CUNNAMULLA MONSTER CHILDREN
Glendyn Ivin
I think I posted this a couple of years ago but my friends at Monster Children recently re-published a list of my 15 Favourite Australian films. I forgot that when they published the story they embedded a copy of the film ‘Cunnamulla’.
From the article… ‘I distinctly remember sitting in the cinema in 2000 thinking Dennis O’Rourke’s portrait of small-town Australia was a devastatingly different portrait to the one the Australian Olympic Committee was sending out to the world at the same time as Sydney hosted the Olympic Games. Rough-as-guts racism, bored-as-batshit youth; the film shows just how wide the divide is between city and country, rich and poor, black and white. All through the unflinching lens of O’Rourke’s mini DV camera.’
This is a controversial film and O’Rourke was a controversial filmmaker. I question his approach on this film and others. But 20 years on Cunnamulla still stands as a raw and uncompromising document of a time and place in Australia that I’m sure is more relevant today than it was when it was first released. Cunnamulla and The Good Woman Of Bangkok had a huge effect on me when I was a young student filmmaker.