A Reply From John Flaus John Flaus December 2014 Feature Articles The Flaus Dossier has overwhelmed me – I am at a loss for words. I know that statement will be met with a measure of doubt by many of those who have had dealings with me over the years, but it’s true – almos...
Welcome to issue 72 of our journal the editors October 2014 Editorial This issue is dedicated to one of the true legends of Australian screen culture, John Flaus, who turned 80 in April this year. The extensive “tribute” dossier that dominates this edition of Senses of Cinema mar...
“Keep the coffee hot, Hugo”: A Celebration for John Flaus (1) Adrian Danks October 2014 John Flaus Dossier This special tribute dossier is devoted to one of the true legends of Australian screen culture, the inimitable and mercurial John Flaus. It marks a little over 60 years since the start of John’s involvement in...
Bubbles in a Coffee Cup: The Film Criticism of John Flaus Bruce Hodsdon October 2014 John Flaus Dossier STANDARD GRAMMAR: CUT ON EYELINE Two glances meet – he looks down, to see Worlds emerging in a coffee cup. See: Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle (1967) (1) John Flaus introduced me to the word ...
The John Flaus I Know Patricia Edgar October 2014 John Flaus Dossier This is a story about a 40-year friendship. One I have always valued greatly. Others will write about John Flaus’ significant contribution to film and television culture in Australia in all its dimensions, and ...
For John Flaus David Stratton October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Image: Flaus as the priest in Newsfront (Phillip Noyce, 1978) I met John Flaus on 5 October 1963. I had been in Australia for only a little more than two months, having arrived from England as a £10 Pom. For f...
Flausy Chris Fitchett October 2014 John Flaus Dossier John Flaus was a mentor and inspiration for a number of Swinburne Film School students in the ’70s, many of whom went on to have successful careers in the film and television industry. Because of “Flausy”, Elle...
John Flaus Through the Pages of FilmNews Tina Kaufman October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Back in the early ’60s I often went to the screenings at Sydney University’s Union Theatre, where the Sydney University Film Group programmed an interesting repertory selection, together with the occasional imp...
Dr Flaustus (Who Didn’t Have to Sell his Soul) Richard Brennan October 2014 John Flaus Dossier I met John some time in 1960. He was a cinephile and an anarchist who had some sort of job on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I was a first year Arts student. Both of us were members of the Sydney University Film Gr...
Reminiscences of John Flaus Paul Winkler October 2014 John Flaus Dossier My first contact with John would be around 1962-63. I had joined the Workers’ Educational Association Film Study Group in Sydney. Not knowing much about cinema, but wanting to know everything, I thought this...
Down Nightmare Alley With John Flaus John Baxter October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Encounters with numerous remarkable men in a lifetime spent in and around the cinema have not effaced the vision of John Flaus’ bare feet planted in the ten-to-two position over the clock buried in the marble f...
John Flaus – Critic of Fortune Michael Thornhill October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Image: Buchanan Rides Alone (Budd Boetticher, 1958) The following short piece should be read as an unreliable memoir. John Flaus (hereinafter referred to as JF) was not a capitalist or even a tyro businessman....
Happy Birthday, John Bryan Brown October 2014 John Flaus Dossier How fondly I remember those early days of excitement making movies. Gunslingers we felt like. Your house in Newtown with cardboard boxes filled with papers and writings and books scattered all over the floor...
Words for John Flaus Sylvia Lawson October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Back in the ’60s and early ’70s, our serious film-viewing landscape was the main campus cinema, Sydney University’s Union Theatre, later the Footbridge; then the fleapits, the adult education centres, and the f...
On John Flaus: Marines, Let’s Go Tom Ryan October 2014 John Flaus Dossier I’ve known John Flaus for more than 40 years. Remarkably, he still looks almost exactly as he did when we first crossed paths at La Trobe University in 1969. Back then he used to be mostly a beard, grey and bla...
John Flaus: A Tribute Neil McDonald October 2014 John Flaus Dossier In the early 1970s when academic film study was beginning, most of us would wait for what John Flaus was going to come up with next. Those of us professionally teaching film were a very small community. Very fe...
John Flaus, a Man with Qualities Lorraine Mortimer October 2014 John Flaus Dossier John Flaus Sydney Like anarchist and writer, Ursula Le Guin, and wily old pragmatist, Bertolt Brecht, we can rightly decry our need for heroes. I liked the way that someone introduced Noam Chomsky at an Anar...
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...
A Face Out of Rembrandt Barry Jones October 2014 John Flaus Dossier (Image: Flaus and Bruce Kerr in Waiting for Godot (La Mama Theatre, 2011)) The face is out of Rembrandt. In one of his YouTube clips my image appears and age is making us converge. I have known John Flau...
Hearing From John Flaus David Donaldson October 2014 John Flaus Dossier An early influence In 1952, I had somehow scored a job as a research assistant in economic history at the NSW Institute of Technology, soon to become the University of New South Wales. My honours degree had ma...
John Flaus: Australian Screen Maverick Lisa French October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Anarchy John Flaus became active in the film society movement in 1953 and in the following year he published in Voice: The Australian Independent Monthly, falling out with the editor on the question of the pol...
Images of Flaus Dave Jones October 2014 John Flaus Dossier John Flaus joined the La Trobe faculty in 1972, the second year of my three-year stint there. Thus he was a working colleague of mine for just two years. But he made a strong and lasting impression on me. I’...
Flaus Phillip Adams October 2014 John Flaus Dossier John Flaus looks like an animated Bert Tucker painting. The voice? It recalls the vocalising of a mallee root if, of course, a mallee root could speak. I’ve known John on and off for half a century and remember...
By Crikey! John Ruane October 2014 John Flaus Dossier I first saw John Flaus when I was at La Trobe University majoring in Latin American History. I thought he looked like he had just auditioned for Bad Santa. I was told he hadn’t shaved for 18 years. Wow! That’s ...
A Tribute to John Flaus Nigel Buesst October 2014 John Flaus Dossier John Flaus Ah, the memories. I think back to first hearing of John in the early ’60s. He was a leading light in the Push, a vaguely lefty group of intellectuals who gathered around certain watering holes in...
Flausography: Articles, Essays and Poems on Film by John Flaus Adrian Danks and Bruce Hodsdon October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Complied by Adrian Danks and Bruce Hodsdon This bibliography is an incomplete listing of John’s publications on film in print (mostly) over the last 60 years. It does not include those pieces for which we coul...
The Western Myth John Flaus October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Originally published in Sydney University Film Group Bulletin vol. 4, no. 3, Second Term 1966, pp. 61-63. Republished with the permission of the author. The Searchers For most film commentators the only “resp...
More Than Skin Deep: La Peau douce John Flaus October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Originally published in Film Digest no. 28, December 1967, pp. 11-22. Republished with the permission of the author. “All art is life; some life is art” My first response to Truffaut’s La Peau douce is to dec...
The World of Satyajit Ray John Flaus October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Originally published in Masque vol. 1, no. 5, May-June 1968, pp. 14-17. This article appeared within a special film issue of this relatively short-lived but significant dramatic and performing arts magazine. Th...
The Killers John Flaus October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Originally published in Sydney University Film Group Bulletin no. 50, First Term 1970, pp. 6-7. Republished with the permission of the author. Audiences who try to “read” rather than “see” films, who are more ...
Melville: Le Samouraï John Flaus October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Originally published in Cinema Papers no. 1, January 1974, pp. 56-7. Republished with the permission of the author. “There is no greater solitude than that of the Samurai, unless it be that of the tiger in the...
Josef von Sternberg: Morocco and Blonde Venus John Flaus October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Originally published in Film Buffs’ Forecast: A Guide to One-off Screenings in Melbourne, Buff Publications, Melbourne, May 1981. This fanzine-style newsletter was compiled and published by Flaus in the late 19...
There’s Always Tomorrow John Flaus October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Originally published in Annotations on Film, ed. Michael Koller, Melbourne Cinémathèque, Melbourne, 1990, p. 53. Republished with the permission of the author and the Melbourne Cinémathèque. The most penetrati...
Miller’s Crossing – A Film Neither Structured nor Constrained by Fashion John Flaus October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Originally published in Filmnews vol. 21, no. 3, April 1991, pp. 8-9. It appears here with minor corrections. Republished with the permission of the author and the then editor of Filmnews, Tina Kaufman. The Co...
In the Mind’s Eye John Flaus October 2014 John Flaus Dossier These articles were originally published in Paul Winkler: Films 1964-94 , Museum of Contemporary Art and Paul Winkler, Sydney, 1995, pp. 9-11 and 24. Republished with the permission of the author and the Museum...
The Big Heat John Flaus October 2014 John Flaus Dossier Originally published in CTEQ: Annotations on Film no. 2, 1996, pp. 7-9. It appears here with minor corrections. Republished with the permission of the author and the Melbourne Cinémathèque. When a police offic...
