Friends With Grain
29.09.24 Kate Middeleer
29.09.24 Kate Middeleer
I already knew Sierra and Kade prior to our planned interview, and so I toyed with the idea of introducing them as I have gratefully come to know them, to bask in the hue of kinship and say: Kade makes a mean flat white and once screwed the license plate back onto my car, and Sierra is a good shot with a pistol and, and, and. But the article is titled Friends With Grain and so I’ll stick to the script. Luckily for you I wrote the script, and while their work is paramount, I’ll take my self-granted authority and perforate the edges of their operation with the quirks that lend so much colour to its creators.
Script. Tell me about Friends with Grain.
Kate. Actually, no. I want to know how you met each other.
“Uh, the age old romantic postal service, known as Hinge. One of those classic romantic love stories,” Sierra says. “We’re not this deep romantic film-loving love story. But if that’s how I had to meet him…”
“Actually, no,” says Kade, “we met at the premiere of La Dolce Vita”.
Script. How did you get into film?
Kate: So Sierra, Kade tells me you’re a good shot?
“What?” she asks me. “Oh, hah. Yeah. From 2014 to 2018 I was a competitive pistol shooter for ten meter women’s air pistol. I did compete nationally, towards the end. I held the Queensland champ record, for a few years, and I was third in Australia at one point. So… don’t get on my bad side.
I just love…I’m just collecting things as I get older. Hobbies, careers, who knows what I’ll do next,” she says.
Differences in artistic approach enable them to bring balanced foundations to their collaboration. “I’d rather be really good at five things, than partially good at 150,” Kade says.
“I have the mindset that I can be really good at 150 things,” she responds.
What brought you to film?
“I think I’ve come back,” Sierra says. “When I was ten, I was obsessed with film. Then you just grow older and you think you need to do something more responsible. So I went to Uni, I was a zookeeper and all that. As I was leaving the industry, it was a good opportunity to think about what I love and what I like to do. And then I got my hands on a Super 8 and the rest is history”.
“I’ve always been into restoring things. Cameras, projectors. Just anything, really,” Kade says when I turn to him. “When you fall down the rabbit hole of film, it’s not just about cameras, it is about projectors, and everything”.
I first met Kade and Sierra at the Friends with Grain event back in July, at the Newyrbar Hall. Unsure of the hall’s location, I had followed the pulse of DJ decks and clusters of people walking up a shadowed Old Pacific Highway. If such phrases as “DJ decks” and “clusters of people” have ever been associated with Newrybar, it would be that evening. A night of experimentation and hands-on exposure to 16mm film, wine, and a looping system center stage, projecting imagery on the walls. Guests were asked to take a marker and draw on the rolls of film.
“We can talk about super 8, we can talk about motion picture. But I feel a lot of people don’t actually know what that means, don’t actually know what that looks like. How small it really is. So to get people to actually touch 16mm film, and draw on it, and go crazy, was just a great opportunity to introduce people to experimental film making,” says Sierra.
In graciously serendipitous timing, Kade and Sierra received the keys to the Friends With Grain headquarters this past week, and I had the pleasure of being present as they first cracked the doors and peeked in. This motion-picture hand-developing community lab will be a resource for the veterans, the curious, and the clueless alike. Whether you’re there to shoot one roll of film or a thousand rolls of film.
“The lab can be what people want it to be,” Sierra explains. “If they’re experimental filmmakers, or if they’re commercial, feature length films. Come give it a go, it’s a moldable thing for artists and creatives. A sense of community”.
“It’s an achievable thing,” Kade says. “To be able to make a film in a communal space. To make something by hand-processing, and make it yourself. And we’re creating a space that’s built for that. And has the people around it to help foster that”.
Who has inspired you?
“Those in the seventies feminist movement in Australia,” Sierra says. “Filmmakers like Jeni Thornley. She came out with an incredible super 8 archival film last year called Memory Film. And publications like Lip Magazine back in the day, that were born after the 1975 Women’s International Film Festival, which was the first in Australia. I think those women that worked in the co-op are inspiring to me personally because they talk about the struggles for Australian women. And we look back, and I think we still go through similar things. Fifty years later. It's wonderful to see the kinds of work these women did, with such limited resources. And how driven they were to create”.
“The people down in Melbourne are an inspiration, keeping experimental film alive. Richard Tuohy from Nanolab, Jordan James Kaye, they are the next generation. They have been working tirelessly to keep film alive, and they continue to provide so many resources. We owe them so much,” Kade says. “Adrian Cousins, and Tom at Bayou, hand processing. Social media wizards doing crazy stuff, local shooters. People making stuff–when I see that, I know the work I’m doing is going to be needed. We all need each other, really”.
They touch on the lengths they have gone to in their own film journeys, the hours of exploration, heads hit against walls, money spent. To shoot and develop movie film is to commit to a degree of frustration, hunting down the proper equipment, resources, and knowledge. Kade and Sierra saw an opportunity to facilitate the process, to become a type of one-stop-shop.
“When you deep-dive into film there’s so many different aspects of it,” Sierra explains. “And we want to do it all. We’re slowly trying to shoot for the moon.”
“Marrying as much of every part of motion-picture film together in the one place would be beneficial to myself and everyone else,” Kade says. “From a longevity aspect, we’re ensuring that whilst there’s still people that know these things—everyone that’s experienced in this area is very old or dead—we’re trying to create a platform to gather as much as we can on the matter and ideally put it all in one place.
The old footage is great, and I think it’s important and we need to save it, but I also think it’s very much about looking forward as well and making way for new things, too. Things that young people are creating. There’s so many amazing people making cool shit. Yeah, we need to look back and talk about how amazing the past was. But we can’t live there all the time”.
Kade and Sierra trail to the back of the studio, through the empty space, pointing out which one will be the dark room, the place where a projector might sit, a fire pit, and so on. Just beyond the gravel path there’s a sloping lawn looking out on a forgotten wooden stage. A place for film screenings, exhibitions, community events. The place has a loving coat of mold and dust, there’s work to be done. But the morning is ticking by and the pair has to lock up shop, hit the road, and get to the Goldy to nab an old projector or some other dated online treasure.