A FILM / CONCERT by Colin Offord

Commissioned by Le-Maillon Theatre de Strasbourg 2005.

Concept & music: Colin Offord

Videography: Colin Offord & Yeh Yilan

Lighting design: Calessandro.
Guest appearance in video: Albert David

Commissioned by Thierry Tordjman for

Le Maillon Theatre de Strasbourg, France 2005.

Australasian music for voice and original instruments performed live

in an environment of projected images. A meditation on the influenceof landscape

on the formation of the Australian psyche.

The vastness of the Australian continent, its isolation from the old world and location on the edge of Asia and the Pacific has played a profound role on the formation of the Australian identity. In many respects the landscape is the identity: wilderness and urbane, pristine, developed and degraded.

Colin Offord’s ideas about homeland are expressed through his extraordinary singing across the rhythmic, sweeping soundscapes he creates on his original instruments. His music and instruments are the result of 25 years of research and development in search of an Australian sound. This work is the embodiment of the ideas that are explored in “ The Tyranny of Distance”.

In the performance the music tells the story and the film provides the landscape. The sounds, the film and Offord’s physical presence are in constant dialogue. Mesmeric contemporary videography of the Australian landscape is juxtaposed with excerpts from the acclaimed 1927 silent film “ For the Term of His Natural Life “. The DVD is shot in a slow motion, hypnotic style contrasting with the intense melodrama of the silent film. Together they form a series of moving paintings imbued with historic references and exploring the idea of colonialism, attitudes to the environment and class structure.

A perspective on Australians and their landscape:

Aboriginal people see themselves as belonging to the land. The land is their mother. They and the land are one. The colonialists and convicts felt alien in their new environment. Their view was one of abject loneliness, they saw the land as a source of hardship and opportunity. In the 1927 silent film masterpiece “For the Term of His Natural Life “ we see the story of an English aristocrat who is transported for life, to the horrors of a convict settlement, on the other side of the world, for a crime he did not commit. His struggle for survival in an alien land becomes a metaphor for Australia’s current search for identity and place in the world and it’s effort to reconcile a violent past. From a modern and multi-cultural viewpoint landscape is seen as a source of pleasure and wealth, to be owned, as a home and as a resource.

A 90 minute work, no interval. The film is projected from a single 5000 Lumin projector fitted with a wide throw lens onto a single central screen approximately 6 metres high x 7.5 metres wide. Rear or front projection is possible. On either side of the screen are suspended sheets of thin recycled metal approximately 3.2 metres high x 1.8 metres wide acting as secondary screens for lighting and played as thunder sheets. Excerpts from " For the term of his natural life "(1927) by Norman Dawn, Australasian Films used courtesy of the Australian Screen and Sound Archives, Screen Sound Australia

About the Classic silent film "FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE"

Based on Marcus Clarke's epic novel, this big budget film follows the fate of an English aristocrat, Rufus Dawes, transported for life to the convict settlement of Van Dieman's Land for a crime he did not commit, and his enduring love for Sylvia, the daughter of a prison governor. Four of the principals in the cast, Eva Novak, George Fisher, Steve Murphy and Katherine Dawn were Americans, as was the director, Norman Dawn and the principle cameraman, Len Roos. Shot on location in New South Wales at Berrima, Wombeyan Caves and Sydney Harbour, as well as in Tasmania at the ruins of the convict settlement at Port Arthur, the film portrays some fine scenes of the convicts in the penal colony and also puts on screen some special effects such as 'glass shots' which enabled Dawn to 'restore' roofs to the derelict buildings at Port Arthur. Hundreds of extras were employed on the film. The use of Americans in the production was hoped to ensure American release. There was public opposition to the film at the time it was made concerning its portrayal of this less favourable aspect of Australia's white history. Release Date: 20 / 06 / 1927 Production Year: 1927