Everything was legendary with Robert

A music video for Dave Graney

Abstract & experimental animation – A century of innovation

This compact history of 100 years of abstract and experimental animation in Australia spans the earliest cameraless classics through to modern examples of what’s happening in the vibrant VJ scene. Australian animators and experimental filmmakers have been as innovative as anybody when it comes to creating abstract animation. This history is more elongated than many people believe, in part due to the inherent lack of commercial or popular screening opportunities for much of this sort of filmmaking. This program showcases a rich collection of films from this most elemental of all animation genres. It will be introduced by a small panel of filmmakers who will contextualise this history and explain its future.

Hillegonda: 3 projector performance

Dirk de Bruyn is one of Australia’s most successful and acclaimed abstract animators. His career spans a significant portion of the history of abstract and experimental animation in Australia and his films are as addictive as they are bold and uncompromising examples of the genre. He displays a remarkable ability to learn the lessons gifted us by earlier greats and yet produce a flowing, beautifully realised river of imagery that is all his own. MIAF’s look at the various iterations of de Bruyn’s work continues with this special one-off live performance in which he will utilise three projectors to create an experience that blends a suite of moving image artwork drawn from his practice with an improvised sound track. Hosted by the VCA, this performance is FREE and will take place in VCA’s Founders Gallery at 234 St Kilda Rd just a few short minutes walk from ACMI.

Proceedings : 10th International Multimedia Modeling Conference : MMM 2004 : Brisbane, Australia, 5-7 January 2004

The International Multimedia Modelling conference series is an annual forum to discuss the efficient representation, processing, interaction, integration, communication, and retrieval of multimedia information.
In particular, the 10th International Multimedia Modelling Conference (MMM2004) concentrates on common modelling frameworks for integrating the diverse fields of visual, audio, video, and
virtual world information.
MMM2004 deals with emerging Multimedia Modelling topics including:
• Multimedia Databases
• Audio Processing, Coding and Encryption
• Network Games and Animation
• Video Applications
• Multimedia Frameworks and QoS
• Topological and 3D Geometric Modelling
• Image Applications
• Image Retrieval
• Modelling / Editing / Virtual Environment
• Video Retrieval and Browsing

Of personalities and personae: a French victory for film producers and authors

The international medium of film poses many challenges for authors and copyright owners. So do the practices of the advertising industry. Each jurisdiction approaches these challenges differently. In a recent French decision three issues that are of interest in Australia were discussed – the copyright status of a literary or dramatic character, the use of such a persona in character merchandising, and the moral right of film directors to control the exploitation of the persona. This article examines the 2004 decision of the Paris Court of Appeal in the matter of the film “The Fifth Element”. It compares the protection offered to author and copyright owner under French law with the protection offered by Australian legislation and common law.

Thaipusam in Malaysia : a Hindu festival misunderstood?

[No Abstract]

Study of an Australian rural music festival

A social and cultural study of the development of the Port Fairy Folk Festival within the context of the current revival of folk music in Australia. The folk music movement is a social and cultural phenomenon, as well as a musical event.

Film: Material

A historic program of 16mm films Regional and International that foreground the material of film itself as part of its subject. Curated by Dirk de Bruyn.

Modelling of vocational excellence: An international perspective

This paper provides an overview of the findings from a Finnish Ministry of Education sponsored project called ‘Modeling of Vocational Excellence’ (MoVE) and an Australian application and adaptation of this research: ‘MoVE Australia’. The Finnish MoVE research project was conducted by the Research Centre for Vocational Education at the University of Tampere explored WorldSkills as a site for the development of expertise and pursuit of excellence. It addressed questions about the abilities and attributes of competitors, and the social and environmental factors which influenced their skill development. The Australian project administered the Finnish MoVE survey to the Australian international WorldSkills team which will compete in London in October 2011 and introduced a second survey about competitor experience, designed to give voice to the young people involved in WorldSkills. This survey was administered to competitors, trainers and judges participating in the WSA National Competition held in Brisbane in May 2010, and later to employers and families. The Australian extension of the Finnish research has generated a rich source of experiential data, providing fresh insights into career choice and training. The findings of the research offer opportunities for reviewing elements of trade training and raise questions about the role of a competitive community of practice in quality skill formation and about the current level of research on this aspect of Australia VET practice.

Moving images effective teaching with film and television in management

This book will inspire academics, teachers and trainers to use film and television in their classrooms and to shows them how it might be done. It brings together respected international scholars who recount their experiences of how they have used moving images in their classrooms (defined widely to include distance-learning) with their explanations of why they chose this method of teaching and how they put their intentions into action. The book also illustrates how particular subjects might be taught using film and television as an inspiration to demonstrate the range of opportunities that these media offer. Finally, this book considers some of the practical issues in using film and television in the classroom such as copyright, technology, and the representation of reality and drama in films. This is a 'practical, how to' book that answers the questions of those people who have considered using film and television in their classroom but until now have shied away from doing so. The opportunity to see how others have used film effectively breaks down psychological barriers and makes it seem both realistic and worthwhile.

Seeing Sarah Bernhardt: performance and silent film

The most famous stage actress of the nineteenth century, Sarah Bernhardt enjoyed a surprising renaissance when the 1912 multi-reel film Queen Elizabeth brought her international acclaim. The triumph capped her already lengthy involvement with cinema while enabling the indefatigable actress to reinvent herself in an era of technological and generational change. Placing Bernhardt at the center of the industry's first two decades, Victoria Duckett challenges the perception of her as an anachronism unable to appreciate film's qualities. Instead, cinema's substitution of translated title cards for her melodic French deciphered Bernhardt for Anglo-American audiences. It also allowed the aging actress to appear in the kinds of longer dramas she could no longer physically sustain onstage. As Duckett shows, Bernhardt contributed far more than star quality. Her theatrical practice on film influenced how the young medium changed the visual and performing arts. Her promoting of experimentation, meanwhile, shaped the ways audiences looked at and understood early cinema.

Material damage: 4 projector film performance

Dirk de Bruyn’s expanded cinema performances engage the æsthetics of process at a number of levels. At the core of these performances are several of three- or four-screen, essentially abstract films of the same duration which comment upon and echo each other in a constant interplay of flicker-like positive and negative imagery. The soundtrack of the films works in a related way: the same or similar words and sound fragments are overlayed, or are repeated in an absurd call-and-answer pattern running from one speaker to another. This overall design or formal system is then set into play and relativised in the live event through a number of treatment-techniques. Reels are placed out of order or interspliced with other short films or fragments of found footage or tests, the bulb of one or more projectors can be occasionally turned off while the soundtrack continues, or the projector can be stopped altogether, extending, stretching out or disrupting completely the apparent synchrony between each screen and soundtrack. The light beam of each projector is filtered, distorted, split and multiplied using hand-held colour gels, plastic bottles, prisms and mirrors, or else silhouetted or blocked completely with the artist’s own hands and body. The projectors themselves can be inverted, turned around or physically transported across the space, mixing and overlaying the imagery, animating different areas of the performance environment and transforming the body of the audience itself into a screen medium.

A tissue of denials: film retrospective (1979-2016)

My abstract moving image making has provided a foundation for my practice since I first started processing and solarizing my own 16mm film in one of those LOMO Russian processing tanks in 1973. Feyers, Zoomfilm (1976) and Running (1976) rework some of those early strips of black and white film. Whenever funding dried up I always fell back on my abstract direct on film work. It was cheap. Like knitting, it gave me a space to process the dilemmas and incongruities of daily life and to escape its clutches. I also began to understand that these forces were still there, embedded implicitly in the work. Now, more than ever, I understand this as a survival response to corporate doublespeak. I would never throw anything away. New scratching, painting, taping or bleaching strategies could be added later. Intensive cluster editing of single frames became an obsession. The translated difference between what you saw over a light-box and what was projected drew me in. Like the migrant position I was allocated from childhood I survived in the space between these two territories. As well as an archive of images and movement I collect optical effects. The flash frame. The trail of afterimages resulting from flickering between positive and negative images. At their liveliest these images float above the screen. Now the digital allows me to amplify the material presence of 16m and 35mm film and a whole new world opens up before me. I cobble together found footage films from my own archive of discarded data and unfinished sentences.