Philippe Mora

Philippe Mora (born 1949) is a French-born Australian film director. Born in Paris in 1949, he grew up at the centre of the Australia arts scene of the 1950s and began making films while still a child. He is the eldest son of artist Mirka Mora and her late husband, restaurateur and gallery owner Georges Mora. He has two younger brothers: William Mora (b. 1953), an art dealer, and Tiriel Mora (b. 1958), an Australian actor.

From an early age, the Moras' family life placed Philippe at a focal point of the Australian arts scene. His mother Mirka Mora is a painter, and his father Georges Mora (a French Resistance fighter during WWII) was a leading art entrepreneur and restaurateur. After a brief stint in New York City, the family emigrated to Australia in 1951, settling in Melbourne, where the Moras founded the Melbourne eateries Mirka Café and Café Balzac. In 1965 they opened the Tolarno Restaurant and Galleries in St Kilda.

Mora's first home movie Back Alley, now preserved in The National Film and Sound Archive, was made in 1964 when he was 15. This was a parody of West Side Story filmed in Flinder's Lane, just behind his mother’s studio at 9 Collins Street. The film features Mora, his brother William and friends, Peter Beilby and Sweeney Reed. His next film, Dreams in a Grey Afternoon (1965) was made as a silent movie but was screened with music by artist Asher Bilu. Shot on 8 mm and blown up to 16 mm, the film features stop-motion animation of sculptures by the Russian-Australian sculptor and painter Danila Vassilieff, and includes rare footage of John and Sunday Reed.

His next project, Man in a Film (1966), was a pastiche of Federico Fellini's 8½ and was also influenced by his recent viewing of The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. Like its predecessor, it was made as a silent film, shot on 8 mm and blown up to 16 mm, and again screened with music by Asher Bilu. Man in a Film starred Sweeney Reed and premiered at the Tolarno Galleries in early 1967.

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