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      Rediscovering Australia’s Generation of Defiant Female Directors

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      Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion, Essie Coffey and others had waited years to tell their stories, as a Museum of the Moving Image series shows.In the opening moments of Gillian Armstrong’s debut feature, “My Brilliant Career” (1979), a freckled, tawny-haired young woman stands in the doorway of her house in the Australian outback and declares: “Dear countrymen, a few lines to let you know that this story is going to be all about me.” The woman is Sybylla, played by a fiery, young Judy Davis, and she dreams of a long, fruitful career as a writer — love, marriage, motherhood and all of society’s other expectations be damned.Sybylla’s words might as well have been the rallying cry for a whole generation of Australia’s female filmmakers, who had waited for years to tell their own stories. Their defiant and eclectic body of work is the subject of Pioneering Women in Australian Cinema, a fascinating series that opened last week at the Museum of the Moving Image, in Queens, N.Y.“My Brilliant Career,” which shot Armstrong into global prominence, was the first feature to be directed by an Australian woman in more than 40 years. In 1933, “Two Minutes Silence,” the fourth and final feature by the three McDonagh sisters — Isabel, Phyllis and Paulette — had closed out a brief but booming era of early Australian cinema in which women had been active as producers and directors. (The MoMI series includes the 1929 film “The Cheaters,” the only feature by the McDonagh sisters for which a print still exists.)The intervening decades had drastically shrunk not just opportunities for women interested in film, but the scope of Australian cinema itself. Stiff competition from Hollywood and the ravages of World War II had more or less shuttered the country’s film industry by the 1960s. Government initiatives to subsidize production and establish a national film school eventually spurred a rebirth in the 1970s. The Australian new wave, as this resurgence came to be called, thrust antipodean cinema onto the world stage with stylized, maverick films like Bruce Beresford’s “The Adventures of Barry McKenzie,” Fred Schepisi’s “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith,” and George Miller’s “Mad Max.”Tracey Moffatt in “BeDevil,” a horror anthology she also directed.Women Make MoviesThe new wave was a male-dominated movement, with many of the films flaunting a grisly, macho vision of Australian culture; Armstrong often stood out as the sole female exception. But “My Brilliant Career” also represented the beginning of another kind of renaissance in Australian cinema — one led by women. Between the late 1970s and the 1990s, a number of women directed landmark films across genres, introducing rousing new feminist narratives to the Australian screen.“My Brilliant Career” is one of many firsts in the aptly named MoMI series, which was curated by the programmer and critic Michelle Carey. These include Essie Coffey’s “My Survival as an Aboriginal” (1978), often hailed as the first documentary to be directed by an Aboriginal Australian woman; the dystopian lesbian heist film “On Guard” (1984), written and directed by Susan Lambert and believed by some to be the first Australian film made with an all-women crew; and Tracey Moffatt’s rollicking three-part horror anthology, “BeDevil” (1993), regarded as the first feature to be directed by an Aboriginal Australian woman. Then there’s “Sweetie” (1989), the oddball black comedy that was the debut feature of Jane Campion, who would go on to make “The Piano” (1993), the first film by a woman to win a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.This flurry of breakthroughs resulted from two intersecting developments: the creation of state film institutions like the Australian Film Television and Radio School and the Australian Film Commission in the 1970s; and campaigns by women’s and Aboriginal groups to demand policies that would ensure fair access to these public resources. Armstrong was part of the inaugural class of 12 at the school, whose graduates also include Campion and her “Sweetie” cinematographer Sally Bongers, as well as Jocelyn Moorhouse, who produced the 1994 crossover hit “Muriel’s Wedding.” “Proof,” Moorhouse’s disarmingly mordant feature debut as a director, is part of Pioneering Women in Australian Cinema.While state support helped nurture a fledgling mainstream industry, it proved crucial in the development of a feminist documentary and experimental film tradition in Australia, which benefited greatly from the commission’s Women’s Film Fund. “On Guard” is a striking example. Lambert’s hourlong movie follows a group of lesbians who scheme to destroy the data held by a multinational company, U.T.E.R.O., which they suspect is performing illegal reproductive experiments on women. A kind of Aussie sister-film to Lizzie Borden’s 1983 cult classic, “Born in Flames,” “On Guard” subverts patriarchal control in both form and narrative. Told in short, sleek fragments, the film strips the heist thriller of all its usual machinations and violence, instead dwelling on the everyday struggles of its heroines — be it with child care, domestic division of labor or living an openly gay life.Essie Coffey’s “My Survival as an Aboriginal” serves as both a manifesto and an heirloom for her descendants.Ballad FilmsMoffatt’s movies similarly reimagine cultural and film tropes, but through the lenses of gender and race. The short film “Nice Coloured Girls” uses clever juxtapositions of image, voice and text to turn a wily story about three Aboriginal women who seduce and scam white men into a historical meditation on the power plays between early settlers and the women’s ancestors. This theme of colonial haunting is expanded with raucous invention in Moffatt’s “BeDevil,” which draws on Aboriginal folklore to tell a series of modern-day gothic tales. Tracing lines between past and present evils — colonialism, gentrification, cultural appropriation — with an irreverent and experimental approach to editing and sound, “BeDevil” refashions Australian history as a deeply unsettling ghost story. Like many films in the MoMI series, “BeDevil” feels startlingly ahead of its time.As does Coffey’s “My Survival as an Aboriginal,” despite its simple and straightforward documentary structure. Made one year before “My Brilliant Career” — and no less seminal than that film in inspiring an entire tradition of filmmakers — “My Survival” is both a personal manifesto by Coffey and an heirloom for her descendants. Coffey speaks bluntly, straight into the camera, of the violence suffered by her people, the Muruwari, at the hands of white settlers. Then she sets out with the camera, brusque and determined, to ensure that her heritage is preserved and passed down to future generations. She teaches the local children the traditional skills of her people — hunting, gathering, surviving in the bush — and laments that their education has left them without this essential cultural knowledge. At the end, Coffey declares, “I’m going to lead my own life, me and my family, and live off the land. I will not live a white-man way and that’s straight from me, Essie Coffey.”Between Sybylla’s fictional “this story is going to be all about me” in “My Brilliant Career” and Coffey’s raw and real “I’m going to lead my own life,” a whole history of Australian women’s cinema was born.“Pioneering Women in Australian Cinema” runs through Aug. 14 at the Museum of the Moving Image. Go to movingimage.us for more information. More

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      The Deeper Meaning of Elvis in Australia

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      I went to the Parkes Elvis Festival thinking I’d learn something about what America used to be. I left thinking more about Australia.The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email.The first time I learned to love Elvis Presley, I was in my early 20s, and visiting Graceland during a cross-country trip with a few friends. I remember watching videos of his concerts in a dark theater there and being amazed at his energy and talent. Next, there was Baghdad Elvis.When I covered the war in Iraq in 2007, a photographer we worked with happened to have mastered a near-perfect rendition of “Suspicious Minds.” At one point, in our heavily fortified compound on the Tigris River, he showed up wearing a bespoke white jumpsuit, circa 1973, leading us all in a night of raucous karaoke — loud enough to drown out the sound of bullets in the distance.And then there was Parkes, the small town in rural New South Wales, which hosts the largest annual Elvis festival in the Southern Hemisphere (and possibly the world). I’d been hearing about it ever since I came to Australia but this year, I decided to go, and to bring my 11-year-old daughter with me.I was looking for more than just spectacle, though there was plenty of that. I was looking for heart. Why do 25,000 people come out to celebrate a dead American rocker in the middle of a continent where Elvis never played a concert?I thought maybe there was something to say about the America he seemed to represent, a country that had been more optimistic, carefree, effusive, and excessive than the more earnest and angry United States we’ve seen over the past few years. Perhaps Elvis nostalgia was also America nostalgia?But what I found — as you can see in my article, with amazing photos from Abigail Varney —was simpler and more local, if no less profound. America was really not the point. Small town Australia and participatory “have a go” Australia was what animated the event.According to Elvis tribute artists — and Elvis’s former tour manager, who made the trek from back home in the U.S. — Australians of all social classes, political persuasions and ages were more likely to dress up, sing, march in the parade, or play rugby, all while dressed up as Elvis, all while encouraging each other to get involved and have some fun.The Australian festival was unique because the lines between serious and silly were blurred. While Americans listened and admired Elvis, Australians made him their own.I’ve written a lot about that Australian penchant for pulling people into an activity — it’s a big part of the idea-driven memoir I published here, called “Into the Rip,” which will be out in the U.S. in the next few months with a different title. But in Parkes there was an extra layer of verve that only the combination of Elvis and small town Australia could possibly provide. My daughter loved it. So did I.Now here are our stories of the week.Australia and New ZealandA dutiful blue catfish dad, mouthbrooding eggs that he probably fertilized.Janine AbeciaMeet Mouth Almighty, a Different Kind of Fish Dad. A study of Australian fish that care for offspring through mouthbrooding shows that things underwater are not always as monogamous as they seem.Australian Gets 12 Years for Anti-Gay Killing of an American in 1988. Scott Johnson, a U.S. graduate student, was pushed off a cliff, in a case that was first ruled a suicide but that his brother refused to let go of.Helicopter Catches Booster Rocket Falling From Space. After sending a payload of 34 small satellites into orbit, the space company Rocket Lab used a helicopter to catch the 39-foot-long used-up booster stage of the rocket before it splashed into the Pacific Ocean.How the King of Rock ’n’ Roll Still Makes Australia Sing. Elvis never played a concert “down under,” but that hasn’t stopped tens of thousands of Australians from making him their own at an annual festival.Around the TimesInside the Apocalyptic Worldview of ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’. A New York Times analysis of 1,150 episodes reveals how Tucker Carlson pushes extremist ideas and conspiracy theories into millions of households, five nights a week.As Victory Day Looms in Russia, Guesswork Grows Over Putin’s Ukraine Goals. The Russian holiday celebrating the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany is viewed by Ukraine and NATO as a stage for the Russian president to proclaim a turn in the war.Abortion Pills Stand to Become the Next Battleground in a Post-Roe America. Medication abortion allows patients to terminate early pregnancies at home. Some states are moving to limit it, while others are working to expand access.Much Gilt, Little Guilt. The Met Gala 2022 celebrated themes of opulence, excess and fame.Enjoying the Australia Letter? Sign up here or forward to a friend.For more Australia coverage and discussion, start your day with your local Morning Briefing and join us in our Facebook group. More

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      How the King of Rock ’n’ Roll Still Makes Australia Sing

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      PARKES, Australia — The Elvis Presley from Japan bowed with quiet respect. Then he tore into a rendition of “Burning Love” that sounded straight out of Memphis, and that definitely stretched the crotch of his blue jumpsuit to the limit.Backstage, a few more “Elvi” — the plural of Elvis, at least at the largest Elvis festival in the Southern Hemisphere — were going over final song choices, sweating their options for a crowd that blurred the line between fans and impersonators. Thousands of Elvi were out there in the middle of Australia, aged 5 to 85, with more pompadours and leisure suits than anyone could count.“God, it’s so many people,” said Charles Stone, Elvis’s tour manager from 1971 until his death in 1977, surveying the scene with a gold chain peeking outside his T-shirt. “Look at this.”Parkes, a small town five hours’ drive from Sydney, now shines once a year with Elvis sequins and rhinestones. Around 25,000 people usually join the festival, which started out with a couple of restaurant owners trying to bring a little less conversation and a little more action into Parkes.That was back in 1993. Nearly 30 years later, the festival has become a national treasure that exemplifies how Australians tend to do a lot of things: all together, with self-deprecating humor and copious amounts of alcohol.An Elvis tribute contest during the festival.A street in Parkes blocked off during the Elvis festival to accommodate an array of vintage cars.A couple swing dancing in their matching Elvis-themed outfit at the Parkes Leagues Club restaurant.This year’s event — after Covid forced a cancellation in 2021 — felt somehow more Elvis-like than ever. A certain heaviness mixed with the thrill of rock ’n’ roll. From tiny pubs with first-time singers to golf courses and rugby pitches where games were played in matching Elvis gear — and, of course, to the main stages, where the world’s top tribute artists could be found — there was a craving for post-lockdown, post-pandemic release.What is life even for, many of them yelled over the music, if not for a dress-up-and-let-go, yank-each-other-up-on-stage-and-SING sense of abandon?“It lets us forget everything,” said Gina Vicar, 61, a small-business owner from Melbourne who had come to the festival with a dozen friends. “With all that we’ve gone through, and what the world is going through now, it’s great to see all this joy.”When we met, she had just shouted encouragement to an Elvis (real name, Deon Symo) who had announced that he was only 21 and from Adelaide, a city often joked about and rarely celebrated.He was wearing a white jumpsuit as he stood in front of a red curtain held up with rubber bands in a pub with sticky floors — and the crowd treated him like a Las Vegas superstar. Two women a decade or two his senior danced in front, mouthing the words to every song.A couple from Queensland, Australia, wearing “Blue Hawaii” themed t-shirts.Toki Toyokazu, a crowd favorite from Sendai, Japan, performing on the festival’s main stage.The annual match between the Elvis-inspired “Blue Suede Shoes” and the “Ready Teddys.”“He’s got a great voice,” Ms. Vicar said. “He just needs the confidence.”All over Parkes, from Wednesday to Sunday, Elvi won over the Elvis faithful.Toki Toyokazu, the singer from Sendai, Japan, was a crowd favorite; he won the festival’s formal competition in 2020, and his return seemed to signal a post-Covid milestone.Another performer, “Bollywood Elvis,” wearing a gold jumpsuit featuring faux gems the size of Waffle House biscuits, also seemed to pop up whenever energy flagged. His real name was Alfred Vaz. He moved to Australia from Bombay in 1981, when he was a manager for Air India, and he said he had been coming to Parkes since the festival began. This year, he brought his nephew, Callum Vincent, 24, a music teacher from Perth, who smiled as he took it all in.“There’s only one Elvis,” Mr. Vaz, 65, said on Saturday morning as the festival’s parade began. “There are a lot of pretenders and a lot of contenders, but there’s only one Elvis.””There are a lot of pretenders and a lot of contenders, but there’s only one Elvis.”Except in Parkes, a former mining town in a country where Elvis never actually played a concert.A few minutes earlier, the mayor and the area’s local member of Parliament had driven by, sitting on the back of a convertible wearing ’70s jumpsuits along with wigs and sunglasses. Ms. Vicar and her friends walked in the parade alongside, well, the full range of Elvi. More

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      Chris Bailey, Who Gave Australia Punk Rock, Dies at 65

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      He and the Saints introduced the country (and later the world) to their own raw sound just as the Sex Pistols were emerging in London and the Ramones in New York.Chris Bailey, an Australian singer who with his band, the Saints, introduced their country to the raw, fast-tempo sounds of punk rock in the mid-1970s, just as the Sex Pistols were spiking their hair in London and the Ramones were donning their leather jackets in New York City, died on April 9 in Haarlem, the Netherlands. He was 65.His wife, Elisabet Corlin, confirmed the death, of natural causes, but did not provide details.Mr. Bailey and the Saints did not borrow from the sounds emanating out of Britain and the United States. Rather, in a case of parallel evolution, they emerged simultaneously, shaped in their native Brisbane by some of the same forces at work in the Northern Hemisphere: high unemployment, stifling social conservatism and grungy political radicalism.They released their first hit, “(I’m) Stranded,” in September 1976, two months before the Sex Pistols debuted with “Anarchy in the U.K.” and one month before the Damned released “New Rose,” widely considered Britain’s first punk single.“(I’m) Stranded,” which the Saints produced themselves, is as pure a punk anthem as one can find, with buzz saw guitar and driving rhythms punctuating Mr. Bailey’s fast-paced snarl of a voice, singing about youthful ennui and failed romance.That single shot the Saints to national and then global attention among the underground cognoscenti, even though it caused only the shallowest ripple in the charts. Until then, no label was interested in the stringy-haired foursome from Queensland; suddenly, everyone was.The Saints — with Mr. Bailey on vocals, Ed Kuepper on guitar, Ivor Hay on drums and Kym Bradshaw on bass — signed with EMI and moved to London in 1977, just as punk was hitting its stride.They were a part of the scene there and separate from it, both sonically — they incorporated horns, for one thing — and ideologically: To them, punk, ostensibly a cri de coeur against consumer society, was already a commodified part of it. Mr. Bailey called it a “marketing gimmick.”Unlike the typical pointy-haired British punks, the Saints kept their look low-key, more like a 1990s American grunge band (and, not coincidentally, many a latter-day Seattle band noted the Saints as an inspiration).Nevertheless, they thrived. Their single “This Perfect Day” reached No. 34 on the U.K. charts, and their first two albums, “(I’m) Stranded” (1977) and “Eternally Yours” (1978), are considered punk classics. The second album included “Know Your Product,” an anti-consumer, anti-punk song that sent fans raving.But like punk itself, the Saints had a short shelf life, though by their third album, the R&B-spiked “Prehistoric Sounds,” they were starting to transcend the genre. Released in late 1978, it fizzled, EMI dropped them and a few months later Mr. Kuepper and Mr. Hay left the band.The Saints’ legacy cannot be measured by record sales; they influenced generations of Australian rockers, as well as bands emerging from the early 1980s metal scene along the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, like Guns N’ Roses.Nick Cave, another Australian musician who came up in the punkish underground of the 1970s, said in a memorial statement on the website Red Hand Files, “I can only simply repeat, for the record, that, in my opinion, the Saints were Australia’s greatest band, and that Chris Bailey was my favorite singer.”Christopher James Mannix Bailey was born on Nov. 29, 1956, in Nanyuki, Kenya, where his father, Robert Bailey, was stationed with the British Army. His mother, Bridget (O’Hare) Bailey, was a homemaker.The family returned to the Baileys’ native Belfast, Northern Ireland, when Christopher was young. But with political unrest brewing and Australia opening its doors to immigrants, the family soon moved to Brisbane, where Robert found work as a night watchman in a factory.Along with his wife, Mr. Bailey is survived by his brother, Michael, and his sisters, Mary, Carol and Margaret Bailey and Maureen Schull.Mr. Bailey onstage during the 2012 Homebake Music Festival in Sydney.Don Arnold/WireImageAfter the Saints’ original lineup split up, Mr. Bailey reconstituted the band and recorded a series of albums under the same name and later as a solo act. He moved away from punk toward roots-driven rock, folk and austere instrumentation that showed off his room-filling rich voice.He moved to Sweden in the 1990s, and then to the Netherlands in 1994, where he continued to write and record. Bruce Springsteen covered one of his songs, “Just Like Fire Would,” on his 2014 album “High Hopes.”While the musician Bob Geldof reportedly said that “rock music of the ’70s was changed by three bands: the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Saints,” Mr. Bailey was unbothered by the Saints’ name recognition relative to those others.“This is the world in which we live,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. “Bitter and twisted is something I don’t see any advantage in being.” More

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      Janet Mead, Nun Whose Pop-Rock Hymn Reached the Top of the Charts, Dies

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      Her upbeat version of “The Lord’s Prayer” was an instant hit in Australia, reached No. 4 in the U.S. and was nominated for a Grammy (it lost to Elvis Presley).Sister Janet Mead, an Australian nun whose crystalline voice carried her to the upper reaches of the charts in the 1970s with a pop-rock version of “The Lord’s Prayer,” died on Jan. 26 in Adelaide. She was in her early 80s.Her death was confirmed by the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, which provided no further information. Media reports said she had been treated for cancer.Sister Janet’s recording of “The Lord’s Prayer,” which featured her pure solo vocal over a driving drumbeat — she had a three-octave range and perfect pitch — became an instant hit in Australia, Canada and the United States. It soared to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 during Easter time in 1974, and she became one of the few Australian recording artists to have a gold record in the United States.The record sold more than three million copies worldwide, two million of them to Americans. Nominated for the 1975 Grammy Award for best inspirational performance, it lost to Elvis Presley and his version of “How Great Thou Art.”Along with Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” famously covered by the Byrds in 1965, “The Lord’s Prayer” is one of the very few popular songs with lyrics taken from the Bible.Sister Janet was the second nun to have a pop hit in the United States, after Jeanine Deckers of Belgium, the guitar-strumming “Singing Nun” whose “Dominique” reached No. 1 in 1963. She died in 1985.When stardom struck Sister Janet, she was a practicing Catholic nun teaching music at St. Aloysius College in Adelaide. The video for “The Lord’s Prayer” was shot on campus.A humble novitiate who devoted herself to social justice, she donated her share of royalties for “The Lord’s Prayer” to charity. She had long helped raise money for the disadvantaged, the homeless and Aborigines and worked on their behalf.She later described the period of her record’s success as a “horrible time,” largely because of demands by the media.“It was a fairly big strain because all the time there are interviews and radio talk-backs and TV people coming and film people coming,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Shunning the spotlight, she declined most interview requests and all offers to tour the United States.She had already achieved some local notoriety by staging rock masses at St. Francis Xavier’s Cathedral, long the hub of Catholic life in Adelaide. Her goal was to make the Gospel more accessible and meaningful to young people, which she succeeded in doing by presenting religious hymns in a rock ‘n’ roll format and encouraging participants to sing like Elvis or Bill Haley. Her masses drew as many as 2,500 people and enjoyed the full support of the local bishop.Janet Mead was born in Adelaide in 1938 (the exact date is unknown). She was 17 when she joined the Sisters of Mercy and became a music teacher at local schools.She studied piano at the Adelaide Conservatorium and formed a group, which she called simply “the Rock Band,” to provide music for the weekly Mass at her local church.She was making records for her school when she was discovered by Martin Erdman, a producer at Festival Records in Sydney. The label had her record a cover of “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” which the Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan had written and sung for a Franco Zeffirelli film of the same name about St. Francis of Assisi. It was released as the A-side of a 45; “The Lord’s Prayer” was the B-side.But disc jockeys in Australia much preferred “The Lord’s Prayer.” Listeners called in demanding to hear it again, and stations gave it repeated airplay. It became one of the fastest-selling singles in history.Its phenomenal success led to Sister Janet’s debut album, “With You I Am,” which hit No. 19 in Australia in July 1974. Her second album, “A Rock Mass,” was a complete recording of one of her Masses.Sister Janet later withdrew from the public eye almost entirely, and her third album, recorded in 1983, was filed away in the Festival Records vaults. The tapes, including a 1983 version of “The Lord’s Prayer” and covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Cat Stevens, were rediscovered by Mr. Erdman in 1999 and included on the album “A Time to Sing,” released that year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Sister Janet’s hit single.Sister Janet explained her philosophy of using rock music to amplify religious themes in her liner notes for the album “With You I Am.”“I believe that life is a unity and therefore not divided into compartments,” she wrote. “That means that worship, music, recreation, work and all other ‘little boxes’ of our lives are really inseparable, and this is why I believe that people should be given the opportunity to worship God with the language and music that is part of their ordinary life.” More

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      In the Australian Outback, the Cobar Sound Chapel Quenches the Soul

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      Beneath the skies of a remote mining town, a composer and an architect created a musical chamber for marveling at the universe.Life in Cobar was a delicate thing until the arrival of the Silver Tank. In the vast, red-dirt hinterland of Australia, over 400 miles northwest of the shores of Sydney, rainwater is scarce. ​​For thousands of years, the nomadic Aboriginal Ngiyampaa people excelled at the art of survival by creating natural rock reservoirs. But after European settlers discovered copper and gold in the area in the 1870s, enough water was needed to sustain a booming mining town. Reservoirs were dug. Water was trained in from afar. Then, in 1901, a 33-foot-high steel water tank painted silver, hence its nickname, was erected about a mile outside of town. While the threat of drought remained (and remains to this day), it turned dusty Cobar, a freckle at the edge of the Outback, into something of a desert oasis.The entrance to the sound chapel, which features a bench from which visitors can listen to Lentz’s “String Quartet(s)” (2000-21), a 24-hour-long composition inspired by the Outback’s dramatic skies.Josh RobenstoneNowadays, Cobar pipes in its water from the Burrendong Dam, about 233 miles east, and the tank, whose silver finish long ago succumbed to rust and graffiti, is empty of water. It has, however, been filled with something new — music. On April 2, after two decades of work, it will be officially reborn as the Cobar Sound Chapel, an audacious sound-art collaboration between Georges Lentz, one of Australia’s leading contemporary composers, and Glenn Murcutt, an Australian Pritzker Prize-winning architect. For his reimagining of the roofless tank, Murcutt installed an approximately 16-foot cube within its cylindrical space, in which Lentz’s “String Quartet(s)” (2000-21), a 24-hour-long classical-meets-electronica work, will play on loop via a quadraphonic sound system. Inside the chamber is a concrete bench that seats up to four, from which one can look out through the ceiling’s gold-rimmed oculus. Morning, noon and night, then, the otherworldly sonic stream will reverberate throughout the concrete booth and spill out into the sky that inspired it. The artists’ hope is that their work will prompt visitors to meditate on our place in the universe. “There is a mysterious element to our existence that we ignore at our own peril,” says Lentz, 56. “By turning to something higher than ourselves, we realize we are just this tiny thing in this vast scheme.”Murcutt set a concrete cube within the tank. Inside it is a concrete bench from which one can look up at the sky through the gold-rimmed oculus.Josh RobenstoneLentz’s “String Quartet(s),” on which he collaborated with the Noise, an experimental string quartet, will play on loop via a quadraphonic sound system.Josh RobenstoneLentz has been consumed by questions of cosmology and spirituality ever since he was a child. Born in Echternach, a small town in Luxembourg that formed around a seventh-century abbey, he grew up attending classical music festivals and stargazing with his dad. Later, he studied music in Hanover, Germany. While riding the train to university in the fall of 1988, he happened upon a story in the German science magazine Geo about the creation of the universe. It threw the tininess of humanity into sharp relief for him, and he fell into a depression that left him sleepless for weeks. “It felt like an abyss you look into and go, ‘Wah!’” he says.A view from just outside the concrete chamber, which was built inside of a roofless (and now empty) water tank.Josh RobenstoneEver since, Lentz has devoted his entire body of work to exploring the questions of the cosmos, transforming his initial fear into a quest for contemplation, one that only intensified following his 1990 move to Australia and exposure to the Outback’s ocean of sky. Both a continuation and culmination of his work, “String Quartet(s)” began as an attempt to translate that sky into a score. To do so, he collaborated with the Noise, an experimental string quartet that’s based in Sydney. They used a range of techniques; to mirror a starry night, for example, the musicians invoked the pointillism of the contemporary Aboriginal painter Kathleen Petyarre, plucking their bows at the top of their instruments to create contained bits of sound. “If you repeat that,” says Oliver Miller, the Noise’s cellist and a technical and creative adviser to the chapel, “it converges into a galactic formation where you get a cluster of the Milky Way.”Two concrete slabs mark the entrance to the sound chapel, though, thanks to its oculus, music can also be heard from outside the space.Josh RobenstoneThey ended up with about six hours’ worth of music, which, through digital editing, Lentz expanded into a 24-hour, techno-infused soundscape of terror, wonder and reverence. Taking inspiration from Gerhard Richter, he layered recorded sounds as if they were in a palimpsest. In one track I sampled, a curtain of piercing strings gave the impression of a dust storm haunting the horizon. In another, I fell into a reverie as the strings receded into shiny, ethereal dots, ringing as if in an empty basement. I listened from atop a hill in Connecticut, but to hear the music inside the chapel would be an experience of an entirely different magnitude.The interior walls of the concrete chamber were cast in corrugated iron formwork and act as sound diffusers. The men chose to keep the graffiti that had accumulated on the disused tank over the years.Josh RobenstoneAround 2000, Lentz began dreaming of a music box amid a copper landscape, a place where his music could live alongside its muse. But it wasn’t until he played a concert in Cobar in 2008 that he considered the town as a potential site. He pitched the idea to the Cobar Shire Council, which later proposed the hilltop bearing the tank, suggesting it be demolished to make room. “Absolutely not!” Lentz said. Soon after, he called Murcutt, 85, who is celebrated for hand-drawn, landscape-specific designs inspired by Australian vernacular architecture, such as farmhouses and shearing sheds. “You’d have to be mad to be doing something like this,” Murcutt remembers thinking. “But it’s also extraordinary.”The morning sun creates a sliver of light on the interior of the entrance to the Cobar Sound Chapel, which will open in April.Josh RobenstoneMurcutt has always been drawn to the desert, whose sparseness resonates with the Aboriginal mantra — touch the earth lightly — by which he tries to abide. In keeping with that idea, he set out to design, largely thanks to governmental funding, a simple, solar-powered chapel that would unify sound, site and atmosphere. Two large slabs of concrete mark the entrance outside. Inside, the cubic space (which is slightly slanted to optimize acoustics) is stark, just like the desert itself. In the four corners of the ceiling, sunlight streams through windows of Russian blue glass painted by the local Aboriginal artist Sharron Ohlsen, who also employs pointillism in her work. And, over the course of each day, an ellipse of light traverses the floor and concrete walls, which were cast in corrugated iron formwork and act as sound diffusers. Music booms from a speaker in each wall, enveloping listeners, Miller says, as if they were “moving within a cosmic nebula or swimming within a school of deep-sea jellyfish.”And so, over a century after arriving in town, the Silver Tank — which promises to put Cobar on the cultural map, especially as the chapel will play host to an annual string quartet festival sponsored by Manuka Resources, a local mine — once again provides something essential. For anyone who spends time inside, it offers a sanctuary for contemplating existential questions that, particularly in the age of the pandemic, haunt us so acutely. And while the piece may not provide answers, it is also a comforting reminder that, even in a vast, seemingly empty expanse, there can still be music. More

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      David Gulpilil, Famed Aboriginal Actor, Dies at 68

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      In a career that began with the film “Walkabout” 50 years ago, he was acclaimed for changing the way Australia’s Indigenous people were portrayed and viewed.David Gulpilil, an Indigenous Australian who found film stardom as a teenager in 1971 when he was featured in “Walkabout” and went on to become Australia’s most famous Aboriginal actor, appearing in dramas like “Charlie’s Country,” for which he won a best-actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, and comedies like the 1986 hit “Crocodile Dundee,” has died. He was 68.Steven Marshall, South Australia’s top official, announced his death on Monday, though he did not say when or where he died. In 2017 Mr. Gulpilil learned that he had terminal lung cancer, something he addressed in a documentary released this year called “My Name Is Gulpilil.”Mr. Marshall, in a statement, called Mr. Gulpilil “an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation onscreen.” Others had heaped similar praise on Mr. Gulpilil over the years. In 2019, presenting him with a lifetime achievement award, the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee, which celebrates Indigenous Australian communities, said he “revolutionized the way the world saw Aboriginal people.”Mr. Gulpilil often played characters who explore or are affected by the intersection of Indigenous and modern cultures in Australia, something he knew from personal experience and did not always handle well. In between his acting roles, he had trouble with alcohol and spent time in prison, including for domestic abuse. Though Mr. Gulpilil sometimes seemed to mix easily in the broader world, Rolf de Heer, the director with whom he worked most often, said demons found him there.“David can’t handle alcohol,” Mr. de Heer said in his director’s notes for “Charlie’s Country.” “He can’t handle cigarettes, or sugary drinks, or almost anything addictive. All of these substances, foreign to his culture, both soothe him and enrage him.”One part of the moviemaking world that Mr. Gulpilil didn’t have trouble with, however, was the camera — he always seemed to be a natural, especially when, as was often the case, the setting of the film was the Australian wilds. As he put it in an autobiographical one-man stage show he performed in 2004, “I know how to walk across the land in front of a camera, because I belong there.”David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu is believed to have been born in 1953 in Arnhem Land, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Missionaries are said to have assigned him a birth date of July 1.He was also assigned the name David at a government-run English school that he attended for a time.“They asked me what was my name,” he said in a 1978 audio interview posted by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, “and I said, ‘My name is Gulpilil,’ and suddenly they said, ‘Ah, yeah, we’ll give you David.’”He didn’t care for the school and its paternalism — “You got your culture, I got my culture,” he said — and instead cultivated a reputation as an excellent ceremonial dancer. His fluidity and love of performing caught the attention of the British director Nicolas Roeg when Mr. Roeg came to Australia looking for an Aboriginal youth for “Walkabout,” a story about two white children lost in the wilderness who are befriended by an Indigenous teenager. (Few Aboriginal actors had appeared in feature films at the time, though documentarians had visited Indigenous communities.)The film led to international travel. Mr. Gulpilil, who was also a musician, used to tell the story of having his room at Cannes invaded by firefighters, who couldn’t place the sounds he was making on his didgeridoo — a traditional wooden instrument — and thought they might be the rumblings of a fire.Several television roles followed “Walkabout,” and then in 1976 Mr. Gulpilil was back on the big screen in “Mad Dog Morgan,” a drama about an Irish outlaw (played by Dennis Hopper) who is a wanted man in Australia. Soon after came “Storm Boy,” in which he played an Aboriginal man who befriends a lonely boy and joins with him in raising some pelicans.From left, Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski and Mr. Gulpilil in “Crocodile Dundee,” in which Mr. Gulpilil played a friend to the title character.Paramount, via Everett CollectionMr. Gulpilil reached a much wider audience when he appeared in “Crocodile Dundee.” As a friend of Paul Hogan’s swashbuckling title character, he delivers one particularly good joke after his character meets a New York journalist played by Linda Kozlowski. She immediately tries to take his picture.“You can’t take my photograph,” he says.“I’m sorry,” she answers. “You believe it’ll take your spirit away.”“No,” he says. “You’ve got the lens cap on.”Mr. Gulpilil was especially proud of his work in “The Tracker” (2002), one of several films he made with Mr. de Heer. He played the title character, who leads several white men on a brutal journey in search of a fugitive.“As he has in other Australian films, including ‘Walkabout,’ ‘The Last Wave’ and ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence,’ Mr. Gulpilil has the mystical aura of a man so profoundly in touch with the earth that he is omniscient and safe from harm,” Stephen Holden wrote in his review in The New York Times.Mr. Gulpilil in a scene from “Charlie’s Country,” for which he won a best-actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014.Monument ReleasingHis most acclaimed role came in “Charlie’s Country,” another project directed by Mr. de Heer; the two men share the screenwriting credit. The movie is about an Aboriginal man struggling to maintain traditional ways. Parts of it were drawn from Mr. Gulpilil’s own life. He and Mr. de Heer began developing the story while Mr. Gulpilil, struggling with alcohol at the time, was in jail for breaking his wife’s arm.His performance won the best-actor award in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes festival.Mr. Gulpilil was married several times. Australian newspapers said his survivors include seven children.Mr. de Heer, in an interview with The Herald Sun of Australia shortly after Mr. Gulpilil won the acting award at Cannes, talked about the pressures his friend felt living in the traditional Indigenous world and in the world that included places like Cannes.“He struggles in both,” he said. “He’ll say he can live in both cultures, but I don’t think he does well in either.” More

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      ‘Burning’ Review: Pulling the Fire Alarm in Australia

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      A new documentary looks at the visceral impact of wildfires and climate change on the country, from its beleaguered people to sickly koalas.If you think what climate change portends for America is scary, wait until you hear about Australia. That’s the gist of “Burning,” which focuses on that country’s sadly familiar experiences with warming temperatures: terrifying wildfires, drill-baby-drill politicians, and activists desperately trying to save us all by pointing out the facts about the future.The big difference is that Australia’s fires are the biggest: Over 50 million acres burned during its so-called “Black Summer” (2019-20), dwarfing losses in California or the Amazon. The director, Eva Orner (“Chasing Asylum”), makes her contribution to documentaries on climate change by sticking to Australia and underlining the visceral impact on Australians. It’s hellish: red skies and dark days, fear and helplessness, pregnancy complications and death.Orner’s flood of talking heads and footage from the field (including beleaguered locals and sickly koalas) settles into a drumbeat of worry — justified, obviously, but numbing. The film also suffers by comparison with a more complex and stimulating look at climate change, Lucy Walker’s alarming “Bring Your Own Brigade.” But the young activist Daisy Jeffrey does provide this film with a smart rebel leader, versus Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, and his coal-friendly politicking.Like many environmental docs, Orner holds up a possible savior (a tech billionaire pitching a pivot to renewables) and a prelapsarian vision (the Aboriginal stewardship of the land before European arrival). Her film is ultimately another in a series of distress signals for the world, with the hope that Australia doesn’t become a continent-sized Cassandra.BurningNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More