Monthly Archives: May 2015

Australian Movies

AUSTRALIAN MOVIES (survival)

Leave a comment

Lantana

Directed by Ray Lawrence. With Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Kerry Armstrong.

Australia remains a British Colony and continues to celebrate British occupation anniversaries. There is a deep confusion about the British status in the country. Due to the convict past the police have been demonised and it is uncanny that many Australian movies show police as the villain and not the protector. The Survival motto of ‘every person for themselves’ creates fractured units, fear and frustration that is explored in Lantana

Barbara Hershey’s Character Valerie sums up the plot at her Book Launch;

“We don’t know what to feel anymore, we don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore, were confused, a cry of the modern age. We ask what can we believe in? Politicians? hardly,Our Priests?You’d be amazed at how many clients come to see me because they were once (cough from audience) .. Its not suppose to be that way. What then? Our parents? Is not home, a sanctuary? for the privledged few, its become a battle ground, Its not meant to be like that, but it is. Love? Can we believe in love?Feel safe in it, Loving someone means we have to relinquish power,its mutural surrender,but how can this take place, Trust? Trust! Is as vital to human relationships as breath is to air, and just as elusive.

The drama is based of a play ‘Speaking in tongues.’ by Andrew Bovell

The film won seven AACTA Awards including Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay.

———————————————————–

Deep Calm

Deep Calm 1988 directed by Phillip Noyce is the story of a husband and wife sailing through calm waters in an effort to recover from the death of their young son. It is quickly established that the film will deal with their trauma. The film escalates to a gothic horror with the arrival of the sinking ship Orpheus and its sole survivor Hughie.

IMG_3273 John (Sam Neill) and Rae (Nicole Kidman) are separated by Hughie (Billy Zane) and must work through their own quests in order to survive and be re-united. The gothic ship becomes a sinister character that challenges John Ingram, just as Hughie becomes the tormentor of Rae.

When John first goes on board the aptly named ship ‘Orpheus’, a hook flies out and nearly kills him, he is trapped on the broken vessel and must employ all of his nautical nous in order to survive. Rae must use her wits against a paranoid killer and navigate her vessel through the vast sea void.

This film explores many aspects of survival. The couple must survive as a unit against the emotional trauma of their lost son and individually against the forces that threaten to destroy them, psychologically and physically. It is a quest journey for both parties; they must survive, or die.

The movie employs the play of opposites; this technique increases the drama and the intensity of the story. The struggle is between good and bad, the rational and the irrational. The Ingram vessel, Saracen represents order and the rational whereas Hughie and his vessel are debauch and confused. The correct order of things has been upset as John is marooned on the wreck of Orpheus and Hughie is causing havoc on the pristine sailing boat.

Hughie is an intruder to the couple and the calm sea whereas John is validated in the surroundings and his marriage. It is the couple’s expertise in the sea and their genuine link that makes their quest triumphant.

Many Australian dramas explore the theme of a floundering intruder in the environment. The desert, like the sea, challenges the individual who strays into it. Landscape movies often challenge the notion of the ‘civilized’ white person and the ‘empty’ space. In their lost state, their boundaries are tested. ——————————————————-

Wake in Fright

IMG_1250

The failure of many Australian movies in our country has been linked to the fact that we do not like to see ourselves reflected back at us. Many of our actors have had to seek work overseas where more funds are available.

Wake in Fright is a local classic and has been released as a DVD, It still has an occasional screening at Movie Theatres, despite its age. When Wake in Fright was released in 1971, Australian audiences were appalled and the movie failed at the box office. The Cannes audience reaction however was that of awe.

The dark masterpiece was directed by Canadian born, Ted Kotcheff , it was the official Australian entry. The stark realism of the film takes the audience on a disturbing journey of moral decline in the Australian outback.

The realism of the movie is perpetuated through the use of locals rather than actors, no stunt men, dangerous driving, real two-up players and a documented kangaroo shoot. Australian audiences yelled out in the cinema,

“that’s not us.”

Kotcheff shot most of the outback sequences in Broken Hill where men outnumbered women 3 to 1 and the female suicide rate was 5 times the national average. The mateship culture that excluded women and bordered on homoerotic behaviour was present in Broken Hill just as it was portrayed at the Yabba.

An English born teacher, John Grant is lured into a journey to the heart of darkness. As in ‘Apocalypse Now’, the main character is corrupted and stripped of his dignity, as he travels deeper into the debauchery of his own soul. The brutality and larrikin nature of the characters destroys any notion of civilisation as they stumble precariously through a series of misadventures. The landscape, like the characters, is corrosive as the Director soaks each scene in hot colours reminiscent of rust. Sweat and dust texture each scene making the viewer feel hot and thirsty as the characters pour down endless quantities of beer. A feeling of claustrophobia and desperation resonates through out the movie as the landscape traps-in the men of Yabba. Beer is handed from bloke to bloke as a bridging ritual that bonds the man to the group.

Of the three women in the movie, the directors first wife Sylvia Kay is the main female character. Her role is at the fringe of the male cult.The mines of the outback remain a breeding ground for the supremacy of mateship.

The director Ted Kotcheff has made a series of successful movies including First Blood (also known as Rambo: First Blood), Orion, 1982 and Fun with Dick and Jane, Columbia, 1977. The director read the book written by Kenneth Cook (published 1961) and came to Australia to meet the locals. He was confounded by the Australian fight ritual between men and saw it as a desperate need to be touched. “All the little devils are proud of hell”, claims Doc.

The rough culture of this outback movie is able to breed unfettered by law or women. It is a place where sophistication and decency are wrung out in a wash of beer. Aussie audiences hated it. When Bill Collins showed it on Australian TV, he spruiked its merits but relented that he was expecting a lot of hate mail. The film has been released twice at the Cannes movie festival, which is a rare privilege and done only one other time in its history. The movie ran hot in France and stayed in theatres for up to 10 months even though it was in subtitles. According to the director, Martin Scorsese was a big fan.

What is it that the Australian audiences hate about this movie? Is it the actual deaths of kangaroos, the exclusion of women, the glorification of alcoholism, police corruption or the male rape? The French loved it but it’s not about them, it’s about us. The camera takes a deep and penetrating gaze into a bottomless pit of our nature and not a nonchalant glance. The characters in the movie are not Aussie caricatures but rather a raw portrayal of men behaving badly, the two up players are genuine players, real locals line the pubs, real shooters kill animals and the endless wasteland is also a member of the cast.

Wake in Fright was the last movie of Chips Rafferty and the first movie of Jack Thompson. Donald Pleasence’s portrayal of Doc is spellbinding in its sinister mischief-making. It’s been over 40 years since the movie was first released and it has stood the test of time. The movie remains relevant and continues to pickle our notions of ourselves.

Australian Culture

The contemporary Australian family

Leave a comment

Demographic information allows us to predict future trends so that town development, infrastructure and social needs are available for the next generation. It is also a fascinating peep behind the closed doors of our neighbourhood. Some of the results are surprising, for instance, if both of your parents are from an Anglo Australian background you are 80% more likely to marry into a different ethnic group.

imageAuthors of the text, Family Formation in 21st Century Australia, discuss changes that are taking place within the family format. They a Demographers and Sociologists attempting to interpret this complicated data through statistics. Ten Social Scientists explore separate themes and patterns that emerge from their research. The Editor Dr. Genevieve Heard and three of the authors Dr. Lindon Walker, Dr. Deb Demsey and Dr Kim Johnson talk to a small gathering of colleagues.

“This book tells the story of both continuity and change, it shows that Australians exercise considerable freedom of choice when it comes to forging pathways into creating families, but also that the tradition remains popular” Dr Heard claimed.

The traditional family has remained resilient in the first decade of the 21 Century, divorce rates have declined and many of these families are showing increased stability. Couples are more willing to marry than those of the previous Decade, however there are also the proliferations of new family styles. There is a rise in couples living together without formalising it through marriage. Latch relationships are also becoming more visible in the community; these are couples that live in separate households. These new types of families are co-existing with the traditional style however they are not replacing them. This mix within the community can offer a greater diversity.

IMG_1314

Dr Walkers field of study is inter-ethnic partnering, a study that continues to interest him as it crosses over multiple aspects that include religion, race and educational levels. The study required customised data and narrowing the field of research, as there are many difficulties, such as when are you considered Australian? Despite these complications some of the results are insightful and show that the longer an ethnic group resides in Australia the more likely they are to marry out of their community, as is the case with Italians and Greeks.

Europe 585

Indians and Iranians tend to marry within their own community but future generations may change this trend. Some cross partnering is one sided, such as Asian women and Australian men, the reverse is less popular. The majority of children that are born from two Australian parents will marry into another ethnic group.

Dr Demsey changes the theme as she discusses same-sex families; this group has been forced to win family rights and recognition through activism, firstly for marriage rights and then for children. Demanding access to fertility clinics has been marred by political intervention such as when former Prime Minister Mr Howard defined the family as being made up of a male and a female parent.

“Every Australian child has the right to a mother and a father” former Prime Minister John Howard claimed.

Dr Demsey explains that a lot has changed since 2001 as lesbians have won the right to use sperm banks (male couples often choose surrogacy). Amendments to laws have also enabled single sex couples to live together with legal protection over property issues.

Many same sex couples have to endure aggressive attitudes within the community that puts them under pressure and destabilises the couple. They might be less likely to endure. Friendships often provide the care and support often found in family life. Nuclear family’s are not the norm and couples often live in separate households that they share with housemates. Marriage type relationships that provide monogamy appeal more to younger Gays and less so, to mature couples.

Dr Demsey draws information from studies and surveys conducted by universities. Same sex couple numbers have been increasing however it is uncertain if it is becoming more popular or that people are more comfortable in declaring it. Children that live with male couples are 5%, whereas 20% of women couples have residential children. Ironically most homosexual couples have heterosexual children.

Dr Kim Johnson’s interest was in the family studies of our Aboriginal community. Couple relationships are more common with younger adults. Within these unions, more urban Aboriginals and those with higher educations will partner outside of their community whereas rural couples and those with less education will choose an Aboriginal partner.

IMG_6723

Aboriginal Australians have a higher fertility rate than non-Aboriginals, however it is comparable with other world communities such as what was common during the 1950’s baby boom. The most definitive distinction is that the women are more likely to start their families at a younger age, 40% are under 25. Younger parenting means that the parent is likely to be more energetic and have the support of younger grandparents that will also pass on cultural knowledge. The negative aspect of young parenting is that they might have less access to further education, employment and wealth.

The family network ideally provides a place for people to feel safe and loved, this is even more important when young children are brought into these relationships. The new family is born from a society that is re-inventing itself and exploring alternative options. It is interesting to look at the changes within ones own family, such as having children at a later age, as this is a modern invention.

Community

Mick Doleman; Survivor & Protector

Leave a comment

Men United to protect women

 IMG_1237One woman is murdered, every week in Australia by her spouse. It’s an alarming statistic. The White Ribbon campaign is designed to inform the nation of this serious dilemma. This is a national, male led campaign to end violence against women. Globally, White Ribbon is active in more than sixty countries.

White Ribbon Ambassadors advocate themselves to protect women. They come from all walks of life and include former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Within our community men are adding their names to the growing list.

Mick Doleman, Deputy National Secretary of the Maritime Unions, for 43 years, spoke to Melbourne Press in regard to his commitment to this cause.

Mike attributes his moral compass to the early influences of his life. He came from a strong family. At 15, he became a sailor and mixed with a breed of men that he deeply respected. He emulated himself on these early role models. The men were smart in worldly affairs and possessed a great respect for women, aboriginals and other nationalities. They spoke up against racism.

In 1978, Mike was aboard the Blythe Star when it sank, off the east coast of Tasmania. He was 18 years old and spent 11 days with ten men, on a life boat where three died before they were rescued.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” he claims.

In 1984 he became the Assistant Branch Secretary of the Seamen’s Union of Australia. He was the first person in the Maritime Industry to establish a sexual harassment policy. He has been honored as the White Ribbon Ambassador of the year, for two years.

“Government’s have to put massive resources in place and police need to be trained in how to deal with domestic issues” Mr Doleman states.

Many children are traumatized by domestic violence. By recognizing the seriousness of abusive relationships, lives can be saved through intervention. Through the White Ribbon campaign, men have become united to protect women.

(Artwork ; The Great Leviathon  TJ B-Webb )