ON A FULL MOON (1997)
+ THE MINI-SKIRTED DYNAMO (1996)
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Randwick Ritz, Sydney:
12:15 PM
Sunday 04 May
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
12:45 PM
Sunday 11 May
Rating: PG
Duration: 17 minutes + 55 minutes
Country: Australia
Language: English
Director: Lee Whitmore (On a Full Moon), Rivka Hartman (The Mini-Skirted Dynamo)
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
12:15 PM
Sunday 04 May
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
12:45 PM
Sunday 11 May
Rating: PG
Duration: 17 minutes + 55 minutes
Country: Australia
Language: English
Director: Lee Whitmore (On a Full Moon), Rivka Hartman (The Mini-Skirted Dynamo)
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
4K RESTORATION – WORLD PREMIERE
“Dora emerges as a fascinating character… a very personal piece of film-making” – David Stratton
“The Mini-skirted Dynamo is a lively, often hilarious, film as well as a moving personal document…This is not a film for those who believe in the myth of happy families – or perhaps it is the perfect film.” – Barbara Creed, The Age
Rivka Hartman’s The Mini-skirted Dynamo focuses on her mother, Dr Dora Bialestock, an extraordinary figure in Melbourne’s medical community. Dora studied Medicine at the University of Melbourne and published widely on her specialist research subjects. She became a figure of some controversy when she attacked the state government’s management of children in care. She was a public thorn in many sides of government. Hartman’s film is a remarkable autobiographical and biographical documentary about the intense and tangled relationship between the film-maker and her mother, both of whom had ambitions and goals that did not mix well.
Screens with...
On a Full Moon
This "poem to my mother", features memories of childhood and family lovingly animated frame by frame by pencil and pastel on paper.
Introduced by Rivka Hartman and Lee Whitmore at Ritz Cinemas and by Susie Orzech and Ray Argall at Lido Cinemas.
A discussion with the filmmakers will be held after the screening in the upstairs mezzanine at the Ritz in Sydney and in the discussion space off the foyer at the Lido in Melbourne.
“Dora emerges as a fascinating character… a very personal piece of film-making” – David Stratton
“The Mini-skirted Dynamo is a lively, often hilarious, film as well as a moving personal document…This is not a film for those who believe in the myth of happy families – or perhaps it is the perfect film.” – Barbara Creed, The Age
Rivka Hartman’s The Mini-skirted Dynamo focuses on her mother, Dr Dora Bialestock, an extraordinary figure in Melbourne’s medical community. Dora studied Medicine at the University of Melbourne and published widely on her specialist research subjects. She became a figure of some controversy when she attacked the state government’s management of children in care. She was a public thorn in many sides of government. Hartman’s film is a remarkable autobiographical and biographical documentary about the intense and tangled relationship between the film-maker and her mother, both of whom had ambitions and goals that did not mix well.
Screens with...
On a Full Moon
This "poem to my mother", features memories of childhood and family lovingly animated frame by frame by pencil and pastel on paper.
Introduced by Rivka Hartman and Lee Whitmore at Ritz Cinemas and by Susie Orzech and Ray Argall at Lido Cinemas.
A discussion with the filmmakers will be held after the screening in the upstairs mezzanine at the Ritz in Sydney and in the discussion space off the foyer at the Lido in Melbourne.
FILM NOTES: THE MINI-SKIRTED DYNAMO
By Geoff Gardner with additional research by Zac Tomé
Geoff Gardner is the Chair of Cinema Reborn committee.
Zac Tomé is a filmmaker, film writer, photographer, and aspiring academic.
RIVKA HARTMAN
Rivka Hartman is a playwright and filmmaker. Born in Melbourne in 1950, she studied medicine for five years and at the same time began her career as an actor at La Mama in Melbourne. There she appeared in the original La Mama productions of Dimboola (1969) by Jack Hibberd, The Coming of Stork (1970) by David Williamson and Whatever Happened to Realism? (1969) by John Romeril.
Hartman began writing plays in 1973 and subsequently two plays were produced at La Mama: The Psychiatrist (1974) and Dream Girl (1975). She also wrote Daughters (1977) and the ABC radio play, Mother Knows Best (1993).
She worked as a projectionist at the Melbourne Filmmakers Co-op before moving to Sydney in November 1975. In 1976 she was part of the inaugural year of the Screenwriting Course at the Australian Film Television and Radio School and, following her graduation, she worked as a film and television writer and film director.
Hartman’s films include The Battle of Mice and Frogs (1977), Consolation Prize (1979, a finalist in the Sydney Film Festival Greater Union Awards), A Most Attractive Man (1982, Australian Film Institute Award for Best Short Fiction) and her only feature length film, Bachelor Girl (1986).
Subsequent to that film, she worked as a teacher and made training films and industry documentaries. The Mini-Skirted Dynamo was made in 1996 and screened to considerable acclaim at the Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals. The film was then screened at film festivals around the world.
Between 1996 and 2011, Hartman was funded to write two screenplays and a mockumentary. After several years of not being able to secure funding for these films, in 2013 she returned to playwriting. Since then a number of her plays have been produced in Sydney and Melbourne – Wanting (2013), My Mother and Other Catastrophes (2015), Let’s Talk About You (2016), and Giving Up the Ghost (2018). She is currently writing Was it only Yesterday?
Rivka Hartman’s career is a reminder that, for most in the industry, Australian filmmaking offers a precarious existence. Her single feature film drew attention and her shorts and documentaries show that she is a filmmaker prepared to burrow into the themes of family and forgiveness. Her greatest prizes are for the medium-length documentary, The Mini-Skirted Dynamo. It causes one to wonder why such material could not be employed in a full-scale dramatic work. Hartman is one of many Australian filmmakers who, despite critical success and a bunch of awards for her work, struggled to convince producers and funding authorities that her work in film should be encouraged and at least some of her many projects brought to fruition. The tale is too common. In a memoir written in 2023, she reflected on this when she recalled that: ‘The Mini-Skirted Dynamo provoked ferment, and mixed reactions: Was I an ungrateful brat with a stellar mother, or an abused child? There was confusion, there was argument. I could not have been more delighted or gratified.
‘In the years that followed, Mini-Skirt the film sparked a spate of personal documentaries in which the filmmaker explored her/his troubled relationships with a flawed parent.
‘In 1997, I was invited to speak at the twenty-fifth reunion of my medical year at the University of Melbourne; a dropout returned as celebrity. Many of those present announced with pride that their children were studying film. I shook my head with commiseration, and told them frankly, I would not recommend anyone try to make a living in the arts.’ (Hartman, Inclined to Disagree, 2023).
Hartman began writing plays in 1973 and subsequently two plays were produced at La Mama: The Psychiatrist (1974) and Dream Girl (1975). She also wrote Daughters (1977) and the ABC radio play, Mother Knows Best (1993).
She worked as a projectionist at the Melbourne Filmmakers Co-op before moving to Sydney in November 1975. In 1976 she was part of the inaugural year of the Screenwriting Course at the Australian Film Television and Radio School and, following her graduation, she worked as a film and television writer and film director.
Hartman’s films include The Battle of Mice and Frogs (1977), Consolation Prize (1979, a finalist in the Sydney Film Festival Greater Union Awards), A Most Attractive Man (1982, Australian Film Institute Award for Best Short Fiction) and her only feature length film, Bachelor Girl (1986).
Subsequent to that film, she worked as a teacher and made training films and industry documentaries. The Mini-Skirted Dynamo was made in 1996 and screened to considerable acclaim at the Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals. The film was then screened at film festivals around the world.
Between 1996 and 2011, Hartman was funded to write two screenplays and a mockumentary. After several years of not being able to secure funding for these films, in 2013 she returned to playwriting. Since then a number of her plays have been produced in Sydney and Melbourne – Wanting (2013), My Mother and Other Catastrophes (2015), Let’s Talk About You (2016), and Giving Up the Ghost (2018). She is currently writing Was it only Yesterday?
Rivka Hartman’s career is a reminder that, for most in the industry, Australian filmmaking offers a precarious existence. Her single feature film drew attention and her shorts and documentaries show that she is a filmmaker prepared to burrow into the themes of family and forgiveness. Her greatest prizes are for the medium-length documentary, The Mini-Skirted Dynamo. It causes one to wonder why such material could not be employed in a full-scale dramatic work. Hartman is one of many Australian filmmakers who, despite critical success and a bunch of awards for her work, struggled to convince producers and funding authorities that her work in film should be encouraged and at least some of her many projects brought to fruition. The tale is too common. In a memoir written in 2023, she reflected on this when she recalled that: ‘The Mini-Skirted Dynamo provoked ferment, and mixed reactions: Was I an ungrateful brat with a stellar mother, or an abused child? There was confusion, there was argument. I could not have been more delighted or gratified.
‘In the years that followed, Mini-Skirt the film sparked a spate of personal documentaries in which the filmmaker explored her/his troubled relationships with a flawed parent.
‘In 1997, I was invited to speak at the twenty-fifth reunion of my medical year at the University of Melbourne; a dropout returned as celebrity. Many of those present announced with pride that their children were studying film. I shook my head with commiseration, and told them frankly, I would not recommend anyone try to make a living in the arts.’ (Hartman, Inclined to Disagree, 2023).
THE FILM
Dr Dora Bialestock was an extraordinary figure in Melbourne’s medical community. She came to Australia in 1928, aged two, with her mother and sister. They joined her father (Rivka Hartman’s grandfather), who worked in a factory to get the money to bring them here. All her relatives left behind in Poland were murdered in the Holocaust. Dora lived in the inner Melbourne suburb of Carlton all her life. She studied Medicine at the nearby University of Melbourne and published widely on her specialist research subjects, especially those dealing with paediatric issues. She became a figure of some controversy when she attacked the state government’s management of children in care. Dora did not take a backward step in confronting authority in her quest for better facilities for children of working mothers and was a public thorn in many sides of government. She was a force for good. She was also the mother of filmmaker Rivka Hartman who, for a while, sought to follow in her mother’s footsteps by studying medicine at the University of Melbourne.
Hartman writes: ‘My mother died in 1975. She was not old (just fifty) and not physically ill. She was a person I admired tremendously, though I often hated her. My first reaction after her death was a weird kind of happiness; I felt released, free from her powerful and crushing influence. The day after her funeral, I left my hometown of Melbourne and fled to Tasmania. I hitchhiked around and around the island, thinking through her life and death from every angle. I could not return to Melbourne. I dropped out of Medical School, moved to Sydney and went to Film School. I didn’t return to Melbourne for ten years.’
Rivka Hartman’s own Production Notes above, written back in 1996, still set the scene for The Mini-Skirted Dynamo, a remarkable autobiographical and biographical documentary about the intense and tangled relationship between two women with ambitions and goals that did not mix well. For Hartman, however, the film is not an attempt to resolve issues or, to use today’s go-to term, produce closure; ‘I always knew this was bullshit, and I was right. I have learned nothing new about my mother or our relationship through making this film. I have understood everything there is to understand about my mother since I was a small child.’
Rivka Hartman’s words were written to accompany the initial release of the film. In its day the film had stellar moments, winning the prize for Best Australian Film at that year’s Melbourne International Film Festival and later winning a Gold Awgie from the Australian Writer’s Guild and being screened on ABC TV. Notwithstanding Hartman’s claim that her ‘motivation in making the film was solely to present a unique and brilliant woman, Dr Dora Bialestock, who was also my mother’, this is a film that tangles itself into a remarkable story of a spirited woman who devoted her life to public service and also to the family, most especially her children.
The film tells this story two decades after Dora’s death. The funny side now asserts itself – the irony, the self-reflection, the admissions of other family members that their sister and wife was a near-to uncontrollable force, albeit mostly for good. As Barbara Creed wrote in her review for The Age (25/9/1996): ‘The Mini-Skirted Dynamo is a lively, often hilarious, film as well as a moving personal document…This is not a film for those who believe in the myth of happy families – or perhaps it is the perfect film.’
Notes compiled by Geoff Gardner from information supplied by Rivka Hartman. Additional research by Zac Tomé.
Hartman writes: ‘My mother died in 1975. She was not old (just fifty) and not physically ill. She was a person I admired tremendously, though I often hated her. My first reaction after her death was a weird kind of happiness; I felt released, free from her powerful and crushing influence. The day after her funeral, I left my hometown of Melbourne and fled to Tasmania. I hitchhiked around and around the island, thinking through her life and death from every angle. I could not return to Melbourne. I dropped out of Medical School, moved to Sydney and went to Film School. I didn’t return to Melbourne for ten years.’
Rivka Hartman’s own Production Notes above, written back in 1996, still set the scene for The Mini-Skirted Dynamo, a remarkable autobiographical and biographical documentary about the intense and tangled relationship between two women with ambitions and goals that did not mix well. For Hartman, however, the film is not an attempt to resolve issues or, to use today’s go-to term, produce closure; ‘I always knew this was bullshit, and I was right. I have learned nothing new about my mother or our relationship through making this film. I have understood everything there is to understand about my mother since I was a small child.’
Rivka Hartman’s words were written to accompany the initial release of the film. In its day the film had stellar moments, winning the prize for Best Australian Film at that year’s Melbourne International Film Festival and later winning a Gold Awgie from the Australian Writer’s Guild and being screened on ABC TV. Notwithstanding Hartman’s claim that her ‘motivation in making the film was solely to present a unique and brilliant woman, Dr Dora Bialestock, who was also my mother’, this is a film that tangles itself into a remarkable story of a spirited woman who devoted her life to public service and also to the family, most especially her children.
The film tells this story two decades after Dora’s death. The funny side now asserts itself – the irony, the self-reflection, the admissions of other family members that their sister and wife was a near-to uncontrollable force, albeit mostly for good. As Barbara Creed wrote in her review for The Age (25/9/1996): ‘The Mini-Skirted Dynamo is a lively, often hilarious, film as well as a moving personal document…This is not a film for those who believe in the myth of happy families – or perhaps it is the perfect film.’
Notes compiled by Geoff Gardner from information supplied by Rivka Hartman. Additional research by Zac Tomé.
THE RESTORATION
Source: DCP Rivka Hartman
The Mini-Skirted Dynamo was restored by Piccolo Films from 16mm A&B roll negatives and digital audio as supplied by National Film and Sound Archive.
Director/Writer/Producer: Rivka Hartman; Production Company: A Hartman Production; Associate Producer: Aviva Ziegler
Photography: Jaems Grant; Editor: Julian Russell; Production Management: Sue Clothier; Sound Recordist: Jock Healy; Music: Nik & Rachael Jeanes
With: Dora Bialestock, Rivka Hartman, Ian McFadyen, Arnold Zable
Produced with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission and Film Victoria. Developed with the Assistance of the Australian Film Commission
Australia | 1996 | 55 Mins | 4K DCP | Colour, B&W| English | PG
The Mini-Skirted Dynamo was restored by Piccolo Films from 16mm A&B roll negatives and digital audio as supplied by National Film and Sound Archive.
Director/Writer/Producer: Rivka Hartman; Production Company: A Hartman Production; Associate Producer: Aviva Ziegler
Photography: Jaems Grant; Editor: Julian Russell; Production Management: Sue Clothier; Sound Recordist: Jock Healy; Music: Nik & Rachael Jeanes
With: Dora Bialestock, Rivka Hartman, Ian McFadyen, Arnold Zable
Produced with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission and Film Victoria. Developed with the Assistance of the Australian Film Commission
Australia | 1996 | 55 Mins | 4K DCP | Colour, B&W| English | PG
FILM NOTES: ON A FULL MOON
By Grace Boschetti
By Grace Boschetti
Grace Boschetti is a screen critic from Naarm/Melbourne.
LEE WHITMORE
A skilled artist and poignant storyteller, Lee Whitmore was born in Sydney in 1947. As a child, she would often observe her father, illustrator Frank Whitmore, at work designing images for The Australian Women’s Weekly. Whitmore began her own career illustrating children’s books before becoming involved in set design for theatre groups. By the late 1970s she had transitioned to film projects, gaining experience as a graphic artist on Phillip Noyce’s Newsfront (1978) and later serving as production designer on Stir (Stephen Wallace, 1980) and Winter of Our Dreams (John Duigan, 1981). In addition to these features, Whitmore worked on various shorts, including as art director on Rivka Hartman’s slapstick comedy, Consolation Prize (1979), which was supported by the Women’s Film Fund. Whitmore was also backed by the fund in the creation of her debut hand-drawn animated short, Ned Wethered (1983), a portrait of a family friend pieced together through childhood recollections. Her second film, the short hand-drawn animation On a Full Moon, followed in 1997. Whitmore’s films tend to be autobiographical, often memorialising the figures and events that shaped her youth.
THE FILM
On a Full Moon opens with impressionistic drawings of an unmanned boat drifting downstream. As Whitmore condenses time, the gorgeous sunset colours of the sky – purple, blue, pink – start to dim. It soon becomes difficult to make out the shape of the boat in the darkness. There is no raging against the dying of the light: Whitmore’s narration begins: ‘She slipped away, probably thinking it was best this way, and not wanting to be any trouble. Mum was seventy-nine.’ Described by Whitmore as a ‘poem’ for her mother, On a Full Moon beautifully illustrates a complex personal experience of navigating grief as a new parent. (1) The film’s central character, Laura, has given birth to her first child just weeks after her mother’s unexpected passing. While the images that accompany Laura’s quiet reflections are rendered in painterly detail with coloured pastels, her busy life with her young daughter is represented through free-flowing black-and-white pencil sketches – small smudges and imperfections a testament to everyday commotion and messiness. In these scenes, colour is used sparingly – red the flush to a crying toddler’s cheeks, orange, purple and blue the cheerful brightness of flowers and the sky. Moments of transition between the undefined present and vivid memories of the past are particularly impressive, Whitmore drawing us seamlessly in and out of scenic reveries. When Laura is reintroduced to Jane, whom she knew growing up, she finds herself reminiscing deeply about childhood days spent at the river her mother loved. She thinks of how, even after she and her brother were grown up, her mother would return to the river to paint. In Whitmore’s conclusion, Laura finds a peaceful acceptance between past and present, stillness and chaos.
Notes
1. Home Grown: Short Short Film Perspectives on Australian Life, ABC TV, 13 January, 1988.
Notes
1. Home Grown: Short Short Film Perspectives on Australian Life, ABC TV, 13 January, 1988.
THE RESTORATION
Source: Lee Whitmore
Restored from 35mm camera original negative. Digital stereo originated from original mix (ex NFSA) as DOLBY surround. Lee was consulted throughout the restoration and grade process. Restoration work was financed by the filmmaker with assistance from Piccolo Films.
Animation/Script/Direction: Lee Whitmore; Production Company: Maracaibo Films, made with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission; Producers: Mark Stiles, Lee Whitmore; Photography: Kim Humpheys; Editor: Henry Dangar, Sam Petty; Sound Design: Sam Petty, Tony Chesher, Big Ears Studio; Dialogue Editing: Denise Haslem, Tony Cody; Music: ‘Beloved Melody’ by J Brandl, arranged and performed by Ross Bolleter
Voices: Noni Hazlehurst (Jane), Gabrielle Lloyde (Barbara), Lee Whitmore (Laura)
Australia | 1997 | 17 Mins | 4K DCP | Colour | English | G
Restored from 35mm camera original negative. Digital stereo originated from original mix (ex NFSA) as DOLBY surround. Lee was consulted throughout the restoration and grade process. Restoration work was financed by the filmmaker with assistance from Piccolo Films.
Animation/Script/Direction: Lee Whitmore; Production Company: Maracaibo Films, made with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission; Producers: Mark Stiles, Lee Whitmore; Photography: Kim Humpheys; Editor: Henry Dangar, Sam Petty; Sound Design: Sam Petty, Tony Chesher, Big Ears Studio; Dialogue Editing: Denise Haslem, Tony Cody; Music: ‘Beloved Melody’ by J Brandl, arranged and performed by Ross Bolleter
Voices: Noni Hazlehurst (Jane), Gabrielle Lloyde (Barbara), Lee Whitmore (Laura)
Australia | 1997 | 17 Mins | 4K DCP | Colour | English | G