I left school at 16 and decided to go the autodidact route, one of my better life decisions. That path shaped how I think about creativity and knowledge —there’s something powerful about choosing what to learn and how to learn it.

So what has all that got to do with my current feature film project? This: The ART e FACTs Film Series celebrates what I see as the unique ability of every human to be creative, think critically, and choose knowledge over ignorance.

From a young age, I’ve had an innate aversion to any kind of authority. By authority, I don’t only mean ‘the government’, I mean all forms of cultural authority: religion, family, customs, corporations, and academia. It used to cause chronic anxiety because my instinct was to be free but my circumstances, family and school mainly, seemed unjustly coercive. It was the 60s and early 70s in Sydney, so things weren’t as uptight as they could have been. I was by no means a rebel. For the most part I managed to stay out of serious trouble. And with both parents working I had ample opportunities to indulge in my own interests, roaming about with friends, watching TV before and after school, then later playing in rock bands. But the subtle existential threat was always lurking. I’ve since become more optimistic, and over time, as I’ve matured and gained more knowledge about myself and the world, the anxiety has pretty much vanished.

As my life transitioned into that of a professional artist and composer, my anti-authoritarian attitude became the foundation of my creative philosophy. All of my narrative, time-based works are critiques of various forms of authority, those that have caused social injustice or shut down innovation on a personal or societal level.

Some of these works are darkly satirical, others more sharply critical, depending on the topic. A few are humorously disrespectful of authority.  In my latest narrative film projects I’m going with a playfully ambiguous tone. Taking cues from Jacques Rivette, who experimented with theatricality and unconventional narrative structures. His films are intellectually engaging and continually critique themselves and the world around them without falling into the deep hole of pessimism.

This kind of self-reflexive criticism isn’t just a stylistic device—it has deeper roots. I’ve come to see it as part of a longer historical tradition, one that spans both the Enlightenment and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. In very different ways, both movements were driven by a trust in the power of critical thinking.

I think it would be fair to claim that critical thinking was the unifying principle and catalyst for individuals in both the Enlightenment and the 1960s cultural revolution. It’s common knowledge that the 1960s was a decade of radical cultural transformation: The Counterculture/Hippie Movement, Anti-War Activism, Civil Rights and Social Justice, Environmentalism, Sexual Revolution, Music and Art. Less common is the knowledge that the Enlightenment (17th–18th Century, Europe) was on par with the 1960s so-called revolution. The Enlightenment’s focus on reason and liberty mirrors the 1960s’ challenge to authority and social norms.

And yet, the deeper I explored the legacies of critical thought from the Enlightenment to the 1960s, the more I began to sense a troubling paradox. The very tradition of critique that once empowered individuals to challenge authority now seems to be turning inward with a kind of self-cannibalising intensity replacing optimism with pessimism.

As philosopher Maarten Boudry puts it, “modern Western civilization is the only hand that allows itself to be bitten.” He argues that excessive self-criticism, especially in Europe, risks undermining confidence, progress, and optimism, potentially paving the way for stagnation or even new forms of authoritarianism.

This tension between necessary critique and destructive pessimism isn’t easily resolved. Yet it’s precisely this dilemma that drives my work, finding ways to maintain the Enlightenment’s trust in reason and the 1960s’ commitment to freedom without falling into the trap of endless self-doubt. Through my ART e FACTs Film Series, I’m exploring the possibility of being critically engaged without being critically paralyzed, of questioning authority while still trusting in our capacity for progress.

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