Senses of Cinema

Synopsis

Over a decade in the making, and courtesy of filmmaking veterans and local heroes John Hughes and Tom Zubrycki, the compelling documentary Senses Of Cinema is a vibrant, essential document of Australian independent film practice that doubles as a comprehensive overview of over 60 years of Australian socio-political life, from the 1960s to the present.

At its centre is the important role the Australian Filmmakers’ Co-Operatives played within the cultural upheavals of the Left in the ’60s-’80s. Birthing major Australian talents like Jan Chapman, Gillian Armstrong and Phillip Noyce, the Filmmakers’ Co-Operatives of Sydney and Melbourne created stunning cinematic documents of the time in lieu of any real sense of a local film industry.

“It was the early 1970s,” director Phillip Noyce has said of the driving force behind the highly provocative Filmmakers’ Co-Operatives. “It was the end of 23 years of Liberal/National Part rule…there was a changing of the guard.”