Peter Speyer's FilmLab Blog

The preparation for the Panel Presentations was immaculate and impressive. Emerging from the range of demands of three weeks of Filmlab, every single person arrived with their own evolved narrative point of view formed and intact. As the second generation of Filmlabsters, perhaps only the first generation will only really appreciate the size of this achievement.

Deadlines propel us forward and this might have contributed to additional understandings you all needed to come to. Impressively, the measured and open offerings made by each team had the honest search for ‘truth’ about their own process and projects, so much part of the ethos of Filmlab. Who knows what when is another way of talking about this and the panel found the story of our Filmlab through you yesterday.

One the Labsters shyly asked me if I would be proud of the films that came out of the Lab and I have to say I am already. And of the participants. You are a community and a growing culture of unique South Australian film-makers. And the mutual support today when you presented to each other is evidence of this.

A word about our panel: perceptive, knowledgeable, experienced practitioners of low budget films themselves, their contributions highlighted challenges each of you were approaching, confronting and in some cases have already dealt with.

The creativity of all of you is impressive but today I wanted to single out the producers. I have watched you hold the line over three weeks of allowing your ‘creatives’ the space to develop their voices, often skewing wildly off into far reaches that they would only have managed to traverse knowing you were there, grounded and solid, sensitive and positive, empathetic while managing to keep your distance. All writers and directors dream of that producer. Well done.

Paddy played a Bach piano prelude for me this morning which explores counterpoint in Bach’s unique way. It made for a few moments of contemplation of beauty, as Paddy would say. Or truth, if beauty and truth are the same thing.

What moves each of us at any point in our lives, I wonder? I very much enjoyed the film clips the Labbers brought in yesterday which were variously deeply moving, entertaining and inspiring. After having gotten to know more from your initial music offerings, this made for a quite different encounter with you, particularly in the light of your evolving projects and the story and film challenges you are each facing.

Your presentations will likewise be offerings and revelations.  If carefully counterpointed and constructed as well as imbued with your own personal sense of inspiration, they will create a good sense of where you are going, what you are aiming for and also be affecting to your audience. They will hopefully reflect and refract what you have done and why. Looking forward…

I’m tired today. It’s our third day off and away from the SAFC site and I wonder who else is tired on the lab. Tiredness has its source in many springs and sleep is only one response. Fatigue is a cousin of tired and is a consequence of working hard. We are joined in this, I feel, participants, tutors and organizers. I hope so, I hope others are tired too or at least fatigued.

However, I sense some of the hard work is happening in space still. It’s not at home. Where is home, Labbers? Where do your films live? Where do you live? Why float in space or in a zone called cinema or the past or in an idea that lives in the country of ideas? Your story is looking for a place, a simple place, to put it’s head down and sleep.

I am a visitor to your country, your city, your gardens, you homes, your bedrooms, your hospitals, cemeteries and hotels and I want to know what you feel about being in these places, living here. What makes you furious, nauseous, worried and passionate? What makes you sad, what do you want to shout about? Who do you wish to avenge and why? What do you mourn and how does your story inhabit this feeling? What do you regret that you wish to correct? What is missing? If this is gnomic, I make no apologies but hope instead it makes a trigger which fires off something for you. And makes you interrogate your stories in the same way.

For those still in search of this heart-beat, it is an honourable space to be in. Don’t be fooled by what you hope it is because unless you really have your head down on the real chest of your story listening to what it’s truly telling you, it will all cave in and feel false. Because the excitement which flows off a story which is flowing, particularly after working hard to find it, is like no other sensation and will beat fatigue and tiredness hands down.

Enough. I look forward to hearing what you’ve discovered in the break. And of course, I look forward to seeing you all again. Onwards!

Saturday, 7am. On the beach. The weekend. Old men fishing. I speak with one. Catch anything? Three whites, he tells me. Then he looks at me as he baits his hook, his accent still living in the old country, Italy: The important thing is to love the thing you do and do it with with all your heart, no?

Indeed. You go fishing for your stories, you bait your hooks, you cast, you wait. Maybe you wait a long time. Finally it bites. You play it. It runs out, comes back. It fights and tugs but you know it’s for real when it does that. There’s something on the end, it’s alive. You also are reeling it in at the same time. And once you land it, you know what to do with it. You show it around before cooking it. Yes, the show goes on tomorrow. I’ve watched all you fishers of stories at work. The actors, the set, the shoot, the cut – but most importantly, the story and how it feels tomorrow.

On my one hour walk along the Glenelg beach this morning, the old man who has a daily swim and who seems to be always towelling himself off as I pass, greeted me for the first time. I asked him if it was cold in there but he didn’t reply. Maybe he didn’t hear. However, from some distance away, a woman’s voice shouted to me: “Hot in there, cold out here!’. I turned around to see who was speaking: a woman in her late seventies changing back out of her swimming togs, perhaps his wife.

This kind of summarises yesterday for me. Kind of because it’s not really cold out here, but ‘in there’ it looks very warm and getting hotter. ‘In there’ is everybody preparing for their presentations on Sunday, dropping deeper into their projects, getting closer to each boiling spring, the source of the films. So much activity, so much intense conversation around us and with us, so much planning and prepping and even shooting. Stay in there, I want to say to the filmmakers, it’s warming up and will get hot. That’s where you want to be.

Yesterdays’ ‘abject’ sculptures were so individual, so crafted too, each person interpreting the instruction in their individual way. One even made me laugh out loud – that voice is irresistible and I can see it emerging nicely in her film too.

I look forward to dipping more than a toe in all of them on Sunday.

I’m in love with Adelaide skies. They have drama in abundance and if one chances to look up at sunset or sunrise, then the poet Derek Walcott’s observation is realised right here, totally disproving Adelaide’s ‘boring city’ monika: ‘Sunset, the greatest picture show in town’.

Yesterday I looked at the faces of all as their respective project-task was set: the greatest picture show in town seemed to be on everyone’s minds. Now, as we approach the half-way point of this Lab, the gauntlet has been thrown down and it’s up to these film-makers to prove us right. Go to where you fear most, is what I wanted to say. The films with the drama in your skies, that cut the sharpest edges, will emerge from the ‘boring city’ if you do, I also wanted to say to them.

I am amazed by the quality of the art produced – hopefully Kerri will will upload some of her excellent photographs soon which will evidence this observation. One person, whose preferred medium when not making films is photography, commented to me yesterday about his surprise at the thinking and idea material that emerges when engaged with painting and sculpture. Displacement activity, maybe an active Zen process which suggests that you will find what you are looking for when you stop looking for it. I hope others are experiencing this too.