Favourite Collection Items – Immigration Song

We’ve asked staff to describe an item from the collection that they really like. Here’s Senior Outreach Curator Diane McAllen.

One of my favourite items in the collection is the music video for This Kind of Punishment’s Immigration Song (F46447). Originally shot and directed by film maker, lecturer and musician John Christoffels, the music video features Peter and Graeme Jeffries playing their instruments and proceeding to destroy things in a rundown industrial environment. The editing and look of the video matches the intensity of the music.

Featuring footage filmed off a television, and then intercut with the original footage, Christoffels plays with the technology of film and video itself, making a feature of the lines on the television monitor. A still image from this video was used as the cover of the Ajax 1993 compilation re-issue of the In the Same Room /5 by Four EPs. Six years ago a restored colour version of this video was released by Graeme Jeffries and can be viewed here.

But somehow I prefer the original blue tinted version and its reference to the monochrome days of early television.