Waterfall
Arthur & Corinne Cantrill | 1984 | Australia | 18’ | 16mm | Sound

The Second Journey (To Uluru)
Arthur & Corinne Cantrill | 1981 | Australia | 74’ | 16mm | English spoken

In 1977, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill took their first trip into central Australia to film Uluru. The resulting film, At Uluru (1978), captures their sense of awe in the face of the structure, which is shown to be both static and ever-changing through the interplay of light and shape. Second Journey (to Uluru) documents the filmmakers’ next visit to Uluru some years later, on a trip taken with the filmmaker Michael Lee. The “secondness” of the film’s journey here is key, as it reflects on its increasing distance from the originating experience and from the enigmatic monolith. Commenting upon the losses and degradations inherit in the act of filming, seeing, and seizing, Second Journey is at the same time an intimate, self-reflexive study of cinematic creation and projected light, investigating the feedback between film and land, form and content.

“We are interested in a continuing dialogue between content and form. We also see this synthesis of landscape and film form as bringing together our attitudes as citizens to the conservation of land, forests and seashore, and to Indigenous land rights. We have no difficulty in sharing the Indigenous belief that the landscape is the repository of the spiritual life of this continent.” (Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, 1982)

Preceded by Waterfall (1984), another enigmatic study of a major Australian landmark – this time, Mackenzie Falls in the Grampians, Victoria. One of the most vibrant of the Cantrills’ three-colour separation films, the film reflects an interest in the beginnings of colourised photographic production and motion-picture film. As in their Uluru films, the filmmakers set out to discover sources and acquaintances for a cinematic practice in the physical, mysterious world.

With an introduction by Audrey Lam and Keegan O’Connor.