by FilmInk Staff
“Budgewoi is much safer now,” Robinson-Smith clarifies about his hometown. “But, when I was around 17 or 18, we’d go to this hotel in Toukley, which was listed as one of the most violent venues in NSW. That violence sort of trickled out through the area to the point where it became normalised. We would go to the hotel, watch fights break out all night and then get chased as we went back home.”
Robinson-Smith’s experience provided the bedrock for his proof-of-concept film, Budgewoi Boy, and the subsequent short film Mud Crab, which has taken the film festival circuit by storm over the last year. The film was made as his Master in Directing capstone project at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
Mud Crab follows a young woman who, reflecting on her own culpability, recounts the traumatising assault she witnessed of a young man in a small Australian coastal town.
The film stars Joshua Mehmet, who grew up with Robinson-Smith.
“Josh and I wanted to explore the idea of seeing someone you know in a pokie room one day and he’s put on 30 kilos, and all you can think is ‘what happened to that guy’,” shares Robinson-Smith. “You know this man was assaulted years earlier, but there is this shock when you randomly come across that person later and they’ve completely changed, both physically and mentally”.
Mud Crab had its world premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival 2022 and went on to play at numerous prestigious film festivals, such as Raindance and Aesthetica. For the filmmaker, showing the film in foreign territories was much easier than sharing the film with his hometown.
“I’ve definitely gotten some odd comments from people around Budgewoi,” Robinson-Smith admits. “Like I said, this place has changed, but one kilometre away in San Remo, it’s still the same. People often say, ‘Yeah it’s happening there, that is a different place’, but how much difference can that distance make? I find international audiences respond better to it because they can unpack it outside of the Australian context.”
As Robinson-Smith’s journey with Mud Crab continues – the film was recently nominated for the AACTA Best Short Film award – the filmmaker has already started making noise with his follow up short, We Used to Own Houses.
“My partner Jaclyn [Paterson, who shot Mud Crab and We Used to Own Houses] and I had to move back to Budgewoi because we wanted to make We Used to Own Houses and write a feature,” Robinson-Smith says. “I want to be able to rent in a liveable place and work enough days where I am not sapping my creative energy. We’ve had to make that sacrifice to continue making our art, which I’m sure previous generations also had to do, I just think it’s never been to this degree.”
Robinson-Smith was able to connect his frustrations with Sydney’s housing market to a poem by Alasdair Dunn in We Used to Own Houses. The film follows Thom, a determined renter, who confronts Ben, a burdened landlord. Within the confines of their meeting, cryptic verses echo, unravelling the hidden truths of a broken system.
“The thing that really frustrates me is that under these circumstances, the only people that will have access to filmmaking are those that come from a higher socio-economic background. Those people won’t really care about class politics, and so we’ll lose those films that shine a light on real issues.”
With We Used to Own Houses, Robinson-Smith has continued to build on his film festival accolades. The film premiered in the Accelerator Lab program at MIFF 2023 and recently played at the inaugural SXSW Sydney.
Robinson-Smith is currently in development on his debut feature film.
