An immersive poetic documentary about transformation
Produced by JOTZ Productions with Anandi Films in association with the Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund
Writer & Director Jeni Thornley
Producers Tom Zubrycki & Jeni Thornley
Editor Lindi Harrison (ASE)
Composer Joseph Tawadros
Sound Designer Tristan Meredith
Australian Innovation Award Nomination Black Magic MIFF 2023
Top 10 Australian Films 2023 (The State of Australian Cinema)
Best Documentary Australian Film Critics Assoc., Nomination 2023
Honourable Mention USA Super 8 Film and Digital Video Festival 2025
Honourable Mention Experimental Forum 2025
Spotlight Silver Award Spotlight Documentary Awards 2025
Best Sound in Documentary, Tristan Meredith AACTA Nomination 2024
Tristan Meredith, Sound Designer, ‘Memory Film’.
MEMORY FILM Synopsis
MIFF Program
“Set against the backdrop of radical feminism, Aboriginal land rights and widespread social upheaval, Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary (85 mins) is a ‘road movie’ of sorts, tracing its maker’s inner journey towards liberation. Adopting the lenses of psychotherapy and Eastern spirituality, and incorporating footage from Thornley’s earlier works ‘Maidens’, the collaborative feature ‘For Love or Money’, ‘To the Other Shore’ and ‘Island Home Country’, this hyper-intimate opus contemplates gender fluidity, sexual politics, the pleasure and pain of motherhood, and the desire for a world free of war and colonisation. With a sweeping score by Egyptian-Australian multi-instrumentalist Joseph Tawadros and inspired by the minimalist sensibility of silent cinema as a dialogue-free piece, Thornley’s “farewell film poem to life” unfolds with a haunting tactility: along with the celluloid’s visible grain… ‘Memory Film’ is a lovingly crafted, lucid meditation on resistance, legacy and carving out one’s place amid constant transformation.”
MEMORY FILM Trailer
MEMORY FILM Screenings
• World Premiere Melbourne Int Film Festival (MIFF) Official Selection 2023
• Conversations & Connections Documentary Festival ‘Storytelling on the Ground’, Macquarie University SLNSW Dec 2023
• Sydney Premiere, Antenna Documentary Film Festival Official Selection 2024
• Melbourne Women in Film Festival (MWFF) Official Selection March 2024
• Hazelhurst Arts Centre, Sydney May 2024
• Madrid Arthouse Film Festival Semi Finalist June 2024
• Sacramento Independent Film Festival Semi Finalist Summer 2024
• Revelation Perth International Film Festival Official Selection July 2024
• ARC Cinema with Q&A NFSA Canberra August 2024
• New York International Women’s Film Festival Semi Finalist 2024
• Edinburgh Film Awards Semi Finalist 2024
• Paris Women CineFest Semi Finalist 2024
• Melbourne Cinematheque ‘Contested Histories: The Documentaries of Jeni Thornley’. A Retrospective ACMI October 30 2024
• Visible Evidence Conference XXX, Plenary & Official Selection Monash University Dec 2024
• Spotlight Documentary Awards Winner Silver Award Atlanta USA 2024
• Adelaide Premiere & Q&A Palace Nova East End Cinema 3 Feb 2025
• USA Super 8 Film & Video Festival Honourable Mention New Jersey Feb 2025
• Blow-up Arthouse FilmFest Chicago Semi Finalist 2025
• Experimental Forum Los Angeles USA Honourable Mention 2025
• Orion International Film Festival Best Feature Documentary Finalist 2025
• Experimental Forum Honourable Mention Los Angeles USA 2025
World Premiere, Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund 2023
Sydney Premiere, Antenna Doco Film Festival Dendy Feb 2024
Melbourne Women in Film Festival ACMI March 2024
Hazelhurst Arts Centre, Sydney May 2024
Revelation Perth International Film Festival 2024
‘Contested Histories: The Documentaries of Jeni Thornley’ Retrospective, Melbourne Cinematheque ACMI Oct 2024
Visible Evidence Conference XXX Monash Uni Dec 2024
MEMORY FILM Reviews, Interviews, Seminars
2025
‘Unknown Pleasures’ travels to Adelaide for MEMORY FILM screening, Bill Mousoulis, February 2025.
Memory Film Q&A Jeni Thornley & Julia Erhart (Flinders Uni) YouTube Discussion (excerpts) Unknown Pleasures Feb 2025.
Memory Film United States Super 8 Film +DV Festival Q+A with Jeni Thornley, Al Nigrin, YouTube, Jan 2025.
2024
Visible Evidence Conference XXX, Plenary Session: Decentering Documentary; Memory Film Official Selection Monash University Dec. 2024.
‘Contested Histories: The Documentaries of Jeni Thornley.’ A Retrospective introduced by the filmmaker with Melbourne Cinematheque (curator Adrian Danks), ACMI October 2024.
Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary, Janice Loreck, CTEQ Annotations on Film, Senses of Cinema, October 2024.
Memory Film: Jeni Thornley’s Archive of Self and Australian Cinema, by Nadine Whitney, The Curb, March 27 2024.
Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary: In Conversation with Jeni Thornley, Grace Boschetti, MWFF Critics Lab, MWFF, April 5 2024.
Remembering, Repeating, Working-Through – A Conversation With Jeni Thornley and Felicity Collins, Melbourne Women in Film Festival, March, Gandel Lab 1, ACMI March 2024.
Feminist filmmaker’s gift to her children, Irene Diakanastasis, Central News, April 5 2024.
2023
Must-see films at the Melbourne International Film Festival, by Stephanie Bunbury and Jake Wilson, The Age, July 29, 2023.
Memory Film Alexandra Slater from the Cutting Room show (RMIT) interviews Jeni Thornley (interview begins at 9m:50sec) CTV+ Australia, @9 July 2023.
Interview: Memory Film Director Jeni Thornley Talks About the Evolution of the Mind with Andrew Peirce, The Curb, August 16, 2023.
Jason di Rosso interviews Jeni Thornley about Memory Film, The Screen Show, ABC Radio August 10 2023.
Documentary filmmaker Jeni Thornley & Flick Forward discuss her immersive cine-poem MEMORY FILM, Primal Screen, 3RRR Digital, August 14 2023.
Memory Film MIFF Seminar: Accelerator Lab Behind the Scenes with Director Jeni Thornley, Sound Designer Tristan Meredith, Editor Lindi Harrison (ASE) exploring the art of sound design and the processes of collaboration in filmmaking, ACMI, August 2023.
‘Conversations and Connections Documentary Festival’, Community/Family Documentary Panel with Iqbal Barkat, Rajdeep Roy, Jeni Thornley & Nicole Matthews, Department of Media, Communications…Macquarie Uni, SLNSW December 1st 2023.
Book chapter: Jeni Thornley, ‘The enigma of film: memory film: a filmmaker’s diary’, Constructions of The Real: Intersections of Practice and Theory in Documentary-Based Filmmaking, (eds.) K. Munro et al., Intellect Books Series: Artwork Scholarship: International Perspectives in Education, 2023.
Sian Mitchell (Director, MWFF) with Jeni Thornley, Melbourne Women in Film Festival Q&A, ACMI, 25 March 2024
MEMORY FILM Director’s Statement
A silent film with music. ‘Memory Film’ is an experiential, lyrical documentary expressing cinema’s power, not via ‘issues’, but with a poetic sensibility blending images, music and sound. It is composed solely of images from my Super 8 archive filmed during 1974-2003, acquired and digitised by the National Film and Sound Archive in 2016-17. The film has no speaking voices, no interviews and no narration. Its story is told visually and poetically, with images and music. This immersive documentary offers viewers a reflective, meditative experience into radical politics, social change and the dynamic interplay between the personal and the political. The superb soundtrack counterpoints the grainy textural quality of the Super 8. Original music by oud maestro Joseph Tawadros and creative sound design by Tristan Meredith interweaves with the images. As there are no speaking voices, narration or interviews, the film offers an immersive experience of the interplay between public and private – transforming lives.
‘Memory Film’ Composer Joseph Tawadros
Composer Joseph Tawadros releases his new album The Virtue of Signals on Spotify featuring original music composed for Memory Film.
Memory Film is unique as its legacy harks back to the silent movie era. The original music score and sound design offers viewers a meditative, inner experience of social change. Editor Lindi Harrison and I initially layered guide track music into the rough cut and the ‘affect’ was compelling, confirming my instinct that the ‘silent film’ conventions of image and music with no speaking voices was the perfect mode for Super 8 film in the digital era. The impulse for the film comes from the ‘Japanese death poets.’ In Japan householders, elders and Buddhist monks write poems to express their feelings about the transience of life and the inevitable passing of all things (jisei:“farewell poem to life”). Householders write poems as a gift to their children – a legacy of beauty and insight gathered over years. Memory Film is made in this spirit.
Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche 2011
JENI THORNlEY INSTAGRAM
Contribute to Memory Film’s distribution via Documentary Australia
Memory Film Distributor Antidote Films
“Antidote Films is proud to represent Memory Film.” It will be available on Antidote films and specialist sites such as DocPlay, Brollie, Chronicle and SBS TV and SBS On Demand later in 2025. The Memory Film Study Guide will be released to tie-in with the
SBS Television release.
Gil Scrine, Antidote Films, Australia-All Rights