“The arts are expensive,” stated Richard Moore nonchalantly. It’s Friday afternoon and the film buff is standing outside a Brisbane bookstore having just finished the program for the Brisbane International Film Festival, a festival that he’s curated for the past three years. “What always deters people is the ticket price, they look at the ticket price and think: ‘I can’t pay $80!’ If the Arts Festival can offer an arts experience at $18.50 or $18 a ticket, then that’s a great thing.”
It’s this deterrence that Moore hopes Art Matters can stop. He hopes that the Melbourne Festival can immerse the Melbourne population in the rich arts culture it is famous for, while appealing to a younger audience, an audience similar to that of the Melbourne International Film Festival, which he curated for four years before becoming the BIFF curator.
Art Matters is a collation of documentary films based around the arts, a choice actively made by Moore who insisted, because “it’s an arts festival”, the films should reflect this. Profoundly titled, Moore stressed the rigorous consideration that was given to the 2012 program to ensure it wasn’t “lost” within all the other events of the festival.
“They were trying to do something a bit more in-depth and based around the arts,” explained Moore, confirming he had free reign over the film selections this year. “I said to Brett, ‘What sort of festival? What sort of films?’ and he goes, ‘Well, the things on at the festival are [centered around] identity and place.’”
With such a broad definition, Moore employed his past experiences working as an ABC arts programmer, curator for BIFF and past work with MIFF to set up parameters to create the program.
Centred about the arts, Moore actively sought after films that have never been shown in Victoria, ones that incited interest, had a sense of humour and imagination, and ones that he didn’t abhor. What resulted was the selection of films ranging from a story about a grandmother making music in her home to Without Gorky, a documentary about famous abstract expressionist, Arshile Gorky, and his legacy.
“I tried to make the program as broad as possible, as multicultural as possible, but it’s also about what’s available,” stressed Moore, explaining that Melbourne Festival has to compete with ACMI and MIFF for the film selections. “They’re [MIFF and ACMI] reasonably forceful in going after titles, so I had to be reasonably forceful as well. It’s an open market, and all’s fair in love and war.”
This assertiveness was no more evident in TURNING, a collaboration between artist Antony (Antony and the Johnsons) and acclaimed director Charles Atlas. Set in modern day New York, TURNING explores the concept of beauty among 13 New York women, set to the ethereal paradigms of Antony’s music.
“I saw that TURNING was premiering at a film festival in Denmark and I really pushed for that,” insisted Moore. “I [also] tried to include material that’s older, [to create] an archival feel looking at the figure of Charles Atlas. He’s one of the best collaborators with dance groups. I thought, ‘Whoa, he’s a very inspirational figure, partly because he’s been part of making dance films and arts films for a long time, but also he’s just such a great collaborator and there’s not many examples of that.’”
Other highlights of the festival include Last Days Here, a fan documentary about relaunching the career of Pentagram vocalist Bobby Liebling, and Anton Corbijn Inside Out, an introspective documentary that details the career of renowned photographer, and budding filmmaker, Anton Corbijn.
“Corbijns been such a big figure as a photographer,” agreed Moore, elaborating upon the paramountcy of Corbijn’s photography role within the music industry. “He’s got such a great eye, and over the years he’s worked with so many good rock bands. It’s [the film] about the people he’s work with and it’s also about him. It’s a short portrait of him; the artist as a loner.”
Corbijn’s debut film about Joy Division star Ian Curtis, Control, won a BAFTA and three Cannes upon its release. Moore describes the documentary as “a total labour of love”, with fellow Dutch director Klaartje Quirijns spending fours years to illustrate the vivid portrait of the photographer.
With a plethora of love placed into the program, Moore worked closely with Publication Editor Rani Kellock to create the aesthetics of the program. The BIFF curator explained that they didn’t want the program to be “pompous” or hold any of that “arts pretentiousness”, rather to be a program that appeals to multiple types of people.
Regardless of all these decisions, the revamp of the Melbourne Festival film program will surely be successful given its acute direction and selection.
“I think that the Melbourne Arts and the Film Festival could have even a deeper connection [after this],” elaborated Moore, stating that Art Matters will be one of the first stepping stones to breeching the gap between Melbourne’s population and artists.
BY AVRILLE BYLOCK-COLLARD
