AFW + NFSA #66: Paul Winkler – Australian Visions

7:30PM Tues 25 June
The Brunswick Green, 313/315 Sydney Road, Brunswick.
16mm projection. $10

AFW is once again delighted to present 16mm film works from one of the living icons of Australian experimental film - Paul Winkler. An undisputed master of in-camera techniques, Paul’s works are often playful, frequently obsessive, and always tantalising to the eye. They have an unrelenting intensity of gaze that leads the audience away from questions of meaning to a realm of almost transcendental visual fascination. Magically for us, his work almost exclusively focuses on Australian land and city-scapes, showing us ourselves in ways that might otherwise be too close to home. Active as a filmmaker for six decades, many programs could be made from his work. These four works are from somewhere in the first third of his film career, and each has become a classic of Australian experimental cinema.

Taylor Square
1980, 19 minutes
“This film was shot when Paul Winkler lived in Darlinghurst, a hectic camera was used with grainy newsreel film, a 75mm lens and a long matte box to create four intersecting segments. This represented the degraded symphony of the city. Building facades, people and traffic going their separate ways.” - MCA

Bondi
1979, 15 minutes
“Carefree atmosphere of the beach captured in this film that is shot with horizontal mattes. The rough and the calm...everything surrounded by, or living by the breeze, the waves and the water.” - MCA

Brickwall
1975, 15 minutes
“Experimental film about brick laying. Filmed almost entirely using single-frame to create a feeling that the bricks are moving at a tremendous speed.” - NFSA

Dark
1973-74, 19 minutes
Abstracted images of Uluru combine with land rights demonstrations in the streets of Sydney and Canberra, where police destroy the Aboriginal Tent Embassy outside Parliament in Canberra.