Revenge of the Subtitle

For years, cineastes reveled in another Australian export to the film world, the top notch SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) TV subtitles were the de facto source for English translations of edgier world cinema. In the early ’90s, subtitlers Mary Pipes and Peter Templeton created a series of segments originally for private use but proved so popular the network allowed them to air. These are collectively known as Revenge of the Subtitle and share much with both Viénet’s Girls of Kamare in the way the clips recontextualize on-screen action, providing completely new narratives that fit with a scene (or song, in the case of a Bollywood clip). Some of the fun comes from transliterating the clips based on similarities between words and phrases ("¿Por qué?" becomes "Porky?").