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Director's Statement
Submit a comment on the MUFF Manifesto
Australian director Matthew Clayfield's Comments
(Originally posted here)
"Austin of Cinema Minima has asked me to read and comment on Richard Wolstencroft's MUFF Manifesto, which I have to admit I was previously unaware of. "Is it a serious document?" writes Austin, "Or only an attempt to grab publicity for the Melbourne Underground Film Festival? [. . .] In short, does it matter?"
Well, it's certainly serious, at least insofar as I can tell, and it also raises a number of valid points and arguments that I myself have raised in the past. On the whole, I find myself agreeing with Wolstencroft's Manifesto, which, while not really adding anything new to the argument (with a few notable exceptions), succinctly sums up the general consensus of an increasingly large number of Australian filmmakers and practitioners.
Australian cinema, as the Manifesto states, does need to put "an end to the political correctness that has been stifling creativity in Australian film for close to twenty years" and does need to be "more diverse, interesting, daring, confronting," "cost effective, cheaper [and] responsible." What the Manifesto has to say about funding bodies and bureaucrats is very much on par with some of my own opinions and it's take on IndiVision (particularly its call for funding bodies to "establish ultra low budget film grants of $250, 000 to $500, 000 a piece [so that filmmakers can] make ten to twenty of such projects per state per year") is perhaps its most significant and original contribution to the discussion.
Of course, the Manifesto is at its best and most passionate (and this is something you'd kind of expect from a genre-friendly festival like MUFF) when it fiercely embraces audience-pleasing genre films, the potential commercial successes of which could well be used to subsidise riskier avant-garde and non-commercial film projects. This is something I've come to see the importance of more and more in the eight or nine months since 'Killing the Gatekeeper' was published, primarily as a result of my conversations with three other young Australian filmmakers, Jeremy, Murali and (especially) Stu, who could well have written the MUFF Manifesto himself. There's a bit of a misconception about me that I'm steadfastly against films that aim to please large audiences, which isn't entirely true – I'm an audience member myself and just loathe pandering! – and as my own films have become less and less commercial in nature over the course of the last six months, I have, perhaps driven by selfishness, been inclined to acknowledge that the "Yin and Yang effect of creative and commercial alchemy" is not only desirable, but completely necessary, if we are to establish a rich, vibrant and diverse national cinema.
I'm not entirely sure what I think about the lip service paid by the Manifesto to the Renaissance of the 1970s, which, despite kick-starting an almost non-existent industry and resulting in a lot of very, very good pictures, has ultimately left a legacy that, in its damaging guise of "cultural mission," is one of the key institutions the next generation of Australian filmmakers needs to question and rebel against. Perhaps that's why I prefer the term "Australian New Wave" to "Second Australian Film Renaissance" (another reason for this, of course, is because I secretly harbour delusions of Francophile grandeur). I also have a problem with a few of the names that appear on Wolstencroft's list of noteworthy contemporary Australian filmmakers, which, given the subjective nature of such a thing, should have probably been left out of the Manifesto altogether.
With the exception of its demand for ultra-low budget funding initiatives, the MUFF Manifesto isn't particularly original (Wolstencroft's predecessors include, among countless others, Peter Sainsbury, Jake Wilson, George Miller and myself), but is nevertheless notable for bringing together in one place all the prevalent issues and ideas of the moment and arranging them in a way that's ultimately analogous a terrorist's list of demands. I couldn't say to what extent the piece is intended as an actual manifesto, though I personally think it's articles are workable and, on the whole, very much desirable.
Austin asked whether the Manifesto matters and I don't really have an answer for him. It certainly matters that people are thinking this way and that a groundswell of filmmakers are getting more and more restless with the current state of affairs, but as regards the Manifesto itself, to quote Balzac for the second time in as many weeks, "painters should theorise with their brushes in their hands." I've by and large stopped writing manifestos (whereas last year I was writing them all the time), in part because I believe I should be theorising with my camera – which isn't at all to say that Wolstencroft's not doing that himself. He's both an independent filmmaker and MUFF's festival director and his paintbrush is his programmer's pen and his canvas is MUFF's official selection. The Manifesto is really just an explicit expression of the ideas that shape a festival like this one. Which is fine by me. It's all good stuff.
The importance of a Manifesto like this is ultimately dependent on its impact. The key word in "Melbourne Underground Film Festival" is, of course, "underground," and while the Manifesto's content may accurately reflect our ever-growing state of unrest, it's overall significance – whether or not it "matters" – will ultimately depend on how many people read it, relate to it and run with it. I don't really know much about the extent of MUFF's reach and can't really say how important a document like its Manifesto could become, but I'm certainly going to try and do my bit by making a concerted effort to disseminate it as far and wide as possible. In my opinion, despite its flaws, this is ultimately the sort of thing that should be read by Australian filmmakers everywhere."
Submit a comment on the MUFF manifesto
