Reviewed by Garry Maddox
November 28 2002
POV
Directed by Anthony Hayes, Kate Riedl, Clayton Jacobson, Jane Manning, Naoki Tsukushi, Keri Light.
The "concept" or "anthology" film is becoming fashionable. This week sees the release of 11'09"01 - September 11 in which 11 directors made films about the events following the terrorist attacks on the United States.
The concept for POV is different but just as artificial. Eight Australian short filmmakers were asked to make a 10-minute film using the same script.
They could choose their characters' genders and names but had to stick to the dialogue, which centres on a character obsessed with someone else, who has recurring dreams.
While the point of 11'09"01 was different responses to a catastrophic event, there's a combination of motivations behind POV. One the one hand, it's about seeing how different directors approach the same material. That makes it a kind of short film lab experiment.
But, as in Tropfest, there is also a competitive element.
The film-makers were competing for prizes including a meeting with an influential production company executive.
That could have encouraged the worst kind of short-filmmaking showiness. That it (mostly) doesn't reflects the strength of the enigmatic, if sometimes theatrical, script by Brendan Cowell, best known for the play ATM.
The eight directors take the script in all sorts of directions. Jeremy Cumpston shot a tough black-white love story in Bourke that resembles a Tracey Moffatt photograph come to life.
Matthew Bird made a sci-fi story with Pia Miranda in a spacesuit. Naoki Tsukushi's film is in Japanese, with subtitles, about a couple on a train. He cleverly adds twists and turns, with one character a mirror image and another a tiny puppet.
In one of the most effective stories, Clayton Jacobson uses deaf characters signing the dialogue. Jane Manning tells a story about young Italian love in Leichhardt. Anthony Hayes has an atmospheric period tale set around the water.
Kate Riedl's film is about a young mother (Daniela Farinacci) who has left her family. And Keri Light uses children to tell an adult love story.
In different hands, the script came to be about the inability to communicate, the pain of love or schizophrenia.
While not all the shorts are successful, POV works in a strange way. You would expect to get tired of hearing the same dialogue, but the opposite happens: with each interpretation the interest grows as the possibilities of the dialogue and the director's imagination are revealed.
And the best of the films - awards will be announced at the premiere tomorrow night - reveal real film-making talent.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/27/1038386202949.html