tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26796279072507852282008-07-16T17:01:18.150-07:00jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-32637609114023860652008-06-19T01:56:00.000-07:002008-06-19T02:04:48.089-07:00

An effect of amnesia is the inability to imagine the future. strange, I meditate to try and be in the present and stop worrying about the future.....in any case here is Chapter 1 Menu design for the film Island Home Country. Thank you Tim Baines - graphic designer - for all your work these past few weeks. Making a DVD is like making another film!

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-81366403128226971642008-05-31T20:18:00.000-07:002008-05-31T21:55:25.953-07:00

A clip from Maidens In a way making Island Home Country has been a revisiting of both Maidens and Tasmania, growing up, as I did, in the repressive era of the 1940s-1950s on that island. Returning to Tasmania in 2004 to make this film I began to excavate into the hard crust of my early childhood memories of a peaceful island with the reality of colonisation and the attempted genocide of

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-40547216764675613262008-05-25T18:12:00.000-07:002008-05-25T18:25:12.387-07:00

Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam wrote this essay The Visual Representation of Developing Countries by Developmental Agencies and the Western Media in May 1994. But it's still relevant in 2008.

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-19976592819358671162008-05-25T14:59:00.000-07:002008-05-25T15:15:12.078-07:00

The future, and this present moment of documentary distribution- on line and the role of the traditional educational distributors is discussed in this article in independent, the new on line Independent Film & Video Monthly. This is a timely article as I look at the distribution choices I have for Island Home Country. To be continued....

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-9314396797865058322008-04-30T22:17:00.000-07:002008-05-19T02:24:32.656-07:00

We finished the film last night. Assistant editor Andrew Corsi and I working through this last (almost) year to bring this project to completion, a project that began in 2004. Karen Pearlman joined me as editor in 2005. I keep Karen's text on my mobile: when she got my 4 hour assembly (from 40 hours). She texted: A cut is born - 90mins 35sec and 15 frames. Karen delivered picture lock off (

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-78887445154550292232008-04-23T20:07:00.000-07:002008-04-30T22:58:02.542-07:00

Dear Pa, I am writing this letter to you on Anzac Day eve. Here you are as a young Anzac and this is my narration in an Anzac sequence in my current documentary ISLAND HOME COUNTRY. I am writing to ask your permission to use the photo in the film along with this narration: Here’s some film I shot of white Australia’s national day of mourning - where we remember the dead - fallen in World

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-26398169246371125462008-03-16T23:57:00.000-07:002008-03-17T00:16:44.485-07:00

The frame is from Island Home Country. The text - a quote from David Tiley at AIDC 08 on Greenaway's plenary at the Conference. I, didn't go, of course. No money and at the beginning of the fifth year of making a film that defies completion....how to explain this rabbit hole I am down? Who would understand? I can't. "He is also unimpressed with the documentary tradition, which he calls “false

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-68333077416072739782008-03-15T12:36:00.000-07:002008-03-15T13:09:13.651-07:00

Isaac Julien and Tilda Swinton, at the filmmaker's grave. Julien has curated a retrospective on Jarman. Photo Nina Kellgren.On August 17, 2002, eight years after Jarman's death, Tilda Swinton, published an epistle to  Jarman entitled Letter to an Angel: Derek made filmmakers out of all of us who worked with him. Our work came out of the pre-industrial atmosphere of an art context, not the

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-87580583390234616892008-03-14T20:29:00.000-07:002008-03-14T21:14:54.549-07:00

Immersed  in links to international distribution of documentaries - in this era of multi platforms - traditional and new paradigms circling each other...and I stumbled on Jonas Mekas's site: what a find! And then  STREAM and then From Here to Awesome.

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-33937147250273417812008-03-10T18:06:00.000-07:002008-03-10T18:14:31.487-07:00

documentary: A Letter to a Boy from His Mother why Jonathon..I was so happy to get a response to my blog - so thanks for that (it hardly ever gets a response;  my daughter says: "well Mum, it's because it's so boring like your films." ) And then, the only response I get from you is navigational advice for the poor user who doesn't realise that the link is always in the header of each post I write

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-70787392174644942462008-03-09T22:10:00.000-07:002008-03-09T22:27:19.068-07:00

Boy , my darling is how Tilda Swinton starts her beautiful essay on cinema and dreams and possibility and ethics : You asked me the other day, just as you were dropping off, what people’s dreams were like before the cinema was invented. You who talk blabberish and chase rabbits in your sleep, hurrumphing like a dog..you who never watch television..I’ve been thinking of your question ever since. I

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-75951513828780834582008-02-18T20:34:00.000-08:002008-02-18T21:01:13.778-08:00

This moment has been a long time coming and it is a watershed. It has reverberations into this film 'Island Home Country' ; so much of the film has been constructed as way through the past, beyond the 'denialism' of the last era(s). And now the bolted door has been unlocked.... Monday 7:40 Feb 14 2008 Michael Mansell. An apology without compensation is a 'half measure'. Michale Mansell,

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-76040656918177061642008-01-20T22:01:00.000-08:002008-01-20T23:22:45.012-08:00

I made Maidens over 3 years (from 1975-1977) with a small grant from the Experimental Film Fund. While making my current documentary Island Home Country(in post production) I have thought about this earlier autobiographical film I made thirty years ago. In a way Maidens reflects a "terra nullus mind" – a mind that perpetuates the white conceit that there were no Aborigines (left) in Tasmania.

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-15630068107600225112008-01-18T15:10:00.000-08:002008-01-18T17:52:09.109-08:00

This is a still of me and screen mother Jovana Janson from Film for Discussion a film Sydney Women's film Group made in the early 1970s. The film was nominated for Best Documentary, Greater Union Awards, Sydney Film Festival 1974. SWFG was one of the first Australian groups to establish itself in the name of “Women’s Liberation”. Film For Discussion is a docu-drama shot in 1970, but not

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-58329944651293295342008-01-14T15:38:00.000-08:002008-01-26T20:23:35.808-08:00

The ghost of history.....in the final edit of the film I use an image of me from Woo Joung Kim's short film Mad Woman's Mountain. I play a madwoman - now for my film I re-use it...perhaps an image of an inner voice, a clue to the madness in the substrata  - of the history of colonisation here - in Australia...once you dig into this history it can drive you mad. I am working on the very final

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-85598217887361653552007-10-08T17:06:00.001-07:002008-01-14T18:02:37.894-08:00

Found this as an unpublished draft from last year:"Last night's Issues in Documentary Seminar was on autobiography. Mark presented on Tarnation: and Carolin presented on a Swiss autobiography by Jan Gassman and Christian Ziörjen, 2007 Chrigu The opening image is a a projector on fire; the film is about death and life..and it affects/sears the senses in the intensity of its images and their

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-19026680529792415632007-09-18T01:05:00.000-07:002007-09-18T01:39:39.533-07:00

Voices of Resistance - Northern Territory Traditional Owners Speaking Out “The link [between Howard’s plan for a nuclear waste dump in the NT and the military intervention] is unbreakable. Because we have stood up so strongly saying we didn’t want a waste dump. We have stood up strongly again against uranium mining. We have strongly said no to both issues. I think this is Mr Howard’s way of

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-83317987047894758342007-07-17T20:29:00.000-07:002007-07-23T19:37:15.315-07:00

"We’re in Truganini’s country. She cries, my sister. I forget to turn on the microphone. Her words are taken by the wind. But it’s not guilt or moral outrage. It’s sadness at the trauma of what happened here. There’s a wound in the coloniser’s mind. We have to go there, open to other possibilities: land rights, treaty and a deep connection to country and other ways of remembering. Truganini,

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-11809394727704542642007-05-12T17:28:00.000-07:002007-05-12T17:49:39.220-07:00

Members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community have been fighting to have their ancestor's remains returned from both local and international museums since the 1980s. Aboriginal elders in February won a court injunction stopping a series of DNA and imaging tests on the remains by Britain's Natural History Museum, which holds the remains. The bones of 13 Tasmanian Aborigines held for more than 100

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-77817018279795598352007-05-09T00:13:00.000-07:002007-05-09T17:21:38.602-07:00

In this fourth year of the doctoral process - scholarship ending September - yet the film's fine cut, sound post and thesis still to come, it is time to make a commemoration; not at the end when I finish, but right now in the thick of things. To my partner, Stephen, for his acceptance, so steadfast. To my principal supervisor Sarah Gibson. Sarah, you hold the space for an inner process to take

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-32922333217962209132007-05-08T23:00:00.000-07:002007-05-09T01:34:15.211-07:00

Last night I found myself in a back street of Sydney I had not visited since the late 70s.I had a direct experience of the uncanny. like falling between reality and unreality; of being in a landscape both familiar, yet as if in a dream; a corridor in my mind opened up to that historical period , as if right there in the dark on that fragment of earth, the space opened up and the line between

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-82190468171405025682007-05-06T03:40:00.000-07:002007-05-07T04:47:06.804-07:00

Derrida in The Work of Mourning (2001) ruminates on Lyotard's injunction, "there shall be no mourning...It could be said that this spectral echo roams about like a thief of the Apocalypse; it expires in the exhalation of this phrase, comes back to haunt our reading, respires or breathes in advance...and that is why whoever thus works at the work of mourning learns the impossible--and that

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-41173985341392756232007-05-02T02:08:00.000-07:002007-05-06T03:24:10.666-07:00

Approaching Jericho, Tasmania. Photo by Stephen Ginsborg I am at an impasse with the edit of the film and the re-write of the edit script. Co-supervisor Katrina Schlunke, looked at the edit and raised tricky questions about narrative certainty: 1. For a postcolonial text the film/me has too much authority 2. She wants a more sophisticated take on who I am 3. I maintain the centre...I need to

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-76018534724145889282007-04-25T23:01:00.000-07:002007-04-25T23:27:04.336-07:00

Well, Robert Manne, just a few months after your Turkish Tale on Anzac Day lecture there is a wind in the air. Perhaps it is happening - holding together the memory of Gallipoli along with honouring those Aboriginal fighters who died on the frontier protecting their country. There were no marching bands or Australian flags when Indigenous Diggers march set out from the Block in Redfern yesterday

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679627907250785228.post-50020492830219363042007-04-25T02:13:00.000-07:002007-04-25T23:00:20.500-07:00

photo source: The Heritage of the Great War. I just heard Robert Manne speaking on the Armenian Genocide "despite the fact that the Armenian Genocide was one of the great crimes of history; despite the fact that it took place on Ottoman soil during the precise months of the Dardanelles campaign; despite the fact that that campaign is regarded as the moment when the Australian nation was

jeni thornleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00525524137908951067noreply@blogger.com