The Physical TV Production Catalogue
(2006, 51:58 mins)
A woman named Thursday finds out she is going to be reincarnated as Tuesday. Her attempt to cheat the cycle of reincarnation unleashes a terrible beauty that leaves the other days of the week in turmoil. “A sweeping and sensual cinematic experience of music, dance and surreal fantasy - a shining example of putting the art back in arthouse” (Gold Medal Award Citation, Director’s Choice for Artistic Excellence, Park City Film Music Festival.).
(2006, non-linear)
 Animations, wallpapers and ring tones for mobile phones inspired by the book The Kamikaze Mind by Richard James Allen. The images are by Karen Pearlman who also selected and edited the illustrations for the book. The ring tones are by Michael Yezerski, Australian composer, who has collaborated with Allen to make music for other film adaptations of his writings. The Kamikaze Mind is a new form of novel, a deranged form of dictionary, a poem for the open minded, which crosses the boundaries between prose and poetry to deliver a text truly for the 21st century. These micro-animations and images are adaptations of just a few quotes from this delightful and always surprising book.
(2003, 8:30 minutes)
 A silent man enters a house and is confronted by memories from the past…
Through a series of dance routines we watch the couples relationship at different moments. As the man is drawn through the house he draws closer to the present and the couple’s final confrontation. Together is a film about the things we leave behind…
(2003, 11: 38 minutes)
 A delightful and infectious animated dance film, Down Time Jaz is a ferris wheel ride through family life from the point of view of the second child who must save the rest of her family from itself.
(2002, 1:55 minutes)
 A lateral look at the usual start of term school report on fun activities during the break(down). This film is streaming through Switch TV. Click the image on the right to view the whole of What I did on my Nervous Breakdown.
(2002, 12 minutes)
 No Surrender tells the story of a young Indigenous woman who is invaded, terrorised and physically attacked by an unseen intruder wielding a camera. As she nears the point of surrender, the woman’s spirit separates from her body and, through the language of dance and spiritual movement, she finds the strength to fight back and overcome her attacker.
No Surrender is a film about the struggle between invasion and resistance. It is about the incredible capacity of the human spirit to overcome insurmountable odds.
(2001, 5 minutes)
 In a dance film which contrasts yoga and fight choreography, violent thoughts interrupt a search for tranquility.
(2001, 6 minutes)
 A superhero who speaks only the language of dance makes an outrageous, graceful and rambunctious physical acceptance speech.
(2000, 1:40 minutes)
 In A Dancer Drops Out of the Sky digitally generated choreography allows our hero to slide from Italy via Sydney to Poland and back to the clouds in one extended phrase of movement.
The Hope Machine
(1997, 23:13 minutes)
 The Hope Machine is a very contemporary look at the subject of hope with a techno pop edge and a worldly point of view. Choreographed in, on, and around a two story "hope machine" created by Australian visual artist Simeon Nelson, the dancers revel in energy which is the engine of hope. This video dance draws fragments of the real world into its choreography making it a dance on hope which is tinged with melancholy - a not quite convinced, but damn willing to try look at creating hope from the exuberance and daring of dance.
(1997, 19:05 minutes)
 One man's journey through the memories, hopes, dreams and projections of what his emotional life has been or might have been. Through these 13 different dance duets with a range of tonalities, details, innuendos and revelations (and of course 13 is a rather unlucky number), we see the high points, the low points, the sublime and the deeply painful, the confronting, and the just plain silly moments from different relationships he has had or might have had, or wished he'd had.
The Frightening of Angels
(1997, 36:07 minutes)
A video dance about suffering and pushing through despair. The dancers, caught like prisoners behind the bars of the Port Arthur Historic Site, struggle to stretch out of their tightly constricted spaces and movement vocabularies to find freedom of movement and spirit. The backdrop of the Historic Site, brought to life very differently than on the usual tourist videos, provides the cells and broken stones of misery and at the same time a transcendently gorgeous vista of hope. The soundtrack borrows a classic statement by Beethoven about the power of beauty and creativity to transcend misery.
(1996, 11: 25 minutes) [ documentary]
 A documentary about creating video dance which looks at the making of a new art form - contemporary dance in electronic media. Includes glimpses of early experiments in the form by Richard James Allen and Karen Pearlman who would go on to become the founders of The Physical TV Company. This documentary is currently available through broadband streaming. Click on the image on the right to see "What is Video Dance?"
Sam in a Pram
(1996, 18:10 minutes)
 Sam remembers wild childhood adventures with his uncles and aunts ‘riding roughshod around the corners of the sky’. Sam in a Pram is a light-hearted sequel to What To Name Your Baby featuring six exuberant dancers whipping around the cavernously industrial Inveresk Railyards in Tasmania. The rough and tumble movement vocabulary references Mad Max films and Keystone Cops comedy and then stretches these references into highly articulate and astoundingly fast-paced, fully extended, electrically crackling dancing.
(1995, 12: 45 minutes)
 What To Name Your Baby is a dance of exaggerations about the joys and terrors of expectant parents as they contemplate the arrival of their first baby. The locations and speed capture the manic energy of the hyper expectant father and preserve a glimpse of a magical moment in the delighted dancing of the nine months pregnant Karen Pearlman.
Blue Cities
(1993, 8 minutes)
 A Party Girl and an Angel meet on the border of heaven. "Blue Cities is an encounter between a gently bureaucratic border angel and a woman caught in limbo between death and heaven" (The Village Voice, New York City). She has a lot of questions for him and he for her: "What message do you want to leave for eternity? State your name and number clearly at the sound of the beep." Blue Cities combines text ("urban poetry, immediate and demanding", Adelaide Advertiser), with dance ("exhilarating", The Sydney Morning Herald) and chroma key/blue screen technology in a cinematic blend that "touchingly evoked the uncertainties of fallible human beings when confronted with by eternal mysteries" (The New York Times).
Mistakes of Heaven
(1991, 12.25 minutes)
 Mistakes of Heaven is a poetic/expressionistic 16mm black and white film, which shows a man’s progress upward from one stage of hell to the next. It is an experimentally expressed narrative – told in images and movement – of a man tangled in dreams and ambitions which are at once uplifting, mystifying and humbling.
Mistakes of Heaven is a humanistic vision of a man who discovers his empathy for others and thus gains some ascent from his own misery. |
