“I have reason to believe that the doctrines of our ‘Reflections on Violence’ are ripening in the shade. The sycophants of democracy would surely not so frequently declare them perverse if they were powerless”- Georges Sorel

“Todtnauberg, Arnica, eyebright, the draft from the well with the starred die above it, in the hut, the line, - whose name did the book register before mine? - the line inscribed in that book about a hope, today, of a thinking man’s coming word in the heart, woodland sward, unleveled, orchid and orchid, single, course stuff, later, clear in passing, he who drives us, the man, who listens in, the half-trodden wretched tracks through the high moors, dampness, much ”- Paul Celan

Someone punched me in the head this evening. I want to thank this unnamed individual for performing a necessary service; breaking writers block. Subsequently, I have been jolted into thinking about violence again and thinking about the Australian film industry. I’m telling you this wee anecdote because our theme at the 5th Melbourne Underground Film Festival is Violence and I was stuck for a way to begin my yearly harangue against the industry and this wicked, wicked world. Which as Lear might say we are bound too as if upon a wheel of fire that our own tears do scald us like molten lead.

Part A. Our Theme of Violence

MUFF V is for Violence. Why Violence? Violence has been in my life since I was young. I am now a big fellow who can defend himself, but when I was six going to school in Lower Templestowe , at Templestowe Heights primary school, the other boys older than me, took me as one amongst the many they planned to hunt and terrorize. On the way home from school and at school, etc. I would find long and difficult paths home to try and avoid the violence of these bullies. Most 9 or 10-year-old boys know these paths and can lay in wait for you, to beat you up, not too bad, but bad enough for a 6 or 7 year old kid to alter their ‘weltanschauung’ considerably. Then there was the violence at home. I was fortunate enough not to have had parents who hit me but they fought each other enough, having arguments and fights and the like, that I tried to get in the middle of. A boy of 5 or 6 trying to stop people in their mid thirties going at it, didn’t have much of an effect. I read Jung, Hillman, Von Franz and Alice Miller later in life after my Professor at La Trobe University, Robert Farrell said you did not have to be hit yourself to be abused, there are other forms of abuse. All this made me realise that this violence I had witnessed had affected me, and not always in a way that made me hate violence. Violence in a sense was Power in its most naked form, something that could cause fear, certainly, but also awe and a weird kind of respect for its power.

Then I hit Ivanhoe Grammar School and another level of Violence awaited. Here it was part of the curriculum and made respectable in the violence of conformity, uniforms, privilege, stupidity, tradition and snobbery. Of course the old violence of bullying was still around and I had a few bullies who attempted to torment me. I befriended another bully, out of respect for the level of mental sadistic violence he employed. I studied his torture techniques from a purely scientific and psychological perspective of course. I’m not trying to pick on bullies here either, by the way, as they often came from homes where abuse was serious like people being beaten and punched up for nothing. They were only passing on the legacy of violence, sharing it around. I tell you all this because though my interests in Violence have many sources, these early tributaries are significant to my choice of theme this year, and why hide it?

I became interested in history and culture around 12 in a more serious way and studied all the great epochs and the leaders who shaped them. I realized Violence was not just in the home, local streets and playground, but everywhere. It was alive like a living beast roaming the planet for all recorded time. There was also the violence of the end of the world, in the 70’s & 80’s, as a child, one would lay awake at night and feel the terrible fantasy/potential reality of the whole of humanity coming to an end. The awe and power of such destruction was intense. In deed the fantasy of the end of the world was played out it in many of my early favourite films, some of which are playing at this years MUFF.

My grandmother Thelma, used to take me to the movies from about six (I now return the favour and take her to the cinema, as she’s 92). She took me to “The Poseidon Adventure”, “The Towering Inferno”, “Soylent Green”, “The Incredible Melting Man” (playing this year), “The Illustrated Man”, “The Omega Man”, “The Andromeda Strain”, “Capricorn One”, “Kingdom of the Spiders” and “Starship Invasions”, plus many other classic seventies flicks I love to this day. This got me used to the second kind of violence in the world. Cinematic Violence. The safe violence. The healing violence. The fun violence.

Yes, here was the violence I liked. I hated real life violence. Not from any moral perspective (being a Nietzschean before read-ing Nietzsche) but from a kind of conception of manners and etiquette. Real life violence is the ultimate in bad manners. It is rude. The more violent it gets the more it breaks the unwritten conception of polite behavior. Of course, now you see people all over the world, to this very day committing the ultimate in impoliteness, taking the life of other human beings. But somehow this impoliteness seemed OK on screen. You could see murder after murder, bashing after bashing on silver or video screen and feel good. Indeed one’s own murderous or violent desires could be cathartically released through violent cinema. My own film making interests began around the time of the cinematic violence boom in home video and mimicked them early on. The stylized, cold violence of the slasher film was big too, “Halloween”, “The Prowler” (playing in this years MUFF), “The Toolbox Murders” (ditto), “Driller Killer”, “Prom Night” and many others were de rigueur.

This led as a late teenager to an interest in more sophisticated violence flicks like “A Clockwork Orange”, “I Spit on Your Grave”, “Mothers Day”, “Maniac” (we have a real coup this year with Bill Lustig the director here for this years festival and jury), “Dawn of the Dead” (the original and the other Romero’s) and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. Here the essence of violence was being captured ontologically on film and served up raw to an audience to cathartically release the massive potential for violence in the human animal and to question/examine the phenomenon itself.

It is in this spirit that we bring you this year’s festival, in a desire to examine the being of violence in cinema and create this cathartic release. The impoliteness of violence is being expressed in all its ugliness through war, both overtly overseas and locally in the underworld. At MUFF V we celebrate the most neglected, daring and important revolution in the past 30 years of cinema. The Art of the Violent film. The Cinema of Cruelty.

Part B. Highlights and tributes for MUFF V

We have many highlights in this years festival, like the coup of two international guests; Bruce LaBruce and William Lustig. Bruce is here with “The Raspberry Reich” on our Gala Opening Night; William Lustig is here heading up the jury and our MUFF VIOLENCE theme with three films, including the perennial classic “Maniac” and a bevy of Blue Underground classic films from the US. All this section is put together by Michael “Helmsy” Helms of the 90’s zine “Fatal Visions” infamy. Expect a selection of Manson films all examining the cinematic legacy of Charles Manson and his Family; A brilliant collection of rarely seen works in our “What is Violence?” section and the violence of the end of the world – “Apocalypse” section. Another must see in the festival is Bill Mousoulis’ collected “Melbourne Independent Filmmakers” section showcasing some of the best ‘text book’ definition under-ground film work from our humble city. The work presented here is important, well worth researching and checking out! Of course all the old standards are back like Sexy MUFF, NEU MUFF (the competition section), Mini MUFF, Anti-K (formerly Street MUFF) and Beck Sutherland’s excellent doco section The Now Dictates featuring some great gear from Disinformation head honcho Richard Metzger and a magic film on the radical MOVE group. Mini MUFF I should mention some more, as it has some great shorts including “Escape from the Planet of the Tapes” about Andrew Leovold, “Scab a Smoke” by Jason Turley and “The Lizardman” by Danny Yagil to name just a few. You will be surprised at the standard of our shorts selection; it rivals other local festivals in its scope and originality of material. Another major Highlight in ’04 is the first MUFF KUNST (see lift out in the centre of our catalogue), put together by talented young artist and go-getter Kristen Condon, the new art wing of our festival. You will see another component in our festival next time, as we expand and grow MUFF into an alternative ‘event’ festival, par excellence. I would also like to thank Peter Clarke, Clifford Qwah, David Butcher, Michael Brereton, Ant Hampel and David Parker in this statement.

We sadly lost one of our own this year in Bill Marshall, whom we dedicate this year’s festival to. Bill helped start this festival when Rebecca and I first decided to do it, with the all-important early sponsorship monies. He was our constant ‘consigliere’ and legal eagle early on with Anna Reeves. He will be greatly missed, but will live on in all those who touched his old school film energy. Bill, we will be having a glass of red for you Opening Night

Part C: The Call to Being of the Second Australian Film Renaissance

I opened this director’s statement with a poem from Paul Celan about Heidegger’s mountain retreat, Todtnauberg. I had the good fortune to visit Todtnauberg and Messkirch (Heidegger’s birth and burial place) in Southern Germany in Feb ‘04 and reflect upon the legacy of this great thinker. The importance to seize the opportunities of this factical life in the now and make the most of the potentiality and openness of Dasein was the message I found in the Black Forest. These pilgrimages deeply moved me and have guided me through this year’s festival as I have discovered more about Heidegger’s complex thought. Seeing the ground from which Heidegger had literally been thrown and returned to, made me realize something about the Australian film industry that I simply have to share with you.

When Adam Elliot won best Animated Short at the Oscars all Australians thought “well good on him” on some level. But no one mentioned a second thought that occurred to me, that a cousin of ours, just a short trip across the sea, known as Peter Jackson (whose retro we featured in MUFF 2) simply cleaned the slate, turning the Oscars into the New Zealand film awards. Now good on Adam for his success, but where is our Peter Jackson? I interviewed Peter in 1990 for Beat Magazine when the old Valhalla brought him out, finding him charming and very much from the same self taught school of filmmakers as much local talent featured in MUFF over the years. He had made “Bad Taste”, and “Meet the Feebles” was either shot or about to be shot. He told me of the support his ideas and film projects had received from funding bodies and government agencies in New Zealand (to my shock and awe) and how they took a different attitude to Peter’s talent. Peter’s unusual talent was fostered by a few in the New Zealand Government Film Agencies. Whoever helped Mr. Jackson back then can walk around knowing certainly that they contributed to his victory at this years Academy Awards and changed the New Zealand Film industry permanently for the better.

I mention this to put forward my own thesis that a generation of Australian filmmakers of similarly unique and daring talent have been betrayed and ignored by Australian funding bodies and institutions. Yes, a generation of filmmakers Betrayed! I’m not saying this to be a smart-ass or piss people off, as I know it will, but fuck it if we couldn’t have a much more vibrant and healthy industry than we do now, if a few people just spoke the truth. Who knows maybe one or two of these filmmakers could do for the Australian industry what Peter Jackson did for New Zealand. Who are these filmmakers I am speaking of? Well, personally I would include Jon Hewitt, Scott Ryan, Mark Savage, Phillip Brophy, Anna Brownfield, Shannon Young, Matty George, Mark Bakaitis, Bill Mousoulis, Paul Moder, Patrick Hughes, Andrew Leavold and yes, Richard David Wolstencroft; plus others we have shown at MUFF or are yet to discover. Indeed, to do right by this generation is one of the modus operandi of our festival.

Now this betrayal as I call it, by funding bodies not interested in genre (particularly horror and science fiction), violence in movies, sexuality, B-Movies, avant-garde art films, exploitation films, queer cinema and many other vicissitudes in between, has been manifest to all who approached them with these kind of projects in the past 15 years. Australians have the potential to create films of great beauty, power and popularity in all these styles and types of filmmaking. I dare say we can do them better than anywhere else in the world, due in part to our earthy nature and essence.

I mentioned a betrayal, but I mention it from Heidegger’s conception of potentiality because the betrayal is not complete, nor finished. It could be turned around or reversed. The Australian Film Renaissance of the 1970’s, that Bill Marshall helped begin with many others like Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, Phillip Noyce, Tim Burstall and Richard Franklin could happen again. I’m talking about restructuring funding bodies, funding bodies acting like producers and setting up a new independent feature fund every two years, to fund these rebel filmmakers.

I envisage film-funding bodies that hunt talent and don’t expect them to come begging cap in hand. Respect the fucking talent. If all the filmmakers above listed where called in and asked what they wanted to do next, and half or a quarter million a piece set aside for their next films, and this repeated every two years, in six years, I personally guarantee we would have a bigger film industry. Forget moaning about tax subsidies and a free trade agreement to help bolster the industry, the film world is aggressive, product driven and a buyer’s market. Let’s make the Australian film scene ‘hot’ again with an exciting bevy of new films and projects. If you have the talent, then you have the productions, the money, and the industry. And we have the talent! The whole world has known it and generally steals it, as it has never been allowed to grow in Australia, as it should have. If this years MUFF is to say anything, it is to say we have this directorial and other creative talent in Australia and showcase some of it. If only these funding bodies could simply pour a little cash over these overripe seeds in 6 to 10 years it could be an Australian sweeping the Academy Awards and changing the landscape and energy of our industry forever. The only cost is that one or two big flops less be made in the Australian film industry for this cinematic revolution to happen. What are the Australian feature film flops I’m talking about? You know what films… I don’t like to be too rude.

A new guerrilla/underground/independent or low budget film fund for features (shorts are not saleable, lets admit it) could and should be set up. Then administered by a board of the same filmmakers making the films, old school seventies filmmakers, with distributors and exhibitors keen to help grow this new film revolution and putting up some of the cash. A filmmaker has two good ideas? Shoot them both back to back at $250,000 or $125,000 a piece using same ensemble cast and crew. Someone like Bill Mousoulis or Scott Ryan could make 3 or 4 features for quarter a million cold, as could many others. We would expose much new talent and produce 20-40 new features in 2 years. We don’t expect this to be a charity either, these films will make money especially some of the more genre orientated of them, even some of the more avant-garde of them could ‘break out’. Producing 40 feature films at $250,000 from the great pool of underground/guerrilla writer and director talent in this country will make much more money, than is the expected return on one 10 or 5 Million dollar Aussie ‘coming of age’, ‘quirky comedy’,’ road movie’, et al, snooze fest. Some will even go blue sky and garner the attention and dollars of Hollywood next time round. Next thing you know, it is fucking Palme D’Or or Oscar time.

The time for action is Now. Forget the majority of suck ass shorts that are made by rich kids thinking film sounds like a cool career. Look to the filmmakers, the talent who have made feature films for $100,000, $50,000, $10,000 or even less and got their films released, into festivals, etc., get their next feature into production quick snap. Lottery funds are also a possibility, as is getting part money from private investors for such an idea.

We are here. The time has come. This is declaration of the Will to Being of the Second Australian Film Renaissance. Whether the Australian Film Industry has ears to hear it remains to be seen. But for a mere 10 mil every two years, three times in a row, you will see the change everywhere. A change in the industry many of us love enough to see rise again and have passion enough to fight for in the trenches of this cultural war/confrontation.

Enjoy the festival and be sure like with our theme of Violence, the fight has just begun. We the filmmakers await your calls and feedback…we are not hard to find.

Richard Wolstencroft
MUFF Festival Director