June Again: behind the scenes

Writer/director JJ Winlove reflects on his upbringing and how it shaped his feature film debut, June Again.

When writer/director JJ Winlove was writing the screenplay for his feature film debut June Again, he found his interest around memory bled into the story.

“I’ve always been fascinated by memory and how much memory defines who we are and just thinking about how lost I would be without my memory,” he says.

In June Again, Noni Hazlehurst plays a woman living with dementia who, in a brief and unexpected window of lucidity, tracks down her children (Claudia Karvan and Stephen Curry) to try and put everyone’s lives back on track.

In writing the feature, Winlove also delved into his own past – his parents operated a hand-printed wallpaper factory and he knew he had to include it in the film.

“I remember running around this factory and just being in awe of the place,” Winlove recounts.

However during pre-production, the dreaded thought occurred to him that there may not be many hand printed wallpaper factories in existence.

“What are we going to do if we can’t find a factory?” Winlove questioned. “Luckily we managed to find this great factory in Leichhardt and we got Noni Hazlehurst and Claudia Karvan along to do a little crash course in how to screen print.”

In this behind the scenes video, Winlove also explains how he chose to represent dementia visually from the point of view of the person experiencing it and what he learned from stepping up from short films to a feature.

June Again is screening in Australian cinemas from 6 May 2021.