Antipodean Super 8 group

We heard about a bunch of Super 8 filmmakers down under in a small Australian town called Daylesford, we needed to find out more, so we dropped them a line. Here's the fascinating response we got from Richard Tuohy...

"...Daylesford is a small town in Victoria that is lucky enough to have a group of Super 8 filmmakers. The group has been going for about 20 years now in different informal manifestations. As always, a group like this is diverse, but basically it's in the 'community filmmaking' tradition - at least when it comes to our screenings. Most people's films are about trying to make the audience laugh, fair enough. Our filmmakers by and large are not Hollywood aspirants and the group aims to be populist(!) and tries to keep experimentalists like myself in check (also fair enough...I'm thankful to have an audience).

To our group, Super 8 is all about cheap access to big, bright images of where we live, projected to an audience of locals in a crowded room with beer on tap. Sure, the 'retro' aspect makes us cute too. I don't think our audience would turn out as they do for video projection. The projector hum and the film-going experience is part of our charm. So this is Super 8 in the camera original, tape spliced, hand drawn titles, rough and beautiful mode.

Sometimes we use the motto 'Daylesford Super 8: we make cheap films!' and the films are almost all conceived as 'silent' with a musical soundtrack on CD, though some people incorporate a more adventurous non-sync soundtracks. The group is very open and tries to encourage newcommers and the town seem to love us! We get 100 or so paying customers turning up to our shows, which is really something. We put on about 3 or 4 different shows a year, each screening on two nights in one or other of the local pubs.

We've also put together 4 compilation DVDs in the last couple of years and have also recently put on a tour to some other neighbouring towns. Daylesford is a tourist and festival town which gives us the oportunity to piggyback on existing festivals for our screenings, this is part of our success here. Our next screening is the last Friday in April during the 'Swiss Italian Festival' held in the town in reference to a particular wave of immigrants, the theme for this screening is 'Grain'. We were going to use Quarzchrome b/w for this screening (hence the theme) but have since found the stock just too old to give a projectable image. But we're sticking with the theme and there are some interesting grain-themed films appearing".

To have such a thriving film scene in any town is amazing, to have a Super 8 community in a town of only 6,000 residents is down right remarkable - it makes us want to get our cameras, sort out our Aussie visas and book flights!

Richard is also shortly going to be offering larger volume E-6 hand processing for Kodak Ektachrome 64T, something he presently does for the Daylesford group which is presently unavailable in Australia. The cost will be Aus$18 per cartridge, excluding postage, and films will be returned on a 50 foot spool, lubricated and come headed and tailed. Plus, he'll also be offering 64T pulled to 40 ASA or pushed to 160 for the same price, especially useful for 40/160 cameras.

Here at onsuper8.org we've decided that Daylesford, Victoria is our nomination for the 'Super 8 Centre of the Universe Award', if we had a statuette thingy we'd send it... that is of course, unless someone, somewhere else can better them?!

We love the thought of Super 8 and beer on tap, and if you want to find out more about the Daylesford Super 8 group or the E-6 processing venture drop Richard an e-mail at richtuo@iprimus.com.au.

technorati tags - super 8 | e-6 | daylesford