The Woman and The Car – Kate Blackmore

— About

Kate Blackmore is an Australian artist and filmmaker whose films have been presented across cinematic, broadcast and contemporary art contexts. She has written, directed and produced over 25 short documentaries about art and culture for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, including The Art of Collecting and the Walkley Award nominated series The Movement. In 2018, Blackmore was awarded the Hive commission to create The Woman and The Car, a hybrid documentary about iconic Australian artist Margaret Dodd. The film was produced by Bridget Ikin (Felix Media) and financed by Adelaide Film Festival, Screen Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Blackmore’s narrative short films have screened at the Sydney Film Festival in 2021 and 2023 (Dendy Awards).

In 2024, Blackmore began production on her debut feature documentary, Make it Look Real, produced by Bethany Bruce (Staple Fiction) and Daniel Joyce (Projector Films). The film follows an intimacy coordinator on her quest to change the way sex scenes are created. Make it Look Real was supported in development by Screen Australia, Create NSW and the SAFC and was selected for the inaugural Doc Society New Perspectives Pitch Lab, and the Sunny Side of the Doc Global Pitch 2021. The film is represented by Autlook Film Sales.

Blackmore is a founding member of the acclaimed artist collective Barbara Cleveland whose works have been included in notable exhibitions including, Know My Name, NGA, Canberra (2021); Divided Worlds, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Adelaide (2018); Unboxed: Artists and the Archive, Hayward Gallery, London (2017); Today Tomorrow Yesterday, MCA, Sydney (2017); Bodies in Time, Australian Contemporary Art Commission, AGNSW, Sydney (2016); The future is already here, 20th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney (2016); and Contemporary Australia: Women, QAGOMA, Brisbane (2012). Barbara Cleveland’s work is included in Australian public collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne. The collective is represented by Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney.

Blackmore holds a BFA/BA (Hons) Moving Image & Performance from UNSW Art & Design, Sydney and a MA Visual and Media Anthropology from Freie Universität, Berlin. She works as a Sessional Academic in Moving Image at UNSW Art & Design and a Lecturer in Documentary at AFTRS, Sydney.

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The Woman and The Car

THE WOMAN AND THE CAR (2018)

Writer & Director Kate Blackmore
Producer Bridget Ikin, Felix Media
Editor Elliott Magen
Cinematographer Emma Paine
Composer Chun Yin Rainbow Chan
Sound Design & Mix Liam Egan

Broadcast Documentary, 30mins

This project was produced by Felix Media in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and with the assistance of Adelaide Film Festival, Definition Studios and the Hive Fund. Financed with the assistance of Screen Australia and the South Australian Film Corporation. Premiered at the 2018 Adelaide Film Festival and broadcast on the ABC.

Kate Blackmore looks at motherhood and mobility, film and feminism, through the prism of Margaret Dodd’s classic short This Woman is Not a Car (1982).

Blackmore and Dodd are both Adelaide-born artists, making films a generation apart. Sitting in an FX Holden, Blackmore talks to Dodd, and her friends, about the context in which her film was made. Like many of her generation, Dodd yearned for a Holden. For suburban women in the 1960s, owning a car was a form of liberation not often realised. Shaped by her experiences, Dodd’s film is a nightmarish vision of a young mother trapped in suburbia. The conversations between the two artists are intercut with footage of 70s Adelaide, interviews with Holden enthusiasts and ex-factory workers, and a car procession at Adelaide’s last-remaining drive-in cinema.

Blackmore’s film, The Woman and The Car is a close-up look at how Dodd, Adelaide and more broadly, the Australian national identity have been influenced by the presence of the car. The recent closure of the Holden factory in Adelaide marks the end of an era for the ‘all-Australian’ vehicle and an extra layer of poignancy when considering the resonances of Dodd’s work on the way we see ourselves.