Post by gunshotwound on Apr 7, 2017 3:40:52 GMT
Giorgio Mangiamele (13 August 1926 – 13 May 2001) was an Italian/Australian photographer and filmmaker who made a unique contribution to the production of Australian art cinema in the 1950s and 1960s.
Clay his first feature film tells the story of Nick, a murderer on the run who is found as a mud-stained figure lying on a road. He is picked up and given refuge in an isolated home, an artists colony, by a sculptress Margot...
The film was an Independent 1965 Australian drama which Mangiamele financed himself.
Clay is the only notable local film, art film from 1960s Australia, it was nominated for the Golden Palm award at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival, but lost to The Knack ...and How to Get It,
not surprising the reaction in 1966 Australia was either indifference or outright hostility.
Critics were kinder and wrote of Clay...
Variety noted, "Visually it's frequently a poem brought to life with some breathtakingly poignant and arty shots".
La Cinématographie Française , "Mangiamele has painted in his visual poem the story of an impossible love."
The Australian wrote, "Clay is a film of singular visual beauty . there is a poetry in the treatment, tact and sensitiveness in the direction"
The Age 11.12.64
"... First and foremost the film confirms that Mangiamele is a cameraman of unmistakable world class ..."
The Advocate standouts saying... "Mangiamele is one of the world's master craftsmen in the art of film, a man who really knows how to use a camera to tell a story and whose photography is a joy".
Mangiamele's originality, his bold intention, was to replicate European art-house cinema in Australia, with his photogenic skills, the black and white cinematography displays in almost every frame a striking and impeccable photographic still.
Struggling against racial intolerance and the cultural and filmic desert landscape that existed mid sixties Australia, Mangiamele never earned the respect due. The financial strain and disinterest disillusioned him, he did not make another film until the 1970s when he made his second and last feature, a film which does not come close to his one and only classic film feature, CLAY
only 19 votes at IMDB!
, available in a Mangiamele box set collection
I have never heard of Mangiamele or his movie CLAY. I don't know that much about Australian cinema except from the 1970s onward.
Years ago when I was researching a book I discovered that Australian cinema began in the silent era. At the time I had no idea Australian cinema was that old.
In the course of my research I found out about the existence of 3 Australian cinematographers who if memory serves me correctly were brothers and their careers began in 1908, 1911 and 1912.
Arthur Higgins (active 1911-1946) - www.imdb.com/name/nm0383329/reference
Ernest Higgins (active 1908-1922) - www.imdb.com/name/nm0383382/reference
Tasman Higgins (active 1912-1944) - www.imdb.com/name/nm0383495/reference
He photographed Errol Flynn's first movie In the Wake of the Bounty (1933)
This all has very little to do with the subject of this thread but it did trigger my memory of the Higgins trio and I thought it might be interesting to some.