Video.
Col. and B&W. 99 mins.
Sample on Youtube
A portrait of the actor, film teacher, critic, and legendary cinephile, John Flaus, in a unique film mosaic structured around cryptic crossword clues and solutions suggesting the content of the twelve sequences.
Extracts from some of his many film and stage performances are intercut with scenes from some of his favourite movies and juxtaposed against scenes of his everyday life.
This film was shot between 1988 and 1992 when John’s life was in a particular stage of transition, moving from Fitzroy where he lived alone, to share life with his partner Natalie de Maccus.
Shown as a “work in-progress” at the Melbourne Film Festival 1992, the film was denied completion funding and was put on hold. From 2007 Tammer and editor Kit Guyatt reconstructed the film, completing it in November 2009. Together they have created an affectionate yet unsentimental portrait of Flaus, which resonates as a true and accurate representation of an amazing man.
Is there anyone else who knows the Australian film industry like John Flaus?
"Flausfilm is one man’s response to another, over time but also in a particular period of time. It is not a biography, or even a comprehensive portrait. This is a personal, impressionistic, passionate, subjective portrait." John Cumming
"What the film highlights so well is what I guess most of us appreciated i.e., Flaus's singularity. To me he is a kind of renaissance man of cinephilia with an extraordinary range of intellectual engagement." Bruce Hodsdon
"I was blown away by the density of it; its layers of insight, its resonance, Flaus as a person, (of which I know only a little), and the built-in sense of struggle with it all. This is really one of those films that improves with subsequent viewings." Richard Leigh
