Batchelor Girl by Rivka Hartman: Article in Australian Jewish News, 3 December 1987.
Dot Bloom is a soap-opera scriptwriter wno spends her time in between re-writes escaping from the clutches of Auntie Esther and Uncle Isaac. They are trying to match her up with a single Jewish male doctor, and contemplating a relationship with an attractive divorced white male lawyer, whose conversation and friends are stupifyingly boring. Dorothy Bloom’s situation is only too familiar to the growing number of professional Jewish women in our community for whom it is difficult to find a suitable male partner. Estranged by helpful,but patronising relatives (you’re still attractive, darling, if only you’d make the most of yourself), she is unimpressed by the available prospects who desire love and companionship but are not prepared to degrade themselves.
A Case Study on Exhibition: Freda Freiberg looks at how the Jewish Film Festival gained community support
Over the past decade, the Australian Film Institute has been responsible for running a great number of imported film seasons, organised around geographic, thematic or authorial categories. Wenhave had new Chinese cinema, Latin American cinema, Oshima and Imamura retrospectives, new German women's films, Gay Film festivals, to name but a few. Thehigh costs of freight and fares make these seasons an expensive operation. We lack the population density, and the high floating tourist population, of cities like London, Paris or New York. Our film community is small and splintered into specialised interest groups, so it alone cannot provide an audience large enough to maintain an ongoing programme of imported film seasons. Does that mean that we have to abandon imported film seasons?
Melbourne Film Festival in retrospect, Canberra Times 30 June 1975
Wizards of Oz: Into the 90s Between Documentary and Fiction
WIZARDS OF OZ:
INTO THE 90s BETWEEN DOCUMENTARY AND FICTION
by Freda Freiberg, May 1995. Edited version published in ARTLINK.
In the incredible shrinking space between 1984 and 2001, the distinction between social-issue documentary and surreal fiction is collapsing - almost as fast as Australian capitalism or Soviet communism. This is nowhere more evident than in that genre of filmmaking that has variously been called the experimental documentary, the non-fiction or essay film. The borders of this genre have always been less distinct, more shadowy, than those of other genres of film. Its exponents have typically been free spirits, nomadic types, no respecters of borders and boundaries. They are the men and women with movie cameras who traverse cities, continents, oceans and skies, reading letters to and from home, experiencing vertigo, exploring the inner and outer, higher and lower worlds.
Border crossings:
This year the Hong Kong Film Festival paid tribute to Ann Hui, a director with a long track record in the local industry. After an active career in television, directing documentaries and drama, she began making movies in 1979, and has hitherto directed 21 features. Her latest film, July Rhapsody, was selected for screening at both the Sydney and the Brisbane International Film Festival. With four features over the past two years, she shows no sign of slowing down and seems to be at the height of her powers. Unlike many of her compatriots, she has not deserted Hong Kong, where she is highly respected for her intelligence, creativity and commitment to local film culture.
A Yen for the Road in Recent Australian Cinema (Mar 2010)
In memory of Solrun Hoaas, mask-maker, filmmaker, printmaker, poet, scholar, critic, intrepid voyager in uncharted waters.
Her rigorous refinement, principled probity and subtle intelligence did not appeal to the crassly commercial crowd in this country, but she kept on writing, filming and directing her own independent film projects, one after the other. Up to the end, despite setbacks and lack of support, she continued to journey off the beaten track, with dogged persistence, remarkable resilience, gritty determination - and courage.