Film series: Flim-flam 4 March – 3 May 2020

By Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd, curator, film

Still from Being there, 1979 — Still from *Being there*, 1979

Cinema of fakes, cons and doubles

Doppelgangers, false identities and body swaps: each generation of filmmakers adapts these tropes to the anxieties of its era. This film season at the Art Gallery of New South Wales – titled Flim-flam (4 March – 3 May 2020) – proposes that our current fascination with the double pivots on questions of authenticity and deception. We’re held rapt by the rise and fall of Instagram fraudsters, sham startups and deep fakes. In the space between the original and its counterfeit lurks the con. An exchange we thought was fair turns out to be unequal; two things we imagined alike bear little resemblance. We have been dazzled and distracted. We’ve been ripped off and we’ve even come to enjoy it.

In dialogue with the Shadow Catchers exhibition, Flim-flam draws together compelling stories of swindles and fabricated realities. Scams exist on a spectrum from small-time rackets to structural inequalities that hide in plain sight. Featuring films from Iran, Senegal, Hong Kong, the USA and more, the series explores a collective vulnerability to lies that sound like truth. Across dark satire and neon thrillers, it exposes cultural mythologies of quick profit, personal transformation and overnight fame.

To gain a victim’s trust, a good con artist puts on a good show. These films make riveting viewing because they exploit the scammer’s tools of comic distraction (F for fake), too-good-to-be-true coincidence (Being there) and sensationalist plot twists (Seconds, Despair). From two-hander gangster dramas (Mikey and Nicky, Good time) to classic mistaken identity comedies (The great dictator) and meta-movies (The watermelon woman, Salaam cinema), Flim-flam introduces cinema’s fiendish grifters and credulous marks.

Accompanying the features are Australian premieres of recent short films by Wong Ping, Garrett Bradley, Alex da Corte, Maryam Jafri, Laresa Kosloff and Michelle Williams Gamaker.

Films

4 March – F for fake (director Orson Welles, US, 1973, 35mm) + Mariam Jafri v Maryam Jafri (director Maryam Jafri, US, 2019, digital)
8 March – The great dictator (director Charlie Chaplin, US, 1940, 35mm)
11, 15 March – Being there (director Hal Ashby, US, 1979, 35mm)
18, 22 March – Mikey and Nicky (director Elaine May, US, 1976, 35mm-to-digital)
25 March – The sting (director George Ray Hill, US, 1973, 35mm)
25, 29 March – Good time (directors Josh and Benny Safdie, US, 2017, digital) + Wong Ping’s fables 2 (director Wong Ping, Hong Kong, 2020, digital)
1, 5 April – Seconds (director John Frankenheimer, US, 1966, 35mm) + Slow graffiti (director Alex da Corte, US, 2017, digital)
8, 12 April – Despair (director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany, 1978, 35mm-to-digital)
15, 19 April – Hyenas (director Djibril Diop Mambéty, Senegal, 1993, 35mm-to-digital)
22 April – Adaptation (director Spike Jonze, US, 2002, 35mm) + La perruque (director Laresa Kosloff, Australia, 2018, digital)
26 April – The watermelon woman (director Cheryl Dunye, US, 1996, 35mm-to-digital) + America (director Garrett Bradley, US, 2019, digital)
29 April, 3 May – Salaam cinema (director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran, 1995, 35mm-to-digital) + House of women (director Michelle Williams Gamaker, UK, 2017, digital)