A revolution is a rotation: a single complete turn. On the face of it, a revolution is a significant change which takes place over a short period of time. However, true revolutions in thought and behaviour can take much longer. Revolutions can be personal or they can be political. Screening features, documentary and experimental film selected from 100 years of cinema, this series examines revolution in its many diverse forms. It explores the energy of revolution and the avant-garde impulse.

• Wednesday, 18 June 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 22 June 2pm
  Ghosts before breakfast 
  Dir: Hans Richter  1927 (Germany)
  7 mins  16mm  B&W  Rated R (unclassified)
  In 1916 the German painter and graphic artist Hans Richter joined the dada movement and asserted that the artist's duty was to be explicitly political, opposing war and supporting the artistic avant-garde. Soon after co-founding the Association of Revolutionary Artists (Artistes Radicaux) in Zürich in 1919, he began intensive experimentation with film. Ghosts before breakfast is pure dada – humorous, delightful, grotesque. Challenging bourgeois values, Richter presents a series of irrational happenings when ordinary objects defy their daily use: a bow-tie undoes itself, bowler hats leap from their owners' heads and coffee cups leap to their destruction.
  Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive.
  
  plus
  
  Everything turns, everything revolves
  Dir: Hans Richter  1929  (Germany)
  4 mins  16mm  B&W  Rated R (unclassified)
  Transforming a day at a Berlin carnival into a surreal, grotesque spectacle, Richter’s first sound film attracted the attention of Nazi officials who hated its modernism. The potent, high-speed, gun loading sequence anticipates the sex-and-violence obsession of the late 20th century.
  
  plus
  
  Dreams that money can buy
  Dir: Hans Richter  1947  (US)
  (in collaboration with Fernand Léger, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp & Alexander Calder)
  84 mins  16mm Colour  Rated R (unclassified)
  The revolt of dada against bourgeois values persisted. In 1947 Richter, now living in the US after escaping World War II, collaborated with various artists in a collective study of dreams. Bound together in a scenario concerning a man who sells dreams to jaded customers, Dreams that money can buy is divided into seven episodes: Max Ernst’s Desire, Fernand Léger’s The girl with the prefabricated heart, Man Ray’s Ruth, roses and revolvers, Marcel Duchamp’s Discs, Alexander Calder’s Circus and Ballet and Richter’s own Narcissus. Taken together they form a collage of cinematic wit, daring and imagination.
   
• Wednesday, 25 June 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 29 June 2pm
  Anémic cinema
  Dir: Marcel Duchamp 1926 (France)
  (in collaboration with Man Ray)
  7 mins  16mm B&W  Rated R (unclassified)
  Emerging as one of the most extreme avant-gardists, Duchamp epitomised an irreverence for conventional aesthetics. This led to his infamous 'ready-mades' which laid the foundation for an aesthetic revolution. His sculpture, Bicycle wheel (1913), demonstrated  a recurring preoccupation with movement. Since his earlier painting, Nude descending a staircase, no 2 (1912) through to his film, Anémic cinema, Duchamp was fascinated by the hypnotic power of cyclical movement. His unique film is based on a series of rotating, spiralling images intercut with spinning words which make nonsensical puns - an abstract experiment in concentricity and eccentricity.
  Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive.
  
  plus
  
  Vertigo
  Dir: Alfred Hitchcock 1958 (US)
  128 mins  35mm  Colour  Rated PG
  James Stewart, Kim Novak
  Vertigo: A sensation that one’s surroundings are rotating or that one is rotating oneself. The state produces dizziness, mental bewilderment, and confusion.
  Considered Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Vertigo is the story of a troubled, neurotic detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), haunted by his fear of heights. He is hired by an old friend to shadow his wandering wife. As he gradually falls in love with the mysterious woman, Scottie becomes alarmingly obsessive and unstable. A masterful study of romantic longing, identity, manipulation, voyeurism, treachery and death.
   
• Wednesday, 2 July 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 6 July 2pm
  Strike
  Dir: Sergei Eisenstein 1924 (USSR)
  73 mins  35mm  B&W  Rated PG
  Maxim Straukh, Grigori Alexandroff
  English intertitles
  Completed in 1925, Eisenstein’s first film is one of his finest. It tells the story of a factory strike, led by young workers who are members of the Bolshevik Party, protesting against the intolerable conditions of pre-revolutionary employment. Making radical use of montage, Eisenstein juxtaposes harshly beautiful imagery to create metaphorical meanings: men, animals and machinery are synchronised to suggest the inhumanity of capitalism. Epic in scale, Strike continues to stir emotion as a rousing tale of human dignity and the awesome power of collective action.
   
• Wednesday, 9 July 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 13 July 2pm
  Ten canoes
  Dir: Rolf de Heer & Peter Djigirr  2006 (Australia)
  90 mins  35mm  Colour  Rated M
  Jamie Gulpilil, Frances Djulibing
  Narrated by David Gulpilil
  Ganalbingu with English subtitles
  A tale within a tale within a tale, Ten canoes explores narrative and traditional storytelling. As the stories weave back and forth in time, they challenge conventional perceptions of the lives of Aboriginal peoples. An all-Aboriginal cast gives rare depth and authenticity to this cautionary tale of a younger brother who yearns for an older brother’s wife.
   

*Please note special Saturday screening

• Saturday, 19 July 2pm
  Experimental Cinema
  
  3 Films by Robert Breer
  Robert Breer has been a major figure in experimental animation for more than 40 years. His large body of work includes paintings, kinetic sculpture and films.
   
  70
  Dir: Robert Breer  1970  (US)
  5 mins  16mm  Colour  Silent  Rated R (unclassified)
  Animated, coloured shapes.
  Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive.
  
  plus
  
  PBL #2
  Dir: Robert Breer  1968  (US)
  1 min  16mm  Colour  Rated R (unclassified)
  A concise, one-minute cartoon history of the black American.
  Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive.
  
  plus
  
  LMNO
  Dir: Robert Breer   1978  (US)
  10 mins  16mm  Colour   Rated R (unclassified)
  '[A] French gendarme weaves a hapless path through the film's strobe attacks, disparate drawing styles, and variable scale .... Framed by underwater and travel imagery, the central section's faucets and aerosols, collapsing tents and outsized croquet games, breakfast foods and sexual violence, all suggest domestic frustration.' - J Hoberman,The Village Voice
  Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive.
  
  3 Films by Len Lye
  The New Zealand-born filmmaker, painter, kinetic sculptor and writer Len Lye became a leading avant-garde artist in London and New York, bridging pre- and post-World War II movements and trends. Lye is best remembered for his contributions to the development of hand-crafted abstract cinema.
  
  Free radicals
  Dir: Len Lye  1979  (Great Britain)
  4 mins  16mm  Colour  Rated R (unclassified)
  A kinetic dance of white lines and angles meticulously scratched into the emulsion of a strip of black film and synchronised to field recordings of drumming performed by the Bagirmi tribe of Africa.
  Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive.
  
  plus
  
  Trade tattoo
  Dir: Len Lye  1937  (Great Britain)
  6 mins   16mm  Colour   Rated R (unclassified)
  Experimenting with the colour separation systems of the newly developed technicolour process, Trade tattoo manipulates three colour matrices superimposing them in complex ways. It also combines 'direct' working on film with black-and-white documentary footage.
  Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive.
  
  plus
  
  A colour box
  Dir: Len Lye  1935 (Great Britain)
  4 mins  35mm  Colour   Rated R (unclassified)
  Made for the GPO Film Unit to advertise the postal system, A colour box was the first time Lye had painted directly onto the film surface and represents one of the earliest attempts to perfect the innovation now known as 'direct' filmmaking. Lye originally planned a self-sufficient abstract film, but made it afresh when tailoring it to advertising needs. In addition to painting onto raw film stock, Lye also scratched directly into the emulsion to create the unique effects.
  
  
• Saturday, 19 July 2.35pm
  Lapis
  Dir: James Whitney 1963-66 (US)
  9 minutes  16mm  Colour   Rated R (unclassified)
  To the ancient alchemists lapis was a kind of 'philosopher's stone' or aid to meditation. The hypnotic effect of the elaborate, shifting patterns in James Whitney’s groundbreaking work were created by analogue computer; shapes consisting of hundreds of parts are organised through the use of geometry and repetitions of detail. Whitney is regarded as one of the major exponents of the experimental film genre known as 'visual music'. Lapis took three years to create and is one of seven innovative short films he completed over four decades.
  
  plus
  
  HO
  Dir: Ivan Cardoso  1979  (Brazil)
  13 mins  16mm  Colour  Rated R (unclassified)
  Artist Hélio Oiticica's Parangolés are three-dimensional, multi-coloured costumes worn in playful participation and social and aesthetic protest. These creations were used by the samba group from the shanty town of Mangueira in Rio de Janeiro in 1964. Oiticica's intentions are demonstrated in Ivan Cardoso's film with original footage showing the Parangolés worn and paraded. Some of the most important members of the Brazilian avant-garde appear, including singer Caetano Veloso, writers Waly Salomão and Ferreira Gullar, and the artist Lygia Clark.
   
• Wednesday, 16 July 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 20 July 2pm
  Videograms of a revolution
  Dir: Harun Farocki & Andrei Ujica 1992  (Germany)
  106 mins  16mm  Colour  Rated R (unclassified)
  German with English subtitles
  Assembled under the direction of Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica from independent and state video and film sources, Videograms of a revolution chronicles the Romanian revolution of 1989 - including the fall, attempted flight and Christmas-day execution of President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena. The documentary consists of found-footage, assembled and intercut to gradually reveal the course of history over the ten days of populist revolt. Using the film and video sources to full advantage, the filmmakers present some of the major moments in the story from multiple perspectives – a strategy which subtly interrogates the use of film in recording history.
   
• Wednesday, 23 July 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 27 July 2pm
  The man with a movie camera
  Dir: Dziga Vertov  1929  (USSR)
  69 mins  35mm  B&W  Rated G
  'We proclaim the old films, based on romance, theatrical films and the like, to be ... mortally dangerous! Contagious!' Abandoning the name of Denis Kaufman and adopting the pseudonym Dziga Vertov (derived from the verb meaning to spin), the radical Russian filmmaker created a revolution in cinematic art with his defiant deconstruction of moviemaking. The man with a movie camera pulses with unruly energy and innovation, subverting the conventions of fictional filmmaking by employing filmic devices in order to comment on daily life, modernity and vision itself: superimposition, split screens, varied speed, and obtrusive editing. The scenario concerns the making of a movie about the city of Moscow. We follow the production from shooting to public screening. The subject matter is the shops, traffic, children, coal miners, tram cars, shuttle looms, traffic signals, motor cars and workers of Moscow during the heyday of the Soviet Union.
   
• Wednesday, 30 July 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 3 August 2pm
  Green bush
  Dir: Warwick Thornton  2005 (Australia)
  27 mins  35mm  Colour  Rated R (unclassified)
  David Page, Ted Egan
  Over one heartbreaking but empowering night, radio DJ Kenny realises that his job at an Aboriginal community radio station is about more than just playing music.
  
  Plus
  
  Backroads
  Dir: Phillip Noyce in collaboration with Gary Foley 1977 (Australia)
  60 mins  16mm  Colour  Rated M15+
  Bill Hunter, Gary Foley
  Two men, an aimless white drifter and an Aborigine on the run from an unsuccessful marriage, steal a car and take off on a wild flight across Australia. Noyce’s first feature, scripted in close collaboration with Gary Foley (a well-known Aboriginal activist), is an existentialist road movie of raw urgency and powerful political content that has at its core an angry inter-racial relationship.
  Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive from the Kodak / Atlab Project.
   
• Wednesday, 6 August 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 10 August 2pm
  Entr’acte
  Dir: René Clair  1924  (France)
  20 mins  35mm  B&W  Rated R (unclassified)
  Two men approach a canon and fire it; rifle-range dummies sway in the wind; a dancing ballerina turns into a strange bearded man; two men on a roof-top terrace play a game of chess; a funeral procession, moving in slow motion, follows a coffin pulled by a camel. At once captivating, disturbing and humorous, Entr'acte is an apparently free-form flow of suggestive imagery reflecting René Clair’s interest in dada and surrealism. This concoction was originally made to be screened during intervals for Francis Picabia's 'interventionist' ballet Relâche, presented at the Théâtre des Champs- Elysées in Paris in 1924.
  
  Plus
  
  L’Age d’Or
  Dir: Luis Buñuel  1930  (France)
  64 mins  35mm  B&W  Rated PG
  Provoking riots during its original screening and banned for almost four decades, this surrealist film juxtaposes shocking scenes and heretical images which attack the social order. The scenario of a man and a woman who are continuously thwarted in their attempts to make love is punctuated by bizarre, often hilarious set pieces. Buñuel thirsted for a revolution that would be triggered by scandal. 'The real purpose of surrealism', he said, was 'to explode the social order, to transform life itself'.
   
• Wednesday, 13 August 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 17 August 2pm
  Rocking the foundations
  Dir: Pat Fiske  1985  (Australia)
  92 mins  16mm  B&W  Rated M
  Pat Fiske’s compelling and inspirational documentary chronicles the history of the NSW Builders Labourers Federation in its attempt to save historic Sydney buildings and communities. The film focuses on the battles for Victoria St, Kings Cross and The Rocks, and the use of union power in assisting resident action groups and environmental groups in their struggles with powerful and corrupt developers.
  Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive.
   
• Wednesday, 20 August 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 24 August 2pm
  Zero for conduct
  Dir: Jean Vigo  1933  (France)
  44 mins  35mm  B&W  Rated R (unclassified)
  Louis Lefèvre, Gilbert Pluchon
  French with English subtitles 
  Made in 1933, but banned by the French censor for a dozen years, Vigo’s study of schoolboy life embodies the atmosphere of the period and the director’s world view. The blend of contradicting styles reflect Vigo’s schoolboy sense of delight in conjuring tricks. Inherited from his anarchist father (who died, presumably murdered in prison), Vigo was a committed contrarian. Here the schoolboy heroes rebel against authority with ferocious verbal insults, pelting the local dignitaries with rubbish. Thirtyfive years later, the film inspired Lindsay Anderson in his own attack on the Establishment, If… (screening 3 & 7 September).
  
  plus
  
  La jetée
  Dir: Chris Marker  1962 (France)
  28 mins  35mm  B&W Rated M15+
  Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich
  English language version
  Constructed almost exclusively from still photographs, La jetée is the strange and unsettling tale of a man projected through time by scientists seeking a way of ensuring human survival after a Third World War. The man has one memory embedded into his emotions: the image of a woman standing on the pier at Orly airport. When the man remembers, we are never sure if he is time-travelling or dreaming. Director Marker constructed the film using a fragmented, circular timeline which flows from one dimension to another.
   
• Wednesday, 27 August 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 31 August 2pm
  The battle of Algiers
  Dir: Gillo Pontecorvo  1965  (Algeria/Italy)
  117 mins  35mm  B&W  Rated M15+
  Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi
  French/Arabic with English subtitles
  It is a story that could have been taken from today’s headlines. This astounding recreation of the insurrection against the French in Algiers in the late 1950s is told from the differing perspectives of  the French Army and the Algerian Liberation Front. Featuring such graphic realism that, upon its release in 1965, many wrongly assumed it incorporated documentary footage, the film is one of the most detailed, vivid and specific cinematic depictions of revolt against colonial rule.

*Please note special Saturday screening

• Saturday, 6 September 1.30pm
  La région centrale 
  Dir: Michael Snow  1971  (Canada)
  180 mins  16mm   Colour  Rated R (unclassified)
  Exploding the possibilities of the 'structural film', Michael Snow’s groundbreaking La région centrale was made during five days of shooting on a deserted mountain top in North Quebec. During the shooting, the vertical and horizontal movements of the camera were controlled by a specifically built robotic arm capable of sophisticated, pre-programmed movements. The result is a film that radically explores frame movement and its relationship with space and time: documenting the spectacular, isolated landscape, capturing the cosmic cycles of light and darkness, with a camera seemingly independent of a discernable centre of gravity.
   
• Wednesday, 3 September 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday, 7 September 2pm
  If…
  Dir: Lindsay Anderson  1968 (Great Britain)
  111 mins  35mm  B&W and Colour  Rated R (unclassified)
  Malcolm McDowell, David Wood
  A timely film whose shooting began two months before the events of May 1968, If… is an allegorical story about a revolution, lead by pupil Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), which takes place in a boarding school in England. Rebellion against the school’s strict codes of behaviour is taken to the farthest limits of the imagination. The director, Anderson, brilliantly employs documentary realism with surrealistic passages and a fractured chronology to explore this quintessentially British institution as a microcosm of society.

Dreams that money can buy, 18 & 22 June