Island Fuse

It's a three-colour separation study of MacKenzie Falls in the Grampians, Victoria.

As the camera moves gently from afar into the very heart of the monolith, the magic of the holiest site of the Aborigines unfolds in shimmering nuances of light. Shot at different times of day, the close-up and panorama shots of this more than 500-million-year-old stone formation combine silence and acoustically altered birdsong to convey a feeling of timelessness into which a sense of loss is also inscribed. The somnambulistic moonrise in the great sky seems almost like an abstract painting and yet it is real. The areas of discolouration in the film material caused by problems in the developing process were deliberately left in the film as a metaphor for the looming threat to this natural environment through bushfires and tourism.

Ayers Rock is examined in the light of its ancient human and animal associations. It is seen under various light effects which create different colour and texture impressions. The timelessness of the monolith is suggested by negative colour, the result of using fine-grain Eastmancolour print stock in the camera, a slow speed material which required the intense Central Australian light for adequate exposure. A half-speed recording of the local bird call and insects contributes to the sense of cross eras. Human perception of time, colour and sound is questioned. As Einstein said: 'The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.'

Timeless elements in a roll of film: stillness, movement, woman, girl, road, wind, sun, leaves. A triptych of a girl who reminds us of the face and figures in old icons.

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill are two of Australia's most prominent experimental filmmakers. The Cantrills are well known for their 'colour separation' films. To create these works they shoot a scene three separate times on black and white film stock, using a different colour filter each time. In the lab, they combine these three films onto a single Eastmancolour print. This process creates dramatic transitions in colour that the Cantrills liken to the vibrancy of Technicolor. Though the footage here was shot in the mid-’80s, it was only last year that they edited it into this fifteen-minute movie. Structurally it’s simple enough: just a series of views of various parts of inner Melbourne, from panoramic wide shots to close-ups of the sides of buildings. The soundtrack blends and warps familiar urban noises – cars, buskers, the ringing bells of trams – into a kind of musique concréte.

A camera calligraphy of the coastal bush -- celebrating growth, summer light, rock and plant textures.

A short animation of Charles Lloyd’s dry points. Sound composition by Arthur Cantrill.

An experimental work about the Australian forests by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill.

short experimental film by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill

Evening performances of traditional Balinese dance-drama in Ubud, shot single frame with open shutter exposures.

The film Harry Hooton is conceived as a huge energy field combining the energy of light and colour, movement, editing and sound — a dense, vibrating, pulsating work, unrelenting in its thrust; a celebration of Hooton’s definition of art as the communication of emotion to matter.

Synopsis Part of a series of four studies the Cantrills made of the native flora of the Stradford Island, this one focusing on the Pandanus Pedunculatus.

TWO WOMEN records our passage through the tribal lands of the Central Australian region – a personal charting of this mythical landscape. The film is shaped by an unedited recording made of a Pitjantjatjara women’s song cycle: "Two Women", which describes the travels of ancestral women through this region. The film is not a literal interpretation of the song story, and there is no translation of the song. We are outsiders to this culture, and must therefore learn what we can from the ‚surface’ of the song cycle – from the voices singing, talking, whispering, coughing, laughing, reprimanding children.

Three-color separation imagery expands the experimental documentation of landscape. Alternating nuances of color conjure up; a formal beauty, which are echoed in birdsong and the buzzing of insects.

Experimental Super 8 film from 2001 by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill

3-colour separation film.