Alice et Moi, dir. Micha Wold ‘Power without Punchlines’ by Simon Sellars. Originally published in RealTime magazine, #68 Aug-Sep 2005. The St Kilda Film Festival did not get off to an auspicious start. Opening night was supposed to showcase the cream of Australia’s top 100 shorts but the session was characterised by tired scenarios and [...]

by Simon Sellars ‘Melbourne Small Press: Maybe Next Year’. Originally published in overland magazine, Summer 2004. At this year’s Melbourne Writers’ Festival, John Murray appreciated the fact that short stories are a perfect barometer for measuring fresh literary talent, Eva Sallis likened short stories to “tantric sex in five minutes” and Frank Moorhouse bemoaned the [...]

Melatonin, photo: Kirsten Bradley by Simon Sellars Originally published in RealTime Magazine, #62, August/September 2004. I’m told “sleep music” is a new genre: music to listen to while dozing off. Emboldened by this, I visited Bus Gallery with palpable excitement. I’ve often yearned for a club that, instead of inducing forward motion through hyper-accelerated beats, [...]

L’Oeil ecoute (The Eye Hears) 1970; dir. Bernard Parmegiani by Simon Sellars ‘Liquid Architecture: the Parmegiani Experience’. Originally published in RealTime no.56, Aug-Sep 2003. Liquid Architecture 4 featured the work of 30 Australian and international artists, including French musique concrete/acousmatic pioneer, Bernard Parmegiani, and San Francisco noise merchants, Scott Arford and Randy HY Yau. Another [...]

Originally published in Jargon, summer 2001, under the pseudonym ‘Ziggy Omar’. The best bars in Melbourne combine kooky architecture with snappy ambience, ‘sound-of-now’ musical policies and the entertainment value of bored waiting staff. But be ever-vigilant: you and your slick posse may discover a great new place, only to return a short time later to [...]

Originally published in Jargon, summer 2001. Project Dumpling by Simon Sellars & Anna Hyde The discovery of gold in 1851 attracted Chinese immigration to Victoria, Australia on a large scale. The small Chinese community first occupied Celestial Ave in the heart of Melbourne, providing for the needs of the diggers – lodgings en route, food, [...]

Originally published in Abaddon #3, Autumn 2000. review by Simon Sellars Nothing sorts memories from ordinary moments. They claim remembrance when they show their scars (Chris Marker). The films of Chris Marker are often termed ‘essayist’, participating in a phenomenological play with deep roots in French intellectualism. Working within documentary and pseudo-documentary modes, they mimic [...]

reviews by Simon Sellars Originally published in Orb Speculative Fiction #0, Spring-Summer 1999. Robotomy by Andrés Vaccari. Saturn Press, $12.95. ISBN 0 646 32003 3 Abaddon #2 edited by Andrés Vaccari. Saturn Press, $6.95. ISSN 1441-046X. Robotomy In the 1960s, Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine ushered in the “New Wave” of science fiction. The stories [...]

Originally published in Abaddon # 2, Autumn 1999. THE FOOTBALL FACTORY Jonathan Cape ISBN 0-224-04302-1 reviewed by Simon Sellars The Football Factory, John King’s début novel, charts the lives of a group of football hooligans in present-day London, England. It has been re-issued to coincide with the release of England Away, King’s most recent book [...]