FILM SYNOPSIS
For more than fifty years, Relvy Teasdale and his son John made beautiful films on their farm and within their small community in the Wimmera, in western Victoria. Their luminous archive connects past and present generations, revealing the rhythms and rituals of life on the land and drawing surprising parallels between settler and indigenous modes of mapping and looking after country. Combining sequences from the archive with contemporary footage and voices, THE FARMER’S CINEMATHEQUE is a lyrical film about the power of memory, the nature of our attachment to country and the ways in which communties strive to balance change and tradition.
FILMMAKER'S STATEMENT
Relvy and John Teasdale were Wimmera farmers born and bred, but they were also gifted cinematographers. For the Teasdales, farming and film-making were an inter-related devotional practice.
Upon his death ten years ago, John Teasdale left a cupboard full of films that reveal and evoke a rich and nourishing terrain. Spanning five decades from the late 1930s to the late 1980s, the Teasdale films offer views into the psychological, social and economic complexities of a wondrous and sophisticated rural world that on the one hand seems to be disappearing but on the other continues to sustain, adapt and recreate itself. THE FARMERS’ CINEMATHEQUE exhumes the Teasdale films from the archive and explores their resonance in the context of a world rapidly changing but connected still to a profound legacy of ideas, desires and rituals.
Having had the good fortune to stumble upon the Teasdale film archive over ten years ago, we’ve been privileged to have ongoing access to related storytellers and locations as well as to the archive itself. THE FARMER’S CINEMATHEQUE is informed by our deep immersion in the archive and by what we’ve learned about the country and culture depicted within John and Relvy’s films. In responding to the Teasdale archive we’ve also taken inspiration from the work of great Australian historian Greg Dening and his contention that: “Historical understanding is an overlaying of images one on the other ... it is cumulative and kaleidoscopic.”
We discover in the Teasdale films a vision that is at once parochial and cosmopolitan: obsessively and lovingly focussed inwards but, paradoxically, also keeping an eye on the wider, ever-changing world. THE FARMER’S CINEMATHEQUE is also a demonstration, quite literally, of the power of film itself: yesterday’s light come back into the present, helping us see in to the future.
Upon his death ten years ago, John Teasdale left a cupboard full of films that reveal and evoke a rich and nourishing terrain. Spanning five decades from the late 1930s to the late 1980s, the Teasdale films offer views into the psychological, social and economic complexities of a wondrous and sophisticated rural world that on the one hand seems to be disappearing but on the other continues to sustain, adapt and recreate itself. THE FARMERS’ CINEMATHEQUE exhumes the Teasdale films from the archive and explores their resonance in the context of a world rapidly changing but connected still to a profound legacy of ideas, desires and rituals.
Having had the good fortune to stumble upon the Teasdale film archive over ten years ago, we’ve been privileged to have ongoing access to related storytellers and locations as well as to the archive itself. THE FARMER’S CINEMATHEQUE is informed by our deep immersion in the archive and by what we’ve learned about the country and culture depicted within John and Relvy’s films. In responding to the Teasdale archive we’ve also taken inspiration from the work of great Australian historian Greg Dening and his contention that: “Historical understanding is an overlaying of images one on the other ... it is cumulative and kaleidoscopic.”
We discover in the Teasdale films a vision that is at once parochial and cosmopolitan: obsessively and lovingly focussed inwards but, paradoxically, also keeping an eye on the wider, ever-changing world. THE FARMER’S CINEMATHEQUE is also a demonstration, quite literally, of the power of film itself: yesterday’s light come back into the present, helping us see in to the future.