The Second Journey (To Uluru)

German title: Die zweite Reise (nach Uluru)

Director: Arthur Cantrill    → show biography   ← hide biography

Biography: Arthur Cantrill, born Sydney, Australia, 1938, has been making 16mm films with Corinne Cantrill since 1960. At first films for children and documentaries on art, interspersed with short experimental films. After working in London for four years, where Arthur Cantrill was a film editor at Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films and then at BBCTV current affairs and documentary, they returned to Australia in 1969 to take up a Fellowship in the Creative Arts at the Australian National University in Canberra during which they made several films. From that time they have worked solely in film as a medium combining kinetic art with formal cinematic concerns and experimental sound composition, and also film-performance.

Director: Corinne Cantrill    → show biography   ← hide biography

Biography: Corinne Cantrill, born Sydney, Australia, 1928, has been making 16mm films with Arthur Cantrill since 1960. At first films for children and documentaries on art, interspersed with short experimental films. After working in London for four years (where Arthur Cantrill was a film editor at Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films and then at BBCTV current affairs and documentary), they returned to Australia in 1969 to take up a Fellowship in the Creative Arts at the Australian National University in Canberra during which they made several films financed by ANU, the main work being the feature-length Harry Hooton. From that time they have worked solely in film as a medium combining kinetic art with formal cinematic concerns and experimental sound composition, and also film-performance.

Country: Australia

Year: 1981

Synopsis: An experimental film to be posited against the Cantrills’ earlier work At Uluru (1977), it explores the changes experienced by the filmmakers at Ayers Rock compared with their previous visit: the effects of a bushfire on the vegetation, the sad reality of tourism and Aboriginal claims to Uluru as a result of tourism. Extreme heat dictated the film-makers work pattern and bad processing of the film caused turbidity in the colour, but continued the cinematic metaphor inherent in the film.

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, in THE SECOND JOURNEY (TO ULURU), bring scientific precision to their observation of the physical and luminous qualities of the surface of Uluru, a rocky formation in Australia’s central desert. The details of its minerals, stones, dust, plants, trees and flowers are contemplated at different times of day, presenting variations in their forms. They also filmed cave paintings inside the monolith and other vestiges, adding a dimension of loss to the film: that of the flight of the aborigines from a territory transformed by the tourism industry.

The timelessness of the monolith questions human perception of time and space, as well as of colour and sounds. As Einstein said: 'The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.'

Language: English

Forum participation year: 1982

Forum catalogue PDF: Download

Tags: Experimental film, Experimental film