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Moving Statics: The Films of Arthur and Corinne Cantrill (I)

18.05’25
Earth Message2

Earth Message © Arsenal

iMAL

Koolmijnenkaai 30

1080 Brussels

€ 8 / € 5 (Student) / Accreditation
Three-day pass for the full Cantrills program: € 20 / € 10 (Student)

Early Movements is the first pro­gram in a four-part scree­ning series dedi­ca­ted to the work of the Australian film­ma­king cou­ple Arthur (1938) and Corinne Cantrill (1928−2025). The screenings take place in Ghent (Art Cinema OFFoff) and Brussels (Cinema Parenthèse, CINEMATEK) between May 18 – 20 and on June 1. You can read more about the Cantrills’ work below.

This selection of works traces the Cantrills’ early filmmaking practice and their travels – from Brisbane (Making Window Pictures), to London (Adventure Playground, London), then back to Canberra (Home Movie; Earth Message) and Melbourne (At Eltham), before their relocation to the USA in 1973.

There will be a break before the screening of Earth Message (23′) and Ocean at Point Lookout (45′).

→ Curated and introduced by Keegan O’Connor, Audrey Lam, Anthony Brynaert and Daniel A. Swarthnas

→ In collaboration with Cinema Parenthèse & Courtisane

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

Making Window Pictures

AU • 1966 • 12' • b&w • 16mm

One of the Cantrills’ earliest filmmaking efforts, documenting child’s play and the activity-based workshops held by the Creative Leisure Centres in Brisbane (through which Corinne and Arthur first met).

624632 1

Making Window Pictures © Footage courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA)

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

Adventure Playground, London

AU • 1966 • 7' • b&w • 16mm

Another film about recreation and learning, made during the Cantrills’ four-year residence in London, and similarly tinctured by Herbert Read’s notions about children’s education as self-directed, creative, and free. The adventure playground provides a space in which children can shape and reimagine the environment according to their own sense of play.

Adventure Playground London

Adventure Playground London © National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA)

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

Home Movie: A Day in the Bush

AU • 1969 • 4' • b&w • 16mm

The first film the Cantrills made upon their return to Australia in 1969, galvanised by their experiences with experimental cinema in Europe and their sense that the Australian landscape could be creatively generative. It is both a landscape and a children’s film: it features their two young sons as they move through a vibrant Australian bush scene.

Home Movie

Home Movie: A Day in the Bush © Light Cone

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

At Eltham

AU • 1973 • 24' • colour • 16mm

A sombre and despairing bush film, made after the untimely death of the poet Charles Buckmaster (1951−72), to whom the film is dedicated, and shortly before the Cantrills’ move to the USA in 1973. Unlike Earth Message, At Eltham is slow and somnambulant, observing with wearied, blinking eyes a bush scene in Eltham (an outer suburb of Melbourne). The film is haunted by a sense that they ​‘could no longer work as filmmakers in Australia’ (Corinne Cantrill).

At Eltham

At Eltham © Arsenal

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

Earth Message

AU • 1970 • 23' • colour • 16mm

An energetic, yet carefully choreographed and layered, study of the hills, plains, and gardens of Canberra. Great feeling and excitement for the landscape is expressed through a roving, dancing, ​‘calligraphic’ camera.

Earth Message

Earth Message © Arsenal

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

Ocean at Point Lookout

AU • 1977 • 45' • colour • 16mm

The camera focuses deliberately on the sea, not on the beach and the visible environmental destruction caused by sand mines. The concentration on the mood and nature of the sea highlights the desire to respect nature and its power. Different materials are used to film the undulation of the sea, the reflection of light and the horizon, over and over. This is visual poetry whose musical structure rests on silence.

Ocean point lookout

Ocean at Point Lookout © Arsenal

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

Making Window Pictures

AU • 1966 • 12' • b&w • 16mm

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

Adventure Playground, London

AU • 1966 • 7' • b&w • 16mm

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

Home Movie: A Day in the Bush

AU • 1969 • 4' • b&w • 16mm

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

At Eltham

AU • 1973 • 24' • colour • 16mm

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

Earth Message

AU • 1970 • 23' • colour • 16mm

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill

Ocean at Point Lookout

AU • 1977 • 45' • colour • 16mm
OFFoff Extra

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill

Portrait2b

Arthur & Corinne Cantrill © In This Life's Body (Corinne Cantrill, 1984)

Over a period of fifty years, Australian filmmaking couple Arthur (1938) and Corinne Cantrill (1928-2025) sought to discover new visual languages and new ways of accessing and rendering landscape through the medium of 16mm film. Their vast body of work – encompassing documentary and experimental film, multi-screen installation, performance, and sound art – repeatedly stages “journeys” into unfamiliar terrain, investigating the creative feedback between environment and art, landform and film-form, shape and light.

Having met while working in children’s education in Brisbane in the late 1950s, the Cantrills moved to London with their young sons in 1965, where Arthur worked as a film editor and a sound producer for the BBC. During the couple’s time in Europe, they made a number of formally inventive documentaries about children and artists, and (after attending the famed EXPRMNTL 4 festival of 1967/68 in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium) determinedly took up an experimental film practice. Upon returning to Australia, they commenced a period of vital collaborative output, making seminal works about the Australian scene and the native landscape. They also started publishing their legendary film magazine, Cantrills Filmnotes, which they produced independently for some thirty years (1971-2000).

The Cantrills’ work is held in major international archives and galleries, including the Royal Film Archive of Belgium (Brussels), Arsenal (Berlin), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne), the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (Canberra), and MoMA (New York). They were the first Australian subjects of MoMA’s Cineprobe series in 1975, with two further retrospectives in 1988 and 2000. This four-part film program in Ghent and Brussels tracks their travels and movements as filmmakers – the development of their innovative practice at the cross-section of cinema, photography, sound design, and performance.

The Death of Metaphor / The Metaphor of Death: On The Cantrills is a new text on the films of the Cantrills written by curator Keegan O’Connor to accompany the program at Open City Documentary Festival in London (6-11 May 2025), with whom we are collaborating for this Belgian part.

Curated by Audrey Lam and Keegan O’Connor.

With thanks to the Cantrill family, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Arsenal, Light Cone and the Australian High Commission in the United Kingdom.