Richard
Wolstencroft
(aka
Richard Masters)
b. April 23, 1969, Melbourne, Australia.
BIOGRAPHY:
Richard Wolstencroft is an independent
filmmaker, who has shot four features, three completed, and many
shorts, on 16mm, Super 8 and video. He worked with Mark and Colin
Savage in his teens, who served as his mentors and his 'film school'.
He collaborated with Jon Hewitt on the feature Bloodlust in 1990, which Wolstencroft directed at the ripe age of 21. It
starred Phil Motherwell, Kelly Chapman and Robert O'Neill.
Wolstencroft
then made The Intruder as a 'director for hire' for Boulevard
Films from a script by Frank Howson, which was never completed
due to Boulevard's financial disintegration. It starred Lachy
Hulme, Paul Moder and Tottie Goldsmith.
In 1992 Wolstencroft
created and ran the "The Hellfire Club" in Melbourne
and Sydney, an adventure which launched him into the world of
nightlife decadence and debauchery, and which lasted for ten years.
From this milieu in 1996 Wolstencroft wrote and directed Pearls
Before Swine, starring Boyd Rice, Nick Crawford Smith and
Lisa Hutchinson. It took Wolstencroft three years to complete
the film, fighting a liver abscess along the way, finally getting
the finished film to premiere at the Stockholm International Film
Festival in November 1999. The film also played at Puchon, Sitges
and Ajijic film fests in 2000/1. In 2000, the film was rejected
by MIFF and in response Wolstencroft founded the Melbourne
Underground Film Festival (MUFF), which is now still running (2017), although Wolstencroft has now relinquished the directorial reigns over to Frank Howson for the 2018 edition.
Wolstencroft
is an occasional writer for periodicals like Large, Beat
Magazine and Filmnet. He has also made some fetish
films that have been sold overseas, as well as appeared in videos
and magazines along similar themes. Wolstencroft completed an
honours year in a BA for Philosophy at La Trobe in 2003.
He continues to make many films.
CRITICAL
OVERVIEW:
What interests me with cinema is the
vast potential for it to open up new ways to examine human existence
and the world. Cinema is a very young art form. The modes of expression
already developed in cinema are only the tip of the iceberg, of
what I believe is cinema's real power and potential.
Cinema can
make manifest the phenomenological nature of cognition in a way
that can echo human beings' own cognitive perception in an uncanny
and disturbing manner. I feel the future of cinema lies here in
the explication of philosophical ideas and cinema. The nature
of film has the power to appropriate modes of existence through
film. Film is existential, existence is filmic. I do not wish
to pursue film theory as just theory, say through subject matter
that is not ecstatic and vital. I am also deeply committed
to making this exposition exciting through traditional film language
i.e. genre or narrative or mise en scene. My own two features
Bloodlust and Pearls Before Swine have their basis
in exploitation and genre film-making. They hopefully contribute
to these film zones by attempting a new interpretation of the
genre and subject matters they deal with. But they have only hints
about the revolution in cinema that interests me. I therefore
consider them to a certain extent 'juvenilia' (early works), especially
Bloodlust.
I hope that
in the future I will be able to realise some of the more recent
ideas I have had about cinema.
For me, also,
particularly genre and taboo subjects of sex, death and violence
are perfect mediums to express the more deeper philosophical/cinematic
matters that interest me.
My film passions
are also practical and political. Through MUFF, film writings
and my other film activities, I hope I am contributing to the
cause of fostering a different voice in Australian film. It is
no secret I find the majority of Australian cinema M.O.R., insipid
and just plain dull. There is much we can do to improve this situation.
Richard
Wolstencroft, April 2003
Pearls Before Swine excerpt(1999)
The Second Coming Volume One TRAILER (2015)
FILMOGRAPHY:
Shorts
-
Early
Shorts (early 1980s): (Often
featuring RW and two childhood/teenage friends Mark Horponitch
and Jamie White. Some of these we co-wrote and directed also as
a collective. Super 8s marked and the rest shot on Video. "Redux"
means in this context early imitation of said film with same title)
Plasticine
Godzilla - Animation - Super 8 (My first film made in 1980
at 11 years of age)
In Search
of U.F.O's
The Pillow
Fight
Synopsis: Goes awry.
Halloween
(Redux)
Mad Max
(Redux)
Smelly
Magnums
Send up of Dirty Harry movies
Sad Case
Send up of Basket Case
Dr. Who
and the Attack of the Bean Bags
Send up of Dr. Who
Dorothy
and John
Synopsis: Mock Diet Infomercial
Three untitled
Slasher shorts shot on video
Early to Mid Eighties more Serious shorts on Super 8 and Video:
Danse
Macabre 10 mins
Starring and directed by Richard Wolstencroft and Jamie White.
Synopsis: Murder in Lower Templestowe as an evening of two friends
ends in Violence.
Alias
Version 1 & 2 Length approx 10 mins each
Directed by Richard Wolstencroft Starring RW, Chris Williams,
Marcus Corn, Jamie White and others.
Synopsis: Send up of the film Alien, second version more
elaborate and shot at Radiation Lab in Yallambie.
The Elevator
(VHS video)
Starring and directed by Richard Wolstencroft.
Synopsis: An intolerant business executive takes an elevator ride
straight to hell
The Blaxton
Fate (1983, 20 mins, Super 8)
Starring Jamie White Directed by Richard Wolstencroft.
Synopsis: A caretaker minds a spooky house in South Yarra that
is possessed by the spirit of a evil young girl.
The Joker
(1983, 10 mins, Super 8)
Starring Marcus Corn and Chris Williams Directed By Richard Wolstencroft.
Synopsis: The local prankster pulls his final prank.
16 Red
Pencils (Working Title: Nothing) (1984, 18 mins)
Written by Richard Wolstencroft Directed and Produced by Richard
Wolstencroft and Marcus Corn. Starring RW, Jamie White and Jill
Corn.
Synopsis: A tale of a disaffected Private School boy who descends
into a world of violence and insanity. Film incorporates abstract
and experimental sequences, shot on Location in Templestowe, Doncaster
and at Ivanhoe Grammar School.
Shorts post 1986:
Angel
Dust (1987, 12 mins, Super 8)
Starring Mark and Colin Savage, Paul Harrington, Zero Montana
and others.
Synopsis: Two drug deals go wrong as our hero is betrayed by a
femme fatale with fatal results.
The Savages
(10 mins approx., Super 8)
Starring Mark and Colin Savage.
Synopsis: Two brothers attempt to kill each other in bizarre ways
in park as part of some perverse game and succeed!
Off Season
(1989, 8 mins, 16mm, Trailer)
Starring Colin Savage, James Cain, Rebekah Kay, RW and others.
Based on the Book by Jack Ketchum (aka Dallas Mayr). Directed
by Richard Wolstencroft. Shot on the Mornington Peninsula.
NOTE: Wolstencroft attempted to make this as his first feature.
"Hey,
Hey, We're The Prostitutes" (1989, 6 mins, Super 8)
Film Clip and live footage for The Prostitutes
"Hooray"
(mid 90s, 4 mins, 16mm)
SNOG film clip. Live footage Shot and Directed by Richard Wolstencroft.
More recent Shorts:
Natasha
Never Learns
credited as Richard Masters director/writer
Victoria
Says Uncle
credited as Richard Masters director/writer
The Question
Concerning CP (2001, 30 mins, video)
credited as Richard Masters director/writer
Macbeth
(2003, 20 mins, mini DV)
Made with the drama students of La Trobe University. Directed
by Richard Wolstencroft.
Excerpts of a modern retelling of the Scottish Play with Macbeth
as a drug dealer.
The Man
who Spanked a Thousand Women (2004, 30 mins, mini DV)
The Dave Neilson Nu-West Interview San Marcos CA
Interviewer Kristen Condon
Features:
Bloodlust
(1990, 89 mins)
co-writer/director w Jon Hewitt
The Intruder
(1991) (uncompleted)
director
Pearls
Before Swine (1999, 96 mins)
writer/director
The Beautiful and Damned (2008, 100 mins)
writer/director
The Last Days of of Joe Blow (2012, 90 mins)
writer/director
Out on DVD from Monster Pictures, Feb 2016.
The Second Coming Volume One (2015, 85 mins)
writer/director
Based on Yeats and starring Michael Tierney, Boyd Rice, Gene Gregorits, Jerome Alexandr, William Margold, Kim Fowley and Pete Doherty
The Second Coming Volume Two (2015, 80 mins)
writer/director
starring Jim Goad, Michael Parle, Bruce LaBruce, Terry McMahon, Mark Savage, Frank Howson, and Kristen Condon
The Debt Collector (2018, currently in post-production)
with John Brumpton, Roger Ward, Jack Ellis, Kristen Condon, Mal Kennard and Andy McPhee
Feature Doco:
The Making
of Pearls Before Swine (2005) mini DV
Shot by Mark Bloothoofd. Compiled by Richard Wolstencroft and
Kristen Condon.
Completed
Scripts as yet unproduced and New Projects:
Nemesis
By Richard Wolstencroft and Jon Hewitt
Titus
Andronicus by W. Shakespeare Adapted by Boyd Rice and Richard
Wolstencroft
Three other
feature projects are in various stages of scriptwriting, preparation
and pre-production. Other non fiction documentary and TV projects
are also being prepared and conceived.
SELECT
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Filmnet
various see archive site
if
magazine
Misanthrope
magazine issue 2
Fangoria
Magazine issue 162
Large
magazine various
Beat
Magazine (editor 1989-1990)
catalogues
of Stockholm Int Film festival 1999,
Puchon Int. film Festival 2000, Sitges Film festival
2000, Ajijic Film Festival 2001.
