David E. Perry

A minimalist exercise described by Thoms as ‘observing the effect of movement on perception within the framework of Ravel’s music’.

A young boy creates a world of puppet friends using pieces of rubbish found in the street.

Concerns a young boy's mystical experiences during his Confirmation. As the ceremony unfolds, figures from religion and mythology appear and impress on him the need to become a soldier of Christ.

Adam is a factory worker. He falls in love with Chris, a slightly older man. Instead of strengthening his own identity, Adam is unable to cope with his sexuality and suffers a nervous breakdown. One of the first representations of gay men in Australian cinema and an iconic piece of LGBTIQA+ film history.

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'A youth is persecuted by the haunting reappearance of a girl's image in various commercial outlets. He finds escape from this commercial brainwashing only in his own confused sexual hallucination.' (14 mins) (Filmmakers Co-operatives Catalogue of Independent Film 1975/6).

“The film was made spontaneously one afternoon in 1966. When a few friends got together... We were all in love with the film medium...” (Garry Shead)

A young boy with such little to do, wanders around Sydney playing sheriff with his toy gun. However, this state of monotony takes a sudden turn when he encounters a group of older boys.

In this film, David Perry scratched onto celluloid the numbers of a poem by Kurt Schwitters, which were projected beside the actor reciting it.

In this kinetic tribute to his Ubu Films collaborator Perry, Thoms combined tests and offcuts from early films with film fragments found on Perry’s editing room at ABC-TV. The Textacolour marks were intended as homage to Perry’s pioneering handmade films.

Made for inclusion in a student theatrical production at the University of Sydney, this film was based on an allegorical play by Antonin Artaud.

An experimental film by David E. Perry

An experimental film by David Perry.

Constant Malernik, artist and filmmaker, is obsessed by the history of the Russian revolution. He makes images in homage to artists of the twentieth century, especially the constructivist V.E.Tatlin. He travels to New York, then to his past in Australia where he meets the notorious fakes, Ern and Ethel Malley. With his partner Lydia he travels to Russia at the time of the overthrow of the Communist Party. In Russia, Malernik films Lydia’s first meeting with her family. He also unearths some little-known facts about Tatlin’s flying machine, the Letatlin.

An experimental film by David Perry.

An animated film using simplified and abstract forms, symbolising nuclear warfare.

An intimate portrait of a son by a mother set to the boisterously pop Batman theme song.

In this short self-portrait, Ubu Films co-founder Perry mines his archive of family photographs, home videos and exhibited 16mm film to fast-forward, reverse and freeze-frame narratives and reminiscences.

Photographer and filmmaker Perry’s concise film-poem uses graphic matches (grapefruits, balloons and bubbles) to convey anxieties about fatherhood.

1967 David E. Perry short