Rupture 2019 review: Terror Nullius

Australia

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      Within the first few minutes of Aussie art collective Soda_Jerk’s collage provocation, Terror Nullius, you’ll get a pretty good sense of the pleasures at hand.

      Whether re-editing scenes from the Mad Max franchise to have Charlize Theron (and an all-female cohort, not all of whom are from Fury Road) take down Mel Gibson, to juxtaposing snippets from Wake in Fright, Long Weekend, Crocodile Dundee, and a kanga-sploitation film unseen by me—to rewrite the kangaroo slaughter of Wake in Fright so that the kangaroos win—the film makes giddy fun of the reactionary aspects of Australian (and some Kiwi) cinema and politics, using its mashups to score points for aborigines, refugees, women, and, thanks to re-configured snippets from Priscilla Queen of the Desert and The Babadook, the non-hetero-normative.

      While you don’t have to have seen every film mentioned in Not Quite Hollywood to make sense of it all, it probably helps if you have a passing familiarity with some of some of the better known Australian exports, whether highbrow (Walkabout, Where the Green Ants Dream, Ten Canoes) or low (Road Games, Wolf Creek, BMX Bandits).

      It will also help if you have a playful sense of humour and a keen eye for the way the film fucks with its source texts—like editing in an image of Olivia Newton John (in leather-clad Grease mode) smiling triumphantly over the brutalized Mad Mel, as Nicole Kidman leaps over him on a BMX.

      If you’re in the know and alert, it’s pretty funny stuff.

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