The Farmer's Cinematheque (2015)

John and Relvy Teasdale were farmers in the Wimmera region of north-western Victoria. Over more than fifty years they created a rich and evocative filmic record of working and community life in their particular dry-land farming district. For John and Relvy, farming and film-making were an inter-related devotional practice. Set against contemporary footage and embellished with story telling from members of the Teasdale family and the Wimmera community, "The Farmers' Cinematheque" stimulates thinking about the power of memory and the nature of our attachment to particular country, drawing parallels between Indigenous and settler modes of country-keeping and providing elements of revelation and affirmation about rural life. A meditation on the power of country and also a demonstration, quite literally, of the power of film, "The Farmer's Cinematheque" teases out important questions about our custodianship of places and communities in the context of a rapidly changing global environment.