Here is a collection of documentaries I have created, either collaboratively or by myself for Contemporary Arts Media.
How to Create Low-Budget SFX Makeup
How to Create Low-Budget SFX Makeup features Alix Jackson, a versatile Australian film maker, actor, educator and SFX makeup artist. Alix brings his knowledge of film making and SFX makeup application and techniques to this unique documentary. The film features real-time makeup application for a number of scenarios including cuts, bite marks, bullet holes and stitches. Alix uses easy to find ingredients such as tissue paper and latex along with blood made from food topping and colouring to produce outstanding results.
The SFX are explained in a full, fun and relatable manner, making this film an ideal accompaniment to any School, University or College film production class.The aim of the film is to relay beneficial information for film makers to incorporate stunning SFX makeup with very little resources or finances.
The Great Wall Of Books
Performance, installation, interactive, temporary architecture. This work begins with a simple sculptural idea that is universally recognisable: the wall and the book. Conceived and Artistically Directed by Dario Vacirca, Meka Audet and Alex ben Mayor. The Great Wall of Books is both a show (performance) and an interactive sculptural installation for public space. As its name suggests the scale of the sculpture, standing 5 metres high and 10 metres wide, is a wall of books or a library in which caretakers (performers) live and work within. The sculpture is an interactive and responsive space in which the public store written and oral stories via visual text, vocal recording and multi-media. These stories are solicited in real time in the street and via workshops with the community. Objects, musings and selected stories are re-interpreted by the caretakers into cross-art outcomes.
This documentary follows the project to Macau, SAR China where the company undertook a three-month residency working with contemporary and traditional artists and community.
WELL is a Melbourne-based performance incubator and since 1999 have been dancing like cranes, resisting gravity, teetering on the brink of reality and stitching back together the fragmented carcass of contemporary existence. Siphoning from the well of diverse knowledges and imaginings WELL people bend the traditional rules of engagement with art to invent new possibilities for meaning, creative expression and sensed experience.
Crossing – Devising Performance
Year: 2009, 186 mins
DVD 1: DEVISING PERFORMANCE This documentary follows the journey of a group of young people, from all corners of the globe, who were selected to work together for 3 weeks before the IDEA 2007 Congress began. Each participant contributed to the intercultural process and multicultural final performance with independent motivation and self-discipline. From the first time they arrived in the studio all activity was recorded: debates, workshops, experiments with techniques and devising tools, individual and collective processes of making artistic decisions – all leading to their powerful final performance. 86 mins
DVD 2: CROSSING – The performances
The DVD contains three performances from three different “CROSSING” projects one of which is documented on DVD 1. The performances are the outcomes of 3 weeks intensive devising and rehearsing. It is a truly intercultural experience about and for young people in the world. 118 mins
Background:
Intercultural exchanges between groups of young people committed to Drama and Theatre are now a living priority within IDEA (International Drama, Theatre and Education Association).
In 2005, after one year of developmental discussion, IDEA’s Directors of Young IDEA, Projects and Solidarity launched a pilot International Young IDEA Project based on intercultural theatre workshop processes which culminated in a multicultural performance at the IDEA 2007 World Congress.
Based on responses from IDEA’s members to the 2005 invitation for participating groups, encounters took place in Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina, August 2006), Kaosiung (Taiwan, October/November 2006), Bagamoyo (Tanzania, November 2006) and Minas Gerais (Brazil, April 2007). Each encounter was accompanied by an IDEA member and evaluated by IDEA’s elected Directors in dialogue with the workshop facilitators.
How To Audition
Year: 2010, 81 mins
From the Author of the best seller DVD “How To Use the Stanislavski System“.
The DVD is an edited documentation of a summer school workshop for actors presented by Peter Oyston in London in 2010. Eight young actors from the UK, USA, Australia, Spain participated in the workshop performing their audition pieces from Shakespeare, Pinter and other contemporary writers.
Peter addresses a number of questions and demonstrates how to shape a speech, how to learn lines, how to prepare, how to place images in space how to be flexible, daring and confident.
The workshop explores character and text analysis, and it provides answers to dealing with nerves, rejection, in fact all the dos and don’ts of auditioning.
This DVD is an invaluable resource for actors and students when preparing for auditions for theatre film or television and drama schools.
Working Forensically: Collaborative Directing in Contemporary Theatre
A discussion between Richard Murphet (Director/Writer) and Leisa Shelton (Director/Performer) about their years of collaboration in directing, during which they have produced 5 new theatre works. The discussion makes a clear distinction between collaboration and group devising, and outlines 4 modes of collaboration that the two artists have undertaken in their working process.
The works produced over a period from the late 90s to 2008 have lent themselves to collaboration because of the focus of their content upon the multiple perspectives of social and personal identity. This has allowed a multifaceted sharing of the various roles of the director between the two artists and given other artists significant voice in the process. The discussion is interwoven throughout with live footage from the works, illustrating clearly both the making processes and the stimulating performances that have emerged from this unique binocular approach to directing.
Staging the Audience: The Sydney Front
by Clare Grant
Year: 2012, 68 mins
See Photos of The Sydney Front on Facebook
Over the course of the seven years they worked together (1986-1993), the performers of The Sydney Front transformed themselves from the extravagant display of frenzied divas in their first work, Waltz (1987), to stage managers invisibly influencing the actions of the audience as they enacted The Stations of the Cross in Passion (1993).
This DVD presents a kaleidoscope of images and archive footage from all seven of The Sydney Front’s major works, accompanied by observations from the voices of the company members still working in Sydney. The images and commentary from the performers reflect on The Sydney Front’s shifting encounters with their audiences and their unfolding working methods.
Warning: Sydney Front’s performances may contain corse language, adult themes and nudity. Suitable for 18+ years old.
Disc 1: Staging the Audience – An overview of The Sydney Front’s philosophy and main achievements in using space, both for the performance and the audience, staging and involving the Audence, aspects and celebration of pleasure and pain, dveloping content. 68 mins
Disc 2: Extended Interview with the members of The Sydney Front (2011-12) illustrated with short excerps of the performances. 150 mins
Disc 3: CD-Rom Resource Pack: 326 pages
Also available: Waltz, John Laws/Sade: a confession, The Pornography of Performance, Photocopies of God, Don Juan, First and Last Warning, Passion
An Interview With Albie Thoms
This precious interview had been planned by Albie Thoms and Kriszta Doczy since the beginning of 2012. During that year Albie was battling with his illness and using every drop of his energy to finish his book “My Gen” about the Sixties alternative underground film makers and artists in Sydney. Finally, just three weeks before he passed away Albie sat down with Kriszta and they started the conversation they had planned for so long. The interview was cut short, the book had to be finished and sent to the printer, and Albie was hoping to attend his last party, the launch of his book.
The interview covers a wide range of topics: Albie Thoms’ early theatre experiments with absurd plays, becoming a film maker, the UBU experimental film group’s work, government politics, rebellion, and the emergence of Sydney’s counterculture. He speaks about the why and the how of being an “experimental” artist and the bravery needed to not belong to the mainstream.
It is a touching account from a once rebellious artist, illustrated with original photos, film clips, excerpts of performances and, most importantly, with selected clips from Albie’s experimental films.
This film is dedicated to Albie Thoms, a much loved and respected figure in Australian culture and film history.
David Perry Biography
David Perry is unique among Australian artists in that he is equally competent in making paintings, drawings, prints, posters, photographs, films and videotapes. In work encompassing more than half a century, he has demonstrated his proficiency in these media, with his art exhibited in international film and video festivals and leading art galleries. To some extent, this versatility has counted against him, since he has been unclassifiable, a hybrid for which there is no name, other than multimedia artist, though this has come to mean someone who combines mediums, which David rarely does.
Artfilms published David Perry’s experimental films, in a separate collection as well as part of
the UBU Experimental Films. This rich illustrated interview is about David’s paintings, drawings, photography and his ventures in life.