Star Voyager: Exploring Space on Screen (ACMI, 22 September 2011 – 29 January 2012)
Margaret and David: 25 Years Talking Movies (ACMI, 17 August – 4 December 2011)
I am really reluctant to criticise anything about new shows at ACMI. Having written quite a nasty review of their Setting the Scene exhibition and then nit-picked at the much better Dreams Come True, I don’t want to seem like I have it in for them. I can also appreciate that we in Melbourne are fortunate to have the place at all: film fans in other Australian cities would love to have such a resource. So I don’t want to seem ungrateful for their new exhibition Star Voyager: Exploring Space on Screen. Once again, though, if I am honest I have to say I came away a little under-whelmed. I’ll keep this brief because as I said I don’t want to harp.
As with Dreams Come True, this is not nearly as problematic as Setting the Scene, avoiding many of that exhibition’s truly debilitating issues: things like layout and presentation of items are generally fine this time around. The big issue that remains, though, is one I have a nagging feeling might be inherent to the kind of moving-image gallery ACMI is trying to be: the oddity of presenting films in a gallery setting. A large part of the best content in this exhibition is film and video footage: there’s Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) and other early silent films about space exploration; a great Fleischer Koko the Clown cartoon; some interesting contrasts of real launch footage with Hollywood recreations such as Apollo 13; a blistering attack by Tom Lehrer (embedded below) on rocket scientist Wernher von Braun; and so on. It’s good stuff, but it’s inherently problematic to present this kind of thing on wall-mounted screens in a gallery setting. There’s probably several hours of footage in the exhibition, which means it takes considerable stamina to sample a significant portion of it. Aside from a few genuine “installations,” most of it would be best enjoyed sitting down, in a theatre or at home on a couch, edited together into a documentary film or television show. So I worry that ACMI may never get around the fundamental problem that films are not best appreciated while walking around an exhibition space.
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