Ubu Films: Sydney’s Underground Radical Culture 1965–72

Abstract

Sydney is most well known internationally for its spectacular harbour, opera house and stunning Northern Beaches. But the history of the city includes an avant-garde underbelly. In 1965 Sydney was a fertile breeding ground for counter-cultural, underground cinema. and one of Australia’s first avant-garde independent film-making, distribution and exhibition groups, ‘Ubu’, was established. The name, from Alfred Jarry’s 1896 subversive play, Ubu Roi, signposted their revolutionary aims. Ubu’s members experimented with film form and pushed the boundaries of cultural conventions. They screened their own work and that of international and local avant-garde film-makers like Bruce Connor, Norman McLaren, Paul Winkler and Dusan Marek. They lobbied against censorship and built a creative community. Numerous members later became important to the revival of the Australian feature film industry in the 1970s, including Bruce Beresford, Yoram Gross, Phillip Noyce and Peter Weir.