Product Overview
Please note: This study guide contains two versions – a full-colour guide and a text-only version for printing and referencing.
Memory Film is a poetic documentary by Jeni Thornley based on her Super 8 archive (1974–2003), filmed during the decades of her personal and political filmmaking producing Maidens (1978), To the Other Shore (1996), Island Home Country (2008) and the collaborative feature For Love or Money (1983).
Documenting the activism of three decades, amidst the intense sexual politics of radical feminism and social change, 'Memory Film' is a road movie of an inner journey of liberation – gender fluidity, utopian feminism, love and its tribulations, the pleasure and pain of motherhood, violence against women and the desire for a world free of war and colonising – accompanied by a sweeping score by Egyptian-Australian oud maestro Joseph Tawadros.
Curriculum Links:
Memory Film is relevant to senior students in the learning areas of:
- English
- The Arts (Media Arts)
- History
At tertiary level:
- English
- Gender Studies
- Cultural Studies
- Screen, Media and Filmmaking
- Modern History
This film is best suited for tertiary students. Selected excerpts may also be appropriate for senior secondary students, particularly those exploring documentary forms, Australian history and feminism. Teachers are encouraged to preview the film to determine its suitability for their specific cohort.
Key themes explored:
- Memory and impermanence
- Feminism and gender politics
- Poetic and experimental documentary form
- Pathways of liberation: transformation and inner journey
- Art and activism
- First Nations sovereignty and colonisation
