SENSES OF CINEMA – REVIEW
Image: SENSES OF CINEMA, Margot Nash Susan Lambert, Megan McMurchy editing For Love or Money (still: Sandy Edwards)
By MARTIN FABINYI
The Sydney Filmmakers Co-Op brought together pioneers of experimental film in Australia, with filmmakers such as Albie Thoms, Aggie Read, Martha Ansara and Susan Lambert. It also became the stepping stone for important international directors Gillian Armstrong, Philip Noyce, Peter Weir and Jan Chapman among others.
Now two of the filmmakers who were part of the fabric of the Co-Op, John Hughes and Tom Zubrycki. have directed and produced the story of the beginning, the highlights and the eventual failures of both the Melbourne and Sydney Film Co-Ops in their illuminating documentary, Senses Of Cinema.
This film is an important document when charting the course of experimental film in Australia. It begins in 1971 with Ubu Films, the collective established by Albie Thoms and Aggie Read, and the screenings that were held at the Third World bookshop in Goulburn Street.
Similarly, in Melbourne the Co-Op established itself in Spring Street in the inner-city in 1972 and was active during the heady days of the Pram Factory and La Mama theatre groups.
It’s in Sydney where I joined the Filmmakers Co-Op, entranced by the films of (sadly, the late) Albie Thoms, and so many others such Tom Cowan, Stephen Wallace and Richard Brennan.
The mid to late 70s created a springboard for fellow creatives, many of them veterans of Martin Sharp’s Yellow House and his enduring legacy. Senses Of Cinema is very much a movie about the emerging women filmmaker’s movement with incisive interviews and film excerpts from Robin Laurie, Pat Fiske, and Margot Nash among many others.
Senses Of Cinema brings the viewer through the bombs falling on Vietnam, Sydney darkened by corruption on all levels, and the violent early Gay Mardi Gras protests, and delivers a celebration of that period and how the creative flow continues. Although both Co-Ops met their demise through squabbles between the various factions, and eventually a lack of funding, this film is a guide to why, at the time, to watch exciting Australian films the filmmakers co-ops were the only show in town.
★★★★★
