Brian McKenzie

On the Waves of the Adriatic

Brian McKenzie

Graham Branch, Steve Kotis

Melbourne filmmaker Brian McKenzie spent 5 years working on this engrossing study of a not-so-typical Brunswick household. It's a laconic, observational documentary similar to the director's I'll Be Home For Christmas (MFF '85), in which McKenzie plays a central part, camera in tow, as he documents the lifestyle of Graham (a youth in his 20s), his family and friends. After having spent so long with the family, McKenzie becomes part of the furniture - a situation which enables him to dig deep into the subject's lives.

Stan and George's New Life

Brian McKenzie

Paul Chubb, Julie Forsyth

Stan is a mild-mannered, gentle, middle-aged man who still lives with his overbearing parents. One day, acting on a suggestion by his father, he lands a job at the Weather Bureau. The work is challenging to him, and a little daunting, and his adjustment is considerably eased for him by his female co-worker "George," as she is called. The two become close, eventually marrying and moving in together. While they are adapting to the married state, conditions at work are deteriorating in a bizarre and irrational way, which puts a considerable strain on both the newlyweds.

With Love to the Person Next to Me

Brian McKenzie

Kim Gyngell, Paul Chubb

Wallace is a Melbourne taxi driver who lives in a block of run-down small apartments in St Kilda on the bay. When not driving his cab, he makes apple cider and broods about his past.

Raccolta d'inverno

Brian McKenzie

The documentary records the traditional Italian community event of slaughtering a pig, butchering it for the meat, making sausages and having a feast with dancing enjoyed by the whole group.

I'll Be Home for Christmas

Brian McKenzie

John Collins, Frank Pardy

I'll be Home for Christmas cuts through social taboos to explore the subculture of people commonly dismissed as ‘derelicts'. In its portrayal of five homeless men, the film challenges conventional views of alcoholism and homelessness by depicting these men as members of a social network with a highly developed sense of mutual concern and camaraderie.

People Who Still Use Milk Bottles

Brian McKenzie

This film uses archival footage and interspersed interviews to look at the dairy industry and its products, but only as a backdrop, as a social indicator in a society thirsty for modernity, unquestioning of the change that first gives and then takes away-milk bottles, railway stations, windows that open and even football clubs. How quickly do things change? How much do we care?

The Plains of Heaven

Ian Pringle

Richard Moir, Reg Evans

Two technicians manning a tracking station on the Victorian High Plains pursue opposite ways of coping with isolation. The ageing Cunningham seems to be rejuvenated by and obsessed with the landscape, while the younger Barker withdraws into the interior and technical world of the station.

Kelvin and His Friends

Brian McKenzie

Kelvin Maher

A closely observed portrait of a single man in his 40's who lives in St. Kilda. Although he has none of the trappings of conventional existence, Kelvin's obsessive interest in born again Christianity, physical culture and recent German/Jewish history has given him a way of making sense of the world and led him to a number of people, friends through whom we see something of his life and beliefs.

The Last Day's Work

Brian McKenzie

Work is becoming more service oriented and more and more services rely upon us doing harm to each other. In most people's lives, work operates as a degrading and debilitating force. It disables people's critical and perception capacities. Unless workers assume responsibility for evaluating the meaning and implications of the work they do, there will never be the capacity to redirect the modern work institutions from their courses of violence and exploitation. Built in seven parts which correspond to each day of the week, this film studies the relationship between work being done and the nature of the people that are doing it.