(2025) Jen Atherton & André Shannon
2025, special paperback: custom spine covering, concertina fold
89 pages, 148 x 210 mm
first edition, edition of 100, signed
hand stamped, editions vary.
no more poetry is pleased to announce the launch of the house’s 29th publication: EYES WIDE OPEN; the debut co-authored publication by film makers Jen Atherton & André Shannon (collectively Garden Reflexxx).
a book about making films without pretending the “industry” is the only room available.
Have you got $4.20 and headlice? Addiction issues you want solved by concentrated work? A crippling need for attention? Learn by reading and working through our new disarmingly frank handbook EYES WIDE OPEN and craft your own cinema situation. Using principles of distributed cognition, talking to strangers, event planning, and audio-visual dieting we present to you an amalgamation of practiced techniques from years of radio interviews and failing-forward independent filmmaking to get you into the comfiest shoes you own to make posture-forward photegenic films. No firearms permitted, unless you’re shooting a movie.
“Go Harder”
— Martine
excerpts:
For eight years on and off we have talked about films on FBi Radio in Redfern. Our focus was to glean insights into the movie life that could be applicable to first time filmmakers. So much about filmmaking felt obtuse and unobtainable to us. When we began making films we had a meeting with Screen Australia where the commissioner told us all she was greenlighting was “Tim Winton adaptations”. It was a dark time. She told us we should try to move overseas; failing that, which we did, she said “build your own audience”, which turned out to be the best advice ever given us.
page. 01 — nmp.29 EYES WIDE OPEN (2025) Jen Atherton & André Shannon
Our ultimate goal is to liberate films from staunch structures. By staunch structures we refer to biases towards quality. The rich image is dominant. What’s monied is considered normal. We fall into traps like agreed-upon image value, agreed-upon correctness. Deep down, cinema has pretty privilege… and it’s called ‘industry standard’. These certainly bad attitudes disempower filmmakers and reiterate film as a posh medium. We’re losing the next generation because they’re being brainwashed, aiming to make $3-5m indies. page.
02 — nmp.29 EYES WIDE OPEN (2025) Jen Atherton & André Shannon
shipments posted bi-weekly.
(2025) by Liv Moriarty