Over eight years ago, cinematographer Jane Castle approached producer Pat Fiske with a film she wanted to direct about death. Fiske was intrigued, but told Castle to go away and write about what she really wanted to make a film about.
What eventuated is the AACTA-nominated When The Camera Stopped Rolling, a documentary about one of Australia’s trailblazing female filmmakers, Lilias Fraser – Castle’s mother. It details not only Fraser’s career and its influence on Castle’s own, but the pair’s often challenging relationship.
Fraser’s career began in 1957 with The Beach, and she would go on to make more than 40 films. However, in her personal life, Fraser was trapped in a destructive marriage and battled alcoholism.
Castle tells IF that when she first approached Fiske, she had been interested in making a film that explored death from a spiritual perspective. She had started interviewing people like monks and nuns on the subject, and put together a trailer.
However, when Fiske sent Castle away to write, the story of her mum’s death in 2004 was the first to drop on the page.
Further, when they then began talking about the project with funding bodies, it was clear the agencies were most interested in Fraser’s story, as one of the country’s early female filmmakers with a cinematographer daughter.
“The universe sent us in that direction, because I didn’t want to make a film about my mother. It was the last thing I wanted to do, because I was still healing from the intergenerational trauma that had come down the family line,” Castle says.
“But it was clear that if I wanted to make a film, then that was the film.
“I didn’t want to be in the film either. But I think about it this way – and it’s an interesting way to think about film – it felt like this film knew what it wanted to be before it came into being. It had its DNA all sorted out, and it was just about getting us on board and to listen.”
Fraser was a pioneer at a time when the Australian film industry was nascent. Her early work consisted of “nation building” documentaries and 1970, she made one of Australia’s first land rights films, This is Their Land.
Her youngest daughter, Castle, forged a career in cinematography shooting music videos for the likes of Prince, U2 and INXS, as well as documentary and feature film. In 1993, she became only the second woman to ever be accredited by the Australian Cinematographers Society.
Growing up, Castle hadn’t wanted to get into the industry, having watched her parents struggle with their business, and fell into it “by mistake”. In When The Camera Stopped Rolling, she speaks of how she later realised she became a DOP to get closer to her mum.
Fraser had an enthusiasm for film that was bigger than the obstacles that stood in her way, Castle says.
“What really did influence me, without me knowing it, was my mum’s can-do attitude, and the way she wasn’t intimated – at all – by the male-dominated industry,” Castle says.
“That rubbed off on me somehow, subconsciously… I never felt intimidated by men, even when some of them, on occasion, were trying to pull me down.”
In terms of her own practice, Castle has been inspired by Fraser’s The Beach.
“She got special low-speed film stock sent out from the UK because it was so bright up in Queensland. She’d go off on her own with a tripod down to Moreton Bay and Stradbroke Island, and demonstrated her capacity to work with light and shade in a black and white palette. Her use of tone and shade in that film is gorgeous.”
Castle’s own first film was also in black and white, but her first rushes were muddy until Fraser cut her out a piece of red cellophane and told her to look at the world through it. “It took all the colour out and you were left with light and shade… my footage got better and better.”
Fraser’s activism, as demonstrated This Is Their Land, has also reached Castle on “a cellular level”. Castle’s first documentary as a director was 2002’s Sixty Thousand Barrels, about toxic waste, and she has previously left the industry to work as an environmental campaigner.
However, finding the story of When The Camera Stopped Rolling was tricky for Castle, in terms of working out the narrative arcs of both her mother’s life and her own, and how they intersected. Then it was a balance in terms of not over-sensationalising their story while remaining emotionally honest.
In this, Castle was aided by editor Ray Thomas, who helped her as “both subject and maker” to strip the film back to its most essential elements and distil their points of connection, while keeping it authentic.
“It’s a formula that probably runs across all films, whether fiction or documentary. The more honest you can be, the more it resonates with audiences because our personal truths linked to universal truths,” she says.
While Castle cringes at the idea When The Camera Stopped Rolling could be seen as a “therapy film”, it ended up being healing to make it, both in terms of dealing with her mother’s death and her childhood.
“I was forced to figure out what happened and put the story into a cohesive narrative, because it was very chaotic growing up in that family.
“It put everything in perspective.”
As for the future, Castle has again decided to step away from filmmaking and is training to become a psychotherapist.
“For the moment, I’m putting it down.
“Getting out from behind the camera, getting away from the the screen and getting in connection with people is a natural progression in my own healing process. I’ve got plenty of experience of trauma and therapy, so hopefully I can bring that into that and be helpful for other people.”
When The Camera Stopped Rolling is currently screening at Dendy Newtown, Dendy Canberra and Thornbury Picture House via Bonsai Films. It will also to screen at the Gold Coast Film Festival on Friday and Screenwave International Film Festival next Wednesday May 4.