Jeni Thornley

According to Collins (1998), Thornley "belongs to a 1960s generation of New Left filmmakers whose revived historical consciousness was germinated during the Cold War years in the silent fallout from Hiroshima". Born in Tasmania where her father was a film exhibitor, Thornley gained a degree in literature and political science at Monash University in Melbourne in 1969. After moving to Sydney she worked as an actor in experimental theatre and was active in the Women's Liberation Movement, Sydney Women's Film Group (SWFG), the Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative, and the Feminist Film Workers Collective,{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pjqOM04aGJ8C&q=%22jeni%20thornley%22&pg=PA393|title=The Women's Companion to International Film|last1=Kuhn|first1=Annette|last2=Radstone|first2=Susannah|date=1990|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=9780520088795|pages=393|language=en}} along with cinematographer Martha Ansara, Margot Nash, and others.{{cite web| title=Créteil Films de Femmes, Largest Ongoing Women's Film Festival in the World 1999 Live Report from Créteil: 19 March 1999|url= https://www.angelfire.com/ms/livingcommunication/page6.html| date= 19 March 1999|quote=Interesting to note was a chronicle of the very productive and remarkable. Sydney Women's Film Group that began in 1976-- with three members present at the festival. Retrospectives of this work brought to the screen an important part of women's cinema: Jennie Thornley, Margot Nash and Martha Ansara}}{{Cite web |title=Martha Ansara |website= Ronin Films |url=https://www.roninfilms.com.au/person/1635/martha-ansara.html |access-date=2022-09-30 }} As a member of SWFG, Thornley appeared in and worked on the production of the 1973 film, A Film for Discussion.{{cite web|title=A Film for Discussion - Credits|url=https://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/a-film-for-discussion/credits/|website=Australian Screen|access-date=19 January 2018}} The title reflects the group's wish "to distinguish it from films where the audience members were merely passive consumers of entertainment".{{cite web|first=Pat|last=Fiske | title=A Film for Discussion: Mother and daughter | website=National Film and Sound Archive of Australia | url=https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/asset/97408-film-discussion-mother-and-daughter | access-date=15 February 2025}}

Thornley was one of the organisers of the International Women’s Year Film Festival in 1975, the first of its kind in Australia.{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/16710590/the_sydney_morning_herald/|title=Nightingale Out of a Golden Cage|last=Frizelu|first=Helen|date=1975-08-06|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|access-date=2018-01-20|pages=7|via=Newspapers.com}} As an active member of feminist collectives until the early 1980s, she was involved in a range of exhibition, distribution and publishing activities as well as working as a camera assistant on independent film productions.

In 1978 Thornley released her first film, the 27½ minute Maidens. The first two parts look at the lives of Thornley's mother, grandmother and great-grandmother through archival photographs and interviews. The second two parts show her own life in film, combining family photographs with feminist material of the 1970s. The film received funding from the Australian Film Commission. "It remains essential viewing for an enhanced understanding of the moment of awakened consciousness that characterised 1970s feminism."{{cite web|last1=Parr|first1=Adrienne|title=Maidens - Curator's Notes|url=https://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/maidens/notes/|website=Australian Screen|access-date=22 November 2017}} The film also acts as a short history of "the Anglo-Celtic 'diaspora' in Australia."{{Cite journal|last=Collins|first=Felicity|date=Summer 2001|title=Death and the Face of the Mother in the Auto/Biographical Films of Rivka Hartman, Jeni Thornley|url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=4240048&site=ehost-live|journal=Metro|issue=126|pages=48|via=EBSCOhost}}

In 1983 Thornley coproduced with Megan McMurchy, Margot Oliver and Margot Nash the film, For Love or Money. The film had its roots back in 1977, when Thornley and the others decided to start working on the documentary.{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/16710506/the_age/|title=From First Suffragettes to the Angel of the Hill's Hoist|date=1983-10-28|work=The Age|access-date=2018-01-20|pages=24|via=Newspapers.com}} In addition, Thornley coordinated the collection of all the photographic material used for the companion book, jointly written with Megan McMurchy and Margot Oliver, For Love or Money, a Pictorial History of Women and Work in Australia, published by Penguin Books Australia in 1983 ({{ISBN|0140064443}}) .{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TfGOAQAAQBAJ&q=%22jeni%20thornley%22&pg=PT1190|title=Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film 3-Volume Set|last=Aitken|first=Ian|date=2013-10-18|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781135206277|language=en}}

Island Home Country – documentary and exegesis – (2009) was the culmination of Thornley's research for which she received a PhD from University of Technology, Sydney.{{cite web|last1=Thornley|first1=Jeni|title=Island Home Country: Subversive mourning – cine-essay and exegesis|url=https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/handle/10453/36070|website=OPUS – Open Publications of UTS Scholars|access-date=22 November 2017}} The documentary screened nationally on ABC1 and ABC2 in June and July 2009.{{Citation | last = Martain | first = Tim | date = 27 June 2009 | title = Amnesia in shades of black and white | periodical = Hobart Mercury }}

Collins (1998) has stated that "Thornley's personal films (Maidens and To the Other Shore) and her social action films (A Film for Discussion and For Love or Money) are landmark films in the history of Australian feminist cinema over the last three decades". To the Other Shore explores death and motherhood through the narration of the fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel.

In 2003, Thornley joined other documentary-makers, including Martha Ansara, Pat Fiske, and Mitzi Goldman, in forming Ozdox, the Australian Documentary Forum.{{cite web | title=Pat Fiske – Producer – When the Camera Stopped Rolling | website=When the Camera Stopped Rolling | date=19 March 2021 | url=https://whenthecamerastoppedrolling.film/pat-fiske/ | access-date=15 February 2025}}{{cite web | title=About Us | website=Documentary Australia | date=6 June 2018 | url=https://documentaryaustralia.com.au/about/ | access-date=15 February 2025}}

• For Love or Money : A pictorial history of women and work in Australia, co-written with Megan McMurchy and Margot Oliver, Penguin, 1983, {{ISBN|0140064443}}

• "Past, Present and Future: The Women's Film Fund", in Don't Shoot Darling!: Women's Independent Filmmaking in Australia, edited by Annette Blonski, Barbara Creed, Freda Freiberg, Greenhouse Publications, 1987, {{ISBN|0864360584}}
• "Through A Glass Darkly: Meditations on Cinema, Psychoanalysis and Feminism", in Womenvision : Women and the moving image in Australia, edited by Lisa French, Damned Publishing, 2003, {{ISBN|1876310014}}
• "Island Home Country: Working with Aboriginal protocols in a documentary film about colonisation and growing up white in Tasmania," chapter 13. in Passionate Histories: Myth, Memory and Indigenous Australia, edited by Frances Peters-Little, Ann Curthoys, and John Docker, ANU E Press, 2010, {{ISBN|9781921666643}}

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• {{Australian Women and Leadership|WLE0485b|Thornley, Jeni}}

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Category:1948 births

Category:Living people

Category:Australian documentary film directors

Category:Australian women film directors

Category:Monash University alumni

Category:University of Technology Sydney alumni

Category:Australian women documentary filmmakers