Two frames from Waterfall (© A. & C. Cantrill 1984)

ARTHUR CANTRILL AND CORINNE CANTRILL - FILMOGRAPHY (16mm unless otherwise noted)

Throughout over a quarter of a century of work, the concerns and films of Australian filmmakers Arthur and Corinne Cantrill have remained consistent. Their approach to filmmaking is both trenchant and resolute. Their concerns converge around experience, both their own and that of the spectator, as they relentlessly explore the subjective experience of perception, process, and time. Their practice is firmly rooted in the body, the material. Theirs truly could be said to be a cinema of the senses, a cinema of the body. The color separation films, the image analysis films, the landscape films, the multi-screen and film/performance works, all reflect a lived body.
---from 'Cinema of the Senses: Selected Films of Arthur and Corinne Cantrill' by Barry Kapke (Cinematograph Volume 3, page 23, San Francisco, 1988)

A note by Canadian filmmaker Mike Hoolboom, ca. 1998:

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill are the primal couple of Australia’s fringe film community. Their enormous body of work – more than two hundred films and counting – have taken on issues of autobiography, the Australian landscape, ethnography, their autistic son Ivor, their sponsorship of a Becak driver in Indonesia – as well as the qualities of a medium that they have embraced with all the tenderness of a lover. About to enter the fifth decade of their making, the Cantrills have shown little signs of slowing, continuing to publish the Cantrills Filmnotes, a glossy, full-colour mag devoted to fringe delicacies, energizing Melbourne’s burgeoning super 8 scene with screenings and performances, lobbying for the preservation of film art and recovering lost makers and history..

Cantrill Films made between 1960-1963:

A series of silent, scripted, 10-13 min., B&W children's art and craft films made for ABC TV (who added commentary and music): Glove Puppets 1: Making heads (Camera: Morgan Jones), Glove Puppets 2: Painting Heads and Dressing (Camera: Morgan Jones), Glove Puppets 3: Scenery and Production (Camera: Morgan Jones), Shadow Play (Camera: Morgan Jones), Bottles into Dolls (Camera: Morgan Jones), Henny Penny Comes to Life, Looking at Insects, Looking at Leaves, Looking at Trees, Making Window Pictures, Metal Collage. A series of 10, 10 min. episodes with shadow puppets made for ABC TV: The Odyssey (music by Nancy Tow). A series of 13, 12 min. episodes made for ABC TV: Kip and David (music by Nancy Tow) ; Zoo, 30 min (music by Alan Lane). Several silent 5 min. 'interludes' made for ABC TV, e.g. Tower of Blocks, Feeding the Ducks, Pebbles etc. The Native Trees of Stradbroke Island, a series of four, 6 min. studies of native flora: Banksia Serrata, Banksia Integrifolia, Pandanus Pedunculatus, Casuarina Equisetifolia. (music by Nancy Tow).

Films made from 1963:

Mud, 4 min. 1963 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Galaxy, 4 min. 1963 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Nebulae, 4 min. 1963 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Kinegraffiti, 4 min. 1963 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Robert Klippel Sculpture Studies, 5 films, each 5 min. 1964-1965 (music by Larry Sitsky):
Robert Klippel – Metal Construction, 1960
Robert Klippel – Junk Sculpture No. 1, 1963
Robert Klippel – Junk Sculpture No. 2, 1963
Robert Klippel – Junk Sculpture No. 3, 1963
Robert Klippel – Junk Sculpture 1964
Robert Klippel Drawings, 1947-1963, 25 min. 1965 (music by Larry Sitsky)

Arthur Cantrill recording piano effects in London, 1966, to be used in the films The Incised Image, Dream and Adventure Playground, London  (photo by Corinne Cantrill).

The Incised Image, 25 min. 1966 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Dream, 4 min. 1966 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Adventure Playground, London, 6 min. 1966 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, 30 min. 1968 (music by David Lumsdaine)
Red Stone Dancer, 6 min. 1968 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Moving Statics, 28 min. 1969 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Rehearsal at the Arts Laboratory, 4 min. 1969
Imprints, 4 min. 1969 (sound composition added in 2010 by Arthur Cantrill)
Fud 69, 6 min. 1969
Home Movie - A Day in the Bush, 4 min. 1969 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Eikon, 3 ¹/2 min. 1969 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
White-Orange-Green, 4 min. 1969
Bouddi, 8 min. 1970
4000 Frames, An Eye-Opener Film, 3 min. 1970 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Earth Message, 23 min. 1970
Harry Hooton, 83 min. 1970 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
New Movements Generate New Thoughts, 11 min. silent 1971
The Boiling Electric Jug Film, 8 min. 1971
Blast, 6 min. 1971 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Meditations, 6 min. 1971 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Nine Image Film, 3 min. 1971 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Milky Way Special, 3 min. 1971
Zap, 2 min. 1971
Video Self-Portrait, 6 min. 1971
Gold Fugue, 3 min. 1971*
Pink Metronome, 3 min. 1971* (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Room, 5 min. 1971* (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
The City, 8 min. 1971* (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Fragments, 13 min. 1971* (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Island Fuse, 11 min. 197 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Skin of Your Eye, 117 min. 1973 (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
At Eltham, 24 min. 1974
Reflections on Three Images by Baldwin Spencer, 1901, 17 min. silent 1974
Negative/Positive on Three Images by Baldwin Spencer, 1901, 10 min. silent 1974
Studies in Image (De)Generation Nos. 1, 2 & 3, each 10 min. silent 1975
Three Colour Separation Studies - Landscapes, 13 min. silent 1976**
Three Colour Separation Studies - Still Lifes, 13 min. silent 1976**
Simple Observations of a Solar Eclipse, 16 min. silent 1976
Touching the Earth Series:
1--Ocean at Point Lookout, 46 min. 1977
2--Near Coober Pedy, 15 min. silent 1977
3--At Uluru, 80 min. 1977
4--Katatjuta, 24 min. 1977
Moving Picture Postcards, 16 min. silent 1978**
Heat Shimmer, 13 min. silent 1978**
Hillside at Chauritchi, 6 min. silent 1978
Near Wilmington, 6 min. silent 1978
Meteor Crater, Gosse Bluff, 6 min. 1978* (sound composition added in 2009 by Arthur Cantrill)
Ocean, 15 min. 1978*
Interior/Exterior, 3 min. 1978***
Angophora and Sandstone, 15 min. silent 1979**
Coast at Pearl Beach, 11 min. silent 1979**
Notes on the Passage of Time, 14 min. silent 1979**
Grain of the Voice Series:
1--Rock Wallaby and Blackbird, 66 min. 1980
2--Two Women, 32 min. 1980
3--Seven Sisters, 19 min. 1980
Unthurqua, 6 min. silent 1980
Warrah, 15 min. 1980**
Experiments in Three-Colour Separation, 21 min. 1980**
Two-Colour Separation Studies, 16 min. 1980
Pan/Colour Separations, 11 min. silent 1980**
The Second Journey (To Uluru), 74 min. 1981
Wilpena, 23 min. 1981
Time/Colour Separations, 18 min. silent 1981**
Floterian - Hand Printings From a Film History, 12 min. 35mm and 16mm, silent 1981
Film of Circles, Squares, Triangles, Lines and Dots, 11 min. 1981 (with Ivor Cantrill) (music by Chris Knowles)
Corporeal, 18 min. 1983*** (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
Passage, 65 min. 1983***
At Black Range, 12 min. 1984**
Waterfall, 18 min. 1984** (sound composition by Arthur Cantrill)
In This Life's Body, 147 min. 1984
Rainbow Diary, 17 min. 1984 (with Ivor Cantrill) (music by Chris Knowles)
Notes on Berlin, the Divided City, 30 min. Super 8mm, (16mm enlargement) 1986
Walking Track, 20 min. Super 8mm, 1987
The Berlin Apartment, 120 min. 1987*** (new version 1992)
Myself When Fourteen, 19 min. 1989 (with Ivor Cantrill) (music by Chris Knowles)

Myself When Fourteen (© Arthur, Corinne and Ivor Cantrill, 1989)

*: 3-screen film
**: 3-colour separation film
***: 2-screen film

Film/Performance Works

'The Cantrills are simultaneously dreamers, historians, artists of modernity, characters, readers and auteurs who have transformed their observations into filmic poems.' --Anna Dzenis writing on The Bemused Tourist, RealTime 23, February-March, 1998, page 24.

Expanded Cinema 1970-1972 (Included multiscreen, projection onto patterned and 3-D screens, and onto burning screens and screens of water. Also included following two works.)
Calligraphy Contest for the New Year 1971 (Hand-painted film projected anamorphically onto black screen progressively painted white and cut into patterns by Arthur Cantrill) (music by Jack Quigley)
Concert for Electric Jugs 1971 (Film of boiling electric jug projected onto four boiling electric jugs.)
Edges of Meaning 1977 (Film images by Walter Baldwin Spencer on two screens at right angles, installation of Spencer frame enlargements, Corinne Cantrill reading from Spencer's writing.)
Fields of Vision 1978 (3-screen projection of extracts from Cantrill landscape films, with commentary live and recorded by A. & C. Cantrill, installation of film stills.)
Grain of the Voice 1980 (Films made with Pitjantjatjara song men and women with live commentary and by Corinne Cantrill; installation of sand, trees, Aboriginal artifacts; film stills.)
The Practice of Filmmaking 1981 (2-screen - 16mm and Super 8 - film based on the production of the Cantrill film The Second Journey (to Uluru) with live commentary and action by C. Cantrill; installation of sand, trees, tent etc.)
Passage 1983 (2-screen film of journey from Melbourne to Central Australia with live and recorded commentary and action by C. and A. Cantrill; installation of sand, trees, tent, garments, camera; film stills.)
Journey Through a Face 1984 , 120 minutes (Autobiographical film with live and recorded commentary and action by Corinne Cantrill, installation of photographs, flowers, garments.)
The Berlin Apartment 1986, 135 minutes (new version 1995) (2-screen film of filmmakers living in a Berlin apartment with live commentary and action by Corinne Cantrill reflecting on the apartment's inhabitants during World War 2, installation of furnishings, pot plants, posters.)
Projected Light 1988, 120 minutes (2-screen film and slides about filmmakers' house and early and pre-film history, especially during 1888, the year the house was built. Live and recorded commentary by A. and C. Cantrill, on cinema as an art of projected light.)
The Bemused Tourist 1997, 2 hours (3-screen and installation of batiks etc. using Super 8 film shot in Bali and Java, with recorded music and effects and live commentary.)
The Becak Driver - A Story from Yogyakarta 1998, 2 hours (2-screen Super 8 and 16mm film and slides and installation of batiks etc., with recorded music and effects and live commentary.)

The Becak Driver - A Story from Yogyakarta (© Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, 1998)

FILM AWARDS:
Australian Film Institute Special Award (special mention for music) for Robert Klippel - Junk Sculpture, 1964, 1966.
Australian Film Institute Silver Award (Experimental Category) for Earth Message 1970. ('A colour symphony in three movements, this entry scores both for the detailed care of its flora photography and for the skill in which colour overlays have been mixed without distortion and with considerable aesthetic advantage.')
Australian Film Institute: The Alan Stout Award for the most creative entries in 1970 for Earth Message, 1970.
Melbourne Film Festival, Diploma of Merit for Warrah, 1981.
St. Kilda Film Festival: Special Lord Mayor's Award to Ivor Cantrill for Rainbow Diary, 1987.
St. Kilda Film Festival: Second Prize awarded to Corinne Cantrill for In This Life's Body, 1986.
Media City 14, an international festival of experimental film and video art, Windsor, Ontario, Canada: Honourable Mention for The Room of Chromatic Mystery, 2008.

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