SUNSHINE CITY is Albie Thom’s sprawling, protoplasmic experimental portrait of his hometown of Sydney. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia call it “a structured diary film which investigates the process of living in Sydney, which uses a repeating light modulation to intensify experiences of light, heat, colour”.
Self-shot: a film shot without a camera operator. Sole witness: the movie camera. Fixed, directed at a single expanse, obedient to the orders of wires that I manipulate: characters splitting in two through the asymmetrical filtration of the comings and goings of self-irony. Composed of various extracts of historical films, such as the Eisensteinian battleship, intercut with stairways of various sorts; the unceasing use of negatives persecuted by positives and vice versa; a cinematic-theatrical dialogue between philosophical doubling and filmic doubling.
A true story, fillmed in Rome with both actors & non actors. in the 1500's Roman life was often a nightmare - Count Cenci tortured his family, raped his daughter, murdered his sons, created general havoc. Beatrice got her revenge, before she lost her head. A hectic, hysterical nightmare built of intercutting, movement & emotion.
