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182.
A rare poster announcing the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op’s First Australian Film Festival, held at the Union Theatre, Sydney University, August 23rd-29th (1971).
Psychedelic design printed offset in black on white stock. 54x44cm. Folded in four for mailing. Addressed on verso to Susan Janssen and postmarked Sydney, July 27th, 1971.
There’s no sender’s address, but the poster’s recipient remembers that “most likely it was sent by Albie Thoms”, an old friend of Martin Sharp’s from Sydney who also worked for Oz magazine and had recently helped programme films for Suck’s Wet Dream Film Festival. He co-founded Ubu Films at Sydney University in 1965, out of which emerged the Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative, a group of independent and experimental filmmakers that coalesced around Thoms, Aggy Read, David Perry, Phillip Adams and Phillip Noyce.
Their first Australian Film Festival, not to be confused with the better-known and much larger Sydney Film Festival, was free, as stated on the poster, which also invited its audience to “Come with Your Films [and] Videotapes”. Beyond mentions of “Expanded Cinema” and “Mixed Media”, no details of films or filmmakers are given. Sharp’s poster, full of psychedelic animation and intricate detail, is seemingly undocumented and receives no mentions in any of the published or online surveys of his work.
Old staple holes from mailing and age-toning to fold lines, o/w an excellent copy of an exceedingly rare poster, previously unknown to this cataloguer.
