From the View Finder

A series of four films by filmmakers dedicated to working with the medium of analogue film. Each filmmaker is a past or present member of non-for-profit artist collective Artist Film Workshop, an analogue film lab based in Brunswick East that provides access to analogue knowledge and resources for filmmakers and artists.

The tactile medium of film holds a unique ability to preserve, capture, and create moments in moving images across time and space. Through this medium a collective convergence of ideas emerges between the four films. They examine our relationships with local and distant landscapes, and consider how these environments intertwine with notions of identity, family and community.

Whether it’s creating a visual record of a family member, a gothic reimagining of a colonial expedition, the destruction of a once-vibrant communal garden, or unearthing forgotten lineages from immigrant family histories; these films highlight the ability of artist cinema to bridge timelines, and breathe new life into personal narratives.

Joanna (2022)
Julia McInerney

Julia McInerney, Joanna (2022), 16mm film, 10 minutes 20 seconds, courtesy the artist.

The film Joanna is a portrait of my mother. Shot on 16mm black and white film, I gleaned fragments of Joanna over the course of a single day, capturing the feminine jouissance I perceived in her creative acts and ordinary pleasures, both inside and outside the home. Inspired by the psychoanalytic technique of scansion or ‘cutting’, I then cut and wove these fragments together into a temporal sequence, a chain of free associations. Reparative in nature, this work maps a process of loss and retrieval, born from the desire to perceive another, to bring them into view.

The Gardens (2022)
Giles Fielke & Paddy Hay

Giles Fielke and Paddy Hay, The Gardens
(2022), 16mm transferred to digital video, 7 mins. Courtesy the artist.
Acknowledgements: with Ingrid Palmer, Greg Spark, Lyndale Cooper.

The Collingwood Community Garden allotments have been tended by residents living in the area for over four decades on a ¾ acre block of Crown Land Reserve along the Birrarung (Yarra) River in Naarm/Melbourne (Australia), and adjacent to the Collingwood Children’s Farm. In May 2021 the gardens were abruptly closed, citing safety concerns. In February 2022 the gardens were cleared for redevelopment by the Committee of Management of the Collingwood Children’s Farm.

The Hidden Eye (2023)
Lucy Helen Kostos

Lucy Helen Kostos, The Hidden Eye (2023), Expired 16mm, 22min. Courtesy the artist.

The Hidden Eye is an essay film about Lucy’s great aunt, Katina, who was a memorable figure for her and someone she identified with. Katina immigrated to Australia as an infant, and kept close ties with the Ithacan community in Melbourne (Naarm). Katina never married, nor had any children, so Lucy returned to her birthplace in Ithaca, Greece, in the hope of finding a new narrative. The process of this film enables Lucy to reflect on her own life, as a woman of Greek heritage, whilst also trying to understand the complexity of family dynamics.

Hume’s Disappointment (2016)

Matthew Berka

Matthew Berka, Hume’s Disappointment (2016), Super 8mm shown as video, black & white, colour, sound, 11:02 min. Courtesy the artist. Acknowledgements: This film was recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, the traditional owners of the land.

The story of my father’s disappearance at Mt. Disappointment (60 km north of Melbourne) fuses with a reimagining of Hume and Hovell’s expedition to ‘first’ encounter northern Victoria in 1824. The film forms a new fictional hauntology in which past, present and future collapse through various forms of re-photography and the re-alignment of ‘found’ fragments from the tails of gothic Australian cinema.