I am standing in a queue at the Swinburne film store behind another budding young film-maker (later to build a strong reputation for himself by directing a feature film involving violent skinheads and neo-nazi psychology). I was holding a wooden Miller tripod with wooden legs and sharp metal tips. It is 1979.

In front of me, a loud discussion was taking place in regard to the quality of the various film laboratories Melbourne had to offer. A lab called MasterColour (now defunct) and another called Victorian Film Laboratories (now defunct) were being compared. The merits of MasterColour were being praised in preference to the apparent incompetence of my own favorite, Victorian Film Laboratories. As an impassioned film student with an undying loyalty to my preferred laboratory and loyal lab-technicians, I piped up, "Depends on what your standards are G.... (name deleted to avoid further attack)..." with all the tact, subtlety and superiority I could muster.

Suddenly, the lights went out. I am lying flat on my back on the film store floor. A fist had come at me from out of the blue and connected with my face. Still holding the tripod I thrust it upwards, metal feet first, connecting with the aforementioned wannabe film-maker’s stomach. He lurched forward in pain as he launched himself upon me with a furious barrage of blows. My time-honoured ritual of self-defense, learned during brief forays into the concrete jungle of the Broadmeadows train line, automatically took over as I curled up in the foetal position and acted pathetic. John Haddock, the storeman, Eugene, the ever-faithful and reliable technician (both noticably absent from the book), and various other students destined for future greatness, pulled the two of us apart to lick our wounds. We snarled at each other.

This testosterone driven explosion was not just about film laboratories. It was about the marking out of one’s territory. It was about the Steenbeck I had fortuitously booked out months in advance (apparently). It was about the one Arri SR camera I had booked out for my entire shoot months in advance. It was about the kids from the suburbs sticking it to the private school pricks (even though the closest I’d ever been to a private school were the gates of MLC). It was about the obscure object of desire we were both lusting after.

It was about ambition, passion, lust, desire, frustrated creative expression, lack of equipment, lack of a film library, lack of screenings, lack of actors, lack of svengalis, competition, deadlines, content over style, form over substance, quality, Brian Robinson and his three intersecting rings of spectacle, conflict and characterization. It was about struggling for what was achievable and if necessary beating each other senseless to get it.

It was about the Swinburne film school.

How to define Swinburne. Swinburne was about the student that was so frustrated at one of the lecturers that he was pushed down the stairs (so legend has it). It was about Nigel Buesst telling Gillian Armstrong that she should become a butcher’s wife and retire to Nunawading (legend again). It was about convincing the Security Guard to let you into the storeroom after hours and stealing rolls of colour reversal stock for your student film (I still have them in my fridge.. Sorry.. ) It was about cutting on a gang-sync and being told that a Steenbeck was a luxury. It was about complaining that "there are those that do, and those that teach". It was about John Flaus and his amazing, but all too few ‘History of Cinema’ classes. It was about an entire year of students going all post-punk-feral-no-future on us and locking everyone into the TV studio during a party and chaining the door shut. It was about being thrown in the deep end by Brian and being told to sink or swim.

Renegades is a brave attempt at an immense task. Capturing and chronicling three decades of a fairly haphazard, erratic, stimulating, frustrating and unique institution. The book reads as a dry portrayal of a very "wet" film school. I doesn’t surprise me to read that it originates from a research thesis. It reads like a research thesis. I see the familiar names and faces, but I am kept at a distance. The viewpoint is that of a outsider. I am never feel what it was like to be inside.

Yet, it is an important work and a mammoth research achievement. To chronicle an important and defining aspect of our fledgling film history and an era that will never again be repeated. Where idealism reigned, rather than Hollywood style ambition to make "B" grade Americana. A time and a film school where obscure "experimenta" was a proud achievement instead of the silent embarrassment associated with it today. Although hampered by lack of funding, it was still one of the best and most unique film schools in the world.

As Philip Adams says in the introduction, the story of Swinburne is the story of Brian Robinson. Brian’s role as father/confessor/therapist and svengali, along with all the other dedicated oddballs, visionaries and students that persevered with the place against all odds. The war between the AFTRS and Swinburne throughout the seventies and eighties became a battle of Robinsonian proportions with Swinburne’s ideas and content winning out over AFTRS money and style for the major part of two decades. In typical Brian Robinson fashion, what Renegades lacks in resources it makes up for in ideas and content.

But there is still another book waiting to be written here. One that speaks in the first-hand voices of those that were there. One that sucks you in there and makes you feel it through the people that lived it. One with the definitive events, flavours, people and periods we can see, hear, smell and touch. One that feels the passions, the struggles, the frustrations, the jealousies, the pain and the tears. That book is yet to come.

Postscript:

When the dust cleared, I looked down in front of me and stared at a bunch of car keys sitting on the floor. They weren’t mine. A six cylinder guzzler belonging to someone with an outer suburban chip on his shoulder. I scooped them into my palm and promptly went and flushed them down the toilet on my way home.

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Fifteen years later, I was doing an interview for a Melbourne magazine. My therapist had advised me to come clean about the car-keys. Something about obsessing and seeing Holden Monaros in my dreams. So I told all.

A few weeks later I was at an AFI Awards Party. The film about the skinheads had been overlooked for some glitzy Cinderella remake about ballroom dancing. I was feeling conciliatory. I felt the skinheads deserved something. I felt good about the world. Everything was in balance. I had purged my demons.

I looked up to see a greying, long-haired dynamo charging towards me from across the crowded room. "I knew it was you, you bastard! I knew it was you!" he was shouting. I started to go into my time-honoured foetal position. Friends started to take up positions on both sides.

You can take the boy/girl out of Swinburne... But you can’t take the....

Richard Lowenstein. 1996.