RevCon
Revcon Academic 2012
Revelation Perth International Film Festival

Jack Sargeant and Alex Munt

Jack: Cinema is an essential part of the media landscape (although, sadly, not all people may watch films in movie theatres) and film festivals offer audiences the opportunity to see works that may never be seen otherwise, to meet filmmakers and to engage with all elements of cinema. It became rapidly apparent to me, in my capacity as a writer, as an academic, and as the Program Director for the Revelation Perth International Film Festival, that there was an urgent and crucial need for an ongoing discourse on film. Having the physical and temporal space offered by a film festival to convene a conference for academics, students, independent researchers and filmmakers to meet, discuss their interests and present papers was too good to pass over. RevCon Academic Conference was born. For two days in July people came together as a temporary community of film writers, theorists, practitioners and critics sharing thoughts and ideas, research and writings, anxious to talk and listen and, most importantly, share their passion for cinema.

Having an academic component of a film festival enabled the speakers and conference attendees to see movies, and it offered a festival audience the opportunity to attend an academic conference. The emphasis was on a coming together of worlds that are normally separate. To my knowledge no other film festival offers this experience and as an ambition to create a new film community - the event was an instant success.

The articles included in this Special Issue of SCAN Journal emerged from the inaugural RevCon Conference. These works examine a variety of areas of cinema from multiple perspectives; all show the ongoing importance of film and cultural theory in engaging with cinema. It is my hope that the RevCon Academic Conference will be an annual event and that this edition Special Issue of SCAN offers merely the first of an ongoing series of papers from what will, I hope, continue to represent the cutting edge of thinking about cinema in Australia.

Alex: Jack invited both myself (UTS) and Leon Marvell (Deakin) to be a part of getting RevCon off the ground in its first year. To have an academic conference attached to Revelation Perth International Film Festival is of benefit to film culture. Revelation stands alone on the film festival circuit with its commitment to cinema beyond the mainstream, a cinema of ideas – which challenges, provokes and entertains audiences in equal measure. The conference took place within the small cinema at Perth’s deco Astor Theatre – this worked well to witness the space transform from day to night: talking, listening, watching cinema.

This Special Issue of SCAN Journal brings together a selection of refereed research articles together with a set of information articles. It is interesting to see how the work in the academic conference aligns with the festival programming – we have here work on Australian film, film philosophy, film auteurs and mavericks, experimental film practice, creative practice-based research, new directions in subgenres, film sound and the digital moving image. Filmmakers discussed include Harmony Korine, Jem Cohen, Werner Herzog, Lynne Ramsay, Cate Shortland and Michael Haneke amongst others. This Special Issue includes images, sound and video to contextualise the ideas presented – enjoy. Thanks to John Potts and Steve Collins from Macquarie University for their assistance in putting together this Special Issue.

REFEREED ARTICLES

Bennet Schaber examines the notion of cinema as mass art/popular art via the philosophical tensions in the work of Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière. Schaber evaluates Jem Cohen's five 'newsreels' from the Occupy Wall Street movement as a contemporary model of 'cinematic occupation' in the tradition of political-aesthetic forms.

Adam Trainer situates Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers as a 'faux-found object' drawn from online video sharing portals such as YouTube. Trainer draws conceptual links between Korine's work and the democratisation of media, amateur video production and user-generated media aesthetics of today's participatory online media culture.

Clare Nina-Norelli examines the evolution of film scores in the Horror genre from the early 1930s to the late 1970s. Nina-Norelli situates the 1970's revival of Horror cinema as 'The New Sounds of Fear' driven forward by new auteurs (Argento, Friedkin, Romero, Carpenter), the popularity of 'prog-rock' and DIY soundscapes made possible with changing technology.

Dirk de Bruyn looks at the filmic mechanics of trauma in relation to both avant grade 'materialist' film practices and the recent work of Michael Haneke. His focus is towards those 'New Australians' subject to official government 'assimilation' policies in the 1950's. De Bruyn reworks his own re-edited/resampled historic film segments to reveal the gaps/absences of 'hidden' trauma in recent Australian history.

Michael Spann investigates the temporal convening of space in Werner Herzog's 'mythical' Australian indigenous fiction film Where the Green Ants Dream. Spann takes Herzog's film as both a source, and departure, from which to explore broader questions of geographical/political space in the context of Western modernity and 'development' paradigms.

Grady Hancock explores the critical potentiality of affective moments of visceral shock in Cate Shortland's debut feature Somersault. Hancock makes a case that it is those very moments of visceral affect - as aesthetic interruptions - which locate and open up new spaces for discourses of femininity and sexuality in the film.

INFORMATION ARTICLES

Denah A. Johnston revisits the films of 'Outsider Auteur' Lynne Ramsay with a focus on We Need to Talk about Kevin. Johnston locates in Ramsay's work a continuity of themes and aesthetics, with respect to bold cinematic image-making practices and soundscapes. Johnston raises the question of gender bias, with respect to a devaluation of Ramsay's auteur status in comparison with her male counterparts.

Katherine Berger is a filmmaker who works with an archival process she describes as 'direct-on found footage animation': analogue, handmade and photochemical. Berger reflects on the history of this distinctive artform and situates it in relation to the culture of the digital moving image of today. She reflects on her own creative film practice of 'co-directing with Nature'.

Stefan Popescu offers his take on three allied contemporary subgenres: Mumblecore, the 'so-bad-it's-good' film and the 'Gonzo Documentary' Popescu frames this new set of film subgenres in relation to the precession of digital filmmaking, the reach of social media networks and the hyper-real phenomenon of 'gonzo exhibitionism'.

EDITORS

Jack Sargeant is the author of numerous books on underground and independent cinema, these include Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground (first published as Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression), Naked Lens: Beat Cinema and Suture, amongst others. He has contributed essays to numerous books and publications, ranging from high brow academic journals to low brow 'zines. He has a regular column for FilmInk and contributes to various other periodicals and magazines. He is currently working on a book of literary essays and editing a volume on cinema, both projects are due for publication in 2013. Alongside writing he is the Program Director for Revelation Perth Film Festival and an internationally recognised curator and programmer; in the last year he has presented talks and retrospective screenings at WNDX, Canada; Cinema OFFoff, Belgium and the Underground Film Festival, Ireland, and has curated specialist programs for both Sydney and London Underground Film Festivals. In 2012 he co-curated a photography exhibition at Alaska, Sydney. He has appeared as a talking-head in numerous documentaries, most recently appearing in Blank City and Advocate Of Fagdom. He has performed as an actor in music video, narrative and experimental feature films. He is currently completing his PhD.

www.jacksargeant.blogspot.com

www.jacktext.net

Alex Munt is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Practices in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at The University of Technology, Sydney. Alex is a screenwriter/director with a background in design who holds screen credits in short film, music video, film titles design and feature film production. His debut feature film 'LBF' (2011) which he wrote, directed and produced had its world premiere at South By Southwest (SXSW) and Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in 2011. Alex's research interests revolve around creative film practice, digital filmmaking, low-budget/independent cinema, screenwriting and adaptation, film auteurs and convergent screen media. He has published on these topics in screen journals and books, in Australia and abroad.

CONTRIBUTORS

Bennet Schaber is Professor and Chair of the Department of English, Creative Writing, Cinema and Screen Studies at the State University of New York College at Oswego, where he created and served as the first director of the program in Cinema and Screen Studies. He has published widely on film, literature and the visual arts. His current research revolves around film, faith and politics.

Adam Trainer is a writer, broadcaster and musician from Perth, Western Australia. He received his PhD in Media and Communications from Murdoch University in 2006 and has taught film, media and cultural studies at Murdoch University, Edith Cowan University and Curtin University's campuses on Australia and Malaysia. He is the music director of RTRFM, Perth's largest community radio station and presents programs on new release music and experimental music. His research interests encompass film studies, popular music studies and the convergence of established media forms in the age of digital information.

Clare Nina Norelli is a composer, musician and writer based in Perth, Western Australia. As well as contributing articles on film music to the website, Sound on Sight, and being published in the proceedings of the 2007 Totally Huge New Music Festival Conference, she has also composed scores to local short films such as Gusto (2008), for which she was nominated for "best score" in the 2006 WA Screen Awards. Clare Nina also composes for small ensembles and performs as a solo artist, and in 2008 released her debut EP, Piano Noir.

Dirk de Bruyn has made numerous experimental, documentary, animations and new media interactive works over the last 40 years, continuing to maintain a no-budget, independent, self-funded focus. He was a founding member and past president of MIMA (nee Experimenta). He has curated various programs of film and video art internationally and written extensively about this area of artistic practice. In 2010-11 he contributed installations and video to The Unwanted Land Exhibition at the Museum Beelden Aan Zee, The Hague, Netherlands. He has recently performed his multi-screen 16mm film performances in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Tokyo, Shanghai, London, Brighton and the Netherlands.

Michael Spann is a PhD candidate and tutor in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. His research interests include how the conceptual apparatus of development is linked to the everyday lived experience of those receiving development, the colonial encounter and how development is represented through literature and film.

Grady Hancock is a PhD candidate and sessional tutor at Deakin University, Melbourne in the School of Communication and Creative Arts. Her doctoral thesis examines the changing face of femininity through the lens of social realist filmmaking in contemporary Australia. Her work focuses on film and media studies, with a particular interest in the critical intersections of discourse and affect theory.

Denah Johnston is a filmmaker and writer who teaches film history and studies courses in San Francisco where she serves as the Director of Operations for Canyon Cinema ( http://canyoncinema.com/). Her first book No Future Now: A Nomadology of Resistance and Subversion was released in Spring 2012, forthcoming works include an essay on Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages. As Experimental and Fringe Film Editor for agnes films (http://agnesfilms.com/), an online resource for female filmmakers and those interested in their work, she is always on the lookout for new and challenging works on female filmmakers. A volume of essays on women filmmakers is forthcoming.

Katherine Berger recently completed a Masters in Film and Digital Art at Sydney College of the Arts - Sydney University. Katherine also co-founded the Sydney Underground Film Festival and has also produced three feature films (Rosebery 7470, Nude Study and Vixen Velvet).

Stefan Popescu is a filmmaker, academic at Sydney University and is currently one of the directors of the Sydney Underground Film Festival. Having completed his PhD in Film and Digital Art in 2007, he has written and directed four feature films since 2007 - Rosebery 7470 (2007), Nude Study (2010) and Zombie Massacre 3 (2012) and Only Sluts Do That (in post-production). Stefan is interested in emerging, alternate and marginal forms in cinema.

Thanks to the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies, at Macquarie University, for hosting this RevCon Issue of SCAN, and to John Potts and Steve Collins for their assistance.