Eddie Martin – Have You Seen the Listers? #IFFR2018

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Eddie Martin, director of the documentary Have You Seen the Listers?.

Director Eddie Martin presented his documentary, Have You Seen the Listers?, at the 47th International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it had its international premiere. The film is about Australian artist Anthony Lister – his family life and his art life. Martin explains that in Australia, art is not an easy career path to take and that Lister somehow challenges the status quo in Australia. “When it comes to the arts,” he explains in this interview, “we can be a little conservative, we’re not so progressive.” Here, Martin talks about meeting Lister and his impression of the artist as well as the man. He also tells us that he was not only surprised to find that “he’d been documenting his and his family’s life over a couple of decades” but also that he was surprised to find that he filmed the bad times as well as the good times. He tells us that he believes that “once you start to have your eyes open to recording these things … you’re more open to looking at things the way you probably previously wouldn’t – like there’s beauty in everything.”

Have You Seen the Listers?: He grew up on a diet of television and noodles, says Australian graffiti artist Anthony Lister. His father only did martial arts and had no time for the family. When the city of Brisbane organised a competition to spruce up the control boxes for traffic lights, Lister submitted a plan. He landed the commission, and the madcap sprayer turned into a world-famous artist. ‘Brizzy Banksy’ was the headline in one local paper. The unique element of this biopic is that Lister always had a camera with him, so viewers get to see the high and low points first hand. He married his first great love, had children, moved to New York and became even more famous. The tragedy is that he developed the same obsession for work that once drove his father out of the house. Then came drugs and divorce and he didn’t see his three children anymore. (Text of the synopsis from the official website of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.)