OnScreen editorial
Kirsten Krauth
I hope you’ve all had a great festive break and are back in the chair, ready for more debates within these pages. In the midst of turmoil in our political climate, there’s plenty of anger seeping into OnScreen. We launch into 2002 with the conference issue. (Why do so many conferences fall around Christmas?) Clare Stewart gets stuck into ‘independent’ filmmaking being subjugated to the glinting dollar in her analysis of the SPAA Fringe; Ned Rossiter attends DISlocations, a conference on new media art, aesthetics and culture, where he argues that we should recognise “that media as a technology is not determined by technical developments, but when technical possibilities coincide with other economic and social imperatives”; Dean Kiley gets excited by fibreculture, a netlist/debate/publication/resource, which “constitutes an overdue, productive, politically-engaged, theoretically-informed and critical—in all senses—intervention” and our new Queensland writer (and filmmaker) Erik Roberts sees a real “paradigmatic shift” in documentary making at Visible Evidence in Brisbane.
According to the AFC, Oz film has never been healthier at the box office and it was gratifying to watch the Golden Globes dominated by ocker accents. (I was particularly intrigued by Rachel Griffiths twirling her Shirley Temple curls in a fluffy pink number.) In our regular column on Australian screen culture, Watchdog, Jane Mills explores the curious phenomenon (increasingly common) of seeing a film that’s Australian-but-isn’t, Charlotte Gray, directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Cate Blanchett. Tina Kaufman asks why so many people are more interested in being filmmakers than making good short films. And Hal Judge confesses to being a Secret Life of Us addict.
Then there’s the profiles: WOW winner Melissa Kyu-Jung Lee is candid on the making of her documentary where she re-enacts scenes with her lovers (just don’t tell her parents); and Garth Paine, Australia Council New Media Arts Fellow, contends that “sound is the most innovative of the digital arts—an entirely new genre that can’t draw on the patterns that existed previously” while experiencing the difficulties of getting sound art exhibited in Australia (not surprisingly he’s taken up a prestigious appointment in the UK).
In our next issue, Jane Mills will be having a look at the eagerly anticipated Rabbit Proof Fence, and the accompanying making-of doco directed by Darlene Johnson. We’ll also be doing a feature interview with the Indigenous filmmaker Ivan Sen, director Beneath Clouds (and one of the best short filmmakers around), whose film has just been picked to screen in competition in Berlin before lining up at the Adelaide Festival.
RealTime issue #47 Feb-March 2002 pg. 16
