Kaya, wanjoo, hello, welcome.
It’s been a while folks.
After some months away from the world of the Curb, I’m finally returning to clear the backlog of interviews and discussions that have been sitting with me over the past year and change, plus I’m eagerly recording some new interviews with great Aussie filmmakers.
I won’t bore you with the life details, other than to say there’s been more downs than ups over the past six months, a lot of which has made life beyond a struggle to deal with. We’re finally on the tail end of this period and life is starting to look a little bit brighter and better, which is giving us a bit of breathing space and the ability to see sunlight for the first time in a while.
So, what you’ll start to see in the coming weeks is a return to weekly interviews, both in podcast and transcribed form. Some are new, while many are older interviews that weren’t released for whatever reason. While the films might have finished their festival runs or have hit streaming, the discussions are still excellent and well worth your time.
If you’re a paying subscriber of the Curb, you’ll start to see a return to the perks that you should be getting with the different tier levels of your subscription. I want to thank everyone who has joined or maintained their subscription in this time of quiet. It really does help a lot. I’m in the midst of reviewing the perks tiers and there’ll be a short survey coming out in a few weeks which I’d love for you to complete to let us know what you’d like from us.
Instead of making a grand statement about what I’ll be doing over the coming months, I’m just going to ride out the rest of the year on an ‘as it comes’ basis. Last year was an increasingly stressful one with more hospital visits than I’d like and the compression of Golden Globes viewing and voting into a very short period. Given the mental state I was in come January, I made the decision to not apply to be a Globes voter this year, something that gave me immediate mental relief. Subsequently, I’ve also stepped down as the co-chair of the Australian Film Critics Association, a role I absolutely loved working in, but felt that it was time for me to step aside to let myself catch a breather.
In that onslaught of viewing with the Globes, I felt myself breaking in a way that I never really thought I would. I love films, but I found myself growing to resent them during that period. Films aren’t meant to be watched in the way that voting for an awards body demands you watch them. It’s never ending with barely any breathing space to come down from the emotional experience of one film before flooding into the next. Granted, this isn’t as big an issue for critics who live in bigger cities where press screenings are held more frequently throughout the year, but for a critic living in Perth where there’s becoming less and less dedicated media screenings or support for local media, alongside a lack of international films (meaning: non-English films) getting released throughout the year before voting starts or outside of a film festival, it made it impossible to think straight. During the month of November alone last year, I viewed over sixty films, while also working at my job, and recovering from a hospital visit, and doing weekly interviews for the Curb. No wonder I found myself burnt out.
Come January, my anticipation for watching anything new or old disappeared completely. I found myself switching off and disengaging from films and works that I would otherwise have anticipated with glee left me feeling despondent. That despondency led to me straying from Australian films.
There’s been some phenomenal films come out, but there’s also been a wealth of mediocrity which has made engaging with and championing Australian films difficult. While I’ll attempt to not be an alarmist, it’s been beyond disappointing to see the quality of some of the films being released nowadays. Maybe even more disappointing is the tepid reaction that the genuinely great films being released are receiving.
I’m still attempting to shake a bitterness for the botched release of Lesbian Space Princess. I’m perturbed by the silent death of We Bury the Dead at the local box office. I find it disappointing that Sophie Hyde’s finest film, Jimpa, whimpered away with barely any attention. I’m frustrated that transformative storytellers like Adam C. Briggs, Parish Malfitano, Samuel van Grinsven, amongst many others, are still not getting the exposure or appreciation they deserve while routine and tired fare that we’ve seen countless times over gets AACTA nominations up the wazoo.
I’m not ignorant to the reality that I’m part of a mechanism that can support Australian films and give them the space and voice that they need, but part of my enduring malaise has come with the ability to actually crack through the black mirror to grab the attention of people in the world. A recent Guardian article explored the data surrounding Australian music, ultimately raising the question whether it’s at risk of becoming extinct. It’s not. Australian music won’t die. But, there is an aspect of truth to be concerned about and that’s that audience numbers are dwindling in ways that is seriously impacting the viability of being a working, paid, Australian artist right now.
The same applies to Australian cinema. Kate Separovich has been tracking the box office of Australian films this year in her regular Australian in Cinemas newsletter. It’s been rather depressing to see the non-existent turn out for Australian films this year. But, if I put myself on the chopping block for a moment, there’s been precious few Australian films this year that I’ve felt I need to pay to go and see in a cinema. If me, someone who regularly covers Australian films, finds it hard to get out there to support Australian cinema, then that’s either an indictment on me or the output of the industry.
Let’s go with the former more than the latter because there have been some stellar Aussie films released this year. At the WA Made Film Festival, I caught a superb documentary called The Mustangs, a powerful flick about an all-abilities footy team in Mandurah and the support they give disabled folks who want to play a bit of footy. It’s really brilliant with its honesty and compassion for the sport and those who just want to get out and give it a bash. As mentioned, I thoroughly enjoyed Jimpa, my current favourite Australian film for the year, and had a blast hosting the Q&A sessions for Zak Hilditch’s We Bury the Dead, a film that moved me in unexpected ways. Zoe Pepper’s Birthright is the biting dark comedy about the housing crisis that we need right now, and it’s one that hits for the fences with its bleak ending, cementing it as yet another modern Aussie comedy that takes no prisoners. James Woods’ The Birthday Trip is another one of those flicks, a film that I had on my best of Aussie cinema list for 2025, and is heading out around Australia in July. Then there’s Kalu Oji’s family drama Pasa Faho, a revelation if ever there was one.
Yet, all of these Aussie films, brilliant in their own right, each struggled to gain audience traction. Well, The Birthday Trip hasn’t released yet, so don’t let it fall to the same fate as the other films when it does land in July, please.
In my sojourn from the world I received a great email from a local filmmaker asking what to do about the current state of Australian cinema. They were concerned because films that featured global stars were failing, and yet, they were quality films. I’ve been thinking about what can happen with Australian cinema for a long while, and I don’t have any clear, safe, or sane answers for anyone. It’s frustrating, really, but there’s no easy fix to Australian cinema. The old adage of ‘make a good film and people will watch it’ isn’t applicable anymore. Maybe it never was applicable.
Audiences do want an investment in the films they’re watching, but more importantly, there is increasingly becoming a return to author admiration, or in more filmic terms, the adoration of the auteur. The Phillippou’s have managed this with their one-two punch of Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, one more successful than the other, while Gooseworx has built a community behind The Amazing Digital Circus online, leading to a successful theatrical run. Yet, it’s not as simple as just ‘be YouTube famous and your film will succeed’.
Turning that investment into ‘support these films or listen to this music because they’re Australian’ just doesn’t cut it anymore. Anyone can make a movie. Anyone can make music. Anyone can be creative nowadays at the push of a prompt. This monologue won’t turn into an anti-AI blather, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid the presence of AI in filmmaking, and it’s even more noxious when you see established filmmakers like Clayton Jacobson, George Miller, and Alex Proyas, openly advocating for the use of generative AI in films, or in the case of Jacobson, flat out utilising generative AI to create their own works.
But again, just saying ‘support Australian cinema’ isn’t enough. Making a great film isn’t enough to get to an audience. Nurturing, supporting, and building that audience, your audience is what matters. If that’s by filming reels upon reels upon reels and living online completely just to break through the attention span of the always online, then so be it, but at what cost?
These problems that have rapidly emerged – or maybe not so rapidly, but quick enough to catch us aging folks off guard – and have made it difficult to navigate just how independent media can connect with people who might be interested in hearing or reading about films and culture. These are problems that, somehow, I’ll navigate over the coming months and years on the Curb.
I don’t know what that’ll look like, and I don’t know what the next few months will look like, but I’m also not setting expectations for myself to attain or achieve anything other than slowing down, taking some time, and really feeling that love for cinema, particularly Australian cinema, that made me want to start a website like the Curb in the first place.
So, what was supposed to be a quick update has naturally evolved into a rambling rundown, but it wouldn’t be any other way, right?
The first interview I’m returning with is a fun one, recorded in May 2025 with David West whose film Lint screened at the 2025 WA Made Film Festival. It’ll be screening with Tristan Fidler’s VHS Tracking on Wednesday 17 June 2026 at Goolugatup's free, artist-led film club. Tickets are free, so if you’re in town, head along and catch a hyper-independent WA film.
It’s good to be back. For now.
Thanks for listening or reading.
Andrew F Peirce
the Curb is a completely independent and ad free website that lives on the support of listeners and readers just like you. Visit thecurb.com.au/subscribe, where you can support our work from $2 a month. Paid subscribers get access to our monthly competitions, exclusive interviews and articles, and more.