Editorial 28 June 2017

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City of Ladies: uneasy utopias

Sarinah Masukor

Sarinah Masukor observes conflicting visions of feminist struggle unfold randomly by algorithm in a singular new video work, The City of Ladies, inspired by a utopian medieval text.

From archive into the future

Lauren Carroll Harris

A retrospective of Sydney feminist cinema at the Sydney Film Festival points not just to a hidden archive of experimental and innovative women’s filmmaking, but a potential future for Australian cinema, writes an inspired Lauren Carroll Harris.

Sydney Film Festival’s engaging outliers

Katerina Sakkas

Katerina Sakkas’ search for non-mainstream, experimental and eerie features in the 2017 festival program is rewarded with idiosyncratic works by Thai, Afghan and New Zealand filmmakers.

Interview: Mark Howett, Good Little Soldier

Keith Gallasch

Perth’s Ochre Contemporary Dance Company presents Artistic Director Mark Howett’s Good Little Soldier, a personally-driven account of the effect of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder on soldiers and their families.

Wireless: fear of phones

Kathryn Kelly

In Wireless, choreographer Lisa Wilson and composer Paul Charlier boldly reveal how “the joyous freedom of handheld technology has been replaced by a monolithic and disturbing entrapment,” writes Kathryn Kelly.

The people remember, the city listens

Ann Deslandes

Ann Deslandes reports from Mexico City on innovative artists’ nurturing of collective memory and political reflection via the public gathering of sounds and music on digital platforms.

Inside the real/digital warp

Laetitia Wilson

Fremantle Arts Centre and Revelation Film Festival present eight Australian video art works that suggest, writes Laetitia Wilson, we are living out the aftermath of digital disruption.

Editorial 21 June 2017

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An anxious Australia

Lauren Carroll Harris

In Antidote’s Moving Nations, young visual artists present highly personalised critiques of Australia’s history of migration, writes Lauren Carroll Harris.

Night Parrot Stories: myth vs reality

Luke Goodsell

Night Parrot Stories, an overlooked essay film on the search for a possibly extinct desert bird, “joins the chorus for the resurrection of endangered mythologies,” writes Luke Goodsell.

Emily Dickinson: her soul is her own

Joanna Di Mattia

“While Dickinson’s life appears on the surface to be a quiet one, Terence Davies interprets it as emotionally brutal,” writes Joanna Di Mattia of A Quiet Passion, showing in cinemas now.