BONZA - Australia & New Zealand Database

Title

beDevil

Released

1993

Production Year

1992

Director

Tracey Moffatt

Comments

A collection of three short stories that
find it's base in indigenous and multi
cultural themes , "Mr Chuck" , "Choo Choo Choo Choo" and "Lovin' The Spin I'm In"

Filmed in Charleville, Queensland.

Synopsis

The aesthetic set design , use of cool colours, visual framing and construction are the first things that strike you as remarkable about this film. "Mr Chuck" tells of building frameworks on insecure ground , with the ghost of the swamp monster who keeps resurfacing to beDevil the constructions. "Choo Choo Choo Choo" is a story of the ghostly apparition of a little girl that dies on a railway line , her soul never finding eternal peace and invading the lives of the family who live through a track that doesn't exist. Even when the family come back they find the spirit of the girl still restless. "Lovin the Spin I'm In" is seen partly through the eyes of a teenage boy who lives in a small town and uncovers the distress of Imelda , a women from the Torres Strait Islands whose dead son and lover haunt the halls of the town and refuse to leave the place they love. There is also a character that looks remarkably like Freda Carlo and plays a disjunctive role in the film. The stories are contructed in a way that does away with didactic narrative or thematic connections. The film is dream like using artifice to subvert the constructed surroundings that have blended all these people together. It may be that the important thematic resonances may only be truly appreciated by audiences who are willing to accept it's multi-layered structure that is at once innovative, iconoclastic and illogical.

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References ( click to view )

web - AFI: Biblioz : Biblioz: Tracey Moffatt

Author Unknown

[full record]

journal - Beyond Assimilation: Aboriginality, Media History and Public Memory aedon 1 V4. pp.12-26

Meaghan Morris

Meaghan Morris embarks upon a learning experience. What began as a talk to be given after a screening of Night Cries turned into an article designed to be h...[full record]

newspaper - Black films burst with radiance The Weekend Australian. 13-06-1998. p.12

Lynden Barber

The articel refers to Rachel's past work in documentary with the ABC TV's indigenous program unit how the film was inspired. "Radiance" has been adpapted fro...[full record]

newspaper - Film Reviews Variety Movie Magazine. p.100

David Rooney

Presents the film as "touching on indigenous questions regarding displacement , heritage , land and belonging all without becoming an agenda movie or sacrifi...[full record]

newspaper - Full-Throttle Assault On Crime The Emerald Hill Times (The Melbourne Weekly). 18-08-1999. p.43

Deb Verhoeven

A brief review about the movie. It is a less'commercialize'review then any other reviews I picked up. My favourite bit of the review is how Deb compare, Two ...[full record]

journal - The Message of The Messenger Continuum V9. pp.185-199

Alan McKee

Attempts to deinfe and then identify the true author of a music video clip, driected by Tracey Moffatt for an INXS song. By identifying the author of the vi...[full record]

newspaper - Women on the verge of a breakthrough The Australian. p.16

Helen O'Neill

An on set description of a scene was a brilliant way to start, capturing the essence and atmosphere during the filming of "Radiance". It touches on issues i...[full record]

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