this time next week, i’m going to be back here, back at the Northcote Social Club for the free music show, only this time it was a hectic, hyper-masc punk show and i’m living in Elwood, and next week it will be the indie pop show and i’ll be living in coburg

it’s cool that this space/place remains the same, as I physically and mentally change my residential premises, whilst also changing as the style and genre  of concert has changed i guess, though i’ll still be there, drinking my water, listening to the show and maybe filming parts of it. this is one of the bands playing next week, who are more or less friends of mine, and i love this video as a synthesis of what encapsulates the melbourne touristic experience for me – going around the cbd on some solemn double decker bus. good song though

A film that I watched for the 2016 Melbourne International Film Festival by an Australian filmmaker I feel wrings true really well as a reference point here. It was called Winter at Westbeth, and for me it was something about the circumstances of what was being documented and how the documentary was then so considered and in a way candidly delivered. Westbeth is a high rise residential complex in New York, on manhattan island, that in the 60s became a low-cost rent controlled residential complex for talented artists who were deemed applicable, low cost enough that these artists reamined to live there, incidentally into their 70s. Thus, what ends up occurring is essentially a naturally occuring aged care residential facility in a way, not that this is the clear m/o to be extracted from Winter at Westbeth. There are various documentary subjects, or characters, and based on perspective you could certainly make the case that there is a central character supported by several others, in that whoever you find most in tune with. That said, Dudley Williams does end up taking a clearly major role in a sense, as we are to find at the end he does pass away.

In a way the viewer is invited to observe, in what does end up being really quite candid, a place that has been met with the change, and how all these characters interact and adapt to this change, in their living situation, time, their age, and I feel like there is almost too much to take from this meditation of this quaint unassuming area, for a short doco that concerns a town, a change that occurs as a result of a change in the place, with Little Saigon Market being burnt down, and the afterglow and aftereffect of the manner in which the community or our case our characters being a select few members of our community then, are able to deal with this change.

Unfortunately no direct scenes cannot be found other than the trailer, but what the trailer is able to really accentuate is that there is this acknowledge that the space exists but also an understanding that I also resonate with, in that one of the most important aspects, truly of assessing change, is to follow the people, not the place, as the people are those that make the place a space, not really the other way around. So amidst all our shots that present this burnt down market, I feel like it will be really important to capture our characters, like Westbeth does, in a reflective manner, where we can really examine this change that has occured, thats where I feel will possess the greatest amount of benefit.

In Westbeth almost all of the characters are presented, as they are detailing their activities, in the shot actually doing those activities, to accompany interviews and long drawn footage of their everyday activities, and this is really executed perfectly, as we really come to understand the nuances of each person. It will be then important for us to really try to hone in on Gigi, with something as potent as “9 months without pay” to support our understanding on a base level for the kind of person she might be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcaCclYrwfc

The immediate feedback to our idea, by the Panel, and from Kim has been interesting, as there seems to be this mutual understanding that what we have picked a very interesting idea, and there is a lot to be said of the extraction of this story, and this place that has changed, and how we approach it. One panel member spoke about how Gigi’s story would be worth focusing on, in part due to this crucial line she uttered, “9 months without pay”, lending to the rather urgent nature of the situation. I think this is really quite important for us as a group, to understand the socioeconomic effects perhaps, or damage that the loss of this market, and so many people’s jobs would have caused. Kim herself has mentioned or suggested a means as to perhaps being able to understand this situation, looking into like They also mentioned that it would be important to see how these supporting voices/characters would be able to function to compound this story. I definitely resonate with this, even if it’s only in the sense that the culmination of all these stories and perspectives could really stand to capture a really important understanding of how neighbourhoods deal with the change or loss of a place that in a way is in direct relation to ones livelihood – either for those that worked there, that owned businesses there, but even all the foot traffic and the residue of all the nearby businesses that have been affected by this change. It was very interesting to do the first steps of perhaps interviewing the nearby grocer around the corner, who seemingly were unaffected as they did not lose their business. But this is purely from a superficial perspective, as they have clearly lost business as a result of the lost residue foot traffic of those went to the market, as the geographical position of Little Saigon Market was quite on one of the edges of the commercial and retail precinct in Footscray, and so was this grocer.

Another panel member made an interesting point, which I’d considered for my own documentary idea, but not Ellie’s here which is, what the space was before being Little Saigon Market as we were to know it. This is really interesting because in the scheme of things Little Saigon Market could only have really been around, under that moniker, for like a maximum of like 40 years, as Malcolm Fraser only began letting in Vietnamese refugees in 1975, so any fruition of a vibrant vietnamese community could have only really taken place, after this time. In this sense it would be cool to look into the genealogy of the area prior to the inception of the vietnamese people, though for the sake of this production I feel like this can’t really be warranted due to the can of worms it would add to the overall length of the sequence. I know that in anyway case the area presented as quite an Italian area

I think the Pentridge Prison project was quite intriguing, because from the outset it is really clear that the concept is intriguing, even just superficially, in the sense that we are talking about a place, that used to be a prison, designed to be a place of punishment and unliveable for people, to then be turned into a residential complex, meaning that somewhere, in this period of time  and everyone has all these ideas of what a place was before they were in that place, whether someone has spit there, whether someone used to sleep in this bed, how many people have stepped in these steps. The group, in this realm touch on the extent of the depraved activities that undoubtedly would have occurred in this prison, and this dynamic is extremely peculiar since it is now a livable area, and I personally feel like I’d be uncomfortable with the knowledge that the place where I was living was home to a disproportionate number of depraved deeds.

In terms of where I think this needs to head, I believe a team of people would fund this project if the group is able to reconcile the spectrum of this transformation from prison to living complex, maybe if there were people directly connected with the prisons existence as a prison still maintaining a stake in the prison’s existence as a living complex, these people would be the central characters I’d love to hear about. But I think it needs to stand more on aspects like this, than purely say trying to focus on the conception of change, like simply that, as it stands, this prison has turned into a residential complex. Nonetheless, I think it would be approved and commissioned given these slight expansions.

might confirm that i am indeed an avid fan of the australian football game, and by extension in doses do quite enjoy the Australian Football League. so like when i was given the opportunity to be a temporary melbourne of the melbourne cricket club, by way of procuring a pass, i saw it right to see it how they had it.

• full strength beer
• cool seats

but kinda like super a little boujee and racist – full colonisation at work? the whole system reeks of white supremacy really, you need to be nominated (i bet the caucasian demographic is 99.3% at the mcc) by probably a caucasian, then you wait years on end, to be approved to contribute hundreds to this white bread organisation

wouldn’t mind wholemeal toast thanks

I just watched the Gurrumul doco, which was both amazing and so thoroughly informative in a manner i wasn’t exactly anticipating – it was interesting how informative it was from the outset — because I remember when it was meant to be the Closing Film for the MIFF closing night gala (it still was) but then Gurrumul passed away, and there was in general a confusion as to how things would progress, as when an indigenous person passes away, it generally is no longer an option to call them by their first name, so the documentary was called something like the Documentary of Dr G Yunupingu.

but from the outset of this documentary, as it was shown this thursday, clan leaders had made an exception for gurrumul, speaking to the aspect of gurrumul’s fame and presence being so important to australian indigenous culture that it was considered beneficual for indigenous education that Gurrumul would remain addressed as Gurrumul, and it was such a fiercely amazing documentary, I highly recommend everyone to watch it

i’ve been thinking a little bit lately about previous documentaries i’ve watched and the ones i’ve enjoyed a lot a lot more

i’ve been studying a subject called True Lies, which obviously lends toward a deeper understanding of documentary and the different modes, but i’ve also been entrusted with a three-month subscription of DocPlay from Kim which is cool

in the last year i think I really enjoyed STEP, for how affecting and amazing it was, so inspiring as well in a way

and also I really liked watching school life, which is kind of like to be and to have

so for a while now i’ve been interning at local music label, Chapter Music, and this week the two people in charge, have embarked on a short stay in America for a couple months, and assorted international areas. I’ve been tasked to, in their absense make sure that all the mail orders are getting sent which is intriguing as they operate at their home and I’ll have to interrupt the person that is subleasing the house by entering the premises and sending out the mail orders

it’s cool though, I’m pretty comfortable with what I need to be doing, though it’s pretty funny because it’s so entrenched in my muscle memory to do these tasks, hopefully i don’t stuff up!!

https://chaptermusic.bandcamp.com/album/her

My recent thing is to attend so many of my friends gigs, because I really think they’re so talented, and last weekend I was blessed with being able to see two of them, Cool Sounds, and Good Morning, some really great band names, and it’s really going hearing about the unravelling of a gig from the people playing in those bands, and then how music can correspond with my on planning process when it comes with preparing a media production, and theres lots of similarities, like collaborating with others, and organising it in a way so that the stars allign and everything gets sorted and a film is made

I’m curious though, like what the equivalent factors are if a gig goes wrong, to a film, I guess that would be, things like, a poor export, a bad edit, continuity errors or something.. Just a silly thought

I went to a really nice event on the weekend, it was a gig at the Evelyn Hotel in Fitzroy, with all the proceeds going to the ASRC and it was really good! I did this thing I’d been doing quite a bit lately which is film parts of the sets, and upload to my youtube channel of assorted gigs around Melbourne (correct: shows that my friend play)

What was really cool was during Cool Sounds, my friend Rex (who i’d met in a group job interview at the Melbourne Recital Centre, we didn’t get the job) was doing the projections, and they were really cool! It was an assortment of all the music videos that they’d previously filmed, and it was cool standing next to Rex to see all of the videos that him and Dainis had filmed, and it was great to see projections documented

Unfortunately I outwardly got involved in one of the sets by vaping. but that’s another story for another time