RUSH OF EVENTS IN AUSTRALIA

In May, my wife Pamela and I went to Newcastle, Australia, where I spoke on Film and History at the Museums Australia international conference. Four hundred attended and we were hosted by Gavin Fry, the fine director of the Newcastle Museum. We went on to Melbourne to see my mother and brothers. Mirka was painting away, better than ever. Tiriel was preparing for a film role as Rene Rivkin, a notorious Sydney character, and William was busy arranging exhibitions of indigenous art.

I attended some of the Sydney Film Festival, and met my old friend, film expert extraodinaire, David Stratton, in the bar at the Carrington Hotel in the Blue Mountains. The beautiful, venerable Carrington is a G rated version of the hotel in The Shining. At the festival I met a Western Saharan woman accused in a shockumentary of being a slave in a refugee camp in Algeria. Clearly, she was not a slave and the whole incident brought up issues of what is a documentary exactly? Tabloid, truth, a mix? The relentless pressure on film makers and others in the media to get attention can easily consume them and consign them to oblivion.

Then on to Canberra where I started an extensive oral history at the National Film and Sound Archive. There I ran into Ted Kotcheff who was about to show his masterpiece WAKE IN FRIGHT. This brilliant film, made in 1971, scarred a generation of film makers with its blistering expose of fear and loathing in the beer soaked outback. Donald Pleasance gave a terrifying performance as a weird doctor, and hangovers have never been more traumatic. The celluloid effect was so bad I didn't drink beer for a few days. Life and art mix, because when I later directed the wonderful Mr. Pleasance I was concerned about his drinking, and he would ingeniously hide bottles of Chardonnay everywhere.

However, the culture of booze is alive and well Downunder. In fact, in Sydney's Chinatown, deluxe wine stores
sell bottles of cognac for as much as $A10,000.

We left Australia sober, incredibly well fed and optimistic.