Film, Music, And Other Art Forms Don't Have To Be Separate Pursuits - They Could Be Part Of A Whole
The Adelaide-based collective Moviejuice on bridging the divide.
Moviejuice (Supplied)
The promising intersection of film and music is finally being further explored in the city of Adelaide, thanks to Moviejuice.
Moviejuice is an Adelaide-based film collective first formed in 2022, an enterprise of the sort that is sorely needed in a city that is on the smaller side. Dedicated to the screening, distribution, and celebration of alternative and experimental cinema, this collective is bolstered by a grounding sense of passion, and a clear belief in the staying power of creative expression. And, as an organisation, they are not to be pigeonholed. They are versatile in their endeavours, having run film and music events in both theatrical and DIY spaces, showcasing everything from curated short programmes and feature-film premieres to rare retrospectives and live score performances. Moviejuice is noteworthy in the way that it is dedicated to fostering a local screen culture that celebrates the intersection of art and community, with a focus on upholding the independent Australian film scene and its future.
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On Thursday, February 20th, Moviejuice will be premiering MALLS, a locally produced independent feature, at the beloved Mercury Cinema.
The screening will be a major event, followed by a Q&A with the director and stars Gabriel Bath and Emily Pottinger, as well as live music from Platinum Gentiles, Adelaide’s #1 David Berman tribute act, and artsy-jazzy synth-pop outfit Passion Pop Music.
This event will, in fact, be the live debut of Platinum Gentiles - which is fitting, as reportedly David Berman’s work was a key influence on the film. Additionally, two of the members of the band star in the film.
Passion Pop Music will be performing material from an upcoming project titled “The Other Team,” a dystopian, future-set musical about repressed queerness, the spiritual degradations of compulsory masculinity, and the AFL.
Daniel Tune, a founding member of Moviejuice, feels extremely passionate about this intersection between the mediums of film and music.
“I think music and film both have a unique potential to work on their audiences on a level that is both time-based and (at least partly) pre-verbal. These are factors that lend both a particularly powerful access to a less-literal, more primal part of the brain, one that other mediums generally have to work much harder to get to,” he says. “I believe this is why musicians and filmmakers often take cues from each other. The best films and the best music create distinct emotional universes (songs and cinema alike ‘build little rooms in time,’ to paraphrase David Berman) - universes whose power and meaning cannot be so easily spoken in words. For me at least, living in the worlds of my favourite music helped me to conceptualise a world of my own in film - and I know the same can happen in reverse.”
Tune expands on the subject, adding, “There's a more practical solidarity that can exist between the two art-forms as well. As a commercial form, cinema has never been in a worse shape, and has never been harder to break into as any kind of career. But the tools for sophisticated, personal filmmaking have never been more available, such that it is now equally possible, with the right ethos and the right community, to make a film with the same means required to start a band. I think this is where the most exciting filmmaking is headed: small, personal art for one’s own community - the kind that defines our local music scene.
“Things have already started to move in this direction in Adelaide, but in general we would all just like to see more cross-pollination between the forms and the people who make their art in them - for people to bring their own ideas, passions and abilities together and make beautiful things out of them. I think in my little personal utopia, everyone would view film, music, and every other art form not as separate pursuits, but as parts of a whole: the great pursuit of art on its own terms, for its own sake and for the community that surrounds it.”
Set in and around the Adelaide CBD, the film MALLS is billed as "a structural romance,” following two isolated protagonists who traverse the city in search of escape and excitement. Directed by Moviejuice co-founder Tune himself, the film meditates on romance, desire, and alienation in a world of decaying late-capitalist fantasy.
"It's both a love letter to the city and a protest against it," says Tune. "It's very much a personal expression of my own anxieties and pathologies, but I think that these feelings are fairly universal ones amongst people living in present day consumer societies.”
The premiere of MALLS will take place from 7 pm at the Mercury Cinema on February 20th. Tickets are available to purchase online now.
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
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