The Super8 Diaries Project (Trainwreck 20/20)

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Compiled over four years between 2004 and 2007 by Melbourne-based film producers (and obvious rabid music fans) Matt Richards and Jeremy Rouse, The Super8 Diaries is a snapshot in time of Australia’s independent rock scene. Filmed (surprise, surprise) entirely on Super8 cameras, the DVD compiles live footage from 11 bands: My Disco, Love of Diagrams, Tucker B’s, Colditz Glider, Mukaizake, Aleks And The Ramps, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Bang! bang! Aids!, Die! Die! Die!, The Tigers and Baseball. The low budget visuals complement the anarchic and lo-fi sensibilities of the bands captured here.

Filmed entirely in Melbourne, the Super8 Diaries is more or less a documentation of a burgeoning Victorian scene breeding bands that amalgamate a punk ethos and a rock’n’roll vibe. My Disco are filmed from the days when they were peddling vinyls, their songs more raw but their structures stilted and clunky, lacking the organic flow of their recent material. Surprise ARIA nominees Eddy Current Suppression Ring explode with ebullience, captured succinctly even on black and white film. The inclusion of the now-defunct Makaizake makes for some wonderful reminiscing, as does the footage of instrumental whiz kids Colditz Glider, who cram so many ideas into one song it’s amazing the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down around them.

Rough interviews with each of the bands are included, though this is where the disc comes unstuck. What was initially a celebration of underground Australian rock turns into an Us Vs Them situation as Matt and Jeremy continually press bands about Australian Idol and their thoughts on mainstream success. Belittling the mainstream doesn’t lend credence to the underground, and this tact makes the experience slightly unsettling.

On the menu front, the division of live footage and interview footage means you can cut the proverbial and move straight onto what makes the Super8 Diaries a fascinating experience. It would have been nice to have an option to watch all the footage, but this isn’t a film, this is a diary, and it highlights the ad hoc approach the filmmakers undertook to creating this DVD.

Ultimately, the Super8 Diaries will only serve to self-perpetuate the scene and won’t bring these bands to wider attention, although acts like My Disco, Tucker B’s and Eddy Current are doing it for themselves anyway. Which, by the way, isn’t a bad thing.

Extra Features
Live footage from the Super8 Diaries fundraiser – not shot on Super8 film!

Dom Alessio

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