Buesst’s leisurely, intimate and at times quite personal documentary on the ‘60s & early ‘70s independent Melbourne filmmaking scene centred in Carlton is one of the most significant cinematic contributions to Australian film history. A kind of underground chronicle of a period widely assumed to not have produced any filmmaking, it is a testament to the perseverance & energy of this important but neglected scene. It includes generous excerpts from such rarely screened but seminal works as Mangiamele’s Clay, Yackety Yack, Buesst’s own work & a string of films (Pudding Thieves, Hey Al Baby) made under the auspices of MUFS, the Melbourne Cinémathčque’s galant predecessor.
The film premiered at the St.Kilda Film Festival on Sunday, June 1, 2003.
"In 2003, the veteran independent director Nigel Buesst made a documentary, Carlton + Godard = Cinema, about a small band of film-makers clustered around the Melbourne University Film Society from 1965 to 1975. Enterprising figures had scraped together enough money and resources to make a bunch of short films; their inspiration came primarily from the French New Wave, which had surged since 1960, and especially from the work of Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless, Contempt, Alphaville). Buesst's memoir shows how this buzz of activity intersected with trends in theatre, how it laid the ground for some striking feature films in the '70s.
For Australians, this is a fascinating, long-buried piece of cultural history - one of those stories that shows local artists engaging with trends from abroad, rather than gazing inwards at their nationalistic navels." Adrian Martin, The Monthly