A collision of Jungian synchronicity; I was studying Jung and Improv with Steve Roe at Hoopla, re-reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and re-watching each of Josephine Decker’s unnerving and amazing films. The recurring theme was of the Jungian shadow and the shadow artist. There’s more to say on archetypes, too, but my brain and this little video didn’t have the space. Includes clips from: Butter on the Latch (2013), Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014), and Madeline’s Madeline (2018), Shirley (2020). Edited by Peter Walsh.
Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale (2018) was marked by controversy in the press but the film is only as violent as the history it tells. Framing faces, Kent confronts the viewer with a powerful and philosophical contemplation of responsibility and culpability in the face of humanity. This is my first “desktop documentary”.
I consider Warwick Thornton one of Australia’s finest working filmmakers. His film, Sweet Country (2017), broke my heart with its truth. A beautiful piece of filmmaking, with such rich writing, I was compelled to make my first video essay, with help from video editor, Jonathan Bygraves.
Dr Peter Walsh is the finest human I know. Together, under the thematic guidance and critical enquiry enabled by Dutch superstars Dana Linssen and Jan Pieter Ekker, we created an hour-long edit of long lost cinema, history, and hyperbole. The Mythory of the Kelly Gang (2019) is our creative, critical collaboration on one of Australia’s and silent cinema’s most notorious figures/films.
As part a season of films programmed at my place of work, Watershed in Bristol, I dressed as a potato and gave an hour’s talk on the work of Nouvelle Vague filmmaker, Agnès Varda. Mostly me talking and gesticulating within the confines of a spud, but also includes clips from some of Varda’s many wonderful films. Video commissioned by Curzon, filmed by Watershed. Potato courtesy of 20th Century Flicks.
