Le Film de Mon Père review – father’s videotape legacy sparks intergenerational dialogue

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A Swiss film-maker’s parent leaves behind a visual diary that raises questions about the limitations of art in a fascinating documentary debut The genesis of Jules Guarneri’s documentary – his first – comes from an unusual gift. Having made more than 20 hours of a filmed diary, his father, Jean, entrusted the material to the budding director, hoping that it would form the building blocks for his son’s first feature. These visual journals, in which the older man addresses the camera – and ultimately Guarneri – with recollections from his past, are awash with nostalgia and regret. As Jean’s recordings are interspersed with Guarneri’s own footage of his family, what starts out as a monologue gradually transforms into an intergenerational dialogue between father and son. Filmed with a fixed camera, Jean’s diaries have a static quality that echoes the stagnancy of his life story. Christabel, his wife and Guarneri’s mother, was an heiress, and the couple lived as idle rich in the Swiss vil...
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Wake in Fright understood the horrors of Australian booze culture. 50 years on, nothing’s changed | Joseph Earp

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As a sober Australian man, I’ve battled the bottle and I’ve battled the boys. As Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 film knows, there’s no victory in either

Wake in Fright, the 1971 film-cum-anthropological study by Ted Kotcheff understands Australian men, it understands Australia’s drinking culture, and it understands the way those two things intersect – which is to say it understands games.

Dick-measuring contests, arm-wrestling bouts, two-up, binge-drinking: Australian masculinity is a series of ongoing games with the promise that if you complete all of these contests you will be the winner – the mannest man. Of course, it’s an illusion: Australian men never really escape the playground rules of the handball court, which turn a swathe of casual interactions into high-stakes opportunities to prove ourselves.

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