All of these films were made with minimal resources so it's no surprise that they look fairly basic. Transfer from 16mm prints has done little to make matters better. However they deserve attention on the basis of their content - moments captured from the sixties, like the arrival at Essendon Airport of Roy Orbison and the Beach Boys (in Fun Radio). Or a jazz concert at the partially built Opera House ( in The Twentieth) which was extracted from footage found in a rubbish bin...
1) THE DESTRUCTION OF ST PATRICK'S COLLEGE 1971
As the wreckers ball lays waste to a fine set of old building in East Melbourne a visiting
professor considers the value of our national identity.
2) FUN RADIO
This 1963 kaleidoscope of our culture, both its energy and its tawdriness, rolls out in a never
ending babble from radio station 3UZ, and in particular their top DJ at the time - Don Lunn.
3) GLOBAL VILLAGE
A rambling film in the tradition of the abstract works so popular with young film-makers in the
sixties, perhaps in definace of earnest Hollywood story-telling. Just let the images and sounds
float by as an aid to rumination. It gently mocks the questionable "need to communicate"
4) BLACK SHEEP GATHER NO MOSS
A girl recalls three generations of the family history, how mother was conceived in the year of
the Yarra floods and how life in the 1920's was no less a soap opera that it is today. Unique
footage of early Melbourne.
5) THE TWENTIETH
In December 1965 there was a jazz convention in Sydney. This attempt to record the event
has lain unseen ever since, but the passing of the decades reveals the significance of
change.