AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL REALISM: THREE SHORTS (MARY CALLAGHAN, DAVID HAY & RAY ARGALL 1977-1983)
Randwick Ritz, Sydney:
11:15 AM
Sunday 10 May
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
6:00 PM
Monday 11 May
Rating: Unclassified 18+
Duration: 106 minutes
Country: Australia
Language: English
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
11:15 AM
Sunday 10 May
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
6:00 PM
Monday 11 May
Rating: Unclassified 18+
Duration: 106 minutes
Country: Australia
Language: English
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
2K AND 4K RESTORATIONS – AUSTRALIAN PREMIERES
‘Stylistically Greetings From Wollongong is from a social realist tradition and it is extremely well realised … The writer-director, Mary Callaghan, achieves a remarkable portrayal of youth unemployed culture.’ – Susan Lambert
‘[In] Me and Daphne, we get to see migrant women in a totally different way. Seeing what they had to endure in a working environment, privately behind the scenes.’ – Josipa Draisma, The Saturday Paper
‘[Julie, Julie is] one of the most precious and essential slice-of-life shorts to ever come out of Australia.’ – Ruth Scouller, Letterboxd
Join us for a specially curated program of recently restored Australian shorts. Mary Callaghan’s award-winning Greetings From Wollongong (1982, 43 mins) offers an intimate look into a typical day in the lives of four unemployed teenagers in an industrial city. Me and Daphne (1977, 38 mins), directed by David Hay and shot and co-produced by Martha Ansara, candidly depicts the labour conditions experienced by migrant women via a narrative centring on a mother and daughter working in a chicken factory. Ray Argall’s minimalist Julie, Julie (1983, 25 mins) follows a young woman from Broken Hill who travels by motorbike to Melbourne.
Introduced by Margot Nash at Ritz Cinemas and Cristina Pozzan at Lido Cinemas
‘Stylistically Greetings From Wollongong is from a social realist tradition and it is extremely well realised … The writer-director, Mary Callaghan, achieves a remarkable portrayal of youth unemployed culture.’ – Susan Lambert
‘[In] Me and Daphne, we get to see migrant women in a totally different way. Seeing what they had to endure in a working environment, privately behind the scenes.’ – Josipa Draisma, The Saturday Paper
‘[Julie, Julie is] one of the most precious and essential slice-of-life shorts to ever come out of Australia.’ – Ruth Scouller, Letterboxd
Join us for a specially curated program of recently restored Australian shorts. Mary Callaghan’s award-winning Greetings From Wollongong (1982, 43 mins) offers an intimate look into a typical day in the lives of four unemployed teenagers in an industrial city. Me and Daphne (1977, 38 mins), directed by David Hay and shot and co-produced by Martha Ansara, candidly depicts the labour conditions experienced by migrant women via a narrative centring on a mother and daughter working in a chicken factory. Ray Argall’s minimalist Julie, Julie (1983, 25 mins) follows a young woman from Broken Hill who travels by motorbike to Melbourne.
Introduced by Margot Nash at Ritz Cinemas and Cristina Pozzan at Lido Cinemas
FILM NOTES: GREETINGS FROM WOLLONGONG
By Bill Mousoulis
By Bill Mousoulis
Bill Mousoulis is a Greek-Australian independent filmmaker since 1982, with 11 features directed. He is also an occasional programmer and film critic. He founded Senses of Cinema in 1999.
Mary Callaghan (1955-2016) is a somewhat neglected figure in Australian cinema. Born in Wollongong, NSW, she took to filmmaking at a young age, working with Super-8 in high school, before completing Victoria’s Swinburne Film & Television School film course in the mid-1970s. Returning to her hometown of Wollongong in the late ‘70s, she felt compelled to document the social issues she observed in the city, which resulted in her social realist mini-feature film, Greetings from Wollongong, in 1982.
While a very fine observational study of several unemployed young adults, Greetings from Wollongong is more striking for its formal experimentation, the way it intersects fictional drama, documentary, and also a kind of experimental collage. The film lays down, firstly, the textures of the city (an industrial city, dominated by the steelworks’ huge chimney tower), and secondly multiple other textures: interior décor, magazine cut-outs on walls, radio sounds, TV images. This collage back-drop, quite similar to the one in Albie Thoms’ experimental narrative feature Palm Beach (1979), is thus the film’s canvas, on top of which is painted the fictional story. The story is distinctly situated within real spaces (factories, homes, a games arcade, the Commonwealth Employment Service) which are rendered with tremendous documentary veracity. Callaghan keeps these three formal elements in great balance, and her direction has a commendable rigour and neutrality.
The film is not dry, however. It does indeed start off in a dour manner, with one of our heroines, Debbie (Tina Waller) stuck at home minding the baby and doing the ironing, the TV taunting her with its ads and lively shows like Happy Days and The Flintstones, but our youthful protagonists know how to have fun and find adventure within their impoverished context. Some comedy scenes even break out, including a department store shoplifting scene that is as funny as the one in Pure Shit (Bert Deling, 1975). People will always take solace in each other, and know how to enjoy life without having to spend money. Callaghan clearly intuits that there is always a transcendence in people, even teenagers and young adults going through their liminal stages.
Greetings from Wollongong was justly awarded at several Australian film festivals at the time, and the road was then open for Callaghan’s first feature, Tender Hooks (1989). Again a somewhat neglected film, looking at it afresh today, it is as good as the more high-profile grunge subculture films Dogs in Space (Richard Lowenstein, 1986) and Going Down (Haydn Keenan, 1983).
Sadly, Callaghan seemingly drifted in the 1990s and 2000s, not making any more films, before being listed as co-director (in reality she was more like an advisor/consultant, with Phillip Crawford acknowledged as the main creative force) on the scattershot collaborative youth film, Rites of Passage (2013). She sadly passed away in 2016, in her early sixties.
While a very fine observational study of several unemployed young adults, Greetings from Wollongong is more striking for its formal experimentation, the way it intersects fictional drama, documentary, and also a kind of experimental collage. The film lays down, firstly, the textures of the city (an industrial city, dominated by the steelworks’ huge chimney tower), and secondly multiple other textures: interior décor, magazine cut-outs on walls, radio sounds, TV images. This collage back-drop, quite similar to the one in Albie Thoms’ experimental narrative feature Palm Beach (1979), is thus the film’s canvas, on top of which is painted the fictional story. The story is distinctly situated within real spaces (factories, homes, a games arcade, the Commonwealth Employment Service) which are rendered with tremendous documentary veracity. Callaghan keeps these three formal elements in great balance, and her direction has a commendable rigour and neutrality.
The film is not dry, however. It does indeed start off in a dour manner, with one of our heroines, Debbie (Tina Waller) stuck at home minding the baby and doing the ironing, the TV taunting her with its ads and lively shows like Happy Days and The Flintstones, but our youthful protagonists know how to have fun and find adventure within their impoverished context. Some comedy scenes even break out, including a department store shoplifting scene that is as funny as the one in Pure Shit (Bert Deling, 1975). People will always take solace in each other, and know how to enjoy life without having to spend money. Callaghan clearly intuits that there is always a transcendence in people, even teenagers and young adults going through their liminal stages.
Greetings from Wollongong was justly awarded at several Australian film festivals at the time, and the road was then open for Callaghan’s first feature, Tender Hooks (1989). Again a somewhat neglected film, looking at it afresh today, it is as good as the more high-profile grunge subculture films Dogs in Space (Richard Lowenstein, 1986) and Going Down (Haydn Keenan, 1983).
Sadly, Callaghan seemingly drifted in the 1990s and 2000s, not making any more films, before being listed as co-director (in reality she was more like an advisor/consultant, with Phillip Crawford acknowledged as the main creative force) on the scattershot collaborative youth film, Rites of Passage (2013). She sadly passed away in 2016, in her early sixties.
FILM NOTES: ME AND DAPHNE
By Grace Boschetti
By Grace Boschetti
Grace Boschetti is a film critic and programmer based in Naarm/Melbourne. She is a member of the Cinema Reborn organising committee.
‘Barred from many occupations, refused equal pay, sacked first, and denied training and promotion, women have received little support from the union movement. In fact, historically speaking, one of the functions of trade unions has been to keep women out’ (Megan McMurchy, Margot Oliver and Jeni Thornley, 1983).
With her ground-breaking 1973 short, A Film for Discussion, produced through the Sydney Women’s Film Group, Martha Ansara intended to ‘show the things that lead a young, attractive girl to discover women’s liberation.’ (Jennifer Stott, 1987). Whereas that film focused on an office worker (played by filmmaker Jeni Thornley), the layered 1977 short Me and Daphne, which Ansara shot and produced, alongside John Flaus and the film’s director David Hay, centres on a mother and daughter employed at a chicken factory.
Much like the protagonist of A Film for Discussion, the younger of Me and Daphne’s titular duo reckons with the realisation of unequal dynamics in her work and home life. This awakening is heightened through a burgeoning friendship with a group of migrant workers who are subject to the factory’s most difficult conditions, as well as the xenophobic attitudes of their co-workers. These women eventually decide to strike for improved pay.
In Me and Daphne’s forthright opening scene, Lillian (Julie Hamilton) explains via voiceover narration that she and her school-aged daughter, Daphne (Cheryl Woods), were required to get factory jobs to avoid having their power switched off. Preparing for their first day, Lillian puts on lipstick and Daphne fusses with the pieces of her hair that stick out of her hairnet. The work, however, could hardly be less glamorous.
Hay cuts from distressing footage of live, and terrified, chickens being hung upside down, to further along the production line where the fully plucked carcasses are processed by hand and machine. Women in the locker room complain of swollen hands. These passing remarks ring terribly true. As explained by artist Josipa Draisma, whose grandmother was one of the numerous real employees who appear in the film’s factory sequences, a reality of this kind of work was a lifetime of ‘disfigured’ knuckles (The Saturday Paper, 2023).
Me and Daphne’s unaffected script, developed from Lillian Rosser’s original story ‘Confessions of a Cannery Worker’, emphasises how thinly stretched women are carrying out unpaid domestic duties while also working an emotionally and physically taxing job. In the film’s opening minutes, we see Lillian trying to manage her household with only moments to spare, hurriedly tidying and kissing her sons goodbye. At the end of the trying first work day, Daphne asks her mother why she is in such a rush to get home just to ‘feed the kids [and] clean the house.’ ‘Sit a while mum,’ she pleads, ‘how long is it since you’ve had some time to yourself?’ For the young girl, who has already despondently acknowledged this work day as ‘the first day of the rest of my life’, it is a difficult introduction to an often unjust labour system.
With her ground-breaking 1973 short, A Film for Discussion, produced through the Sydney Women’s Film Group, Martha Ansara intended to ‘show the things that lead a young, attractive girl to discover women’s liberation.’ (Jennifer Stott, 1987). Whereas that film focused on an office worker (played by filmmaker Jeni Thornley), the layered 1977 short Me and Daphne, which Ansara shot and produced, alongside John Flaus and the film’s director David Hay, centres on a mother and daughter employed at a chicken factory.
Much like the protagonist of A Film for Discussion, the younger of Me and Daphne’s titular duo reckons with the realisation of unequal dynamics in her work and home life. This awakening is heightened through a burgeoning friendship with a group of migrant workers who are subject to the factory’s most difficult conditions, as well as the xenophobic attitudes of their co-workers. These women eventually decide to strike for improved pay.
In Me and Daphne’s forthright opening scene, Lillian (Julie Hamilton) explains via voiceover narration that she and her school-aged daughter, Daphne (Cheryl Woods), were required to get factory jobs to avoid having their power switched off. Preparing for their first day, Lillian puts on lipstick and Daphne fusses with the pieces of her hair that stick out of her hairnet. The work, however, could hardly be less glamorous.
Hay cuts from distressing footage of live, and terrified, chickens being hung upside down, to further along the production line where the fully plucked carcasses are processed by hand and machine. Women in the locker room complain of swollen hands. These passing remarks ring terribly true. As explained by artist Josipa Draisma, whose grandmother was one of the numerous real employees who appear in the film’s factory sequences, a reality of this kind of work was a lifetime of ‘disfigured’ knuckles (The Saturday Paper, 2023).
Me and Daphne’s unaffected script, developed from Lillian Rosser’s original story ‘Confessions of a Cannery Worker’, emphasises how thinly stretched women are carrying out unpaid domestic duties while also working an emotionally and physically taxing job. In the film’s opening minutes, we see Lillian trying to manage her household with only moments to spare, hurriedly tidying and kissing her sons goodbye. At the end of the trying first work day, Daphne asks her mother why she is in such a rush to get home just to ‘feed the kids [and] clean the house.’ ‘Sit a while mum,’ she pleads, ‘how long is it since you’ve had some time to yourself?’ For the young girl, who has already despondently acknowledged this work day as ‘the first day of the rest of my life’, it is a difficult introduction to an often unjust labour system.
FILM NOTES: JULIE, JULIE
By Daniel Tune
By Daniel Tune
Daniel Tune is a filmmaker and programmer living on Kaurna land. He is a co-founder of the independent film collective moviejuice. His debut feature MALLS was released in 2025.
Like many great films, Ray Argall’s 1983 short, Julie, Julie, doesn’t sound like much when broken down to its basic plot beats: a young motorcyclist from Broken Hill splits town and sets up in a quiet caravan park in the outer suburbs of Melbourne; she takes a job at a factory in order to repair her faltering bike, which she sometimes feels might be trying to talk to her; she meets the caretaker of the caravan park, two factory colleagues, and two mechanics; she develops a crush on one of the mechanics (he also feels his bike is talking to him), adopts a cat, and eventually leaves town again.
What distinguishes Julie, Julie, and Argall’s directorial work in general, is his careful, yet entirely unstressed attention to the commingled characters of people and their environments. Minuscule moments of behaviour can sketch an entire personality and place, as when the caretaker (Bruce Knappett) swoops down to pick up a wad of rubbish from the grounds of his otherwise fairly daggy caravan park. Elsewhere, Argall is equally capable of leaving space for mystery – Julie (Jill Delaney) herself remains a somewhat distant figure, despite her inner monologue soundtracking the film, à la early Robert Bresson (Argall cites Pickpocket as a favourite). Julie is endlessly amiable and seemingly blessed with an easygoing gratitude at whatever life throws her way but what drives her rootless existence remains just out of view to us, draped in a cloak of banal daydreams (‘I’ve often wondered if machines have feelings’) and routine observations (‘As usual, it was a job designed for the minimum amount of mental effort’).
‘Filmmaking,’ says Argall in his bio on Bill Mousoulis’ invaluable Melbourne Independent Filmmakers website, ‘is both deceptively simple and extremely complex [...] I don’t believe that cinema is about what’s written on the page, nor is it an intellectual pursuit.’ Julie, Julie bears out this simultaneously mystical and unpretentious conception of the medium in a uniquely Australian context, treating everyday rural and suburban life with a quiet, humanist grace. Between many cinematographer gigs, Argall would continue to develop this style in his directorial work, culminating in his magisterial 1989 feature debut, Return Home, one of the best films ever made about the Australian suburbs.
While Argall’s minimalist stylistic preoccupations were (and remain) uncommon within an Australian cinematic context, the undervaluing of his talents by the local film industry is a familiar story. After the international festival success of his first feature, Argall, who by his own admission ‘never thought about filmmaking as a career,’ elected not to chase work overseas, choosing to remain based in Australia: ‘somewhat naively, I thought that recognition internationally [...] would help build a solid career in Australia. Well yes it does, but not consistently over time, and certainly not if you choose to stay here’ (MIFF website). To date, Argall has only directed one more narrative feature after Return Home, Eight Ball (1991).
In this light, it can be melancholy to consider how Argall’s sensitive, realist films represent a road not taken for the Australian film industry. Of course, it is also probably true that the particular kind of stylistic intelligence and sensitivity Julie, Julie demonstrates does not gel with the careerist-driven view of filmmaking that the industry largely runs on. Though the lack of continuing support afforded to Argall’s work is one of many black marks against the history of the mainstream funding bodies, the stylistic and ideological integrity evidenced in his work should serve as an inspiration to anyone interested in creating serious film work in this country.
What distinguishes Julie, Julie, and Argall’s directorial work in general, is his careful, yet entirely unstressed attention to the commingled characters of people and their environments. Minuscule moments of behaviour can sketch an entire personality and place, as when the caretaker (Bruce Knappett) swoops down to pick up a wad of rubbish from the grounds of his otherwise fairly daggy caravan park. Elsewhere, Argall is equally capable of leaving space for mystery – Julie (Jill Delaney) herself remains a somewhat distant figure, despite her inner monologue soundtracking the film, à la early Robert Bresson (Argall cites Pickpocket as a favourite). Julie is endlessly amiable and seemingly blessed with an easygoing gratitude at whatever life throws her way but what drives her rootless existence remains just out of view to us, draped in a cloak of banal daydreams (‘I’ve often wondered if machines have feelings’) and routine observations (‘As usual, it was a job designed for the minimum amount of mental effort’).
‘Filmmaking,’ says Argall in his bio on Bill Mousoulis’ invaluable Melbourne Independent Filmmakers website, ‘is both deceptively simple and extremely complex [...] I don’t believe that cinema is about what’s written on the page, nor is it an intellectual pursuit.’ Julie, Julie bears out this simultaneously mystical and unpretentious conception of the medium in a uniquely Australian context, treating everyday rural and suburban life with a quiet, humanist grace. Between many cinematographer gigs, Argall would continue to develop this style in his directorial work, culminating in his magisterial 1989 feature debut, Return Home, one of the best films ever made about the Australian suburbs.
While Argall’s minimalist stylistic preoccupations were (and remain) uncommon within an Australian cinematic context, the undervaluing of his talents by the local film industry is a familiar story. After the international festival success of his first feature, Argall, who by his own admission ‘never thought about filmmaking as a career,’ elected not to chase work overseas, choosing to remain based in Australia: ‘somewhat naively, I thought that recognition internationally [...] would help build a solid career in Australia. Well yes it does, but not consistently over time, and certainly not if you choose to stay here’ (MIFF website). To date, Argall has only directed one more narrative feature after Return Home, Eight Ball (1991).
In this light, it can be melancholy to consider how Argall’s sensitive, realist films represent a road not taken for the Australian film industry. Of course, it is also probably true that the particular kind of stylistic intelligence and sensitivity Julie, Julie demonstrates does not gel with the careerist-driven view of filmmaking that the industry largely runs on. Though the lack of continuing support afforded to Argall’s work is one of many black marks against the history of the mainstream funding bodies, the stylistic and ideological integrity evidenced in his work should serve as an inspiration to anyone interested in creating serious film work in this country.
THE RESTORATIONS
Source: Piccolo Films
Greetings from Wollongong: 4K restoration by Ray Argall, Piccolo Films, in consultation with Martha Ansara.
Director: Mary Callaghan; Production Company: Steel City Pictures; Producer: Nina Saunders; Script: Mary Callaghan; Photography: Louis Irving; Editor: Tony Stevens; Production Design: Michael Callaghan, Marie McMahon; Music: Graham Bidstrup // Cast: Tina Waller (Debbie Dean), Kevin Budgen (Steve Dallas), Lorraine Palamara (Gina), Shirley Faulkner (Pat Dean), Syd Long (Billy Dean), Julie Dunn (Janis Dean), Cory Dunn (Jaye Dean), David Horridge (Hickey).
Australia | 1982 | 43 mins | Colour | English | Unclassified 18+
Me and Daphne: 2K restoration by Piccolo Films. Restoration by Ray Argall in consultation with Martha Ansara (cinematographer and co-producer).
Director: David Hay; Producer: John Flaus, David Hay, Martha Ansara; Script: David Hay; based on a story by Lillian Excell-Rosser; Photography: Martha Ansara; Editor: Rhonda MacGregor; Music: Stiletto, Martin Armiger // Cast: Julie Hamilton (Me – Lillian), Cheryl Woods (Daphne).
Australia | 1977 | 38 mins | Colour | 2K DCP | English | Unclassified 18+
Julie, Julie: 4K restoration by Ray Argall, Piccolo Films.
Director: Ray Argall; Production Company: Musical Films; Producer: Daniel Scharf; Script: Ray Argall; Photography: John Whitteron; Editor: Ray Argall; Production Design: Lisa Parrish; Music: Joe Camilleri // Cast: Jill Delaney (Julie), Ian Shrives (Sam), Bruce Knappett (Caretaker), John Cummings (Bike shop attendant), Ursula Harrison (Roadhouse lady), Tammy Bowen (Sam’s child).
Australia | 1983 | 25 mins | Colour | 4K DCP | English | Unclassified 18+
Greetings from Wollongong: 4K restoration by Ray Argall, Piccolo Films, in consultation with Martha Ansara.
Director: Mary Callaghan; Production Company: Steel City Pictures; Producer: Nina Saunders; Script: Mary Callaghan; Photography: Louis Irving; Editor: Tony Stevens; Production Design: Michael Callaghan, Marie McMahon; Music: Graham Bidstrup // Cast: Tina Waller (Debbie Dean), Kevin Budgen (Steve Dallas), Lorraine Palamara (Gina), Shirley Faulkner (Pat Dean), Syd Long (Billy Dean), Julie Dunn (Janis Dean), Cory Dunn (Jaye Dean), David Horridge (Hickey).
Australia | 1982 | 43 mins | Colour | English | Unclassified 18+
Me and Daphne: 2K restoration by Piccolo Films. Restoration by Ray Argall in consultation with Martha Ansara (cinematographer and co-producer).
Director: David Hay; Producer: John Flaus, David Hay, Martha Ansara; Script: David Hay; based on a story by Lillian Excell-Rosser; Photography: Martha Ansara; Editor: Rhonda MacGregor; Music: Stiletto, Martin Armiger // Cast: Julie Hamilton (Me – Lillian), Cheryl Woods (Daphne).
Australia | 1977 | 38 mins | Colour | 2K DCP | English | Unclassified 18+
Julie, Julie: 4K restoration by Ray Argall, Piccolo Films.
Director: Ray Argall; Production Company: Musical Films; Producer: Daniel Scharf; Script: Ray Argall; Photography: John Whitteron; Editor: Ray Argall; Production Design: Lisa Parrish; Music: Joe Camilleri // Cast: Jill Delaney (Julie), Ian Shrives (Sam), Bruce Knappett (Caretaker), John Cummings (Bike shop attendant), Ursula Harrison (Roadhouse lady), Tammy Bowen (Sam’s child).
Australia | 1983 | 25 mins | Colour | 4K DCP | English | Unclassified 18+