Burning Down the House

Philippe Mora is a French-born Australian film director. Born in 1949 to a German Jewish father and a French Jewish mother, he began making films while still a child. Mora's first home movie Back Alley, now preserved in the The National Film and Sound Archive, was made in 1964 when he was 15. This... was a parody of West Side Story filmed in Flinder's Lane, just behind his mother’s studio at 9 Collins Street. The film features Mora, his brother William and friends, Peter Beilby and Sweeney Reed. Hia next film, Dreams in a Grey Afternoon was made as a silent movie but was screened with music by artist Asher Bilu. Shot on 8 mm and blown up to 16 mm, the film features stop-motion animation of sculptures by the Russian-Australian sculptor and painter Danila Vassilieff, and includes rare footage of John and Sunday Reed. His next project, Man in a Film , was a pastiche of Federico Fellini's 8½ and was also influenced by his recent viewing of The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. Like its predecessor, it was made as a silent movie, shot on 8 mm and blown up to 16 mm, and again screened with music by Asher Bilu.
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