KT 110: Hitlist’s Cool Devices #3
Biddy Mahy reflects on Melbourne's premier media archive’s most recent ‘Cool Devices’ screening.
Hitlist | Cool Devices 3
Screened at Trades Hall
Updates on upcoming Hitlist screenings via instagram.
Words by Biddy Mahy
There were black wooden picnic seats set up in rows in front of a black stage where a projector screen had been rolled down. There was a bar, people were drinking. Someone’s laptop was tucked away on a high table in the back corner. On the laptop was a long video of all the collated films submitted to ‘Cool Devices’ — a screening series run by Hit List (Bella Besen and Nica Nevergna-Reed) and Ignatz Freer. Hit List describes itself as a media archive, hosting curated screenings of art-adjacent film and video art, often displaying local work alongside international selections. The curation of international content is a mixture of high and low, trending toward influential contemporary artists working with video (e.g. Kern, Trecartin, Ulman) as well as surprising, almost MTV-style, kitschy inclusions from news reels or reality shows. If a more traditionally established director is featured, the work shown is often art-focussed than narrative-focussed (i.e. adverts or music videos), or excerpted to highlight distinctive artistic choices. For example, a recent screening celebrating David Lynch showed his weather reports, adverts and sections from Inland Empire alongside local performances. The effect is part-homage, part-citational, tracing a lexicon of influence from center to periphery — the influence being more of the aesthetic than the strictly cinematic kind, hence the catch-all ‘media archive’.
Cool Devices builds from this filmic syllabus by focusing only on local work and by prescribing that artists create something entirely new, without the use of found footage. There is something Dogme95 about the constraints which I think, at the artistic level, reflects a demand for fresh imagery as opposed to the recycled language of the compilation/remix — a feature of a lot of contemporary video art post-Pictures Generation. The constraints also call for resourcefulness, pointing to the disinterest Australian art financing bodies have in experimental film compared to previous generations of filmmakers (Hit List, in a way, is an extension of the sharehouse gallery model to Australian cinema). At this cross-section, Hit List offers the rare opportunity for emerging filmmakers to show work to a new audience, while opening up the Melbourne arts scene to exercise in new territory.
The rules for submission operate along these lines:
All content must be filmed/created by the artist within a month. No found footage can be used.
The films are supposed to focus on the surface of the subject matter and shouldn’t push any deep, intellectual message.
All contributing members must help each other in whatever capacity possible
All short films will be shown at the end of the month in succession, and can be archived or destroyed by your own means thereafter.
The constraints establish that the film made by the artist may not necessarily consume their whole month. The theme of the event, to me, seems to ask artists to consider the kind of performance, observation and cataloguing that is already done compulsively — and to consider it in a filmic sense. The call to focus solely on surface level aesthetics discourages the kind of anxious conceptual hand wringing that comes with making work in an art-institutional context where exposition is a key part of the self-branding required to market yourself as an artist.
The one month time constraint is a challenge but possibly a reprieve too: encouraging risk-taking without the added pressure of being memorialised. In an Instagram post describing the concept, there is a friendly reminder added for the participants:
“Whatever you make within the allocated period is what the film is! Therefore there's no way you can fall short!”
Everything was set up to be sans-emcee. There was something cutely shy about this — the desire to maintain casualness, eschew too much ceremony. The audience waited expectantly and took the lights dimming as their cue to hush. The event logo, done in a loopy, hand-drawn script, was blown up on the screen and then the reel began. The conditions for the filmmakers involved flashed across the screen in black impact font and then sixteen films played in succession, with a short intermission.
There was definitely a theme of candidness to most of the submissions: most utilised phone cameras and willing, unrehearsed friends. Will McIntyre’s ‘My Movie,’ filmed someone in sunglasses, at close quarters, staring in an ironic wistful way at the ocean. There was a kind of holiday ad hoc quality to a few of the other films also — Elodie Lempriere’s ‘Benito Bonito’ is a beach-trip-film of two men undertaking an aimless search for treasure, the wilted, tired figure of Miles’s character contrasting with Jeb’s character’s madcap determination on a roundabout journey which ultimately leads them nowhere. Anaïs Lasage Baker’s ‘Poem’ takes place on a dark, dark night on a wide, wide lawn, lit sparingly by phone and laptop screens and street lamps. Millie reads aloud a poem from her phone written by Anaïs. The scene is somehow both spectral and casual — the moments in the poem are from Anaïs’s childhood and because they are recounted by another person, rather than confessed, take on a mythic quality. Armani Hollindale’s ‘Fourplay’ begins with three bisected reels playing simultaneously of three mobile, aimless-seeming characters (Jeb [who we met earlier in Elodie Lempriere’s short film], Daniel & Caesar) who walk along unpopulated urban streets, followed from place to place in long, handheld takes. The film shifts its carefree tune as it splits into four. An atonal, chaotic soundtrack ramps up, possibly a joking reference to creative/intellectual angst. A studious man (Stuart) pulls his hair back from his face in anguish while thinking of what to write; a painter (Jeb) works with his face inches from the canvas; artist and boyfriend (Caesar) ushers the camera through a small studio crammed with paintings. It is nice when your friends are generous enough to star in your films and it’s reassuring to watch a film where the off camera affinity between filmmaker and subject is obvious. When something is candid, what is not captured is there to bolster what is and the decisions made as a filmmaker aren’t purely economical but often arise out of being suddenly inspired or entertained.
There were also films which had a theatrical focus and a more prepared quality to them. Ignatz Freer’s “Miss Susie and Big Yellow” traps the audience in a claustrophobic room awash with detritus: bright paint, wooden boards and planks. Two figures, one wearing a Sesame-Street-style mask, careen and wrestle around in a playful fit of mutually assured destruction. A nursery rhyme plays ad nauseam, gradually becoming layered and unintelligible. It’s like a Trecartin film losing its wheels — without speech, purely physical and abstracted. Scarlett Cunningham’s ‘Shell’ takes place in a large, vaulted theatre. A figure emerges slowly from behind the stage’s vast, red curtain, performing an aria which has a fuzzy, underwater quality as though being sung from a great distance away. It’s a re-enactment of a scene from Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and leans on its constructed quality, the two lone audience members standing in place for Laura Harring and Naomi Watts wear these silver, glinting wigs. The last film ‘CIRCLES’, by Lucy Lazar and Lucia Burke was glossy and meticulously planned. It begins with a slow motion party scene, proceeding in a typical way to create an image of excess: dancing, flapper style dress that has been modernised and blinged out. The film is silly, frivolous on purpose and different stylistically from the other films shown, more traditionally commercial.
A long credits list plays out and I notice the venue has become significantly more populated because this time the cheering is louder. Everyone files out and gathers on the steps outside Trades Hall which I do too before breaking away towards home, taking elongated steps.
Listings | Thurs 17 April - Wednesday 23 April
Notable Screening
(Ecologies of Disappearance: Contemporary French Analog Films (Co-Presented with the AFW)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024
Screening Fri, Sat, Sun at ACMI
The Blues Brothers
John Landis, 1980
Screening Fri 18 Apr
The Exorcist
William Friedkin, 1973
Screening Sun 20
New Films in Release
The Correspondent
Kriv Stenders, 2025
Screening at most arthouse cineams
Warfare
Ray Mendoza; Alex Garland
Screening at both multi and arthouse cinemas
Focus on Michael Hanake
The Seventh Continent
Michael Haneke, 1989
Screening Thu 17 Apr
Benny's Video
Michael Haneke, 1992
Screening Fri 18 Apr
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance
Michael Haneke, 1994
Screening Sat 19 Apr
Funny Games
Michael Haneke, 1997
Screening Sun 20 Apr
Code Unknown
Michael Haneke, 2000
Screening Mon 21 Apr
Matinees
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024
Screening Fri, Sat, Sun
Next screening May 12
Neil Young: Coastal
Daryl Hannah, 2025
Screening Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun
The Blues Brothers
John Landis, 1980
Screening Fri 18 Apr
The Sound of Music
Robert Wise, 1965
Screening Sat-Sun
The Exorcist
William Friedkin, 1973
Screening Sun 20
The Last Temptation of Christ
Martin Scorsese, 1988
Screening Mon 21 Apr
BBBC CINEMA (GALLERYGALLERY BRUNSWICK)
Returning in June
No screening this week
CHINATOWN CINEMA
We Girls
Xiaogang Feng, 2025
Screening Daily excl. Sat
Ne Zha 2
Yang Yu, 2025
Screening Sat, Mon
The Last Dance
Anselm Chan, 2024
Screening Fri, Sun
No screening this week
No screening this week
Events / Previews
Neil Young: Coastal
Daryl Hannah, 2025
Weekend Previews
Wilding (Q&A)
David Allen, 2025
Screening Tues 22 Apr
Tinā (Mother)
Miki Magasiva, 2025
Advance screening Wed 23 April
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (20th Anniversary)
Judy Irving, 2003
Screening Daily excl.
Heat (30th Anniversary)
Michael Mann, 1995
Screening Thu, Fri, Sun
Se7en (30th Anniversary)
David Fincher, 1995
Screening Thu, Fri, Mon, Wed
The Fall (Restoration)
Tarsem Singh, 2006
Screening Fri, Mon
Wake in Fright (Restoration)
Ted Kotcheff, 1971
Screening Sat, Sun, Mon
Requiem for a Dream (25th Anniversary)
Darren Aronofsky, 2000
Screening Mon, Tue, Wed
Eyes Without a Face (65th Anniversary)
Georges Franju, 1960
Screening Wed
Dog Day Afternoon (50th Anniversary)
Sidney Lumet, 1975
Screening Fri, Sun, Wed
Goodfellas (35th Anniversary)
Martin Scorsese, 1990
Screening Mon
Alien
Ridley Scott, 1979
+
Aliens
James Cameron, 1986
Screening Tues 22 Apr
New Release
The Correspondent
Kriv Stenders, 2025
Screening Daily
Small Things Like These
Tim Mielants, 2025
Screening Daily
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre de La Patellière & Matthieu Delaporte, 2024
Screening Daily
Death of a Unicorn
Alex Scharfman, 2025
Screening Daily
Head South
Jonathan Ogilvie, 2024
Screening Daily
The Cats of Gokogu Shrine
Kazuhiro Soda, 2024
Screening Daily
Black Bag
Steven Soderbergh, 2025
Screening Daily
In Vitro
Will Howart, Tom McKeith, 2025
Screening Daily
Flow
Gints Zilbalodis, 2024
Screening Daily
Ange and the Boss: Puskas in Australia
Cam Fink & Tony Wilson, 2024
Screening Daily
Mickey 17
Bong Joon Ho, 2025
Screening Daily
Bob Trevino Likes It
Tracie Laymon, 2024
Screening Daily
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024
Screening Daily
The Last Showgirl
Gia Coppola, 2024
Screening Daily
Queer
Luca Guadanigno, 2024
Screening Daily
Babygirl
Halina Reijn, 2024
Screening Daily
A Complete Unknown
James Mangold, 2024
Screening Daily
The Brutalist
Brady Corbet, 2024
Screening Daily
Becoming Led Zeppelin
Bernard MacMahon, 2025
Screening Daily
Anora
Sean Baker, 2024
Screening Daily
Last days of every other film, probably, see calendar.
DOGMILK DEGUSTATIONS: @ Miscellania
(Ecologies of Disappearance: Contemporary French Analog Films (Co-Presented with the AFW)
‘Absences’ (Ø collective, 16mm, 2017, 4min)
‘Per Una Selva Oscura’ (Emmanuel Lefrant, 16mm & Super 8, 2022, 8min)
‘Agua de Vinagre’ (Frédérique Menant, 16mm, 2021-22, 40min)
Date: Wed 23 April
Location: Miscellania, 2/401 Swanston St
Doors: 7pm
Films: 8pm
Tix: $15 on the door
FRENCH FILM CLUB
No screening this week
GAY24 (Bar Flippy’s)
No screening this week.
No screening this week
LIDO / CLASSIC / CAMEO
Events
Sculpting in Time: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky
Mirror
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975
Screenings Thurs
To see all events, click here.
Classic Matinees
Zorba the Greek
Michael Cacoyannis, 1964
Screening Sat and Mon
Panorama of Chinese Film
Yi Yi
Edward Yang, 2000
Screening on Sunday
Meet Cute: A Celebration of Romantic Comedies
Clueless
Amy Heckerling, 1995
Screening on Tues
Cult Classics
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
Peter Greenaway, 1989
Screening on Mon and Tues
General Release
The Minecraft Movie
Jared Hess, 2025
Screening Daily
Small Things Like These
Tim Mielants, 2025
Screening Daily
Flow
Gints Zilbalodis, 2024
Screening Daily
Death of a Unicorn
Alex Scharfman, 2025
Advance Daily
The Amateur
James Hawes, 2025
Screening Daily
Novocaine No Pain
Dan Berk, Robert Olsen, 2025
Screening Daily
Black Bag
Steven Soderbergh, 2025
Screening Daily
Mickey 17
Bong Joon Ho, 2025
Screening Daily
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024
Screening Daily
A Complete Unknown
James Mangold, 2024
Screening Daily
OVA CLUB
No screening this week
MISCELLANIA
MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: SCREENING IDEAS
No screening this week
PALACE BALWYN / BRIGHTON / COMO / KINO / PENTRIDGE / MOONEE PONDS / WESTGARTH
Events / Previews
Tinā (Mother)
Miki Magasiva, 2025
Preview screening on Wed
General Release
The Minecraft Movie
Jared Hess, 2025
Screening Daily
Flow
Gints Zilbalodis, 2024
Screening Daily
Death of a Unicorn
Alex Scharfman, 2025
Advance Daily
Novocaine No Pain
Dan Berk, Robert Olsen, 2025
Screening Daily
Black Bag
Steven Soderbergh, 2025
Screening Daily
Mickey 17
Bong Joon Ho, 2025
Screening Daily
A Complete Unknown
James Mangold, 2024
Screening Daily
Conclave
Edward Berger, 2024
Screening Daily
Anora
Sean Baker, 2024
Screening Daily
Between shows.
No screening this week
THE MELBOURNE CINÉMATHÈQUE (ACMI)
Continental Divide: The Unflinching Vision of Michael Haneke
Amour
Michael Haneke, 2012
Screening from 7pm
+
Lemmings Tale I: Arcadia
Michael Haneke, 1979
Screening from 9.15pm
Neil Young: Coastal
Daryl Hannah, 2025
Screening most days
The Minecraft Movie
Jared Hess, 2025
Screening Thurs, Fri, Sat
Warfare
Ray Mendoza; Alex Garland
Screening Thurs, Sat, Tues
Dog Man
Peter Hastings, 2025
Screening Fri, Sat
Small Things Like These
Tim Mielants, 2025
Screening Fri, Sat
Black Bag
Steven Soderbergh, 2025
Screening Sun
Death of a Unicorn
Alex Scharfman, 2025
Screening Wed
Flow
Gints Zilbalodis, 2024
Screening Wed
Ange & the Boss: Puskas in Australia
Cam Fink, Rob Heath & Tony Wilson, 2024
Screening Tues
Reel Rock 19
Various, 2025
Screening Sun
UNKNOWN PLEASURES @ Thornbury Picture House
No screening this week