Filmme Fatales

We’ve all suffered our way through unfulfilling jobs, but on the plus side, they provide plenty of opportunities to daydream and think about what we would rather be doing with our lives. During one of those moments in a dull advertising position, Melbourne-based Brodie Lancaster came up with the concept for Filmme Fatales, a brilliantly designed zine that fixes an irreverent eye on the flashpoints where film and feminism collide.

With a refreshingly easy-going attitude towards feminist issues, each issue is based around a non-time-specific theme that reaches back into cinematic history to discuss anything from the women of Iranian cinema to mashups between Sex and the City and The Sound of Music. With issue #4 about to drop, Brodie gave us the lowdown on Filmme Fatales.

When and why did you start making zines?
I started making Filmme Fatales around September 2012. I had left a job editing a website and was working in advertising, feeling really creatively unfulfilled. I missed writing about the shit I was into, and had a specific interest in films by and about women. I didn’t know of any publications that intersected film and feminism in a way that spoke to me, so I decided to invest a bit of cash in a URL and start my own. Issue #1 of Filmme Fatales came out a few months later, in January 2013.

What do you like about the medium?
I like being in control of a publication, and tailoring all the written pieces and art to suit my interests. Maybe I’m a totally selfish control freak, but I figure you kinda have to be to be a good editor. It took me a while to work that out, and stop being afraid of people thinking I was a bitch for knowing what was and wasn’t right for the zine. I like that a zine is permanent and tangible in a way that a lot of online writing (which I’ve done loads of in my career) isn’t. There’s a timelessness about print that’s really important to me. The content in Filmme Fatales is not super time-specific and neither is the zine itself.

What’s Filmme Fatales all about?
It’s all about the places where film and feminism intersect. It’s full of pieces written by people who identify as feminists (mostly female writers, but a few guys too!) about the films, directors, actors, characters, scenes and themes they relate to and really love. Each issue is themed around a certain topic, too. Issue #1 was about women in their 20s, issue #2 was about music, issue #3 was about working girls and the upcoming issue #4 is all about reality.

What do you do for a living and how does zinemaking fit into your life?
About a year after I started working on Filmme Fatales, I quit my job in advertising and started working part-time at The Good Copy, which is an awesome new writer’s studio, publisher and newsagent-style shop in Melbourne. When I first started there, I was doing copywriting part-time, and working on my zine and some freelance writing jobs on my days off, weekends and at night. Then my boss approached me about having The Good Copy publish Filmme Fatales, which was amazing! So now I’m lucky enough to have that relationship, which means zinemaking is now a part of my 9-5 job. It’s pretty great to be able to reschedule the less-fun copywriting jobs to work on making my zine, and not get told off for wasting time!

Have you swapped Filmme Fatales for any other good zines?
Yeah, at the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle last year, I finally met Vanessa Berry, who’s kind of a legend in the Australian zine world. I was stocking up on a bunch of her zines, and she offered to trade me, which was really cool. I’ve also become really good friends with Megan Clune, who is based in Sydney and edits the classical music zine World’s Only. Her zine is amazing and has a really strong voice and massive following (I think it’s stocked at Serpentine Gallery over in London!) and Meg is a really great pal.

What are your favourite zines?
Well I love Meg’s and Vanessa’s zines; my friend Sinead made a one-off A6 zine filled with poems about hip hop which was so hilarious and cool; First Kiss, My Every Single Thought and Ladybeard are some of my all-time favourites; I recently bought Sad Selfies Zine, which is incredible; Plant magazine by Isabel Sloane is really cool, and so is Praying 4 U by my friend and fellow Rookie staffer Minna Gilligan.

Filmme Fatales issue #4 looks at reality. You should probably go and preorder a copy.