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Selected
quotes from reviews
Obsession
(1981-5)
"In
some ways, (this) film is about a man and his car: fixing it,
driving it, worrying over it. In others it is a sinister investigation
of society's definition of the individual." (Stephanie Bunbury,
The Age, 4 October 1985)
"A car
is the object of Cumming's desire, a metaphoric vehicle in the
journey to psycho-social paradise, but actualisation seems not
what it's cracked-up to be. ... The film ends with the question
'Do you want to get out?' It is madness and 'yeah, right here
will be fine'." (Jordan Rodgers, The Richmond Times,
1 October 1985)
"The
film is beautifully photographed in black-and-white. It also features
the best use of video manipulations I have seen in a film."
(Chris Windmill, The Emerald Hill & Sandridge Times,
10 October 1985)
"Rarely
has the death-loving thrall of driving been rendered with such
kinetic allure. Yet the film also uses its subject to mount a
grim analysis of the way identity is offered, mass-produced (one
could say even mechanised) within our larger social structures.
There is a distinctive, metallic humour in the film." (Marie
Craven, Silver Delirium, 1995)
Obsession
screened at Experimenta (Melbourne1996), Cinematografia
Invitada Week of Experimental Cinema, Madrid (Spain 1994),
Westworld Stories programme, Metro Mania (MIMA/FTI, Perth
1989), Indian Film and Television Institute (Puna India
1985), London University Extra Mural Studies Department,
Sheffield Film Co-op, Sheffield Polytechnic, Humberside College
Hull (U.K. 1985), Camera Plurielles (Lyon, France 1985),
Collective for Living Cinema (New York, NY, U.S.A 1986),
UCLA (California, U.S.A. 1986) and Melbourne International
Film Festival (Australia 1985).
Obsession
is represented in the film collections of: Screensound Australia
and The National Library of Australia.
Recognition (1982-6)
"In
the beginning ... (sic) A wordless political allegory in
which the Hero emerges into a surreal terrain - a tract on the
terra incognito of male sexuality which traverses the frontiers
and archetypes of modern psychological history." (Melbourne
Film Festival programme, 1987)
Recognition
screened at Oberhausen Short Film Festival (West Germany
1987), Melbourne International Film Festival (Australia
1987). It is represented in the film collections of Screensound
Australia and The National Library of Australia.
Sabotage
(1983-7)
"Sabotage
evolved out of frustration with the inadequacy of political dialogue
in the 1980s. In this film, each character's response to the notion
of 'sabotage' is different: dogma, action, deception, hypocrisy,
incompetence, detachment, subversion. The strategy of the film
itself is to sabotage the synchronicity of sight and image."
(Megan McMurchy, Signs of Independence, 1988)
Sabotage
screened at the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane, 1989).
Obsession,
Recognition and Sabotage were made with
financial assistance from the Australian Film Commission (AFC)
Creative Development Fund.
First
Time Tragedy, Second Time Farce
(1987-89)
"Made
in conjunction with Jane Madsen and James Swinson, this 75-minute
film comprehensively reflects upon the Aboriginal perspective
of the 1988 Australian bicentennial celebrations, a notorious
event for those who consider that human involvement with the continent
started somewhat before 1788." (Geoff Wright, The Melbourne
Times 12 September 1990, p 17)
First
Time Tragedy Second Time Farce was made with financial
assistance from Film Victoria. It was screened at Bristol
Rio Cinema and Watermans Art Centre (by Amnesty
International) in London (U.K. 1990), the Melbourne Fringe
Festival (1989), the Film and History Conference (Sydney, 1989)
and broadcast by RTE TV (Ireland 1990). Held in the film
collections of The Australian Institute of Aboriginal &
Torres Straight Islanders, Screensound Australia.
Headfirst (1987-90)
"...
offering students the chance to devise a commissioned documentary
has allowed them to subtly alter and innovate the documentary
form itself, for example when experimental footage is used to
create the subjectivity of the brain damaged with stunning results.
Through the incorporation of a collective writing and directing
role with the brain damaged victims themselves, an improvisation
process has allowed them to play themselves as well as dramatised
characters, which gives the film a truly Brechtian quality in
that the dramatic style never completely masks the political issues
being discussed." (Shane McNeil, Filmnews, October
1990, p 13)
"...
a haunting and intimate experience imaginatively wrapped."
(Geoff
Wright, The Melbourne Times 12 September 1990, p 17)
Headfirst
was made with assistance from Vic Health, Deakin University
and various corporate sponsors. It was distributed by the Australian
Film Institute until the demise of AFID and is now held on video
in the library of Deakin University. Winner Frames/STA Award for
a Student Film/Video, Frames Film and Video Festival, Adelaide
1990.
The Hollow Centre
and Spaces (1999)
These two
films screened as part of Ultra-Projections One and Two at Dancehouse
in 1999.
The Hollow
Centre is a two-screen work comprising a roll of film and
a videotape. Images from the video are reprocessed in the film.
"The
Hollow Centre evokes a sense of self at a time in one's adulthood
when the rich internal life of childhood is found missing. Self
eventually appears to us as nothing more than a complex lace of
mirrors on the world - a hollow centre." (Christos Linou)
"John
Cumming's video/film performance The Hollow Centre, first
encountered at an Ultraprojections screening, is like the distilled
stutter of an eight year work of self-reflexion. John talks to
the camera at various stages of maturity, cut down from hours
and hours of self-filming, but there is hardly any talk, any content
left, just pregnant moments, before things are started, dredged
up, kinda empty from a "hollow centre". But what seeps
through this monumental erasurre and denial is that such an heroic
monumental act/task has been carried through. It is like a pause
that has been contemplated for 8 years, a writer's block made
manifest on some timeless personal scale, beyond reason. as in
Pop [George King, NZ, 35mm/digital video, 14 mins, 1999]
it is what is intimated beyond the achievable. It is an emptiness
itself that becomes clear. repeated gesture, repeated stare, smile,
waiting, compacted time: this is really a very, very, very long
film. It ends with film: a solarised shot of John, hovering silently
as only film can at the end of its history. Is this the memory
of film and time that is experienced? it is no longer about information
and knowledge any more but about its loss and mourning. Film's
ghost was captured by John Cumming in March 1999, Melbourne."
(Dirk de Bruyn, Artlink, vol 19 No 3, 2000, p 50. )
Spaces
is comprised of edited interviews with people from the audience
for the Dancehouse screening of The Hollow Centre (many
of whom appear on this website): Frank Lovece, Lyn Malone, Robin
Plunkett, Ettore Siracusa, Marcus
Bergner, Neil Taylor, Yoni Prior, Philip
Tyndall, Lee Smith, Steven Ball.
Retrospective of John Cumming's
work (2004)
5th Melbourne
Underground Film Festival, July 13, 2004
Works screened:
Obsession, Recognition, Sabotage, and excerpts
from First Time Tragedy, Second Time Farce, Headfirst,
and The Hollow Centre.
"John
Cumming's film work is marked by a strong interest in form, often
resulting in films that are interesting hybrids of various elements.
As a director, his hand is both (to quote Godard) "soft and hard",
as he effortlessly moves from narrative to essay to documentary,
from analysis to poetry to emotion." - (Bill Mousoulis, program
notes, see Melb
indie film website.)
"(Cumming's)
films have few common denominators beyond their virtuosic editing
and sound design, and their drive to undermine any single consistent
reality, offering the fractured impression of a story rather than
the story itself. As this suggests, Cumming is unusually aware
of the political underpinnings of form; his comments at a subsequent
question-and-answer session implicitly showed up the limits of
current debates about the state of local filmmaking, which tend
to focus unthinkingly on narrative aspects even when success isn't
crudely equated with profit." (Jake Wilson, RealTime
Oct/Nov, 2004, p 19.)
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