde extravaganza described in Thoms’ 1978 essay collection Polemics For a Ne...
The Squares of the City: John Dunkley-Smith’s Flinders Street Jake Wilson June 2011 Melbourne on Film Dossier The time is 1980; the place, a crucial node on the grid of inner Melbourne, where Swanston Street, running north to south, crosses Flinders Street, running east to west. Four corners, four landmarks. Southwest...
In The Submarine: The 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival Jake Wilson October 2010 Festival Reports Another Opening, Another Show In Joe Dante’s satirical Small Soldiers (1998), a range of high-tech action figures is marketed under the slogan “Everything Else Is Just a Toy.” Perhaps this year’s Melbourne I...
Voice of the Grain: Films by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill Jake Wilson October 2010 Arthur and Corinne Cantrill Dossier This essay originally appeared on the website of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and was written to accompany the retrospective “Grain Of The Voice: 50 Years Of Sound and Image” which I curated. ...
How to Change the World: An Interview with Leo Berkeley Jake Wilson October 2010 Feature Articles Once, and appropriately, Melbourne based filmmaker Leo Berkeley went under the moniker of “last of the independents”. Having shaped a decades-long body of work on the fringes of the industry, he talks at length about the filmmaking principles that inform his work.
Aliens Among Us: Sally Marshall is Not an Alien (Mario Andreacchio, 1999) Jake Wilson July 2010 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Where’s she from anyway? The outback? The moon? Worse. L. A. - friends of Rhonnie (Thea Gumbert) in Sally Marshall is Not an Alien At the end of the twentieth century, there was more than one reason for Aus...
Heer No Evil: Dutch Tilt, Aussie Auteur: The Films of Rolf de Heer by D. Bruno Starrs Jake Wilson April 2010 Book Reviews Over the past two decades, Rolf de Heer has arguably emerged as Australia’s leading active narrative filmmaker: excepting one or two figures working mostly outside this country, none of his contemporaries can m...
The Boy From Oz: Blood and Tinsel: A Memoir by Jim Sharman Jake Wilson April 2009 Book Reviews The fabulous was Jim Sharman’s birthright. Grandson and son of successive managers of the legendary Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Troupe, he fills the opening pages of this remarkable memoir with vivid recollections o...
A Critic Unbuttons: I Peed On Fellini: Recollections of a Life in Film by David Stratton Jake Wilson May 2008 Book Reviews Every film lover in Australia owes David Stratton an enormous debt of gratitude. He was largely responsible for the growth and success of the Sydney Film Festival, which he directed for 17 years; he did alm...