Artist Richard DeDomenici travels the world remaking scenes from blockbuster movies with casts of amateurs and budget props. His Redux Project encourages others to submit their own remakes of shots from films. The aim of the project is, presumably, to democratise the process of filmmaking, demonstrating to the participants who DeDomenici sources as he travels the world, the practical craft of assembling a movie, using films with heft in the popular consciousness as a ready template.
In this hour-long show at Carriageworks (one of the "About an Hour" programme), DeDomenici talks through his process and a little of his background along with the practicalities of shooting redux scenes from four movies that themselves were originally shot in Sydney: Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Muriel's Wedding, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and The Matrix.
If the point is that "anyone can do it", it's a punk project, and DeDomenici in person with his baggy shorts, sneakers and hair gelled to stand half-a-foot above his face certainly portrays himself and his work within that tradition, joyous to disclose that million-dollar Hollywood shots have been restaged with sets made out of cardboard boxes and party-wigs bought on eBay for a few dollars.
The films themselves are at their best when, rather simply replicating their originals, the shots revel in the limitations of the remake, and improvisations to maintain the mis-en-scene infuse the shots with punk humour. Of these, fake birds hoisted on sticks to replicate a frozen crowd scene in The Matrix are a highlight, as is DeDomenici himself wandering into Max Max's skyline, not with a weapon carried over his shoulder, but a camera tripod.
Where The Redux Project doesn't work is as an hour-long show in itself. DeDomenici is an appealing and droll person, but his hour-long presentation is merely that; a guy with a laptop and projector talking about films he's made of other people's films and his insights into budget filmmaking along the way.
The hour passes as the introductory lecture to a film studies course; as thrilled as you'd be if this were the case, if you're seeking out the The Redux Project as an entertainment experience, you'd be as well served just looking up the website.
