Australian filmmaker and author Shirley Barrett died this week. Her brother-in-law Imre Salusinszky pays tribute
When Shirley Barrett’s first feature film, Love Serenade, won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes in 1996, she found herself briefly flavour of the month in Hollywood. Flown to LA to wine and dine with Warren Beatty and his friends, Shirley later portrayed the visit as a series of hilarious embarrassments:
In 1981, while studying at the University of Melbourne, Shirley went to a party and met an art student, Chris Norris, who became the love of her life. Typically for Shirley, she didn’t just fall for Chris – she fell for everything about Chris; Robinvale, the eventual location for Love Serenade, was his home town. The couple moved to Sydney in 1985 when, on her third attempt, Shirley was accepted at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
Shirley’s third feature, South Solitary , is a change of pace. Set in 1927, it stars Miranda Otto once again, as Meredith, a lonely young woman with a complicated past who accompanies her uncle George to take charge of a lighthouse on a remote island, where she is thrown with lighthouse keeper Jake Fleet , a damaged WWI veteran. Again, the film did not make money, but it pleased many critics, and Shirley’s script won a number of literary prizes.
“I would put ‘don’t write a book about cancer’ right up there with other government health guidelines, like how much alcohol you should consume if you don’t want to get cancer . Can writing a book about cancer give you cancer? Apparently! So that’s my first tip: don’t.”