by Damien Spiccia
Revelation Perth International Film Festival’s director, Jack Sargeant fills us in on the philosophy behind one of the most unique film festivals in Australia, nay, the world!
Congratulations on this year’s programme. It’s another exciting mix of premieres, international features, docs, shorts – it’s just gravy for film lovers. When you’re putting it together, do you have a specific kind of remit or guiding vision that shapes things?
“You want to show what’s good, what’s out there, what you like. Other than that, it’s open. But then, what’s interesting is that patterns emerge. With something like Lesbian Space Princess, for example, you don’t go out saying, ‘Oh, I want to find a film like that’, because it’s so unique. We’ve got The End, which is a musical, but it’s not a musical you’d expect, and The Extraordinary Miss Flower, which has a musical component to it. So, these things emerge, and you suddenly start noticing these patterns, but you don’t go out looking for them.”
Speaking of Lesbian Space Princess, Rev has always been a champion for queer cinema, and this year you’re also screening The First Last Time, Scarlet Blue, Velvet Vision, about the making of Pink Narcissus, amongst others. It feels like spotlighting queer voices is part of Rev’s DNA.
“I come from a background in underground, independent and cult film. If you’re interested in auteur-driven film, it’s very hard not to see lots of queer films. The whole history of auteur-driven film is driven by outsider filmmakers and a lot of outsider filmmakers would probably be under the LGBTQI+ umbrella. The LGBTQI+ influence throughout all of the arts – of society, obviously – but all of the arts is immense, and it’s part of who we are as viewers, part of who we are as a culture. But we don’t go out and say that we need to find two films from this community. It’s just there, because it’s all really great stuff. To me, it’s part of everything.”
The End is one of the bigger selections this year, alongside Eddington by Ari Aster. What are the smaller, hidden gems that you’re really excited about?
“They’re all great. We only program stuff that we like. A Grand Mockery is a really interesting film from Brisbane. That’s entirely shot in Super 8”
You’re running a Super 8 workshop alongside that one.
“The filmmakers [Adam C Briggs and Sam Dixon] are gonna be there. Returning to Super 8, to analogue media, is a really big thing, when so much has been online and digital. So, to have a workshop about that where people could talk to the filmmakers, to me that’s really important. But we’ve got other films that I’m really excited about. Pater Noster is a great low budget horror film. We’ve shown work from the director [Christopher Bickel] before, and he’s just got such a great take on genre and low budget filmmaking and has such a great attitude, and that attitude comes through in the film.”
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is returning to Rev…
“What makes that exciting is that it’s on a double bill with Chain Reactions, a documentary. It is five people talking about the film, explaining the impact the film had on them personally, and then kind of extrapolating from that. It’s like a real benchmark in a documentary about a genre film.”
The Pavement documentary [Pavements] sounds wild, like, a reflection on the process of filmmaking itself.
“I mean, it’s about Pavement, but rather than just being people talking about being in a band, it’s also got elements that address other kind of possibilities, one of which is a feature film about Pavement, one of which is the museum of Pavement opening in New York. When you watch the film, it all becomes totally clear. You asked at the beginning what the guiding vision is, and just thinking about it as we’re talking, there’s a lot of films that explore the form, that explore the possibilities of film; filmmakers thinking about what they’re doing in a different way. Zodaic Killer Project does that, even something like The End brings up this idea of what does it mean to make a musical in a post-apocalyptic setting, you know? It’s raising questions about film or what we expect from film. Eight Postcards from Utopia is entirely constructed from archival footage. Eno is different every time it’s screened. These are all films that are looking at things in a different way. That’s a really exciting aspect that we’re seeing this year.”
You mentioned Eno, which uses generative AI to change with every screening. I was reading about how festivals are generally approaching AI with a degree of caution and skepticism, but with Eno, and The Thinking Game, you’re screening films that are more concerned with exploring AI’s creative potential.
“The Thinking Game is a science documentary. AI is a really contentious issue, and on one hand, I acknowledge that we need to be cautious, but on the other hand, we have to recognise that it’s a tool, and how we use it is up to us. The philosopher Jacques Derrida referred to writing as a pharmakon in this essay called Plato’s Pharmacy, which is an analysis of Plato’s philosophy, where the god Theuth gives the King the gift of writing. The King says, ‘Why have you given me this? God creates with his voice, and this is the death of the spoken word. You have given me a pharmakon’, meaning a poison. But Derrida, writing 2,000 years later, says, ‘actually, if you look at ancient Greek, pharmakon also means cure.’ So, is writing a poison, or is it a cure? It will stop your memory, and it will stop the importance of self-presence, but it also means that what you say and think can be heard by a wide audience. So, if you think of this concept of technology being both a poison and a cure, then you apply it through the ages. The camera – will it put painters out of work? Some. But some are going to invent modern art. I think that when people say, ‘AI is just bad’, on one level, yeah, I agree with that. But on the other level, it’s like we don’t know what’s going to happen…in a sense, it’s a tool.”
Once again, you’ve included a few WA-made features this year like Skeleton Girls and School of Hard Knocks. Why is it important for Rev to highlight WA-made films?
“Well, Skeleton Girls, that’s somebody dreaming big in WA, making a wild cult film, that’s exciting and should be encouraged. Part of a film festival’s job is to give a voice to people who wouldn’t normally get a voice, and that has to include people who live in the local community. I don’t think that can be underestimated. That’s why the Academic Conference is important, because you get a room of people talking about what they’re doing, what they’re researching, what they’re thinking about. It’s important that they feel that they can share their ideas with their community.”
The WA-made thread continues with retrospective screenings of Fran and Shame.
“Both films deserve to be seen again. Part of retrospective screenings is to facilitate that audience who’ve only seen stuff online. So, to have those WA films, it says that WA has always been on the big screen, that it’s part of the global cinematic culture. Retrospectives are also about a sense of place. How do people fit in this world? We’ve got the Wim Wenders retrospective. Alice in the Cities, it’s about looking for a home, it’s about place. We’ve got a documentary, Marlon Williams: Two Worlds which is literally about living in two worlds, linguistically, but also culturally. Of Caravan and the Dogs is a documentary about journalists in Russia and what’s happening to them, the Errol Morris documentary Separated is about what happened to children under the first Trump Presidency who were stopped at borders. I’ve even called a selection of short films Places and People! Stories are universal, but they’re also personal. They’re also about community and where you are and where you’re from and where you’re going.”
Rev’s in its 28th year, and this is your 17th year curating. Rev commissions shorts, docs and VR works. It’s got its own streaming service and Academic Conference. So, looking ahead, what else would you like to see Rev achieve in the coming years?
“One of the most important things about Rev is that we try and do new things. I can only speak for myself – for me, it’s what’s happening creatively that I like or I think is important, or I want to share with the world. We’ve done some great things over the years, like having Goblin come and do a live soundtrack for Suspiria. I got Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth to come and do a performance with Leah Singer, his partner. We had Decibel performing live projected scores. I co-curated a show called Other Suns with Erin Coates down at Fremantle Art Center, I did a Mike Kelley three-screen installation. I love that. Richard [Sowada, Rev founder] brought over a then unknown band called Amyl and the Sniffers. All those things are really exciting. To find those things in whichever way they manifest, and they contribute to the festival, and to a conversation – that’s important. That excitement that the audience feels, that’s really important to me. That excitement of what’s going to happen next. Like the excitement I feel looking at the blank screen in September, and wondering what are we going to do next.”
The 28th Revelation Perth International Film Festival runs from the 2nd to the 13th of July, 2025. The full programme can be viewed here.
