Amiel Courtin-Wilson
b. 1979, Melbourne,
Australia.
BIOGRAPHY:Having
directed over 20 short films, seven feature length films and numerous
video
installations, Amiel Courtin- Wilson’s work has exhibited in many venues
including the Whitney Museum, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam,
National Gallery of Victoria, MONA, Yale, GOMA, the Gallery of New South Wales
and ACMI.
At
age 19, Courtin-Wilson’s debut feature documentary, CHASING BUDDHA premiered at
the Sundance Film Festival in 2000.
After
collaborating with Opera Australia and Chunky Move Contemporary Dance Company,
Courtin-Wilson formed the production entity Flood Projects in 2008.
His
subsequent feature documentary BASTARDY won the Best Documentary Jury Prize at
the 2009 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards (FCCA), and was released to
critical acclaim.
Courtin-Wilson’s
short film CICADA premiered at the Cannes Film Festival
as
part of Directors’ Fortnight in 2009 and won a slew of awards internationally.
Courtin-Wilson’s
public installations under the moniker of OXO OVO were published in the
worldwide survey of street art “The Art of Rebellion” (Gingko Press, 2003). His
first solo exhibition of drawings was at Utopian Slumps Gallery in Melbourne in
2009.
In
2012, Courtin-Wilson collaborated with the Black Lung Theatre Company on DOKU
RAI which premiered at the Darwin and Adelaide Arts Festivals.
Courtin-Wilson’s
next solo exhibition of drawing, photography and video work THE AMERICAN
EXPERIMENT featured at the Gertrude Contemporary Art Space in 2015.
His
dramatic feature film debut HAIL premiered in competition at the Venice Film
Festival, (Orizzonti, 2011), winning many awards internationally and was named
Best Australian Film of 2012.
Amiel with actor Daniel P. Jones (HAIL)
Courtin-Wilson’s
co-directed feature film RUIN won the Special Jury Prize
in
the Orizzonti Competition of the Venice Film Festival in 2013.
Courtin-Wilson
was also commissioned to create CARSON - a short film for the 70th Anniversary
of the Venice Film Festival as part of the Future Reloaded program, alongside
directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci and Claire Denis.
In
2014, he exhibited a video work entitled THE DEATH OF A KING at the Museum of
Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney as part of a Yoko Ono retrospective.
In
2016, Courtin-Wilson created THE SILENT EYE, a feature-length performance film
collaboration with Cecil Taylor and Min Tanaka, commissioned by the Whitney
Museum which premiered at Cecil Taylor: Open Plan.
In
2016, he won the National Portrait Gallery Award for Digital Portraiture with
the video installation CHARLES, shot in Norman, Oklahoma.
Also
in 2016, Courtin-Wilson exhibited BREAKING WAVES, a fifty minute, two-channel
video
installation
work about composer Percy Grainger for the Ian Potter Museum, as well two new
video works at MUMA as part of the exhibition UNDER THE WIRE, featuring Bill
Morrison and Rick Charnoski.
Courtin-Wilson
also recently joined BADFAITH - a VR collective that includes video artists
Shaun Gladwell and Daniel Crooks. Their first collaborative VR work EXQUISITE
CORPSE premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2018.
Courtin-Wilson
was awarded the Byron Kennedy Award at the 4th AACTA (Australian
Academy of Cinema and Television Arts) Awards in Australia in 2015, in recognition of
his commitment to innovation
in
Australian cinema over the last two decades.
The Melbourne Cinematheque
screened the second full retrospective of the artist’s films in 2018.
Courtin-Wilson is
concurrently developing several large scale installations (TRACES, BODY MUSIC),
in addition to being in post-production on his latest feature film THE
EMPYREAN.
HAIL
CRITICAL
OVERVIEW: Amiel Courtin-Wilson
is an acclaimed, multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker whose practice pursues
the breakdown between creator and subject through an expansion of the
possibilities of documentary portraiture. Centring on immersive, long-term
collaborations with individuals including musicians, performers, poets and ex-
inmates, Courtin-Wilson works across film, video, sound art, installation,
theatre and performance.
Courtin-Wilson’s
gaze is firmly wedded to the process of his subjects’ struggle to self-actualise
on their own terms. It charts the means by which the individual carves a space
for themselves through acts of defiance and reclamation, forging a shared
aesthetic space that stands in radical opposition to socio-historical
iniquities.
Early
works (‘Chasing Buddha’, ‘Bastardy’, ‘Hail’, ‘Ruin’) find Courtin-Wilson
deeply engrossed in his subjects’ lives, sometimes living with them for months
or years at a time. Through this, a fluid, radical space is opened that
introduces questions of the chaotic, the accidental and the surprising into
nominal traditions of documentary/art practice. These portraits of iconoclasts
and outliers render highly intimate moments on a perpetual cycle of personal
change, charting a subjectivity that bleeds into the sublime as a continual
state of transfiguration.
Increasingly,
works from 2014 onwards (‘The Death of a King’, ‘Charles’) have sought to
re-frame the ontological fabric of documentary portraiture itself through the
lens
of
visionary, extra-realist and para-cinematic formal gestures drawn from
Materialism and the lyrical avant-garde. Constantly evolving the language of
the observational, these new works propose a concept of “tactile time”, a
quality whose elasticity conflates inner with outer boundaries of the limit
experience.
As
these concerns have increasingly taken centre stage in Courtin-Wilson’s work, a
language beyond linear screen-based image media has evolved, with increased
experimentation in site-specific, installation and multi-channel projection
presentations (‘Breaking Waves’, ‘Under The
Wire’)
incorporating performance, architecture and sound art elements.
Startling
as a collection of individuated projects, Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s body of work
also functions as a serialised ‘cosmology’ - a living, breathing corpus of
impressions, experiences, sensations, and memories.
Cumulatively,
a picture emerges of urgent compassion, a restless exploration of embodied
experience through radical portraiture, crystallising Courtin-Wilson as one of
the most prolific, innovative and critically acclaimed Australian artists and
filmmakers of his generation.
THE SILENT EYE
Courtin-Wilson’s
works are not strictly documentary in nature or form, but rather carefully
contrived portraits of trauma and survival. Straddling a space somewhere
between the
real and unimaginable, his work is characterised by its combination of highly
authored realist narratives with imagery that is raw, fragile, violent,
impressionistic — and oftentimes staggeringly beautiful.
-
Emma Crimmings, Gertrude Contemporary
An
artistic vision that is astonishingly rich – seemingly unfathomable.
- Nick Feik Editor, The
Monthly Magazine
A
gifted artist of singular vision and ingenuity.
- Erik Jensen Editor, Saturday
Paper
An
artist whose work is defined by creative risk taking and governed by an
insatiable appetite to push boundaries, Amiel Courtin-Wilson is one of the
hardest working, courageous, and prolific filmmaker / artists of his generation in
Australia.
- Katrina Sedgwick CEO,
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)
Amiel
is one of the most distinctive and interesting Australian filmmakers and in my
capacity as Senior Curator at the MCA I have followed his work for many years.
- Natasha Bullock
Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney)
Amiel’s
expansive, exhilarating practice is unfailingly courageous, riveting, and
visceral in its impact. His humanistic, character-centric works reinvent the
relationship between anthropology and cinema, taking his audience on
meditative, trance-like journeys into unseen and alien aspects of our
environments, and ourselves.
- Ulanda Blair Curator
Moving Image M+ Museum (Hong Kong)
FILMOGRAPHY:
THE SILENT EYE
2022
'MAN ON EARTH', documentary, director – 96 min
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Melbourne International Film Festival 2022
2018
'EXQUISITE
CORPSE', VR work co-writer / co-director / co-editor Production Collective:
BADFAITH Producer: Leo Faber
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Melbourne International Film Festival 2016
'THE
SILENT EYE', single channel video installation, writer / director / producer /
editor Starring Cecil Taylor & Min Tanaka Curators: Jay Sanders, Lawrence
Kumpf
Commissioned by the
Whitney Museum - WORLD PREMIERE 2016 WINNER BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM Harlem
International Film Festival 2018
Official Selection
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2017
Official Selection Melbourne
International Film Festival 2017
Official Selection
Cork International Film Festival 2017
Official Selection
Antenna International Film Festival 2017
Official Selection St
Tropez International Film Festival 2017
Official Selection
Dark MOFO Festival, MONA 2017 NGV Screening “MOMA at NGV” Exhibition 2018
Australian Gallery of NSW Screening 2018
2015
'THE
NERVE METER', single channel video installation, writer / director / producer
Commissioned by the Adelaide International Film Festival Official Selection
9:16 Film Festival 2015
WINNER SPECIAL JURY
PRIZE Official Competition Venice International Film Festival (Orrizonti) 2013
WINNER BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Official Competition Moscow Tomorrow International
Film Festival 2013
WINNER Best Editing
Asia Pacific Film Festival 2013
WINNER BEST DIRECTION
Fantaspoa International Film Festival 2014
Official Competition
Sydney International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Goteborg International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Valdivia International Film Festival 2013
Official Selection
Cork International Film Festival 2013
Official Selection
Sofia International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Fantaspoa International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Asian Deauville International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Munich International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Sitges International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Transylvania International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Syros International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Dark Mofo MONA Film Program 2014
Official Selection
Melbourne International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Brisbane International Film Festival 2014
Official Selection
Cologne International Film Festival 2014
'CARSON',
short film writer / director / editor
Commissioned as part of the Venice 70
Future Reloaded Project celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the oldest film
festival in the world.
Official Selection
Venice International Film Festival 2013
'DOKU
RAI' Theatre Production, director, cinematographer & editor film sequences
for projection (In collaboration with Black Lung Theatre Company)
Adelaide Arts
Festival 2013
Brisbane Arts
Festival 2013
Darwin Arts Festival
2012
HAIL
2011
‘HAIL’,
feature drama, writer / director / producer / co-editor
Official Competition
Venice International Film Festival (Orrizonti) 2011
WINNER SEQUENCE JURY
PRIZE BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2012
WINNER AGE CRITICS
AWARD BEST AUSTRALIAN FEATURE MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2012
WINNER BEST FILM
PANORAMA SECTION FANTASPOA FESTIVAL BRAZIL 2013
NOMINATED BEST FILM,
BEST DIRECTOR, BEST ACTOR, BEST EDITING, BEST CINEMATOGRAPHER, BEST SCORE
AUSTRALIAN FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION (AFCA 2013)
Official Selection
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Adelaide International Film Festival 2011
Official Selection
Sydney International Film Festival 2011
Official Selection
Istanbul International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Munich International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Seattle International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Melbourne International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Cork International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Fantasia International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Message to Man International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Transylvania International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Fantastic International Film Festival 2012
Official Selection
Around the World in 14 Films (Berlin) 2012
Official Selection
Slash International Film Festival Austria 2013
‘CATCH MY DISEASE’,
feature documentary, 86 mins, director / co-producer / co-editor
Official Selection
Melbourne International Film Festival 2011
2010
‘TAG’,
short, director / editor / producer – 6 min
2009
'CICADA',
short documentary, director / editor / producer - 8 min
Official Selection
Directors’ Fortnight Cannes Film Festival 2009
Official Selection
Clermont Ferrand International Film Festival 2010
Official Selection
Sheffield International Documentary Festival 2009
Official Selection
Melbourne International Film Festival 2008
WINNER SBS Television
Award St Kilda Film Festival 2009
Special Mention
Krakow International Film Festival 2010
Special Mention Il
Janela International De Cinema Do Recife 2009
Highly commended Best
Documentary Flickerfest 2010
Nominated Best
Documentary Australian Directors Guild Awards 2009
Nominated Best
Documentary Sydney Film Festival 2009
Nominated Best Short
Form Documentary ATOM Awards 2009
BASTARDY
2008
‘BASTARDY’,
documentary, writer / director / producer / cinematographer – 84 min
Winner Grand Jury
Prize FIFO International Documentary Film Festival 2010
Winner Australian
Film Critics Circle Best Documentary Jury Prize 2009
Winner Best
Documentary Human Story ATOM Awards 2009
Nominated Best
Documentary, Best Direction, Best Editing Australian Film Institute Awards 2009
Nominated Best
Documentary Sydney Film Festival 2009
Nominated Best
Documentary Asia Pacific Awards 2009
Official Selection
Aboriginal Australian Film Festival Paris 2016
Official Selection
Melbourne International Film Festival 2008
Official Selection
Singapore International Film Festival 2009
Official Selection
Sheffield International Film Festival 2009
Official Selection
Mexico International Film Festival 2010
Official Selection
Kiev International Film Festival 2010
Official Selection
International RADO Film Festival Cameroon 2010
Official Selection
London Australian International Film Festival 2010
Screened National
Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Timeline Exhibition
2006
‘ON
THE OTHER OCEAN’, writer/ director/ editor – 8 min
Official Selection
Melbourne International Film Festival 2006
Official Selection
Sydney International Film Festival 2007
Official Selection
Adelaide International Film Festival 2007
Official Selection “Pulse”
American Director’s Guild screening 2008
2003
‘ADOLESCENT’
- short, director / producer / writer / editor – 6 min
Official Selection
Melbourne International Film Festival 2003 Official Selection RESFEST 2003
2002
‘PERSONA
IN THE HOME’ – documentary, writer / director - 7 min
Official Selection St
Kilda Film Festival 2002
‘ARCADE’
– documentary in collaboration with Chunky Move dance company, director/
editor/ cinematographer - 24 min
'STRANGLEFILM' Short film
Writer, Director, Editor, Cinematographer: Amiel Courtin Wilson
2 min
Official Selection St
Kilda Film Festival 2002
2001
'MELBOURNE 2:36AM' - short film
'& It’s POLITIkAL' - short documentary
2000
‘ISLANDS’
- SBS documentary, co-writer / director / cinematographer - 26 mins
Official Selection
Margaret Mead Documentary Festival 2001
Official Selection
Hawaii International Film Festival 2001
WINNER Documentary
Excellence Award, Real Life On Film Int’l Festival
2001 WINNER Best
Short Form Documentary Atom Awards 2001
'RE:CONSTITUTION' Short documentary
Co-Writer, Director, Editor: Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Co-Writer, Director, Editor: Vincent Heimann
6 min
OFFICIAL SELECTION St Kilda Film Festival 2000
CHASING BUDDHA
1999
’CHASING
BUDDHA’ - SBS documentary, writer / director / producer - 60 mins
Official Selection
Sundance International Film Festival 2000
WINNER Rouben
Mamoulian Award Sydney Film Festival 2000
WINNER Dendy Award
Best Documentary Sydney Film Festival 2000
WINNER Best Documentary
Australian If Awards 2000
Nominated Best
Director AFI Awards 2000
Nominated Best
Documentary Critics Circle Of Australia 2001 Gallery Of NSW
Asia Pacific
Documentary Focus Screenings Official Selection Singapore International Film
Festival
1998
'COSMONAUT' 6 min
ABC & Australian Opera Company
Director, Editor, Cinematographer: Amiel Courtin-Wilson
'LIVING WITH MENTAL ILLNESS' short film
1997
'BUBBLE CHOKE SQUEAK' short film
1995
'CHARLIE’S TOY MEETS MADELINE MORITZ' 6 min Writer, Director, Editor, Producer: Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Cinematographer: Vincent Heimann
Music By: Ween
WINNER Longford Nova Award
St Kilda Film Festival 1996
SCREENED on SBS ‘Eat Carpet’ 2001
'NUMB' 3 min
Writer, Director, Editor: Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Cinematographer: Vincent Heimann DISTINCTION National Panasonic Video Awards 1996
BEST Student Short Nomination
Atom Awards 1996
SELECTED
EXHIBITIONS
2016
CHARLES
The
National Portrait Gallery canberra single channel video installation
WINNER
DIGITAL PORTRAITURE PRIZE
RUIN “LIVE AT GOMA”
GOMA
Single
Channel Video installation live musical performance by Oren Ambarchi Curator:
Jose De Silva
SOVEREIGNTY
Australian
Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)
Single
Channel BASTARDY screeningCurated by
Max Delany
UNDER THE WIRE
MUMA
(Monash University Museum of Art)
THREE
CHANNEL VIDEO INSTALLATION GROUP EXHIBITION
CURATOR
JAMES HEWISON Commissioned as part of the Melbourne Arts Festival
BREAKING WAVES
Ian
Potter Museum
2
CHANNEL VIDEO INSTALLATION
Commissioned
as part of the Melbourne Arts Festival
CECIL TAYLOR: OPEN
PLAN
The
Whitney Museum Single Channel Video installation “THE SILENT EYE” Curated by
Jay Sanders
2015
THE AMERICAN
EXPERIMENT
GERTRUDE
CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE, SOLO EXHIBITION (TWO CHANNEL VIDEO INSTALLATION,
PHOTOGRAPHY, SOUND INSTALLATIONS, DRAWINGS) Curator: Emma Crimmings
2014
DEATH OF A KING
MUSEUM
OF CONTEMPORARY ART (MCA) SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA YOKO ONO RETROSPECTIVE “Experimental
Universe” SINGLE SCREEN INSTALLATION Curated by Joel Stern for Other Cinema
ACMI
/ ASIALINK AUSTRALIAN VIDEO ART TOURING THROUGHOUT ASIA
16MM
SINGLE SCREEN PROJECTION “PASH” 2004-2005.
CURATED
BY ALEXIE GLASS
2004
TAG, PASH, THE
EFFECTS OF FIRE
ACMI
AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR THE MOVING IMAGE
SINGLE
CHANNEL VIDEO INSTALLATIONS 2004 AUSTRALIAN CULTURE NOW (PUBLIC IMAGING
SCREENS)
CURATOR:
RHYS GRAHAM
PUBLICATIONS
'LUMINA'
'THE
INTERVIEW ISSUE' Australian Film Television and Radio School First Printing
2015
‘UTOPIAN SLUMPS: THE COLLINGWOOD YEARS‘
A
publication documenting exhibitions and events that took place during Melbourne
Gallery Utopian Slumps from 2007 to 2009. Publisher: Utopian Slumps 224 pages,
25 x 17.5 x 2.5cm, colour, hard cover cloth bound
Edition
of 2000 First printing 2011
‘TEN YEARS OF THINGS THAT DIDN’T KILL US’
Short
story anthology First Printing, 2008 Paroxysm Press
‘THE ART OF REBELLION’
Worldwide
survey of street art including Melbourne “OXO OVO” aerosol installations. First
Printing 2003 Gingko Press Inc (Germany)
SELECTED
LECTURES / WORKSHOPS
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY (2019)
SENSORY
ETHNOGRAPHY LAB PHD STUDENT SCREENING AND LECTURE ABOUT HYBRID FILMMAKING
METHODOLOGIES
MOMA
at National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Chunky Move Presents panel discussion
Australian Artists working in New York (2018)
WHITNEY
MUSEUM Panel discussion with Min Tanaka about collaborating with Cecil Taylor
(2016)
JOHNS
HOPKINS UNIVERSITY (BALTIMORE) Industry Mentor for the Saul Zaentz Innovation
Fund (2016)
YALE
UNIVERSITY Film Presentation of HAIL (2016)
EXPERIMENTAL
CONGRESS (Gertrude Contemporary Art Space) Curated by Joel Stern & Other
Film (2013)
NATIONAL
GALLERY OF VICTORIA Special Guest Artist Lecture “Portraiture and Documentary”
(2010)
U.C.L.A.
(University of California, Los Angeles) ‘Art as Moral Action’ invited by
Professor Peter Sellars (2000)
A.F.T.R.S.
(Australian Film Television & Radio School) ‘DIRECTING & PRODUCING
DOCUMENTARY & DRAMA SEMINARS’ (2000, 2011, 2012, 2013)
NATIONAL
GALLERY OF VICTORIA Special Guest Artist Lecture “Portraiture and Documentary”
(2010)
SYDNEY
FILM FESTIVAL industry lecture series “From Shorts to Features” (2011)
A.I.D.C.
(Australian International Documentary Conference) “The Next Wave” (2003) “The
Visual Language of Documentary” (2006) “This is not a documentary” 2017
FREELANCE
JOURNALISM
AUSTRALIAN
CHAMBER ORCHESTRA PROGRAM
“WORKING
IN THE COMPANY OF ARVO PART” ESSAY (2019)
THE
SATURDAY PAPER FEATURE ARTICLE CHRISTIAN MARCLAY'S “THE CLOCK” (2019)
THE
MONTHLY MAGAZINE FEATURE ARTICLE “Cecil Taylor” (2015)
SBS
ONLINE (PHOTO ESSAY: MODESTO CALIFORNIA, 2015)
MONSTER
CHILDREN “Influences and seminal cinema memories” (2012)
SESAME
MAGAZINE “Jack Charles: A Diary” (2005, 2007)
WORLD
SIGNS “OXO OVO Graffiti profile” (2003)
METRO
MAGAZINE “Director’s impressions” (2003)
IF
MAGAZINE “Margaret Mead Documentary Festival Profile” (2002)
STU
MAGAZINE (2002)
CURATORIAL
PROJECTS
MUSEUM OF
CONTEMPORARY ART (SYDNEY)
GUEST FILM CURATOR For the Contemporary Film Program (MAY 2016)
CAREER
AWARDS
AACTA BYRON KENNEDY
AWARD (2015)
Awarded
for a body of work in Australian film that has continually pushed boundaries
with innovative form and stories.
