Melanie Rodriga

Last updated • 4 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Melanie Rodriga (née Read; born 30 September 1954) is a New Zealand-Australian film maker, lecturer, and author. [1]

Contents

Early life

Born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Rodriga was the third child of Daphne Mary (Billie) and Albert Thomas (Bertram) Read. She is of Eurasian (Malay-Chinese-Portuguese) ancestry on her mother's side and British ancestry on her father's side. [2] Her father was a pianist arranger of the British Dance Band Era, playing with Bert Ambrose and Henry Hall (bandleader), among others. [3] The family moved from Malaysia to Sydney in 1961, and lived in the eastern suburb of Vaucluse. Rodriga graduated from Kambala CofE Foundation School for Girls in 1972. She then traveled to England where she studied filmmaking at Ravensbourne Polytechnic, Bromley, Kent.

Early career

Rodriga's career began in Sydney in 1974 at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where she was trained in production management and film editing for both drama and documentary. Her first film as writer/director was the 1976 experimental short Curiosities. In 1979 she edited Witches and Faggots, Dykes and Poofters. [4] This was one of the first documentaries about the lives of gay and lesbian people in Australia set against the backdrop of the first Sydney Mardi Gras and the arrests that followed. [5] In 1980, having moved to New Zealand, Rodriga began writing and directing her first three short films: Second Sight, about Sally Rodwell and Deborah Hunt of theatre group Red Mole, [6] Them's The Breaks, a documentary about street kids, and Hooks and Feelers, a short feature based on the Keri Hulme story. [7]

Later career

Rodriga's first feature-length film, Trial Run (1984), [8] starred Annie Whittle and was edited by Finola Dwyer. [9] It was the first film in New Zealand to be written and directed by a woman. [10] Whittle's character relocates to a remote cottage which appears to be haunted by a previous occupant. [10] Conceived by Rodriga as a feminist thriller, and seen by some critics as a feminist form of "Kiwi Gothic," [10] Trial Run was feminist in its work practices as well as its ethos: twenty of the twenty-nine people on the production crew were women. [11] Together with Gaylene Preston's Mr Wrong , Trial Run marked a turning point in New Zealand cinema. According to Barbara Cairns, "From this moment on, the centrality of the white, male hero, or anti-hero ... was if not displaced, then constantly undermined." [12] Cairns argues that Rodriga's Trial Run was the more daring of the two films as it focused "not on the unknown, external danger to women, which the thriller uses most potently, but on threats within the family." [12] In 1986-87 Rodriga directed three episodes of the seven-part TV series Marching Girls. This pioneering series was conceived by actor-writer Fiona Samuel as a response to the lack of challenging female roles in New Zealand television. [13] Rodriga's next feature, Send a Gorilla , was conceived and developed with three of her Marching Girl colleagues. Set on Valentine's Day, the film was a feminist critique of the commercialisation of Romance. [14] The film is frenetic and has some fine comic moments, while having a serious feminist subtext. [15] In the 1990s Rodriga focused on TV drama and documentary (and changed her surname to Rodriga early on in the decade). The People Next Door (1994) was New Zealand's first prime time documentary dealing with gay and lesbian culture. In 1997 Rodriga moved to Perth, Western Australia. While teaching screen production and screenwriting at Murdoch University, Rodriga directed her third feature film, Teesh and Trude (2002) starring Linda Cropper, Susie Porter, Peter Phelps and Bill McCluskey. Teesh and Trude tells the story of a day in the life of two working-class single mums in Perth, Western Australia. [16] The film was nominated for three Australian Film Institute Awards in 2003. Critics were divided by the film's gritty social realism:

This is a story that won't appeal to viewers who live similar lives or take refuge in sudsers such as Neighbours, which looks like a sugar-frosted Cinderella fantasy compared with this. Strong humanity and even a faint sense of optimism emerge in the final reel as the women assert themselves against the innate bullying and objectification that has been their lot and downfall. It isn't Ken Loach or Mike Leigh but it's in that ambit and the acting is very gritty - Linda Cropper's Trude and Susie Porter's Teesh radiate desperation that is almost palpable and Peter Phelps, as the blustering no-hoper Rod, delivers a penetrating observation of a type that is frighteningly accurate

— Doug Anderson, The Age Newspaper [17]

In 2010, Rodriga wrote, directed and produced her fourth feature film myPastmyPresent , shot on location in the Margaret River region of Western Australia. myPastmyPresent is a young lesbian love story with Buddhist themes shot with an entirely undergraduate crew. [18] It played at the 16th Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. [19] In 2015 the feature film 'Pinch' (w/d Jeffory Asselin) which Rodriga executive produced, won best feature at the WA Screen Awards.

Academics

Rodriga has a PhD from Murdoch University in Perth, where she ran the Graduate Screen Program]. [18] [20]

Personal life

Rodriga identifies her sexual orientation as fluid, and identifies as lesbian and queer as of 2018. She has written that she disagrees with "the assumption that sexuality is biologically or genetically driven" and believes in "allowing young people the freedom to make up their own minds about their sexual preference(s)." [2]

Filmography

YearTitleTypeNotes
1976Curiosities short film director, writer
1977Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Sailor documentary as editor
1977The Man who Broke the Bankdocumentaryas editor
1979Witches and Faggots, Dykes and Pooftersdocumentaryas editor
1980Wild Southdocumentaryas editor
1981Them's the Breaksdocumentarydirector, writer, producer and editor
1981Second Sightdocumentarydirector, writer, producer and editor
1982Hooks and Feelersshort filmdirector, writer
1984 Trial Run feature film director, writer
1985The Mindersshortdirector, editor
1986/87Marching GirlsTVdirector
1988 Send a Gorilla feature filmdirector. Nominated for 3 New Zealand Film and TV Awards
1991New Zealand Rivers Waikatodocumentarydirector, editor
1993Standing in the Sunshinedocumentarydirector
1994Once a Convent Girldocumentarydirector
1994TrueLife Stories: The Pip Brown Storyshort dramadirector, writer
1994The People Next Doordocumentarydirector, writer
2002 Teesh and Trude feature filmNominated for 3 Australian Film Institute Awards; director, producer and script consultant
2010–2011 myPastmyPresent [21] feature filmdirector, writer, editor and producer

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras</span> LGBT pride event

The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras or Sydney Mardi Gras is an event in Sydney, New South Wales attended by hundreds of thousands of people from around Australia and overseas. One of the largest LGBT festivals in the world, Mardi Gras is the largest Pride event in Oceania. It includes a variety of events such as the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade and Party, Bondi Beach Drag Races, Harbour Party, the academic discussion panel Queer Thinking, Mardi Gras Film Festival, as well as Fair Day, which attracts 70,000 people to Victoria Park, Sydney.

<i>Dykes to Watch Out For</i> Comic strip by American cartoonist Alison Bechdel

Dykes to Watch Out For was a weekly comic strip by Alison Bechdel. The strip, which ran from 1983 to 2008, was one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture and has been called "as important to new generations of lesbians as landmark novels like Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) and Lisa Alther's Kinflicks (1976) were to an earlier one". It introduced the Bechdel test, a set of criteria for determining gender bias in works of entertainment, that has since found broad application.

<i>Curve</i> (magazine) Global lesbian media project

Curve is a global lesbian media project. It covers news, politics, social issues, and includes celebrity interviews and stories on entertainment, pop culture, style, and travel.

Feminist separatism is the theory that feminist opposition to patriarchy can be achieved through women's separation from men. Much of the theorizing is based in lesbian feminism.

Sonali Gulati is an Indian American independent filmmaker, feminist, grass-roots activist, and educator.

Cheri Gaulke is a visual artist and filmmaker most known for her role in the Feminist Art Movement in southern California in the 1970s and her work on gay and lesbian families.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheryl Dunye</span> Liberian-American actress and director

Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and actress. Dunye's work often concerns themes of race, sexuality, and gender, particularly issues relating to black lesbians. She is known as the first out black lesbian to ever direct a feature film with her 1996 film The Watermelon Woman. She runs the production company Jingletown Films based in Oakland, California.

Joan E. Biren or JEB is an American feminist photographer and film-maker, who dramatizes the lives of LGBT people in contexts that range from healthcare and hurricane relief to womyn’s music and anti-racism. For portraits, she encourages sitters to act as her “muse”, rather than her “subject”. Biren was a member of The Furies Collective, a short-lived but influential lesbian commune.

<i>Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives</i> 1992 Canadian documentary film directed by Lynne Fernie

Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives is a 1992 Canadian hybrid drama-documentary film about Canadian lesbians navigating their sexuality while homosexuality was still criminalized. Interviews with lesbian elders are juxtaposed with a fictional story, shot in fifties melodrama style, of a small-town girl's first night with another woman. It also inserts covers of lesbian pulp fiction. The film presents the stories of lesbians whose desire for community led them on a search for the few public beer parlours or bars that would tolerate openly queer women in the 1950s and 60s in Canada. It was written and directed by Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman and featured author Ann Bannon. It premiered at the 1992 Toronto Festival of Festivals and was released in the United States on 4 August 1993. It was produced by Studio D, the women's studio of the National Film Board of Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dyke (slang)</span> Lesbian slang term

Dyke is a slang term, used as a noun meaning lesbian. It originated as a homophobic slur for masculine, butch, or androgynous girls or women. Pejorative use of the word still exists, but the term dyke has been reappropriated by many lesbians to imply assertiveness and toughness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tami Gold</span> American film director

Tami Kashia Gold is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist and educator. She is also a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York in the Department of Film and Media Studies.

Teesh and Trude is a 2002 Australian drama film directed by New Zealander Melanie Rodriga, and was adapted from an original stage-play by Wilson McCaskill. The film was produced and shot entirely in Western Australia with Production Investment Funding Support from ScreenWest and Lotterywest. It was shot on video at Murdoch University where Rodriga teaches.

Amber L. Hollibaugh was an American writer, filmmaker, activist and organizer concerned with working class, lesbian and feminist politics, especially around sexuality. She was a former Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice and was Senior Activist Fellow Emerita at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Hollibaugh proudly identified as a "lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivy Bottini</span> American activist and artist (1926–2021)

Ivy Bottini was an American activist for women's and LGBT rights, and a visual artist.

Honey Lee Cottrell was a lesbian photographer and filmmaker who lived most of her life in San Francisco, California. Her papers are part of the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University Library.

Trial Run is a 1984 New Zealand film directed by Melanie Read starring Annie Whittle. The film is a feminist revision of the thriller genre.

Melissa Hasluck is an Australian film producer, director and editor.

Sue Wills was an Australian activist, prominent in the Women's Liberation Movement and the press for LGBT rights. She was instrumental in challenging the psychiatric community's views and treatment of homosexuality and a co-founder of the Campaign Against Moral Persecution (C.A.M.P.)

The 78ers are a group of LGBT activists who marched in the original Sydney Mardi Gras on 24 June 1978 and participated in the subsequent protests against police violence and the arrests of participants in the Mardi Gras. In 1997 a small group of people who were part of the 1978 events contributed to planning the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Sydney Mardi Gras parade in 1998. This group became known as the 78ers and has led each year's Mardi Gras parade since 1998.

Shitou is a Chinese activist, actress, filmmaker, multimedia artist, and gay icon. She has been active in the Chinese gay scene since the 1990s and was the first lesbian to come out on Chinese television.

References

  1. ↑ "Research Portal".
  2. 1 2 Lim, Rebecca; Kwaymullina, Ambelin (2018). Meet Me at the Intersection. Fremantle, WA: Freemantle Press. ISBN   9781925591705.
  3. ↑ "British Dance Bands 1912-1939" by Brian Rust and Edward Walker Storyville Press London 1973. pp. 13, 19, 136
  4. ↑ Witches and Faggots, Dykes and Poofters Archived 18 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ↑ "Witches, Faggots, Dykes and Poofters" by Scott McKinnon in "Making Film and Television Histories: Australia and New Zealand." Rebecca Beirne, James E. Bennett Eds. pp225-230
  6. ↑ "Red Mole". Archived from the original on 17 August 2017. Retrieved 14 October 2011.
  7. ↑ Biography from NZ On Screen
  8. ↑ Trial Run
  9. ↑ Finola Dwyer
  10. 1 2 3 "New Zealand's Cinema of a Perilous Paradise" by Ian Conrin In Horror International Steven Jay Schneider, Tony Williams Eds. Wayne State UP p115
  11. ↑ Trial Run in "Decade of New Zealand Film: Sleeping Dogs to Came a Hot Friday" by Nicholas Reid John McIndoe Ltd Dunedin 1986 p. 99
  12. 1 2 Cairns, Barbara (2007). "Working in Close-Up". In Conrich, Ian; Murray, Stuart (eds.). New Zealand Filmmakers. Wayne State University Press. p. 203. ISBN   9780814330173.
  13. ↑ "The Marching Girls | Series | Television | NZ on Screen".
  14. ↑ "Reframing Women: A History of New Zealand Film" by Deborah Shepard Harper Collins 2000.
  15. ↑ Women's Companion to International Film, Annette Kuhn and Susannah Radstone Eds Uni of California Press, 1994. p 335-336
  16. ↑ "Spur for local film industry". www.abc.net.au. Archived from the original on 8 August 2014.
  17. ↑ Teesh & Trude Review, Doug Anderson, The Age Newspaper, 17 June 2007
  18. 1 2 "Courses available at Murdoch University in Perth Australia". murdoch.edu.au. 2011. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
  19. ↑ "My Past My Present | Showtimes and Tickets | Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival". slgff.strangertickets.com. 2011. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
  20. ↑ "4 results for Melanie Rodriga | Murdoch University". search.murdoch.edu.au. 2011. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
  21. ↑ myPastmyPresent

Reviews

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.