KT 116 BUFF Special: Ships that Bear (Gabriel Bath, 2023)
KT Stalwart Austin Lancaster previews 33% of the films on offer in BUFF's Adelaide MovieJuice triple header
Brunswick Undergound Film Festival:
MovieJuice Triple Feature
MovieJuice is an Adelaide-based film collective dedicated to the screening & distribution of alternative & experimental cinema. In addition to showcasing boundary-pushing movies and music, they also make their own awesome magnificent microbudget art! BUFF is proud to present a triple feature of MovieJuice onscreen, with the filmmakers in attendance.
2:45pm Saturday, 31 May
SV HQ (47 Melville Road Brunswick West VIC 3055)
Buy Tickets | Buy Passes
Ships that Bear
Gabriel Bath, 2023
Words by Austin Lancaster
Writing of the Kuchar twins, Bronx filmmaking heroes of the DIY underground, Manny Farber wrote thus: "For the Kuchars, Edison has just invented the movie camera, and the industry is getting ready for its infancy." His description is fitting too for Gabriel Bath's Ships that Bear, an irreverent romp with wonky stylized overdubs and affectionate-ironic pastiche ripped half-digested from the Kuchars' no-budget playbook. Bath and his Flinders University chums have come up with a period epic (or rather, "epic"), ambitious in spirit if not in technique, cobbled together from whatever and whoever were close to hand. It will be presented this Friday alongside Malls (Daniel Tune) and Night of the Cryptoids (Aubrey Wilson, Jack Langford) by Adelaide film collective MovieJuice, known for their screening events of adventurous independent-focused programming combined with live music. The journey takes us across revolutionary Cuba, a domestic quarrel, a "large city" of the present-day, and finally to Warhol's Factory of the 60s, with Bath winking all the way to remind us that we never left Adelaide.
We begin with Che Guevara's landing on the Cuban coast, with mannered ABC-News-style narration reporting to us that "things aren't too sweet in the land of sugar." An eccentric digitally-overlaid montage unfolds made of coasts, toy action figures, scribbled drawings, and a diagram of Fidel Castro's righteous heart. Che Guevara (Quinn Vlasic, voiced by Isaac Bails) holds up a pineapple, telling us "This, hermanos, is the fruit of the revolución." He stuffs a handful of banana lollies — not the fruit of the revolución — into his mouth and chews them as his fake beard unconvincingly wags. (Here Bath announces — threatens — his intention to milk all the humour he can from dodgy costuming.) Che parkours off gum trees, accompanied by pals outfitted in sneakers - one wears a top depicting Peter Griffen and Mickey Mouse sharing a bong. (Supplies for filmmaker renegades, as for the Cubans, are short.) Che's rousing Argentinian-accented exhortations ("This is what's guided us out of the path of bullets and onto the caring breast of mother Cuba") are met with bathetic Adelaidean ("Yeah, sure. Yeah.").
The tone shifts to druggy nightmare as we find ourselves in the home of Phil and Ronnie Spector on a fraught night of shadowplay. Dialogue absent, Phil fumbles with his slipping moustache, brandishes a gun towards Ronnie who lies prone, transfixed with fear. The couple are both played by Bath himself: Phil wears a handlebar mo and a wig somehow faker than the real Spector's own; while his Ronnie is decked in winged-out liner and a Beehive do. A slowed version of the "Be My Baby" beat plays under a wall of reverb as Ronnie appears in the backyard, apparition-like.
A match cut transports us from Ronnie's visage to that of a young She Guevera (Luisa Moller) draped in a Cuban flag. She bumps into the advances of radical feminist Valerie Solao (Luna Grzan), who in turn bumps into those of a chauvinist beatnik (Daniel Tune). After a long stretch where words have been absent, we run into a strange profusion of them: a high-flavoured but barely-coherent word-salad tossed together from Solanas’ sardonic guttermouth, along with quotes magpie'd from the likes of Driller Killer, Jack Kerouac, and Marilyn Monroe. Tune's finger-clicking entrance — more brain-damaged than menacing — is funny, as is Grzan, who leans on a curled lip and dangled cigarette, overdubbing herself in nasally New Jerseyan.
We drop in on Andy Warhol filming Mario Montez's banana fellatio, and sure enough Solanas turns up. She doesn't shoot him in the flesh however, but via a projector on cardboard stuck to a garage door. A sharp object pokes "bullet holes" through the cardboard, and Warhol's pitched-down groans tear the audio as oil-like blood drips through. It's only retrospectively, at the film's end, that we see that the film's structure is linked as a circular chain: Ronnie's plight connects to feminism of the present day; in turn, Solanas' self-righteous desperation harks back to that of the Cuban revolutionaries. Its final moments — a lateral jump involving Solanas nervously clutching a cigarette as police sirens approach — have an unexpected pathos that throws the rest of the film into relief.
Ships that Bear has faults aplenty. Uneven performances galore, lines buried in the unmastered mix, and Gath seems to have an allergy to testing for audio clipping. But the film is surprising, energetic — not all the ideas work, but there's a scattershot punch, a ballsy energy, talent crying out for a cinematographer. (DPs are to filmmaking what armaments are to guerrilla warfare.) Intrepid moviegoers and would-be filmmakers might want to make the trip to Static Vision HQ to see what's sparking in the City of Churches. There's something moving — and bracing — about its communal, homegrown enthusiasm and the conviction of its makers — one implicit in the ethos of their Movie Juice comrades — that cinema is alive and kicking, and theirs for the taking.
LISTINGS
THU 29 MAY - WED 28 MAY (A-Z by Cinema)
Notable Screenings:
Brunswick Underground Film Festival
Films screening at Estonian House, Static Vision HQ and Pink Flamingo Pop up cinema (43-47 Melville Road, Brunswick West) from Fri 30 - Sun 01.
We are co-presenting Joel Petrykus’ Vulcanizadora.
For cheaper tix use our code BUFFXKINOTOPIA for cheaper ticks to the film PARTNERPASS5OFF for $5 for all films.
Vulcanizadora (Kinotopia Pick)
Joel Potrykus, 2024
Screening 11am Sat 31 May at Estonian house
Other Notable Screenings:
Scala!!! (Editor’s Pick)
Jane Giles, Ali Catterall, 2023
Screening Sat 31 May, Mon 2 Jun, Tue 3 Jun
Gazer (Editor’s Pick)
Ryan Sloan, 2024
Screening Sat 31 May, Sun 1 Jun, Mon 2 Jun, Wed 4 Jun
Festivals:
German Film Festival 2025
For the full program visit here.
Screening at Palace Cinemas
New Films in Release
The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson, 2025
Screening Daily
Bring Her Back
Danny and Michael Philippou, 2025
Screening Daily
Beating Hearts
Gilles Lellouche, 2024
Screening at Palace and Cinema Nova
Cannes Competitors
The Invasion
2024
Screening Thu 29 May
The Night of the 12th
Dominik Moll, 2022
Screening Fri 30 May
No Bears
Jafar Panahi, 2022
Screening Sat 31 May
Showing Up
Kelly Reichardt, 2022
Screening Sat 31 May
Fire Will Come
Oliver Laxe, 2019
Screening Sun 1 Jun
Worst Person in the World
Joachim Trier, 2021
Screening Mon 2 June
ART + FILM
Jen Valender
Screening Thu 29 May
Matinees
Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story
Bruce David Klein, 2024
Screening Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Next screening Wed 11 June
No screening this week
Heat
Michael Mann, 1995
Screening Thu 29 May, Fri 30 May, Sat 31 May, Sun 1 Jun
El Topo
Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970
Screening Fri 30 May
Return to Oz
Walter Murch, 1985
Screening Sat 31 May
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Jack Clayton, 1983
Screening Sat 31 May
Singin' in the Rain
Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952
Screening Tue 1 Jul
The Decline of Western Civilization
Penelope Spheeris, 1981
Screening Wed 2 Jul
BBC CINEMA (GALLERYGALLERY BRUNSWICK)
Returning in June
No screening this week.
Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning (Chinese Subtitles)
Christopher McQuarrie, 2025
Screening Daily
Lilo & Stich
Dean Fleischer Camp, 2025
Screening Daily
Peg O’ My Heart
Nick Cheung, 2024
Screening Sat, Wed
No screening this week
No screening this week.
Events / Previews
What The Fest
Scala!!!
Jane Giles, Ali Catterall, 2023
Screening Sat 31 May, Mon 2 Jun, Tue 3 Jun
Gazer
Ryan Sloan, 2024
Screening Sat 31 May, Sun 1 Jun, Mon 2 Jun, Wed 4 Jun
The Vanishing
George Sluizer, 1988
Screening Thu 29 May, Sat 31 May, Tue 3 Jun
The Piano Teacher
Michael Haneke, 2001
Screening Thu 29 May, Mon 2 Jun, Wed 4 Jun
The Holy Mountain
Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973
Screening Thu 29 May, Sat 31 May, Tue 3 Jun
Enter the Void
Gaspar Noé, 2009
Screening Thu 29 May, Sun 1 Jun, Mon 2 Jun
El Topo
Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970
Screening Thu 29 May, Sun 1 Jun
The Thing
John Carpenter, 1982
Screening Daily
Tears of the Black Tiger
Wisit Sasanatieng, 2000
Screening Sat 31 May
Crash
David Cronenberg, 1996
Screening Sun 1 Jun, Mon 2 Jun
Blue Sunshine
Jeff Lieberman, 1977
Screening Mon 2 Jun, Wed 4 Jun
The Blob
Irvin Yeaworth, 1958
Screening Wed 4 Jun
In the Rear View
Alphaville
Jean-Luc Godard, 1965
Screening Daily
Dressed to Kill
Brian De Palma, 1980
Screening Fri 30 May, Sun 1 Jun
Akira
Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 1988
Screening Sat 31 May, Mon 2 Jun
The Love Witch
Anna Biller, 2016
+
Suspiria
Dario Argento, 1977
Screening Tue 3 Jun
ChalaMay
Call Me by Your Name
Luca Guadagnino, 2017
Screening Mon 2 Jun, Wed 4 Jun
New Release
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Laura Piani, 2024
Screening Daily
Bring Her Back
Danny Philippou & Michael Philippou, 2025
Screening Daily
Universal Language
Matthew Rankin, 2024
Screening Daily
Wilding
David Allen, 2023
Screening Daily
The Surfer
Lorcan Finnegan, 2025
Screening Daily
The Salt Path
Marianne Elliott, 2024
Screening Daily
La Cocina
Alonso Ruizpalacios, 2025
Screening Daily
Hurry Up Tomorrow
Trey Edward Shults, 2025
Screening Daily
Björk: Cornucopia
Ísold Uggadóttir, 2025
Screening Thursday, Sat & Sun
Misericordia
Alain Guiraudie, 2024
Screening Daily
The Wedding Banquet
Andrew Ahn, 2025
Screening Daily
Monsieur Aznavour
Mehdi Idir & Grand Corps Malade, 2024
Screening Daily
Ocean with David Attenborough
Mehdi Idir & Grand Corps Malade, 2024
Screening Daily
Sinners
Ryan Coogler, 2025
Screening Daily
Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke: Tall Tales
Jonathan Zawada, 2025
Screening Daily
An Unfinished Film
Lou Ye, 2025
Screening Daily
Tinā (Mother)
Miki Magasiva, 2025
Screening Daily
Lies We Tell
Lisa Mulcahy, 2023
Screening Daily
Flat Girls
Jirassaya Wongsutin, 2025
Screening Daily
The Correspondent
Kriv Stenders, 2025
Screening Daily
Crossing
Levan Akin, 2024
Screening Daily
Small Things Like These
Tim Mielants, 2025
Screening Daily
Death of a Unicorn
Alex Scharfman, 2025
Screening Daily
Warfare
Ray Mendoza & Alex Garland, 2025
Screening Mon
Flow
Gints Zilbalodis, 2024
Screening Daily
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024
Screening Daily
Dale Frank: Nobodies Sweetie
Jenny Hicks, 2024
Screening Monday only.
Last days of every other film, probably, see calendar
DOGMILK DEGUSTATIONS
Twilight Time
John Hughes, 2024
Screening Thursday 15 May at Miscellania (Doors at 7pm, screening at 7:30pm tix $10)
FRENCH FILM CLUB
No screening this week
GAY24 (Bar Flippy’s)
Updates on upcoming Gay24 screenings via instagram.
No screening this week
To see all events, click here.
Robert Altman: A Centenary Retrospective
Brewster McCloud
Robert Altman, 1970
Screening Thu 29 May
Cult Classics / Restorations
Dazed and Confused
Richard Linklater, 1993
Screening Thu 29 May, Mon 2 Jun
Brewster McCloud
Robert Altman, 1970
Screening Thu 29 May
The Night of the Hunter
Charles Laughton, 1955
Screening Sat 31 May, Mon 2 Jun
A Star is Born
Bradley Cooper, 2018
Screening Sun 1 Jun, Wed 4 Jun
What's Up, Doc?
Peter Bogdanovich, 1972
Screening Tue 3 Jun
General Release
Universal Language
Matthew Rankin, 2024
Screening Daily
The Surfer
Lorcan Finnegan, 2025
Screening daily
Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning
Christopher McQuarrie, 2025
Opening on Sat 17
La Cocina
Alonso Ruizpalacios, 2025
Screening daily
Hurry Up Tomorrow
Trey Edward Shults, 2025
Screening daily
Sinners
Ryan Coogler, 2025
Screening at most cinemas.
Small Things Like These
Tim Mielants, 2025
Screening Daily
Thunderbolts
Jake Schreier, 2025
Screening Daily
PALACE BALWYN / BRIGHTON / COMO / KINO / PENTRIDGE / MOONEE PONDS / WESTGARTH
Events / Previews
German Film Festival 2025
For the full program visit here.
General Release
Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning
Christopher McQuarrie, 2025
Screening Daily
Monsieur Aznavour
Mehdi Idir & Grand Corps Malade, 2024
Screening Daily
The Wedding Banquet
Andrew Ahn, 2025
Screening Daily
Sinners
Ryan Coogler, 2025
Screening at most cinemas.
Small Things Like These
Tim Mielants, 2025
Screening Daily
Thunderbolts
Jake Schreier, 2025
Screening Daily
Tinā (Mother)
Miki Magasiva, 2025
Screening Daily
Between shows.
Brunswick Underground Film Festival (BUFF) starting May 30 — 1 June
THE MELBOURNE CINÉMATHÈQUE (ACMI)
Victor Erice: Come Towards the Light
El Sur
Victor Erice, 1983
Screening from 7pm
+
Victor Erice - Abbas Kiarostami: Correspondences
Victor Erice, 2007
Screening from 9:25pm
The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson, 2025
Screening Daily
Bring Her Back
Danny and Michael Philippou, 2025
Screening Daily
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
Christopher McQuarrie, 2025
Screening on Wed 04
UNKNOWN PLEASURES @ Thornbury Picture House
No screening this week