Jeni Thornley is a documentary filmmaker, writer and film valuer. Her poetic essay documentaries: Maidens (1978), collaborative feature film and Penguin book, For Love or Money: a history of women and work in Australia (1983), To the Other Shore (1996), Island Home Country (2008) and Memory Film: a filmmaker’s diary (2023) are landmark films in Australian independent and feminist cinema, widely distributed and also broadcast on ABC TV and SBS. The films are available via beamafilm, Ronin Films, Anandi Films.
Memory Film, is an immersive, poetic diary film about transformation and ‘the personal is political’. It is based on Jeni’s Super 8 archive (1974-2003), acquired and digitised by the National Film & Sound Archive in 2016. Also watch the Trailer to get an idea of the film.
Preparing the Super8 rolls for NFSA digitising.
Memory Film is currently streaming via The Education Shop. Download the Memory Film (ATOM) Study Guide from The Education Shop. Memory Film is also streaming on SBS On Demand, Australia’s leading public television broadcaster.
‘Memory Film’ on SBS on Demand
Memory Film documents the activism of three decades amidst an inner journey towards liberation, with a unique music score by Joseph Tawadros.
Joseph Tawadros composer ‘Memory Film’ recording to picture, Church Street Studios, Camperdown 2023.
The film has no speaking voices or narration and offers a meditative, reflective experience into radical politics, social change and transformation. More detail on Memory Film: here !
Jeni is a Visiting Scholar in the School of Communication, Faculty of Design and Society UTS, where she lectured in Issues in Documentary from 2002-2013, while making her doctorate film Island home country:subversive mourning. Earlier she taught history of documentary film at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). Jeni was a pioneering member of the Sydney Women’s Film Group, Feminist Film Workers and Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative where she worked in film distribution and exhibition and wrote for Film News.
Jeni worked on many independent films as actress and collaborator, including Film For Discussion, Women and Men Living Together, Woman’s House, Secret Storm, and was a contributing director on Australia Daze. She made her first film Still Life (Thornley & Ross) in the 1974 Women’s Film Workshop, was co-national co-ordinator 1975 Women’s International Film Festival, and worked as a camera assistant at Film Australia and on many independent films, including Journey Among Women and Climbers. Jeni was Manager of the Women’s Film Fund and Project Co-ordinator & Reader in Documentary Development, Australian Film Commission and NSW Film & TV Office. She writes about documentary regularly, having contributed over the years to Film News, Simply Living, The Conversation, Metro Magazine, Realtime and has written chapters for various film related books, as well as writing essays on her blog Documentary. Jeni maintains an active connection with feminism, radical change and psychoanalysis, in particular the place of ‘the maternal’.
“Thinking in the infant emerges from the mother’s ability to think about her baby’s unthinkable thoughts and unbearable feelings. She must allow herself to ‘reverie’ about her baby, to take in the baby’s unbearable feelings and give them back in a benign form.” Wilfred Bion,’The Thinking Breast’ 1962. [Super8 frame and text from ‘Memory Film’]