Background

A short 16mm film, first made as a Super 8 film by → ↑ → in 1982. The Celluloid Self takes the form of a seris of interviews with people, each placed at a table speaking into a microphone, prodded by an off-screen interviewer. Each of the 3 actors plays 3 different characters. No attempt is made to make the actors resemble, appear or invoke the people (famous, actual, invented) they portray. Despite them all discussing aspects of their lives and work, not a single word of convincing truth is uttered in the film. Let's call it docmentary in drag.

Credits

16m version

Crew

Direction - Philip Brophy
Script - Philip Brophy
Camera - John Laurie
Lighting - Dale Putting
Sound - David Chesworth
Editing - Philip Brophy
Sound post - Philip Brophy
16mm production Funded by the Creative Development Branch of the Australian Film Commission,/p>

Cast

Esther Costello - Linda Barron
Joan Crawford - Maria Kozic
Lawrence Quirk - Philip Brophy
Alice Budinski - Linda Barron
Bill Collins’ researcher - Maria Kozic
David Soul - Philip Brophy
Ordinary person - Linda Barron
Ordinary person - Maria Kozic
Ordinary person - Philip Brophy

16mm version

2024

4K restoration by Ray Argall, Piccolo Films

1988

State Film Theatre, Melbourne
Mandolin Cinema, Sydney

1987

Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne

1984

Glasshouse Theatre, Melbourne

Super 8 original

1982

POPISM, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Melbourne Cineastes Society, Melbourne; Melbourne Film Festival; Virgin Press benefit concert, Seaview Ballroom, Melbourne; The Mill, Geelong; Burwood Town Hall, Melbourne
Australian Independent Filmmakers Programme, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Departure Lounge, Sydney; Paddington Cinema, Sydney
Media Resource Centre, Adelaide

1981

Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, Melbourne
City Studio, Sydney

Overview

From the original 1982 programme note

A fairly overworked title, but a complex and intriguing area of film and filmmaking in general. It is most interesting in respect to its spread of oversimplified theoretical practice. Obviously we know the difference between a person, an actress/actor, and a character—but what exactly do such textual components mean and/or imply? What does knowledge provide us with? Has their history generated shifts and changes in the functioning?

The Celluloid Self poses one major question (of course it has been asked for) In relation to the above concerns: who is speaking in any one instance of the film (text) and from where are they speaking? The answer to such a question is not simply supplied by an awareness of the supposed differences between actor/actress, person and character. The play between these textual voices is at different times amplified, muted, multiplied, repeated. A Mobius strip of hierarchies, this family of voices expands to include historical figures, stereotypes, stars, archetypes, authors, etc. To utilise a bad binary for a moment,"real life" and "fiction" expand and contract each other-continually consuming and regurgitating one another. The Celluloid Self inserts itself gleefully into what could be termed a textual mess.

Technical

The shoot for the 16mm version of The Celluloid Self took place over a single day in August 1983. A small crew was assembled in the kitchen of Philip and Maria, who both perform in the film along with Linda Barron. The script (a brief outline containing no dialogue) specified each character. The filmed dialogue was improvized and recorded on the first take. The looseness uses 'naturalistic' performance to facilitate the falsity of who and what the performers are betraying. The photos on the walls behind the performers are a collection of Kodak Instamatic snapshots taken by Philip and Maria of all and any visitors to their place. Everyone always performs for the camera: that statement of truth merges the 'real person' (docmented in the snapshot) with the 'reality' of the mask they project. The Celluloid Self is a filmed extension of that phenomenon of constructing and presenting a 'self' to the world—a world that in this case is no larger than a pathetic kitchen in a rented house.