Paris Will Survive

Paris Will Survive, looks at the Ozploitation film, The Cars that Ate Paris, and my memories of peaking through floorboards, roadkill, rust in cuts and homesickness that the film conjures up - I hope this show reminds my mother of our farm.

A year ago, I made it a small goal of mine to watch every single Australian film between 1971 and 1984 that I could find listed online. Aside from the percentage of absolute bollocks that I was inattentive to, I landed on Peter Weir’s 1974 film, The Cars that Ate Paris, and was instantly reminded of our family farm in Queensland. It reminds me of the peach farmer on our neighbouring property, John. The prick smells like motor oil and has seven of his former Kelpies buried up his driveway, each grave marked with the name Rusty I-VII. The film sees the rural Australian town of Paris, whose inhabitants cause the fatal road accidents of outsiders before picking apart and bartering over the wreckages like maggots on a carcass in front of a quaint country backdrop. Paris offers reminders of lath and plaster walls, rusting metal, small town attitudes and absurdities that I really loved about our property. I want to make work about that memory. The movie inspires a response to a secular world of co-dependency between man, machine, and what is a deteriorating national identity, through the fetishisation of big rigs orgiastic violence, and proletariat attitudes.