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"A masterpiece of Australian experimental cinema." – The Sydney Morning Herald
Albie Thoms was a pioneer of Australian underground filmmaking; an iconoclast whose avant-garde sensibilities offered a sharp contrast to the decidedly more conventional output of the 1960s Australian film industry. Marinetti, his first feature-length film, is a tribute to its namesake: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the early 20th-century Italian Futurist art movement.
Taking its cues from Futurism's veneration of speed, destruction and mechanisation, Marinetti is a whirlwind of experimental techniques. Snatches of house party sequences, domestic footage and found images are treated to every technique imaginable – from multiple exposure and rapid zooms to lens distortion and scratched film stock.
Set to a pulsating psychedelic jazz soundtrack by John Sangster, this is a fascinating artefact of late-‘60s counterculture, and an altogether exhilarating experience.
Courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
