ScreenSound boss loves being here.

(From Canberra Times)

A S I WALK into ScreenSound Australia to meet its new director, I run into a smiling Kim Dalton, chief executive the Australian Film Commission and the central figure in one of the world's biggest rows over screen and sound culture.

As I walk out the door an hour later, I meet Ron Brent, the previous director of the National Screen and Sound Archive, who just chanced to be in the neighbourhood.

There may have been some kind of symbolism in the coincidence, though you'd hardly say that the new director, Dr Paolo Cherchi Usai, was sandwiched between the two, for he's obviously not a man to be sandwiched at all. On the contrary, in an amusing twist, I find he's recording me, not the other way round, as we talk about his first eight days at ScreenSound and I take notes. Last week the spring blossoms were falling as Cherchi Usai opened the archive's 20th- birthday exhibition in a flurry of euphoria. Immediately afterwards, he was whisked away interstate. This week the euphoria isn't quite so obvious, but the energy is. In between meetings, he's been giving interviews speaking …