Jeni Thornley
Birthday: Place of Birth:
Synopsis
Jeni Thornley is a documentary filmmaker, writer and film valuer. Her poetic essay documentaries: Maidens (1978), collaborative feature film and Penguin book, For Love or Money: a history of women and work in Australia (1983), To the Other Shore (1996) and Island Home Country (2008) are landmark films in Australian independent and feminist cinema, widely distributed and also broadcast on ABC TV and SBS. Her films are available online and DVD via beamafilm, Ronin Films and Anandi Films.
Acting
memory film: a filmmaker’s diary
‘memory film: a filmmaker’s diary’ is an immersive poetic documentary based on Jeni Thornley’s Super8 archive (1974-2003) filmed during the decades of her political and personal filmmaking, while producing ‘Maidens’, ‘To the Other Shore’, ‘Island Home Country’ and the collaborative feature ‘For Love or Money’. Documenting the activism of three decades amidst the intense sexual politics of radical feminism and social change, ‘memory film’ tells the inner story of a journey of liberation – gender fluidity, utopian feminism, love and its tribulations, the pleasure and pain of motherhood, violence against women, the desire for a world free of war and colonizing, and ultimately mortality and impermanence.
