David Perry (Australian filmmaker)
| David Perry | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1933 Sydney, Australia |
| Died | 15 April 2015 (aged 81–82) Sydney, Australia |
| Known for | Experimental film, video art, animation, underground film |
David Perry (born 1933 in Sydney, died 2015) was a pioneering Australian experimental and underground filmmaker, video artist, and a founding member of Ubu Films (1965). He also practised as a photographer, poster artist and painter.
During work on the production of The Theatre of Cruelty in Sydney, July 1965, he joined Albie Thoms, Aggy Read and others in establishing Ubu Films—named after Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi—the precursor of the Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative. This was Australia's first consciously avant-garde filmmaking group.
16mm experimental films include Walking (1955),The Tribulations of Mr Dupont Nomore (1967); Bolero (1967); A Sketch of Abigayl's Belly (1968); David Perry's Album (1970) and Adam (1975). Ubu Films 1965–70 a retrospective video compilation, was released in 1997. Refracting Glasses (1992) is a 109-minute feature film which "uses a range of techniques (actuality and staged footage, optical effects, animation) in an essay-like construction on the theme of the historical status of the artist invoking, amongst a diverse range of references, the Ern Malley hoax and the work of the Russian artist V. E. Tatlin.
Perry underwent his primary and secondary education in Sydney during the 1940s. In 1949–54 he served a printing-trade apprenticeship, after which he worked for various printers and on farms in New Zealand.
In Sydney during the 1960s, he associated with the Sydney Push and developed as a painter, photographer and 8mm filmmaker. Prior to separation, he was married, with three children. He was employed by the Australian Broadcasting Commission in photographic positions and engaging privately in experimental film and video, and other artworks. It was during this time that he made the abstract videographic film Mad Mesh, and the controversial political poster, Whoever you vote for, a politician always gets in! His film, A Sketch on Abigayl's Belly which showed shots of a pregnant woman caused controversy when it was banned by the Commonwealth Film Censor in 1968 when the print returned from the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. In 1970 Don Chipp, the Minister for Customs and Excise, in a conscious public gesture, overturned the banning of the film.
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