MICHAEL MULLINS’ TINY LETTER

I rewatched part of Remembering the Man on iview yesterday after it was screened on ABC2 on the weekend.

It is the 2015 documentary interpretation of the tragic love story of the Melbourne Catholic schoolboys Tim Conigrave and John Caleo. They fell in love at Xavier College in the 1970s and continued their same sex relationship for most of the time until they both died of AIDS in the early 1990s.

The documentary followed Tim Conigrave's highly successful memoir Holding the Man that was posthumously published in 1995. It was later dramatised on stage (2006 and subsequent productions) and in a feature film (2015). The novel developed a legendary status as one of the '100 Favourite Australian Books' of all time. It is also regarded as essential reading for young males exploring their sexuality.

It's of particular interest to me because Tim and John were in my class at school and all of the archival footage in the first part of the film brings back memories of my own school days.

I'm currently assessing my school days, in the lead up to the 40th anniversary dinner on 1 September. Because I have mixed feelings about my school days, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be there. I'm relieved that the decision not to attend has been made for me by the date's clash with my forthcoming sojourn in Tokyo.

I was in their class, but I was not part of Tim and John's immediate circle of friends. I was privy to few of the details of what was going on. But I knew the context very well and understand what others with preconceived notions of Catholic education at the time find hard to believe.

That is how a same sex relationship could be implicitly supported by some of the religious teachers at the school and by an ostensibly homophobic sport focused peer group. One theory is that it was because the 'renaissance man' ethos of Jesuit education prevailed at this school. This was in practice, not just in theory, and among staff and students alike.

Of course that argument is contentious and simplistic. The open minded attitude of the Jesuits at the school has as much to do with post Vatican II liberalism and confusion, and the winds of change that challenged social norms in the years that followed the election of Gough Whitlam in 1972. There's also the unexplored question of whether the attitudes of the two Jesuits as depicted in the story represented what their Jesuit colleagues were thinking at the time. Probably not.

In my early days as editor of the Jesuit publication Eureka Street in 2006, I reviewed the first stage production of Holding the Man. I wrote in celebratory terms about what I saw as the school's implicit affirmation of the school boys' same sex relationship.

When I presented the article for approval, I was requested to make changes. This was because of continuing raw emotions on the part of John's family and the fact that my interpretation of the events - and that of the play - was regarded as contentious and possibly damaging to the reputations of individuals who were still around.

I would be interested to know how such an interpretation of events would be treated by the censor eleven years down the track. There's no doubt it will be talked about at the dinner on 1 September.

Last week I passed a very satisfying hour and a half viewing the O'Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW.

In going, I was a bit half hearted, as I thought I'd seen enough of Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith in the past. They're both well known women artists from the first half of the 20th Century who spent most of their time on Sydney's North Shore.

As for their US contemporary Georgia O'Keefe, I'd never heard of her. Such is my ignorance. The Sydney Morning Herald art critic John McDonald says she's one of the most famous female artists of all time, with an auction record of $US44.4 million for a flower painting.

Not that he thinks much of her. He finds her 'mechanical and deliberate' touch 'unexciting', with there being 'something so drab' about exhibition itself.

A few other grumpy critics are unimpressed with the show. The Australian's Christopher Allen dismisses Preston and Cossington Smith as 'minor' and O'Keeffe as 'niche'.

But he struck a chord with me when he praised O'Keefe's 'erotic vitality' in contrast to 'the rather spinsterly sensibility of the two Australians'.

I went into the exhibition before reading this but instantly recognised and appreciated the magnetic eroticism in the shapes in her paintings.

I also found pleasing familiarity with the arid rocky New Mexico landscapes, which I'd fallen in love with when I did a road trip through that rocky and arid part of the US in 2003.

I think Allen means 'spinsterly sensibility' as a put down. But that's what I liked about Preston and Cossington Smith.

Their works were at the same time ordinary and elevated. Still paintings that had a certain 'otherness' about them that evoked the old Australian monoculturalism of Mosman and Turramurra and other parts of the North Shore.

I was keenly aware that they were painting there during the 1930-35 period during which my father's family sold their farm in north-eastern Victoria and relocated to Mosman, witnessing events such as the completion of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The big drawcards at this year's Sydney Film Festival included Nicole Kidman's latest The Beguiled, and Ben Mendelsohn's Una, which opens in cinemas tomorrow. To enter the screening of Una, I stood in a queue that snaked several hundred metres down Market Street and around the corner into Pitt Street.

They were both good films. But I found myself more drawn to Tom Zubrycki's documentary Hope Road, which is about raising money for a school in South Sudan. There was no queue to get inside for this one.

Zubrycki is now 70 and has spent many years perfecting his particular style of his observational documentary that is defined by the films' closeness to their subject.

The subject matter may be worthy but I always find the execution quite nail biting, and often humorous in a subtle way that is recognisably Australian. I am reminded of the famous 'For gorsake stop laughing - this is serious' cartoon by Stan Cross that was first published in 1933.

Oddly this state of mind is characteristic of the White Australia era that preceded multiculturalism, yet Zubrycki's films reflect the vision of his father Jerzy Zubrzycki. Zubrzycki senior was a university academic credited as one of the main architects of the Australian government's multiculturalism policy that began in the 1970s.

But of course the genius of multiculturalism is that it was able to bring 'old' and 'new' Australians together in one magical harmony. That is exactly what happens in Hope Road, with South Sudanese refugee Zac Machiek getting together with three 'old' Australians including Zubrycki himself, to raise funds to fulfill his dream of building a school in his former village in South Sudan.

It's not promising, on a variety of fronts. They can't find a major sponsor for their walk to raise funds. One of the fundraisers has to have surgery for a brain tumour. Zac's marriage breaks up and he becomes a single father. The escalating war intervenes and the bricks they've bought to construct the school disappear.

Because the war is unlikely to end any time soon, the vision itself is challenged by the suggestion that scholarships might be more practical than building a school.

But Zac insists on the school and hope is their greatest resource. The film ends with plans for the school still a long way from realisation but the team's hope as strong as ever. As a film goer, it has you longing to see the sequel. As a human being, it makes you want to donate to help the project along.

I'm being asked to name my favourite of the 34 feature films I've just seen at the Sydney Film Festival. Normally it's hard to choose, but there is one that comes to mind.

It stands out not only because it is very different to any of the other films, but for the urgency of its simple message at this time and its invitation to me to act on a particular desire.

The film is a beautiful Canadian feature length animation titled Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming. Its theme is the power of imagination to overcome the distrust and political intransigence that is bringing us closer to major military conflict.

The story is about a naïve mixed-race aspiring poet named Rosie. She travels from her home city of Vancouver to Shiraz, the Iranian cultural mecca where she has been invited to read her poem at a poetry festival.

She feels very awkward because of the cultural differences, but is overwhelmed by the graciousness of her Iranian hosts, for whom nothing is a problem. This contrasts with the attitude she receives from a fellow western guest named Dietmar, for whom everything is a problem.

Rosie becomes reacquainted with her Iranian father, who disappeared from her life when she was a young child. Her judgment of him dissolves and they embrace each other when she learns of the circumstances of his return to Iran. Ignorance and prejudice is defeated.

Perhaps part of its appeal to me is that for some time I've wanted to travel to Iran for an experience of breaking down barriers like Rosie's.

But the US Government won't have anything of it. About two years ago it introduced a new regulation denying those who've travelled to Iran since 2011 easy entry to the US under its visa waiver program.

Do I care about this? Not really. The US has its reasons for wanting to have the rest of the 'free' world join it in not trusting Iran. But I won't be bullied. I'd rather feel free to reach out to Iranians, learn from them, and enjoy their hospitality, just as Rosie did.

I've spent the past eleven days at the Sydney Film Festival, at the famous State Theatre in the centre of the city. From 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning until mid afternoon or early evening.

I viewed the usual 34 feature films, in what has become an annual winter ritual. I haven't skipped or had to miss a film since I was teaching in 2008.

I've sat in seat D36 on the Mezannine level alongside my friend Shirley, who has been my Daytime Subscriber companion in that space for the past 14 years. Sadly, we learned this year that another companion - Anne - was not in the seat D34 this year because she died in March.

Unlike most Festival filmgoers these days - the casuals - we do not pick the films we see. They are chosen for us by the curators. Many of the films I most appreciate are ones I would not have chosen from the hundreds screening at the various Festival venues each year.

I used to take annual leave from my job at this time of the year. Now I'm a retiree like most of the other daytime subscribers, except many are much older than me.

However it seems we share the same humanitarian values and enjoy similar art house and documentary films. Including the mix of drama and factual films, and indeed the combination of drama and fact in particular films, which tend to reflect the most pressing issues confronting humanity.

This year it was refugees, and one of the festival guests was refugee advocate and veteran British actor Vanessa Redgrave. At 80, she has just made her directorial debut with her film Sea Sorrow, which combines a survey of the history of international refugee conventions with stories and recollections of past and present refugees.

It was not a surprise that she received a standing ovation as she stood on stage to introduce her film. It is clear that many in the adoring audience were also refugee advocates. In fact my companion Shirley is secretary of a local suburban refugee support group.

But I kept thinking about another octogenarian humanitarian, the veteran senior public servant and now blogger John Menadue, with whom I worked for a couple of years until a few months ago.

John is constantly frustrated by the single minded idealism of refugee advocates, whom he believes stand in the way of solutions, which must always be political. Politics is the art of the possible and must always involve compromise.

But I think John would agree that we owe a debt of gratitude to refugee advocates, to the extent that their activism helps to stem the tides of mass indifference to the plight of these people and right-wing political fear mongering.

Vanessa Redgrave talked about the 'field of energy' the advocates seek to generate around the world.

Noticeably short of breath after climbing on to the stage, she told her Daytime Subscriber friends that her message to refugees is: 'We will save you till our last breath'.

After viewing Sea Sorrow, I was sure that however many more breaths she has until her last, she has accomplished what she set out to do for refugees, with this film.

Yesterday I drove with my sister to the southern Kent coastal city of Folkstone, where she had a work commitment. I remember Folkstone as the entry point on my first visit to England in 1993 after taking the ferry from France.

With ferry traffic having quickly declined after the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994, Folkstone ceased to be a significant port. The locals have been trying to regenerate the city as an arts hub, but it was Sunday morning and there was little going on as I walked through its slowly expanding Creative Quarter.

We drove west along the coast through Romney Marsh, a sparsely populated wetland area which was formerly known as a smuggler's paradise. This took us into East Sussex and the historic towns of Rye and Winchelsea, being directed by our GPS along quite a number of narrow country roads framed by beautiful thick canopies of green vegetation.

The most memorable of these, at least for its name, was Dumb Woman's Lane. I looked it up afterwards and - as expected - the naming has nothing to do with diminishing women. The legendary dumb woman was in fact mute, with the possibility that her tongue was cut out by smugglers she witnessed in order to prevent her from reporting their actions.

Our next destination was the small village of Burwash, which I knew was close to the former family home of a friend from Sydney. A further two miles down the road was Bateman's, Rudyard Kipling's home from 1902 until his death in 1936. It is now a National Trust property and we enjoyed the rest of the surprisingly sunny afternoon looking at the house and its interiors and walking in the large garden.

My friend told me that his family's home - an iron master's residence - was built with stone from the same quarry as Kipling's. Knowing him, I don't think he meant that as a claim to fame. In my eyes, it would be the opposite, for Kipling is one of those figures that I love to dislike.

I find it easy enough to be seduced by his genius for phrase making. But I'm much more mindful of his role as a triumphant champion of British colonialism, particularly in his birthplace India.

Earlier this year I'd been shocked when I listened to an interview that touched on some of the details of how the Britain trashed India's economy and cruelly exploited its people for its own economic and political advantage. It was with the Indian writer and politican Shashi Tharoor, who was promoting his new book Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India.

Elsewhere Tharoor summarises his opinion of Kipling: 'Fine words strung together in praise of the morally indefensible'. This is a variation on George Orwell's criticism - 'He dealt largely in platitudes, and since we live in a world of platitudes, much of what he said sticks' - which we see echoed in today's politics.

I'm spending just over a day in Brighton. Last May I spent two days here. It's the month of the Brighton Fringe and the Brighton Festival.

I first came here last May when I was alerted to the festivals by my niece's one hour performance piece 'The Daddy Blues', which was about growing up with a difficult father.

The timing didn't work out for me to see that, but I came here and enjoyed other performances and events. So a return May visit to Brighton was always on my agenda.

Yesterday's surprise was a nice sunny day. I also enjoyed the contrast in culture and outlook from my rural Kentish base of Faversham, which in itself is a beautiful town. Faversham voted decisively for Brexit, while Brighton was overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU.

Brighton has a lot in common with Newtown in Sydney, so in some sense it's like returning home. It was a pleasure to walk the streets and investigate what I might sample from the hundreds of festival offerings available, including cabaret, circus, comedy, dance, spoken word, music, theatre and visual arts.

What I ended up experiencing was really quite random. Two blocks from my guest house, I came upon an exhibition of body art by young French artist Charly N'Doumbe. It was not tattoos, but photographs of coloured light creations projected on male and female nude bodies and printed on aluminium. They looked like whole body tattoos.

Next I walked up Grand Parade to the University of Brighton, where last year I'd seen a book art exhibition. This year it was doll sculptures, some of which were presented as if they were participating in a life drawing class.

Last Saturday the artist Cathie Pilkington held a 'Corpse workshop', so I guess you could call it corpse art. There was quite a variety of exhibits and forms, and they seemed to be peaceful rather than macabre. There was even a work of taxidermy, a stuffed dog restfully lying on a mat.

Finally, in the evening I attended an improvised electronic jazz music and contemporary dance performance titled Ahtuf Kontrol. It was members of a local family, including father on the keyboard accompanying his dance school graduate son, along with fellow musicians with electric guitar and trumpet.

The experience reminded me quite strongly of the Interplay workshops I've done several times a year in the Newtown parish church in Sydney with the parish priest Peter Maher. It's about acting out feelings and stories in body movement, often to music.

The Interplay reminder had me wanting to rise from my chair and move my body according to how I felt about the performance. But it was still England, and all members of the audience were politely restrained in their seats for the duration. In control of their emotions, even though they were viewing a performance titled 'Ahtuf Kontrol'.

For most of May I'm in England, staying in the old Kent market town of Faversham, a few stops north of Canterbury on the train line from Dover to London. It's also on the line that proceeds from Dover towards London along the coast, through a number of seaside towns including Deal, Broadstairs, Margate and Whitstable.

While I was here last May, I discovered that it's perfectly legal to buy a return ticket from Faversham to Whitstable - one station - for just £3.90, and travel in the opposite direction, taking in the long scenic route around to Whitstable through Canterbury, Dover and all the other coastal towns, breaking the journey a couple of times along the way.

That's what I did yesterday. My stops included Broadstairs, where I visited the Dickens House Museum.

Charles Dickens would spend his summer holidays in Broadstairs in the 1850s and 1860s, in a cliff top house named Fort House, which is claimed to be the Bleak House depicted in the title of Dickens' 1853 novel.

The Dickens House Museum is in the beachside home of the friend of Dickens who was the inspiration for the character Betsey Trotwood in David Copperfield. It contains items that once belonged to Dickens such as his writing box and a mahogany sideboard that he owned from 1836 to 1855.

But what I found most interesting was the portrait of Dickens' London. This included his experiences as a 12 year old child working in a boot polish 'blacking' factory after his father was arrested for debt and sent to Marshalsea prison.

He was clearly traumatised by his experience of the rat infested workplace - 'the dirt and decay of the place rise up visibly before me as if I were there again'. His loneliness deepened his despair. 'No advise, no council, no encouragement, no consolation, no support, from anyone.'

It's probably fair to say that he suffered from what we now call post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and that this formed his outlook on life and gave him the basis of many of his novels. Later in life, Dickens used his writings to offer a social commentary that improved the lives of the poor.

The other quotation that caught my attention was from Our English Watering-Place, Dickens' 1851 eulogy to Broadstairs. It was about welcoming outsiders.

'We are a little bilious sometimes, about these days of fraternisation, and about nations arriving at a new and more unprejudiced knowledge of each other ... but it soon goes off, and then we get on very well.'

This could have been wishful thinking on the part of Dickens. Or perhaps the locals' attitudes have changed over the course of the past 116 years. In the Brexit referendum, the Thanet local government area that includes Broadstairs voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU, by a margin of almost two to one.

Moreover the local council is dominated by UKIP councillors, and former UKIP leader and vocal Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage stood for election in the local South Thanet constituency in the 2015 parliamentary elections.

On the stairs above the beach a few metres from the Dickens House Museum, I noticed a group of teenage boys speaking what seemed to be Polish or some other Eastern European language. A sign of the times that are soon to change.

When I visited the Art Gallery of NSW last week, I spent time at the 'Adman: Warhol before pop' exhibition.

I probably wouldn't have made a special effort to see an Andy Warhol exhibition because I have always dismissed him as superficial. Indeed this collection was focused on his career in the advertising industry.

A quote that I read the other day would seem to reinforce my attitude: 'I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're so beautiful. Everything's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.'

Yet this exhibition revealed to me that I can be very superficial in my evaluation of other people's apparent superficiality. Warhol was in fact much more grounded as a person than I'd realised.

There are the obvious contradictions. He was at home in the drug addled world of New York in the 1970s and 1980s but at the same time a 'devout Catholic' of the Eastern Rite who is said to have attended Mass almost daily and volunteered at a shelter for the homeless.

But what I found more interesting was the aspect of his personal - and professional - relationship with his mother Julia, who is described as 'the passion of his life'.

One of the panels in the exhibition tells the story: 'Warhol needed some text for an assignment in a hurry and asked his mother to pen it for him in her own baroque and rather quirky handwriting. The client loved the spontaneous yet decorative result, and an important feature of Warhol’s commercial art was born: Julia’s calligraphy.'

Warhol and his mother went on to collaborate on many commercial projects, and in 1958 the Art Directors Club of New York awarded a certificate of merit to ‘Andy Warhol’s mother’, as she was always known.

The two would together observe their Eastern European traditions. Julia made traditional folk art and also decorated Easter eggs and embroideries for the church, while Andy would often incorporate the religious motifs and the gold of church decoration into his art.

She looked after him domestically while they lived together until just before her death in 1972.

Then we have the Warhol of the 1970s and 1980s that we're much more familiar with. But now I can look at that Warhol through the lens of his relationship with his mother and appreciate his depth as a person and cultural icon.

I made a snap decision to do a day trip to Canberra yesterday. It turned out that eight hours in an air-conditioned train was a good way to beat the heatwave.

Last May I visited the National Portrait Gallery in London. I liked it, but essentially it just made me more determined to see our own National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. I'd heard about ours but had never visited. It was established in Old Parliament House in 1998 and moved to its present dedicated building next to the National Gallery of Australia in 2008.

I'd sometimes wondered why it was necessary to have galleries dedicated to portraits. I don't know whether this Wikipedia list is exhaustive but there are National Portrait Galleries in London, Washington DC, Edinburgh, and Mariefred (Sweden). Then there's the Portrait Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

Why don't they have a National Still Life Gallery or a National Landscape Gallery?

My theory is that it is an effort to define ourselves as a nation by our people. We want to highlight images of Australians whose achievements and presence in our midst we have valued materially and spiritually, and cherish emotionally.

If we don't focus on the people, we default to abstract and potentially dangerous notions of nationalism, or the use of particular legends or stories that some Australians feel more at home with than others.

Recently I was talking with a friend who is a foreign-born non-Anglo Australian citizen. I asked him whether he felt Australian. He said no. I felt sad and did not want to dwell on it by asking him to elaborate.

But I don't think Waltzing Matilda means much to him, let alone the Anzac legend. On the other hand, a visit to the National Portrait Gallery, with its representation of the images and stories of Australians of diverse cultures, might make him reconsider his answer to my question.

Years ago, somebody I regarded as a mentor told me that he had a strong dislike for flags of nations. I didn't fully appreciate what he meant until the Cronulla Riots of 2005 and I saw the Australian flag as a symbol of ugly nationalism. Since then I have taken the position that we should not change the flag to lose the outmoded Union Jack. Instead we should minimise its use.

I did not notice an Australian flag at the National Portrait Gallery, and there it is no Australian flag on the Gallery's website.

The ABC's Australian Story TV program has done a great job over 20 years putting people at the centre of various preoccupations. Tonight the program begins its 2017 season, the first without its own mentor figure and contributor Caroline Jones. If I was disappointed by anything at the National Portrait Gallery yesterday, it was that they have in their collection two portraits of Caroline but neither is on display.