Memory Film: A Filmmaker's Diary

Revered filmmaker Jeni Thornley (Maidens, MIFF 1979) composes an immersive cine-poem from her extensive super-8 archive spanning three decades.

Set against the backdrop of radical feminism, Aboriginal land rights and widespread social upheaval, Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary is a ‘road movie’ of sorts, tracing its maker’s inner journey towards liberation. Adopting the lenses of psychotherapy and Eastern spirituality, and incorporating footage from Thornley’s earlier works Maidens, the collaborative feature For Love or Money, To the Other Shore and Island Home Country, this hyper-intimate opus contemplates gender fluidity, sexual politics, the pleasure and pain of motherhood, and the desire for a world free of war and colonisation.

With a sweeping score by Egyptian-Australian multi-instrumentalist Joseph Tawadros and inspired by the minimalist sensibility of silent cinema as a dialogue-free piece, Thornley’s “farewell film poem to life” unfolds with a haunting tactility: along with the celluloid’s visible grain, there are shots of foliage, forests, fronds of hair, fingers on skin. Thornley allows the personal to intrude on the societal, revealing cracks in institutionalised accounts of events and foregrounding both impermanence and the inexorable passage of time. Supported by the MIFF Premiere Fund and produced by Tom Zubrycki (Senses of Cinema, MIFF Premiere Fund 2022; Ablaze, MIFF Premiere Fund 2021), Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary is a lovingly crafted, lucid meditation on resistance, legacy and carving out one’s place amid constant transformation.

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Director Jeni Thornley will be in attendance for the screenings on Sunday 13, Tuesday 15 and Thursday 17 August.

MIFF is committed to providing accessible screenings and is proud to offer the 17 August session of Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary as an Open Audio Description session. This Open Audio Description session offers a service for blind and low-vision patrons, and MIFF is excited to be able to offer an experimental and inclusive film experience beyond the original intent of the filmmaker.

For this session, the Audio Description track will play aloud through the cinema speakers over the film score and sound design. All patrons in the cinema will hear the Audio Description track. Audio Description provides narration and commentary that aims to describe body language, expressions, movements, key actions and the visual content of the film, thereby offering additional information about the film through sound.

All other sessions will have the film’s score and sound design playing aloud through the cinema speakers and the Audio Description track will only be available through a device with headphones that can be borrowed from the MIFF Box Office. For any questions regarding access services available for this film, please contact access@miff.com.au.