PERSONS OF INTEREST: THE INDEPENDENT FILM WORK OF HAYDN KEENAN AND ESBEN STORM

Esben Storm (1950–2011) and Haydn Keenan (1951–) met each other at University High in Melbourne in the late 1960s, going on to produce a series of award-winning short films that demonstrated their unflinching and fiercely independent approach to cinema. Emerging just prior to the official launch of the “revival”, their low-budget first feature 27A (1974) – produced by Keenan and written and directed by Storm – is one of the major films of its era. Receiving acclaim at the Sydney Film Festival, it also won the AFI Awards for Best Fiction Feature and Best Actor. Featuring an extraordinary lead performance by Robert McDarra, it established Keenan (the youngest producer to ever win the AFI award) and Storm as two of the key young voices in Australian cinema. Although they maintained a close relationship, Storm left their production company, Smart Street Films, to make his follow up feature In Search of Anna (1978). Across the rest of his career, he completed two further features but mainly worked on television shows including Round the Twist (1992-2001) and Kick (2007). Keenan went on to direct and produce short films, documentaries, TV movies and two fiction features, Going Down (1982) and Pandemonium (1987). Although not widely seen at the time, Going Down is now regarded as one of the most vibrant and underrated Australian films of its era and provides a fascinating portrait of inner-city Sydney in the early 1980s. Keenan’s career has sustained Smart Street Films as one of Australia’s longest-lived production companies. His subsequent work has included documentary portraits of Reg Mombassa, Ross Hannaford and Aboriginal activist Sam Watson. He also wrote and directed the important documentary series Persons of Interest (2014), exploring the declassified ASIO files of figures such as Frank Hardy and Gary Foley. This program celebrates the tenacious work of Storm and Keenan by screening recent restorations of their two most celebrated features, 27A and Going Down.

Wednesday 8 April

7:00pm 27A

Esben Storm (1974) 86 mins – M

Winner of the AFI Awards for Best Feature and Actor, Storm and producer Haydn Keenan’s audacious first feature was made when both were in their early 20s. A key film of the Australian feature film “revival”, it is an incendiary portrait of the mental health system and “a reflection of the society that built it” (Storm). A middle-aged alcoholic (Robert McDarra, in an extraordinary lead performance) is given a six-week sentence for a minor offence and becomes trapped in a cycle of incarceration and abuse when he volunteers for psychiatric treatment and is subjected to section 27A of Queensland’s Mental Health Act. With Bill Hunter and Richard Moir.

To be introduced by the film’s producer, Haydn Keenan.

8:50pm GOING DOWN

Haydn Keenan (1982) 94 mins – M

Since its self-distribution to little fanfare, this fiercely independent cult classic – following four women friends on an odyssey of heady excess through a realistically depicted inner-city Sydney on their final night together before one of them leaves for New York – has been too rarely screened. Celebrated by critics such as John Flaus, Meaghan Morris and Adrian Martin, the latter calling it “one of the finest and most memorable films made in Australia”, Keenan’s film gained further distinction by featuring early-career performances from local bands including Pel Mel and Dynamic Hepnotics. With Tracy Mann, Julie Barry, David Argue and Esben Storm.

4K restoration to be introduced by the film’s director and producer, Haydn Keenan.