Souvenir of a wet summer
I am in Adelaide on family business, and one thing I have noticed is how dry and brown the unwatered parkland is. I don’t mind the countryside when it’s like that, but when I watched Wanyi Wighton’s stills-movie of the Todd River in flow, I did find myself missing the temporarily green, green grass of home.
There’ve been a few features on the web celebrating the Centre’s wet summer in a way that only desert-dwellers really can. With the expert assistance of the ABC’s Nicole Lee, Alex Nelson took interested parties on a voyage of exploration up St Mary’s Creek, which has only flowed six or seven times in Alex’s lifetime. The film was apparently inspired by Alex’s great new regular column, Naturally, in The Alice Springs News.
Wanyi was also born and bred in Alice Springs, as was his brother Lelep, who co-stars with the Todd River in Wanyi’s A Flow of Moments. Wanyi’s technique, in which he takes hundreds of still frames at a fast shutter speed, has the effect of presenting life as just that: a flow of moments, each one with its own character, that exists independently as well as within the illusion of continuity.
This film is also great fun. – D.R.
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Alice Springs, AUSTRALIA
Was feeling blue till I saw this video and now I’m thinking of taking up the ukele. What a glorious thing: the Todd in flood. And what a fine and productive way to spend a day: floating thongs down the Todd. Da da, da da da da, da da. What is that tune anyway? I know there’s an overflowing gutter nearby in Brisbane so I’m off to float sticks in it.
You’ll never get it out of your head now, Sandra. It’s the music from the film The Third Man . Sorry, I should have said so. It was composed by Anton Karas and played by him on the zither, which might be related to the ukelele. According to Wikipedia, Karas was an unknown wine bar performer before the production of the movie came to Vienna.
Say hello to the Brisbane River for me.
It reminded me of 101 things to do with a… usually dry – but now flowing abundantly – river. Some novel ideas were demonstrated, and the stop frame film technique was refreshingly different as well. The combination of the bowler hat and the really catchy music went down a treat. Congratulations to the filmmaker. Could we have some more please?