Category Archive for: ‘Issue 45 – Radical Beginnings Dossier’

Year one at La Trobe for me was 1967, and it was literally a wild year. Some friends from University High joined me in the brand new campus for what was going to be a romantic adventure (or so we hoped). This included my girlfriend Freya Mathews. While making out with Freya one day in the surrounding bush I got …

Radical Beginnings is an oral history project exploring La Trobe University’s own cultural and screen studies history during a period of political and artistic ferment, the late 1960s and early 1970s, that coincided with the establishment of the University. A symposium was held at the university campus that was a two-day feast of films, filmmakers and key media figures of …

Panel Two: ‘Film and student protest: Beginnings’ With Scott Murray, Gordon Glenn, Rod Bishop and Peter Beilby, chaired by Rolando Caputo Rolando Caputo: Welcome to panel number two. We didn’t actually think of structuring the panels in this way, but in the Q & A session of panel one there was so much discussion about the points of views from …

Panel Three: Film ferment: Yackety Yack With Dave Jones, John Flaus, Rod Bishop, Peter Carmody and Peggy Cole, chaired by Anna Dzenis Anna Dzenis: Welcome to ‘Film Ferment’, our third panel in our Radical Beginnings: The Birth of Media and Cinema Studies at La Trobe University symposium. This panel focuses on the feature film Yackety Yack (1974), a film that …

Panel Four: Plenary Session with Patricia Edgar, Rod Bishop, Dave Jones, Scott Murray, Ina Bertrand, Gordon Glenn, Robert Newton, chaired by Dr. Mary Debrett Mary Debrett: It has been said that those who remember the 1970s weren’t there. I think this symposium has disproved that. But there’s another cliché I want to explore and that’s the idea of wisdom in …

Yackety Yack is perhaps the most hilarious film ever made in Australia, in large part because of the character of Maurice, played by none other than the film’s writer-director Dave Jones, who shot the film in 1973 while on staff at the Media Centre of La Trobe University. Maurice is an academic up for a tenured post (as was Jones …

Part 1 (1967 – 1969): My Beginnings – Producer, critic and educator Rod Bishop recalls his days at La Trobe University Rod Bishop was the producer and co-writer of the restored and re-released (on Blu-ray) Body Melt (Brophy, 1993) and has also been a prominent critic, writer and educator. He was the Director of the Australian Film Television and Radio …

The assistance of Rod Bishop and Mal Bryning in the gathering of information for this article is gratefully acknowledged. Note: this article on Mataungan, a documentary film project that began in 1973 but was eventually abandoned, was submitted for publication in August 1999 for the 25th anniversary edition of Cinema Papers. For some unknown reason the essay was not published, …