FILMS THAT ARE NOT TERRIBLY ANNOYING
Beards of Evil(small) Mr. Benevolent (small) The Buffs (small) Eiffel Tower Sponge Film (small) The Birds do a Magnificent Tune (small) A Few Details
Eleven Short Films
Sagely Words of Criticism

A film-maker representing his own films for sale masquerades as a sales agent, using the irresistible trading name:
"Films That are not Terribly Annoying".

Have such films ever been made?
Will distributors, or collectors of the esoteric be hypnotised by this extraordinary claim?
Will exhibition opportunities and sales eventuate?

After meagre sales to SBS TV (Australia), ABC TV (Australia), The National Film Lending Library (Australia), and that last outpost of Bolshevism, the Carringbush Public Library, things look bleak for this unsophisticated non-businessman. Nevertheless, after a massive PR campaign on a never-visited web-site, "Films That are not Terribly Annoying" could one day prove as popular around the world as they are when projected on the film-maker's lounge-room wall.
Here are some fabricated testimonials from these lounge-room screenings:
"They were not as annoying as they could have been."
"Is it true that your wife's mother made the vinyl screen? It is first-rate."
"I forgot to bring anything to drink. Do you have any more wine?"
In response to this litany of praise, the film-maker made more and more short films. In mere decades there were eleven of the little beauties which could wear the imprimatur of quality "Films That are not Terribly Annoying". The Eleven films were joined together and named "Some Films to Watch". It was hoped people would recognise that they had an obligation to watch the films. Failing that, perhaps moths would be attracted to the projector beam, and appear to be paying attention to the film-maker's work.
Title: Some Films to Watch
 Subtitle: Eleven Films that are not Terribly Annoying
Short synopsis: A feature-length compilation of short films by C f h Windmill, rolling in the in the mire of quotidian life.
Date: 1980 to 2000
Observation: (20 wasted years)
Total running length: 102 mins
Country: Australia
Director: Chris Windmill
Producers: Chris Windmill, Sarah Zadeh, the Australian Film Commission, Film Victoria
Language: English
Genre: Comic/Alternative/Short Film. (O how I love thee, Beguiling and Misleading word ‘Alternative’)
Original Formats: 16mm, Betacam SP, Super 8 (B&W and Colour)
Distribution Format: Betacam SP (PAL) - other formats and TV standards can be made. Two short film titles, 'The Birds Do a Magnificent Tune’ and ‘A Woman is Doing the Dishes’ are also available as 16 mm film-prints.
Screen Ratio: 1.33
Sound: All mono, except two short titles are in stereo (mono compatible).
Territorial rights available: All distribution and exhibition rights (Free to Air Television, Pay Television, Theatrical and Non-Theatrical) in all countries of the world... and beyond. (Purchasers acquiring rights in worlds other than this one, are advised to verify the existence and business viability of such territories).
Categories and target audience: These films must be watched by all human beings, if only to ascertain if they like them. (People who like seeing strong, well-acted characters may be exempted from viewing).
Contact: C f h Windmill
Tel: 61 8 8981 2789
Address: GPO Box 1690 Darwin NT 0801 AUSTRALIA
E-mail: cfhwmill@ozemail.com.au
Return to top
Title: SOME FILMS TO WATCH
Subtitle: ELEVEN FILMS THAT ARE NOT TERRIBLY ANNOYING
The programme is made up of these eleven short film titles.
1. ‘The Birds do a Magnificent Tune’ 26 mins, 16mm, colour, 1996
Winner of the Kino Cinemas Award for Creative Excellence in an Australian Short Film, Melbourne International Film Festival, 1996.
With Angela Twigg and Andrew Blackman. Music by Robin Casinader. Director of Photography Peter Falk.

The Birds do a Magnificent Tune The story of Pinry, a museum curator who works by day, and her husband, Bernard, a greyhound photographer, who works by night. Recently married, the couple only see one another on weekends, which makes life a little lonely. So they love the weekends they spend together, during which they show mutual worship through devotional rituals involving tidying their home.

This romantic worship is almost wordless, but is based on an understood private language that they have evolved.

They keep catching glimpses of a pair of elderly neighbours, who are a possible future projection of themselves.

The old couple don’t speak English. They have an obvious kind of isolation which is a bit disturbing and portentous for Pinry and Bernard to witness.

Pinry and Bernard also have an obsessive nostalgia for their wedding day, and for some extraordinarily esoteric marital information given to them by their priest.
2. ‘A Woman is Doing the Dishes’ 15 min, 16mm, Black and White, 1999
A low budget, low tech, farce about desperate social couplings in small town tropical Australia. Recent!

A Woman is Doing the Dishes 1 Adele is washing dishes when she receives an unexpected visit. The visitor would like to be Adele’s friend. But, whenever she senses rejection, Adele’s guest can’t help making enemies… and fighting them. A Woman is Doing the Dishes 2
3. ‘The Buffs’ 7 mins, Betacam SP, colour, 1994
Screened in Australia by the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

The Buffs Members of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes demonstrate their rituals, discuss their history, and fears of imminent extinction, in a modern world where men’s lodges are an anachronism. Their world is a mixture of the arcane, cute and strange.
4. ‘Satan’s Machine’ 5 ½ mins, 16mm, Black and White, 2000
Cheap. Sort of Funny. Just made!

Satan's Machine A man with a terrible cold has run out of handkerchiefs. They remain wet on the clothesline. His neighbour wants to use the clothesline. She has terrible taste in music, an evil temperament, and a 1984 Nissan Pulsar hatchback.
5. ‘The New Shoes’ 8 mins, 16mm, colour, 1990
Screened on SBS TV (Australia). Experimental and yet entertaining.

The New Shoes Wild associative hallucination about some breath-takingly shiny shoes. Incorporates ugly post-surgical imagery, and shoes captured in conversation.
6. ‘The Cuttock-Heads’ 6 mins, Super 8, colour, 1991
Screened on SBS TV (Australia). Very low budget comedy. Employs a weird subtitling device to good comic effect.

The Cuttock-Heads The Cuttock-Heads , the most minimal evocation of a rock band ever created, achieve fame while on tour in their own flat.
7. Eiffel Tower Sponge Film’4 mins, Super 8, colour, 1991
Delirious tourist film popular in various Fringe-oriented film Festivals.

Eiffel Tower Sponge Film They are a very good likeness of the Eiffel Tower, but they are much more absorbent. They inspire profound feelings of nostalgia as they erode, and rapturous tourist memories fade.
8. ‘Beards of Evil’ 10 mins, 16mm, colour, 1984

Beards of Evil A naive, young gardener, the Candide of the horticultural world, is oppressed by evil, bearded men. He is driven towards ultimate desolation, while being burdened by a vast weight of suitcases.
9. ‘Mr. Benevolent’ 13 mins, Super 8, colour, 1988

Mr. Benevolent Three people grow to worship the once-powerful West Australian tycoon, Alan Bond. Features Anthony Morgan, and Greg Fleet (sometime darlings of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival).
10. ‘Queen’s Birthday’ 5 mins, 16mm, Black and White, 1980
Screened on SBS TV (Australia).

Queen's Birthday This definitive anti-royalist work of agit-prop was accidentally forgotten during the recent Australian Republican Referendum. As a result Australia remains in the firm grip of the Monarchists. Queen Elizabeth (2) demeans one of her working-class subjects on her birthday.
11. ‘Mystery Love’ 5 mins, 16mm, Black and White and Colour, 1985
Screened in many Australian Art Film Venues.

Mystery Love A Woman falls in love with the guy next door, The Pope. A Big Mistake.
Return to top
Criticism: THE WINDMILL OF MY MIND © Adrian Martin
(Author and Critic for the Melbourne Age) September 1994


The films of Chris Windmill are quietly mad. His films begin from the charming, irritating minutiae of everyday experience - shopping, cleaning shoes, hanging out the washing, going for a picnic in the park - and enlarge them into magnificent, terrifying obsessions. Windmill’s ever-modest heroes and heroines live for no higher purpose than to fill out the days and minutes of their ordinary lives. As a consequence, every imaginable flight of poetry is concentrated in these little activities.

Hallucinatory associations of sight or sound begin to accumulate; abrupt narrative reveries take form. In this universe where nothing much means anything and every small detail is endlessly fascinating, Windmill offers us a homegrown surrealist revolution. But these fevers of the imagination are tempered by a limpid pathos, a sense of life’s limit and its fond comedy - dreams without portfolio, knightly quests without faith.

As a stylist, Windmill is a surprising, original mix of primitivism and sophistication. Like other radical naifs of the cinema - like Sergei Paradjanov, Aki Kaurismaki, Luc Moullet, George Kuchar - he strips filmmaking down to its elementary building blocks. Static frames, coloured filters, non-actorly recitations, domestically contrived optical tricks reminiscent of the early days of silent cinema - one encounters them in their full materiality, disconcerting, poignant and lyrical. Then, on this array of familiar devices and gestures stripped down and laid bare, Windmill proceeds to piece together his own audio-visual grammar, with its own odd, unique strategies and codes.

Again like the great naifs - and also like those idiosyncratic engineers of screen gags, Jacques Tati or Jerry Lewis - Windmill forges, from one mad moment of his movies to the next, a special form of hyper-logic. The path of his film-daydreams is not simply absurdist or irrational but, on the contrary, compulsively rational and systematic. To watch Chris Windmill’s films is to be seized, as in a sudden embrace, by this genteel but fully deranged hyper-logic - this subjective hallucination which leaves no speck of the everyday untransformed.
Return to top
Congratulations. You are the first, and only visitor to this prestigious site.
This site was last updated during the Gothic Revival Period (1749-1850).
And... Did you know that http://www.FilmsThatAreNotTerriblyAnnoying.com.au has the longest internet domain name in the world outside Wales?
I confess... This is a Site under construction, and the alleged domain name is as yet unregistered. Oh well.
Certified Luddite Friendly. Guaranteed unadulterated by video, audio, or animated content.