In the long list of words that humans find disgusting, “moist” ranks among the most hated and the most innocuous. Why is this word so objectionable? Is it the mere suggestion of something displeasing? The mouthfeel? Or is it just social conditioning?
According to the Australian film-maker Philip Brophy in the opening crawl of his 1988 experimental short Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat, “These are moist times we live in … and things just keep getting wetter.” Don’t believe him? See for yourself. After whetting appetites back in the 80s, the Melbourne mainstay’s early films are returning to Melbourne international film festival – where they first screened. Almost four decades on, Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat and No Dance have been lovingly restored by the same cinematographer who first shot them – Ray Argall – for the twisted enjoyment of a whole new generation of thrill-seeking moviegoers.
From his groundbreaking Warhol Factory-esque experimental group → ↑ → (for those who can’t read arrows, that’s “Tsk Tsk Tsk”) to his collaborative partnership with legendary avant garde artist Maria Kozic, Philip Brophy is hardly being rediscovered. In fact, a whole generation of art students know Brophy as their teacher – among other things, he continues to lecture on film and sound at Melbourne’s RMIT.
Much like Brophy’s uproarious suburban-horror feature Body Melt, the lesser seen Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat delivers what is promised in its title. The film is broken down into four chapters over four days, each following what is essentially the same story. Man wakes up, man goes to work, man makes a total mess. With each instalment, we follow the central figure, brought to life by the cartoonishly slack-jawed Phillip Dean who, save for a few swearwords, remains mute for the whole film.
Taking inspiration from the emergent technologies of the 80s, Brophy transforms his frame into a computer screen filled with text. Wordy proclamations are bold if somewhat inchoate, such as: “What’s inside a body? More bodies. Body whole, body parts, body fluids. We are already inside out but we don’t know it yet.” What the hell, sure!
But Brophy’s treatise is also starkly prophetic, particularly when he raises the political concerns of a climate catastrophe still being defined back in 1988. The icecaps are melting, holes in the ozone have changed rainfall patterns, but there is “no spring of knowledge, no well of contentment” for us to fall back on, he warns. “Sink or swim – float if you’re lucky.” So the true horror of Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat isn’t so much being subjected to watching a turd slowly drop into a toilet bowl, but in discovering jaded art about the climate crisis was being made almost four decades ago.
Perhaps more so than his contributions as a film-maker, Brophy is known for his work as a composer and musician, and Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat has a signature Brophy score that will stick with you. Take, for example, the repetitious single rhythm created with the drum machine: ba / ba-ba-ba / ba / ba, which imitates the syllabic pattern of the film’s title: salt / sa-li-va / sperm / sweat.
No Dance, Brophy’s other offering at this year’s Miff, is a film about the advent of electronic music and the human urge to dance. Before being reshot in 16mm in 1985, a Super 8 version of No Dance was shown in music venues across Sydney and Melbourne. Ironically, the original was destroyed precisely because Brophy chose to project it on to the stages of the same sweaty nightclubs the film sought to document.
In this experimental work, best described as a free form video essay with rhythm, Brophy interrogates the juncture of rock and disco at a time when digital synthesisers and programmable drum machines were calling people back to the dancefloor. Like any good DJ, he blends musical styles and dance sensibilities, sometimes so freely that the mashup becomes mishmash. From break dancing to the unashamed novelties of “the twist”, the film takes an anthropological approach to its melange of studies.
The world is Brophy’s orifice, and he takes great pleasure in examining what’s inside. In both films he invites audiences into a splash zone, to experience what’s happening as opposed to simply viewing it. Whether gagging at the sight of vomit or tapping your foot to the beat, it’s an impulse that the maverick director invites.
Like all deserving bodies of work, Brophy’s is being given a new life and, thanks to Miff, his films make a return to the place where it all started. As he confesses in Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat: “You strive to have a presence in the world; to leave your mark upon it.” Like sweat patches and shit stains, the films of Philip Brophy certainly leave their mark.
The Philip Brophy Restorations are showing at ACMI on 21 & 22 August as part of Melbourne international film festival
