Ettore
Siracusa
b. March 29, 1943, Vizzini, Italy.
BIOGRAPHY:
Ettore Siracusa works in film and video. Shortly
after his arrival in Australia, in the early years of pre-industry
Australian cinema, Ettore was associated with the films of the
pioneering film director, Giorgio
Mangiamele.
He was also one of the first crop of graduates
of the Swinburne Film and Television School, going on to set up
and teach Super 8 film-making and video in secondary schools.
CRITICAL
OVERVIEW:
Ettore Siracusa's short films and
videos are inspired and informed by a tradition of visionary or
extra-realist cinema keen to bear witness to the more perplexing
and strange in the everyday. His relatively small output of films
include Natura Morta (1979), "one of the most evocative
yet concise statements - and powerfully inventive metaphors -
of the migrant experience"(Quentin Turnour) (1)
and Italians at Home (1991), "this film lovingly
witnesses the kind of collage experience that millions of Australians
enact everyday as they attempt to make sense of a world composed
of infinitely fragmented traditions and languages" (Ross
Gibson). (2)
Natura
Morta
In his latter
work Ettore has sought to extend his documentary fictions about
migration and the depiction of urban environments to exploring
ideas on 'migrant' remembering and baroque architectural forms.
The video essay The House of Doctor Duende (1997),made
in collaboration with Paul Carter, and based on his novel, Baroque
Memories (1992), presents a fictional portrait of a baroque
city, Lecce, in a collage of voices, fragmented remembrances and
overlays of interpretations, to dramatise ways in which migrants
make sense of their new environment by improvising new, forward-looking
points of reference.
His most
recent work is a documentary multi-screen video installation at
ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne.
(1)
Private corrrespondence to Ettore Siracusa, July 2000.
(2) See Bibliography below.
Italians
at Home
FILMOGRAPHY:
Yours
Faithfully
(1969, 5 mins, 16mm, b&w)
Short
Story (1970, 8 mins, 16mm, b&w)
Lost (1971,
5 mins, 16mm, b&w)
Natura
Morta (1980, 14 mins, 16mm, col.)
The Occupant
(1984, 25 mins, 16mm, col.)
co-directed with Peter Lyssiotis and Michael
Karris
Italians
at Home
Italians
at Home (1991, 29 mins, 16mm, col.)
The House
of Doctor Duende (1997, 28 mins, Video)
Lecce:
locations for unmade film (1997, 25 mins, Video)
Jadi
Jadian (1998, 50 mins, Video for stage projection)
Shanghai
Daily (2001, 20 mins, Video documentary)
Picture
Palaces (2003, 2 x 29 mins, Video multi-screen installation at ACMI, Federation
Square)
Hem of Memory (2017, 2 x 13 mins, Video multi-screen installation at Co.as.it)
Italians at Home (1991, excerpt)
Picture Palaces (2003, excerpt)
SELECT
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
"2 Films",Catalogue, The First Australian Filmmakers' Festival, 23 August
1971.
The
House of Doctor Duende
"L'imagine
dei settant'anni", Antonio Di Pierro, Il Messagero,
page 17, March 1979.
"The
Occupant", Interview with Peter Lyssiotis, Cantrills Filmnotes,
No. 49/50, April 1986
