CLAY (1965) Australian film in Competition at Cannes International Film Festival 1965 intro+dissertation+academicappraisal
In 2006 I started doctoral research at the University of Melbourne on the films of Giorgio Mangiamele, which I discovered at the National Film & Sound Archive in Melbourne. I was preparing the first edition of Sguardi australiani, Italy, and selected Giorgio Mangiamele's The Spag (1962), along with twelve other Australian short films that highlighted the diversity of culture in urban Australia. In the course of the doctoral research, I delved into cultural politics, Italian cinema, Australian cinema and more, and critically discussed Giorgio Mangiamele's cinematic work.
Who is behind the camera? I have included below excerpts of the appraisal of the PhD Dissertation from international academics. With the research completed in 2009 and the Dissertation written, I sought to publish it. I made several requests for contribution towards its publication that a potential publisher had set as a requisite. Needless to say it was unsuccessful. In any case, the dissertation "Who is behind the camera: the cinema of Giorgio Mangiamele" remains available on the MINERVA repository of the University of Melbourne. It is also listed on the Giorgio Mangiamele page of the National Film & Sound Archive of Australia, who restored four of the films in 2011. The Sguardi australiani archive in Prato conserves the films Italian version of Clay, Beyond Reason The Spag and 99% with Italian subtitles and related material produced by Lacunae for Sguardi australiani, Italy, between 2002 and 2006.
Silvana Tuccio September 2022
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| Giorgio Mangiamele Courtesy Sguardi australiani Archive |
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| Carlton Courtesy Sguardi australiani Archive |
Montsalvat
Courtesy Sguardi australiani Archive
The thesis is without question an original and thought provoking research project. Ms Tuccio makes a compelling case for Giorgio Mangiamele’s work to be reevaluated as one of the pioneers of Australian film. It is to be hoped that this study will be published so that further analysis of this overlooked artist (and others like him) occurs.
Ms Tuccio ... locates Giorgio Magiamele in his originating cultural milieu in Catania, Sicily and links his formative development with the formation of Italian neorealism. She inserts carefully chosen examples to reveal how Mangiamele’s work demonstrates neorealist influences but how it also developed its own unique aesthetic attributes. As she puts it at the end of the thesis (p. 199), it makes little sense to designate Giorgio Mangiamele’s work as simply neorealist since the films were produced within Australia and not Italy. The thesis includes historical archival work supplemented by interviews with surviving family and with associates and friends. The fact that Mangiamele set up a film school in the 1960s that nurtured the talents of Tim Burstall, Phillip Adams and a number of subsequently well-known actors, clearly needs to be more widely acknowledged.
Ms Tuccio looks at other films contemporary with Giorgio Mangiamele’s work in Australia including films made by other ‘foreigners’ (such as Michael Powell and Tim Burstall) that had a different fate and gained an acceptance not forthcoming for Giorgio Mangiamele’s work.
To situate Gioirgio Mangiamele’s unique aesthetics Ms Tuccio cites highly pertinent Australian and international cultural theorists. Drawing on the work of film critic Hamid Naficy on ‘accented cinema’ she reveals how Mangiamele’s diasporic ethos meant that his unique vision was at odds with the setting up of Australian cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. The salient characteristics of the Australian mythos (in all aspects of its cultural life) left no room for the perspectives of non Anglo-Celts such as Mangiamele. Ms Tuccio’s choice of cultural theorists includes Derrida, Agamben, John Berger, Iain Chambers, Trinh Minh-ha, Seyla Benhabib and others but it also includes refreshing alternatives such as the work of Abdelmalak Sayad on the diasporic experience. While most of the examples are appropriate and illuminate the material in unexpected ways, there are a few occasions when the choices are not completely felicitous. An example is to use Toni Morrison’s sensitive analysis of whiteness in relation to slavery and the African American experience in the USA are somewhat distinct. While Ms Tuccio is correct to cite ‘racism’ as an appropriate term for Mangiamele’s experience, it does not map onto other specific histories of racism quite so seamlessly. … Ms Tuccio rightly cites the work of Ghassan Hage for the Australian context of ‘whiteness studies’. There is undoubtedly a case to be made for the fact that southern Europeans, amongst others, experienced racism in Australia in the immediate postwar period.
… Having said this, Ms Tuccio’s work deserves praise for the fact that she unearths unexpected examples from the work of the ‘usual suspects’ such as Derrida and Zizek, finding an autobiographical essay for the former and an essay exploring alterity for the latter.
The strengths of the thesis also lies in the sensitive analyses of the individual films and photography of Giorgio Mangiamele’s oeuvre. There is no doubt that a compelling case is made for a reappraisal of this body of work. The analyses of the shorter films makes the argument for seeing these as political statements about the kinds of discrimination that both migrant workers (Il contratto) and new immigrants (The Spag and The Brothers as well as 99%) faced in postwar Australia. The feature film ‘Clay,’ set in the eccentric artists’ colony of Montsalvat, is also a remarkable example of the development of a unique lyrical aesthetic whose elements produced a very different approach to the Australian landscape–manufacturing a visual grammar completely at odds to those prevailing at the time. The filaments linking this perspective to continental European traditions are unmistakable. The fact that this was the first film to be chosen for showing at Cannes and that it received no national recognition or support does demonstrate the double standards operating at the time amongst national art funding institutions. The example underpins the poignant account of Mangiamele’s attempt, at the end of his life, to submit an appeal to the Commissioner for Human Rights and Equal Opportunities (pp. 91-2) that he had been the victim of sustained racism. The appeal was denied.
It would be hugely useful if this study sparked further research on Giorgio Mangiamele’s work and that the ‘lost films’ (apart from surviving copies) of the PNG years were to be recovered. Finally, it is devoutly to be hoped that the achievements of Giorgio Mangiamele might generate more sustained attention to the achievements of other non Anglo-Celtic Australian artists–belatedly and not before time.
TWO
It has been a pleasure to read and consider Silvana Tuccio’s Who is Behind the Camera? The Cinema of Giorgio Mangiamele. …I must congratulate the author for championing the work of a significant filmmaker who has received too little attention from both the film and industry establishments. I had never seen any of Mangiamele’s films or, indeed, heard his name until I read this thesis. Nor is his name, as Tuccio argues, present in any of the standard books on Australian cinema, even though Mangiamele made the first Australian film invited for inclusion in the Cannes film festival. So despite my reservations, I extend my gratitude to the author for bringing attention to a significant filmmaker.