UBU Films

1967 David E. Perry short

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

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

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.

“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)

An experimental film by David Perry.

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’.

Lovemaking in water has Antarctic repercussions.

Records the backwaters and docklands of Sydney Harbour accompanying a young woman with a red umbrella.

Kath is seen in different environments.