Albie Thoms

As notions of civil rights transformed across the world, so was the screen landscape reformed by the ascension of grassroots film movements seeking to challenge the mainstream. Some aspired to push form to its limit; others worked to destabilise what they saw as a homogenous industry, or to provoke questions around gender, sexuality, migration and race.

The stories involving surfing and drugs are followed in Sydney over two days.

The stories involving surfing and drugs are followed in Sydney over two days.

The stories involving surfing and drugs are followed in Sydney over two days.

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”.

Albie Thoms' Marinetti was the culmination of the synthetic environments that the UBU group had pioneered in Australia; festive public 'happenings' that combined the energy and volume of creative rock and jazz with the mesmeric effect of multi-dimensional lightshows. Another kind of culmination: Marinetti records most of the principal collaborators in the UBU film group, like Aggy Read and the Perrys. Uniquely valuable as a document of Australia's late 1960s counter-culture, the soundtrack provides the best indication of the unrestrained liberty that bands like Tully and the John Sangster Underground band some of whose members perform on this recording were famously achieving in their improvisations of the period.

An intimate portrait of a son by a mother set to the boisterously pop Batman theme song.

An intimate portrait of a son by a mother set to the boisterously pop Batman theme song.

In this kinetic tribute to his Ubu Films collaborator Perry, Thoms combined tests and offcuts from early films with film fragments found on Perry’s editing room at ABC-TV. The Textacolour marks were intended as homage to Perry’s pioneering handmade films.

A minimalist exercise described by Thoms as ‘observing the effect of movement on perception within the framework of Ravel’s music’.

A minimalist exercise described by Thoms as ‘observing the effect of movement on perception within the framework of Ravel’s music’.

“The film was made spontaneously one afternoon in 1966. When a few friends got together... We were all in love with the film medium...” (Garry Shead)

Thoms dedicated three months and a toolkit of pins, razor blades and scalpels to create the rich, abstract surface texture in Bluto. The result, according to the filmmaker, ‘was something like thunder and rain, interspersed with burps, belches and farts, which added an urgency that seemed to express the anxieties of the time’.

In Moon virility, Thoms drew on clear stock and added a ‘found’ soundtrack.

A spoof of the early James Bond films and Ian Fleming universe from Australia. Bumbling overweight Aussie secret service agent Jim Bond alias Agent Minus 007 blunders his way against arch rival villains Ernest Stavro Blowfly and Dr. Yes down under in Sydney, Australia.

This experimental documentary about two young Paddington dress-makers was banned for nudity, but was screened widely in Australia without complaint.

This experimental documentary about two young Paddington dress-makers was banned for nudity, but was screened widely in Australia without complaint.

A one-second explosion of a plastic head filled with milk is reversed, stretched to 50 seconds in length and overlaid with a split screen superimposition of a modernising Sydney: skyscrapers, cranes, trains and planes.

In this film, David Perry scratched onto celluloid the numbers of a poem by Kurt Schwitters, which were projected beside the actor reciting it.

Made for inclusion in a student theatrical production at the University of Sydney, this film was based on an allegorical play by Antonin Artaud.