Julie HIGGENBOTHAM
Mirka film 1973
Saturday 10 May
2 pm -3 pm
Paul Cox joined the photography department of Prahran College in the late 1960s and saw his time at the College as something as an apprenticeship in which he learnt to make movies alongside the students he taught. Whilst at Prahran, his films offered collaborative opportunities for students, graduates and fellow staff – a model of working that Cox would take into her later feature-film career and would help him become recognised as Australia’s most prolific film auteur.
Join Prahan alumni Peter Leiss and Mimmo Cozzolino with award-winning critic and essayist Adrian Danks to discuss film-making at Prahan College and watch short films, including Leiss’s 16 mm three-minute student film Metamorphosis (1970) based on the Franz Kafka novella of the same title, and Bad hair day (1970) by Mimmo Cozzolino.
Free program
Mimmo Cozzolino is an Italian-born Australian designer, photographer and artist. Cozzolino partnered in and ran his own design studios for over three decades. In 1975 he co-founded ‘All Australian Graffiti’, a freelance illustration co-operative which celebrated an Australian approach to illustration over borrowed international styles. A founding member of the Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA) in 1987, he was inducted into the AGDA Hall of Fame in 2016.
Cozzolino has authored books including the best-selling The Kevin Pappas Tear-Out Postcard Book, (Penguin Books, 1977) and Symbols of Australia (Penguin Books, 1980), the first ever study of Australian trademarks and commercial iconography. He has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions, and has been a sought-after speaker, educator and leader in the fields of Photomedia and Design.
Cozzolino holds a Diploma of Art & Design/Graphic Design from Prahran College of Advanced Education (1971), a Bachelor of Fine Art/Painting, Monash University (2005) and a Master of Fine Art/Photomedia from Monash University (2012). His artworks, photographs, designs and posters are held in the collections of the SLV, the NGA, the Art Gallery Ballarat, RMIT Design Archive and in private collections.
Adrian Danks is a teacher, editor, curator, award-winning critic and essayist. He is Associate Professor, Cinema Studies and Media, at RMIT University, co-curator of the Melbourne Cinémathèque, and was an editor of Senses of Cinema between 2000 and 2014. He is author of the edited collections, A companion to Robert Altman (Wiley, 2015); American-Australian cinema (Palgrave, 2018) with Steve Gaunson; and the monograph, Australian international pictures (1946–75) (Edinburgh UP, 2023) with Con Verevis. He has published hundreds of essays and book chapters on cinema, with a specific focus on Australian cinema, film history and film authorship. He has contributed essays to DVD collections released by Criterion, Madman, the BFI, Arrow and Masters of Cinema, and has served on selection committees, curatorial boards and judging panels.
Peter Leiss is a photographer, filmmaker, actor and director.
Leiss studied photography and filmmaking at Prahran College from 1970-1971. He worked at the Australian Broadcasting Commission as an assistant film editor until 1974 and lectured in photography at the Centre for Adult Education, and in filmmaking at RMIT. The 1976 exhibition Images of India with Jon Rhodes was the first of many exhibitions of his work to be held at The Photographers' Gallery and Workshop (1973–2010). Subsequent solo exhibitions included Regression (1988), The Romper Stomper Series (1992), Prague: Identification by Blood (1997) and War Fever: 50 Images of Urban America, 1992–1994 (2004).
In 1979 Peter Leiss received a Visual Arts Board grant which supported him to study acting in New York. He studied at Herbert Berghof and Gene Frankel Studios, later appearing in numerous plays, films, soaps, TV shows and voice overs, both in the USA and Australia. Leiss was associate producer of Red White & Black Pictures in Los Angeles, which specialised in developing feature film projects (1992-93). Returning to Australia in 1995 Leiss became one of the founding directors of Wax Studios Theatre Company, which produced over 40 productions in three years.
Since 2001 Peter Leiss has been directing, shooting, writing, editing and producing digital films, for personal projects as well as commissioned works. His film credits include Romper Stomper (1992) (Still photographer), Amerikan Peephole (2006) (Director) and The Bridge at Midnight Trembles (2006) (Director).
