No. 027 - 'Us And The Night' by Audrey Lam (2025)

Watched by Matthew Donlan at Golden Age

In early 2018, my first year at the (previously well-respected) Australian National University, half of the campus was a construction zone. Almost $300 million was being spent on the Kambri project to revitalise (i.e. gentrify) the heart of the campus, replacing many established icons, including the Union Bar, with tall, glossy structures. Steel fences and dust clouds made a typical 5-minute walk to class a 20-minute hike. But, at the centre of this site, untouched, stood the Chifley Library. Untouched, until a sudden summer storm.

Flash flooding and torrential rain hit Canberra, with Sullivan's Creek, the main waterway through campus, rapidly overflowing. The construction had blocked up and diverted the Creek, but this only pushed the flood waters closer to the centre of campus. With little warning overnight, the basement floors of Chifley Library flooded. The basement floors were home to the university's archives, holding records from Parliament and government departments. The construction of the university's future had washed away its past.

Delineated by chapter titles, Us And The Night follows Xiao (Xiao Deng) and Umi (Umi Ishihara), two young library workers going about their tasks late at night, recounting stories and theories to each other to pass the time. Like the archivists at Chifley, Xiao and Umi concern themselves with the preservation of the books affected by leaking roofs. Across the film, library shelves holding encyclopaedias and reference books slowly empty, revealing the chasm of time. Sitting on the edge of the film is the encroachment of technology and its associated buzzwords - the digitisation of knowledge.

Us And The Night is a tapestry, stitched together with gorgeous 16mm film. It contains some of the most beautiful compositions of a library, making full use of the fluorescent lighting and endless aisles. Each shot finds a new corner of the library, tilting shelves and bouncing reflections to confuse your position. It makes the space feel larger, like an endless sea, with a depth of knowledge still to be discovered. This atmosphere of discovery is aided by the montage editing of stills, quotes and images from books and by the asynchronous soundscape. Voice-over from the two leads feels natural and rough around the edges. The sound of crashing waves mirrors the movement of a mop. Tropical sounds of crickets and birds float through the empty aisles. Definitions are learnt and words are reworked and shaped into new meanings.

This re-working of ideas is Lam's creative process. As she explained in the post-film Q&A, the typical, linear process of film-making wasn't suited to her. She was no good at writing a script. It wasn't until art school that a lightbulb set off. Seeing creators in their workshop work and rework the same materials into new designs, she saw a path forward in film-making. Sequences with Xiao and Umi were filmed ten years ago, and over that decade, Lam would build, collapse and rebuild the film into its final form today.

What Lam has created is a tender and sweet collage to the hours you can lose with a friend in the library. It puts to screen the creativeness that emerges from boredom and captures a modern sense of loneliness with fine details.

Us And The Night screens exclusively at Golden Age on Tuesday 4 November.

Fleapit Pick of the Week

While there are many Halloween screenings to get you through this weekend, the Sydney Opera House is hosting a bunch of incredible screenings. Rare sights include the debut film from Wong Kar-wai, As Tears Go By, the city symphony Koyaanisqatsi, and a Q&A with Somersault director Cate Shortland. The full programme can be seen here.

Screenings: Thursday 30 October - Wednesday 05 November

NEW RELEASES:

Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025)

Signorinella: Little Miss (Swan, McFadyen, Pricolo, 2025)

Journey Home, David Gulpilil (Maggie Miles & Trisha Morton-Thomas, 2025)

Kiss of the Spider Woman (Bill Condon, 2025)

Cinema Astragale
Supernatural (Victor Halperin, 1933) + I Married A Witch (Rene Clair, 1942)
Thursday

Brazilian Film Festival | selected highlights
Same Old West (Erico Rassi, 2024)
Thursday

Manas (Marianna Brennand Fortes, 2024)
Friday

City of God (Fernando Meirelles & Katia Lund, 2002)
Sunday

British Film Festival | selected highlights
The Choral (Nicholas Hytner, 2025)
Opening Night
Wednesday

Hayden Orpheum | selected highlights
Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)
Friday

ParaNorman (Chris Butler & Sam Fell, 2012)
Saturday & Sunday

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Saturday

Golden Age Cinema | selected highlights
Little Trouble Girls (Urška Djukić, 2025)
Friday & Monday

Cecil B. Demented (John Waters, 2000)
Saturday

Happyend (Neo Sora, 2025)
Thursday & Sunday

Us And The Night (Audrey Lam, 2025)
Tuesday

Ritz Cinemas, Randwick | selected highlights
Journey Home, David Gulpilil (Maggie Miles & Trisha Morton-Thomas, 2025)
Daily

The Travellers (Bruce Beresford, 2025)
Daily

Kangaroo (Kate Woods, 2025)
Daily

Jim Jarmusch Less Is More (link)
Dead Man (1995)
Thursday

Cult Classics (link)
Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999)
Saturday & Monday

Celluloid Film (link)
Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)
Friday

Classic Matinees (link)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Saturday & Monday

Make It Musical (link)
Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (Lian Lunson, 2005)
Sunday & Wednesday

Meet Cute (link)
(500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009)
Tuesday

Dendy Newtown | selected highlights
Happyend (Neo Sora, 2025)
Daily

Journey Home, David Gulpilil (Maggie Miles & Trisha Morton-Thomas, 2025)
Daily

Marlon Williams - Two Worlds – Ngā Ao E Rua (Ursula Grace Williams, 2025)
Dendy Exclusive
Thursday, Sunday, Monday & Tuesday

The Travellers (Bruce Beresford, 2025)
Thursday, Monday & Wednesday

Cells Out (link)
Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
Friday

Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
Friday

The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sanchez & Daniel Myrick, 1999)
Friday

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
Saturday

Cineversaries (link)
Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
Thursday & Saturday

Palace Cinemas | selected highlights
The Travellers (Bruce Beresford, 2025)
Daily

Signorinella: Little Miss (Swan, McFadyen, Pricolo, 2025)
Daily

Journey Home, David Gulpilil (Maggie Miles & Trisha Morton-Thomas, 2025)
Daily

Cult Vault (link)
Pee-wee's Big Adventure (Tim Burton, 1985)
Monday

Matinee Memories (link)
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
Saturday

Art Gallery of NSW
Film Series: Focus on queer 中文 cinema
Double-screening
Be a Woman (Fan Popo, 2011) & The Last Year of Darkness (Ben Mullinkosson, 2023)
Saturday

Film Series: Brazil! Brazil! A century of cinema
The Hills of Disorder (Andrea Tonacci, 2006)
Sunday

The Day I Met You (André Novais Oliveira, 2023)
Wednesday

Sydney Opera House | selected highlights
As Tears Go By (Wong Kar-wai, 1995)
Friday

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
45th anniversary - 4K extended version
Friday

Saturday Film Club:
Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)
Saturday

Somersault (Cate Shortland, 2004)
Q&A w/ Cate Shortland
Saturday

Left-Handed Girl (Shih-Ching Tsou, 2025)
Saturday

Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982)
Sunday