‘Life’s Body’ Opens Season for Filmforum

Filmforum begins its fall season at LACE tonight at 8 with Corinne Cantrill’s uniquely powerful “In This Life’s Body” (1984).

Faced with a life-threatening illness, Cantrill, whose work with her husband, Arthur, has established them as Australia’s most distinguished experimental film makers, decided to tell us about herself via snapshots (and snatches of home movies) accompanied by her own spoken narration.

This austere approach could quickly prove a bore if the subject were a lesser person, but this reflective and candid woman, now 60, emerges in her own process of self-discovery as thoroughly extraordinary, an individual who from early age has embraced life fully, turning her back on a difficult childhood, disregarding convention and at last discovering that her true calling was film making.

Her story is a record of bohemian life in postwar Europe and later in Sydney. Now a vibrant, plump Earth Mother, Cantrill is oblique about the nature of her illness; the point is that she confronted it in her own courageous way, refusing major surgery in favor of alternative therapies. Since completing this film, the Cantrills have made more films and won fresh honors. Information: (714) 923-2441.