CHARLES PURCELL

‘Their films try to generate not just respect for nature, but something else. This is a kind of going down on one knee before an ineffable force’ SEAN MAYNARD.

A board upon which the Cantrill’s projected their film Blast (1971).

Last year the work of phenomenal husband and wife team Arthur and Corinne Cantrill was celebrated through a 50 year retrospective, Grain of the Voice, held at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Having made more than 150 films to date, it celebrated one of the most impressive bodies of contemporary avant-garde cinema in the world. Their road to becoming the most active and prolific avant-garde filmmakers in Australia began in the 1960s and since then Corinne Cantrill says that they have overcome the challenges of making nothing but financial disasters through ‘living very simply’.

Their contribution to the Australian cinematic landscape, however, doesn’t stop at their films. For 29 years from 1971 to 2000 the couple provided indispensable documentation through the publication of quarterly magazine Cantrill’s Filmnotes, aiming to document work at the fringes of film culture that had largely been ignored by the mainstream.

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December 2009

Image by Larry Roibal.

Since coming to power in March 2004, Spain’s current Prime Minster José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE) have made numerous legislative changes that drastically oppose the approaches of previous Spanish governments. The government has acted with particular urgency in passing laws that promote gender equality and gay rights, amongst them acts on gender violence[1], effective equality between men and women[2] and gay marriage[3] (Santaemilia 2008, p. 182). All of these laws are indicative of the ‘emphasis on social reform’ (Hooper 2006, p. 2) that has been at the forefront of the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party since their induction, and have proven that Zapatero’s successes during his term as Prime Minister have come largely in the dramatic social reforms that have not only modernised Spain but transformed it into an international leader (Abend & Pingree 2008, para. 3). Although we can recognise that the Zapatero government has successfully emphasised drastic social reform, to establish whether the Zapatero government is making Spain ‘modern’ or ‘radical’ requires firstly an outline of what these inherently subjective adjectives mean, and secondly, something to compare these reforms against.

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(EXCERPT)

She has been staring at the balls in Rebel Sport for thirteen minutes and her forehead is glistening, thick with sweat. It is January, humid, and the air conditioning must be broken. She scans the wall, left to right. Each ball is still in the same spot, each on its own small plastic shelf; nothing has changed and her eyes are losing focus. Her mind rolls away. It drifts further and further from her and after a brief moment of complete emptiness she is imagining her funeral, a pastime usually reserved for bus trips.

She believes in God—God with the lot—and therefore believes to hold the right of watching her funeral perched atop her coffin, like an excitable infant on a swing. What would he say, she thinks, if he delivered her eulogy, standing there broken amongst the wattle? He opens his mouth but the words don’t form and everyone’s hearts pour towards him because they know now that he is completely alone. He grips the edge of the pulpit, white-knuckled and sweating. He’ll keep it simple, she thinks—an anecdote on love—and then everyone will think What A Remarkable Mother. She hopes she’ll be able to hear it. Not just hear it, but have the capacity to register each word’s meaning, each subtle nuance, and later, to be able to reflect. Might just stop at dirt and worms, she thinks, or maybe I’ll be a ghost in the abstract sense: more ubiquitous, illiterate.

‘Need a hand?’

Her heart punches a triplet of semiquavers into her ribcage and she looks to her left. She sees a pimply teenager, an employee, his nametag is blank. She does, of course, need a hand, and this boy, she thinks, might just know. But she loathes the questions. How old? What’s he into? What sports does he like? What school?

‘No,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’

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(EXCERPT)

EXT. PADDOCK. DUSK

The sun is setting behind the mountains, brilliant pinks and oranges cast across the sky. Across it flies a single black bird.

EXT. PADDOCK. NIGHT

The brothers are lying side by side on swags, lit only by the dim light of a dying fire. They stare up at the stars. Oli points to the sky.

OLI: Plane or satellite?

JOE: Satellite.

OLI: How can you tell?

Joe doesn’t respond.

OLI: What if satellites were attached to strings?

JOE: Like kites?

OLI: Yeah. And each country had their own.

JOE: That’s a lot of string.

OLI: And a lot of satellites.

Oli thinks.

OLI: A hundred and ninety three. Not including continental shelves.

Joe laughs.

OLI: But then the planes would have to zig-zag around the strings and I don’t think they’re very good at zig-zagging. And they’d probably get tangled if the wind blew them funny.

JOE: Disaster.

OLI: But if you were holding Iraq’s satellite and I was holding one here, and then ours got tangled, we’d be able to have a tug-of-war.

JOE: Shhh.

Oli rolls on his side and looks at Joe. He pauses.

OLI: Hey Joe.

JOE: Mm?

OLI: (pause) Did you kill anyone?

Joe stares straight up, says nothing.

Oli hesitates, and shuffles closer to his brother. He puts his arm around him and rests his head on Joe’s chest.

Joe’s eyes close.

Image by William Lamson

(EXCERPT)

The doors of the rickety lift open but before stepping out, I take a moment and breathe. I’m a university student about to meet and interview Noel Tovey: man whose tumultuous life has spanned almost eighty years; a man born in the slums of Carlton who not only survived a slew of horror stories to tell the tale, but survived to become one of Australia’s most sought after theatrical exports and a key voice of contemporary Indigenous Australia.

An otherworldly cacophony blares from somewhere down the hallway of the art deco Potts Point apartment block and as I edge closer, I see it’s coming from apartment 507. Through the door I glimpse Noel. He turns, flicks off the stereo and smiles ear to ear.

‘Hello darling,’ he says, ‘take a seat,’ and with a flourish of his hand the butterflies in my stomach dissipate.

One wall of Tovey’s spacious apartment is taken up by two large Aboriginal paintings. A small Magritte hangs on another, and scattered throughout are delicate ceramics and an ornate African sculpture—flaggings, I assume, of the varied and numbered forces that have shaped the Noel Tovey of today.

‘People look around, they come to this flat and they say Oh you’re lucky,’ says Tovey. ‘I’m called a flash black or whatever, but they forget it took many years of hard work to have what I have.’

He speaks with an unwavering eloquence; it’s a sinuous voice that, although flamboyant, never loses authority over its subject matter. His body language is a paradox: both proud and grounded, his irreverence sharply undermined by a tight sense of control. It’s a delicate balance that not many pull off, an apt reflection, perhaps, of both the hardships and successes of his life.

Image by W H Chong

(EXCERPT)

We were never real farmers. That’s just the bullshit myth of my childhood. An easy abbreviation, I guess. Real farmers talked about foaling and wheat yields and barbed wire sales. They had bowed legs and blood shot eyes, rough skin and burn-flecked foreheads. Their Sunday roasts were actually on Sundays and they drove around town in muddy four-wheel drives. Farmers glided down the main street in nuclear family units like they were on parade: men and boys in crisp shirts and polished boots, women and girls in pearls and polos. By the time they were fifteen their sons had shoulders built like bulldozer blades. They played rugby league, fuelled by testosterone that knocked about in their bodies like they were pinball machines. At Blue Light Discos they drank bourbon and coke from cans and crushed the aluminium with their fists. They drank it until it seeped through their foreheads in a thick glaze and they shone like beacons in the strobe lights. In front of parents they smiled like sweaty, charming princes, but whenever alone they shouted and thumped each other. Around them orbited their sisters, who rode horses and spoke with good grammar and slid through puberty quietly, eventually emerging with breasts and eyelashes and beguiling glances. Farmers’ kids lost their virginity at sixteen in the back of pig hunting utes at the races while fifty metres away their mothers drank VB and swapped tuna bake recipes. I wasn’t a farming kid. I lost my virginity in a cinema a week after my eighteenth birthday. It was clumsy, and laboured, but I felt it was about time.

We weren’t real farmers, but we were never real townies either. We hid somewhere in the middle, where flies buzzed louder and dilapidation was good enough. It was the literal edge of town—in front of our house there were more houses, but over the back fence there was nothing. Tall dead grass and a few scattered gums were all that stood between Dad’s tool shed and the horizon.

Image by Mike Seyfang