A MOVIE ABOUT A VENUE CALLED LANFRANCHIS

A month after the illegal artspace Lanfranchi's shut down in 2007, opinion columnists, journalists and other people who had never set foot in the place started lamenting about how it was "the end of an era" and "the loss of a major strand to our city's cultural DNA". Lanfranchi's Memorial Discotheque was a massive warehouse on the third floor of an old chocolate factory in Chippendale, Sydney, built from discarded parts of The Matrix set. It was home to some of the best live gigs and experimental electronica in Sydney. As well as a lot of crap, as usually comes with these types of venues.

Margaret Pomeranz organised a protest screening of Ken Park there the week it was banned. Dual Plover (who put out early releases from Deerhoof and Naked On The Vague) ran their label from a bedroom next to the kitchen. Amazing acts like Captain Ahab, Kevin Blechdom, Pig Island and Justice Yeldham played alongside questionable performance artists and terrible acoustic nights that threatened to never end. Richard Baron was there a lot. He's edited over 50 hours of cheap DV footage into an intimate doco about the art movements, parties and petty share house squabbles that happened there. The film is funny and unpretentious and makes you feel nostalgic for something that finished only recently, without glorifying it or make any concessions for what it was.

Vice: What made you want to make this documentary?
Richard Baron: My cousin lived at Lanfranchi's and the space was closing at the same time. I needed to make a three-minute film for a course I was doing, so I borrowed a camera and rocked up one day. I thought the whole thing would be easy and started to film everything I could, which is pretty much the worst way to make a documentary. I just pulled the camera out of the bag and pressed 'record'. I had never shot anything before. The whole thing ended up taking me three years. You can actually see the production value increase throughout the film.

There are so many intense stories from Lanfranchi's: all the garbage, avalanches of cockroaches falling on people while they slept, people hurting themselves and flinging poo around… How come that didn't show up more?
I have a whole reel of poo stories. Yes!

Where is it?
When you start talking fecal matter in your doco, you are gonna devalue the rest of it. Maybe not in everyone's eyes, but… it wasn't really central to the story. You can only say so much in an hour.

That's very mature of you. I also liked that you included a lot of the not-so-good stuff that happened: hippies talking nonsense, that gore-core hip hop group who looked like Insane Clown Posse.
Suicidal Rap Orgy. Yes.

Most people would have tried to glorify it but you give it a Spinal Tap feel at times.
Well, you've gotta have some crap stuff with the good, usually. That was what was great about Lanfranchi's. People were allowed to be crap, and good things often followed.

Lanfranchi's Memorial Discotheque - The Documentary is screening on Friday the 27th of August as part of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival