Rup on film at Rup

The film ‘The Farmer’s Cinematheque’ will have a special one-off screening at the Rupanyup Memorial Hall at 2pm on Sunday 9^th October.

‘The Farmer’s Cinematheque’ tells a story that comes from Rupanyup, although it could equally be a story from many other country towns. For more details on the history of the film see this previous post.

There’s a poetic resonance to this event, as the late John Teasdale, creator of most of the archival celluloid interpreted within the film, served many years as the projectionist for the Memorial Hall, in between his farming and his filmmaking. (The Memorial Hall makes a few appearances within the film.)

For information on the film, including a 2 minute teaser, please follow the link.

Admission to the Rupanyup screening costs $5  and includes afternoon tea.

A DVD version of ‘The Farmer’s Cinematheque’ will be launched at the screening, and copies will be available to purchase.

Can never find a toilet when you need it

Amusing item in the Education Departmental file on Dalcross School.

Dalcross School site at the group of sugar gums

 Dalcross School No. 4381 (named after Dalcross pastoral station, part of which was taken over for the Dyers Estate soldier settlement) opened temporarily in a room in the residence of Miss Helen D’Alton on 27.4.1928 till 13.7.1928, then in new premises on 16.7.1928 on 5 acres Allotment 34C Lallat Parish.

Section of the Lallat Parish map showing the school site

In 1927 the Education Department had purchased the site with house, from the Closer Settlement Board. The school operated in a weatherboard soldier settler’s home altered for the purpose. A shelter shed was erected in 1934. The school closed in April 1946.
The books were sent to Rupanyup State School. The 29’x14’ building was considered unsuitable for removal, and was sold by tender to Mr R. McRae of Rupanyup in August 1965, to become a plumber’s shop. 
The site is now landlocked and only a row of sugar gums mark its position.

The Argus article

The file item concerns the school's toilet/outhouse/out-office/loo/lavatory. There is an article from the Argus newspaper 7.7.1955 by Michael Fitzgerald.
One night in March some locals in a truck drove to the Dalcross school site and removed one of the toilets (there was a boys & a girls toilet. The school had been closed for nine years and the buildings were still there). In the morning the landowner rang the Rupanyup police (he was on Leave), so he then rings Constable Megee at Marnoo. Megee investigates and when driving through Rup, spies the loo in the backyard of a house owned by the Rupanyup Football Club (for the new team coach), then in the Wimmera League (Megee was the president & coach of the Marnoo Club, then in the Southern Wimmera League).
A week passes and low & behold the missing loo turns up back at Dalcross.

The Chief Commissioner's letter

The Chief Commissioner of Police & the Education Department are notified.
Megee presses charges, a summons is issued, and the case scheduled for the next court sitting at Rupanyup. The Police Divisional Inspector was to attend the Hearing in August, to ask that the case be struck out. No further Police action was contemplated.

The final fate of the toilets is unknown. 

But in light of the above, is the screen shot below related to the Dalcross incident? (taken from Malcom McKinnon's "Chronicle of a country life" the photographic work of John Teasdale of Rupanyup who filmed social life in the town in the 50s & 60s).

Archival film launch

The library has been involved in the creation of ‘The Farmer’s Cinematheque’ for some time, and now finally the film is born.

John and Relvy Teasdale were farmers in the Wimmera region of north-western Victoria. Over more than fifty years they created a rich and evocative filmic record of working and community life in their particular dry-land farming district of Rupanyup. For John and Relvy, farming and film-making were an inter-related devotional practice. 

Upon his death ten years ago, John Teasdale left a cupboard full of films that reveal and evoke a rich and nourishing terrain. Spanning five decades from the late 1930s to the late 1980s, the Teasdale films offer views into the psychological, social and economic complexities of a wondrous and sophisticated rural world that on the one hand seems to be disappearing but on the other continues to sustain, adapt and recreate itself. 'The Farmer's Cinematheque' exhumes the Teasdale films from the archive and explores their resonance in the context of a world rapidly changing but connected still to a profound legacy of ideas, desires and rituals.

Set against contemporary footage and embellished with story-telling from members of the Teasdale family and the Wimmera community, the film stimulates thinking about the power of memory and the nature of our attachment to particular country, drawing parallels between Indigenous and settler modes of country-keeping and providing elements of revelation and affirmation about rural life. A meditation on the power of country and also a demonstration, quite literally, of the power of film, Combining sequences from the archive with contemporary footage and voices 'The Farmer's Cinematheque' teases out important questions about our custodianship of places and communities in the context of a rapidly changing global environment. It is a lyrical film about the power of memory, the nature of our attachment to country and the ways in which communities strive to balance change and tradition.

‘The Farmer’s Cinematheque’ has its own website, where you can get a sneak peek at the film trailer. The film is a Reckless Eye Production, written and directed by Malcolm McKinnon and Ross Gibson, with cinematography by Ben Speth, produced by Annie Venables, and music by Chris Abrahams.

The world premiere will be at the 2015 Adelaide Film Festival, on 19th October, and importantly its local screening is a free event on 1st November, in Natimuk, part of the Nati Frinj Biennale.

'Combine Nation' 2004 Space and Place

The Nati Frinj Festival is a bi-annual event with an eclectic mix of programs and performances (one of the most notable has been the pictures and lights projected onto the exterior walls of Natimuk’s railway grain silos).