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Bill Mousoulis: Profile Whether or not one is in accord, or in sympathy, with the aesthetic world and philosophy of Bill Mousoulis, there is little doubt that he is amongst the most significant of film-makers active in the Melbourne Super-8 community. His significance is at least two-fold. On the one hand, a prodigious body of work - approximately thirty films in a six year career, almost all privately financed - is evidence enough of a committed passion for film-making and a prolific articulation and refinement of stylistic and thematic interests. On the other, as co-founder of the Melbourne Super-8 Film Group, Mousoulis helped establish a central organisational body for the Super-8 community where none had previously existed ..... Mousoulis, as
a film-maker, is self-taught, having neither a formal film school training
nor an academic acquaintance with film theory and history. Not surprisingly,
given his vast oeuvre, Mousoulis has made forays into a number of marginal
film genres such as the abstract film, the diary film and the essay film.
Yet he remains best known for his narrative dramas which, in the course
of time, have taken on the description of 'transcendental cinema' .....
A description of Mousoulis' style would point to his use of skeletal narratives,
a small cast placed in domestic and often banal situations affixed to
a quotidian reality, a concise and formal framing pattern (most often
classical), and an austere and passive use of camera without any overt
stylistic flourishes intruding on the spectator's contemplation of the
action. More often than not, the metaphysics of Mousoulis' world is embodied
in his film titles - Dreams Never End, Aspire to Infinity, Faith." © Rolando Caputo, 1988. This article was first published in Case Studies in Independent Production, AFTRS publication, 1988.
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