In a Room is a conversation series where we ask our friends to share their favourite domestic spaces. For this edition, we’re joined by programmer, writer, and broadcaster KATE JINX.
Kate is a Senior Programmer at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), where she oversees features and talks. She was the founding Program Director of Sydney’s Golden Age Cinema, co-hosts the culture podcast See Also, and has curated film programs for the Sydney Opera House, ACMI, and more. Her writing appears in The Monthly, and she regularly contributes to ABC radio. She lives in Melbourne with her partner, comedian and artist Zoë Coombs Marr, and their dog Top Chef.
In this edition, Kate moves between a shared convent studio, an open-plan apartment in a former factory, and a hallway jokingly referred to as “the library.” She shares the joy of rearranging tchotchkes, the lingering dream of her grandmother’s mushroom-filled greenhouse, and her love for writing in bars. Also: an enduring affection for Kim Novak’s apartment in Bell, Book and Candle: mid-century, magical, and lit just right.
Kate Jinx
Which room are you in today?
In my little studio on the top floor of the Sister’s Convent building at Abbotsford Convent, built in 1901. It’s a shared space between five of us in the former nun’s dormitory where the Sisters, novices and postulants slept. I keep a desk here that looks out over the heritage garden below and on a good day some of the animals from the Collingwood Children’s Farm will go for a long wander into my view. I don’t get to come here much (I’m usually in the MIFF office in the city or working from home in Fitzroy) but I like to come in here on a quiet weekend and do some of my own writing when possible.
Which room is the heart of your home?
My partner Zoë and I live in an apartment in a converted factory in Melbourne that has an open–plan bottom floor with kitchen, dining, and lounge integrated. Though we both gravitate there naturally when we’re home, there is a little hallway (we jokingly refer to it as “the library”) off the dining area where Zoë put up some shelving when we first moved in, and that’s where I spend way too much time rearranging the shelves with books and tchotchkes like it’s an exhibition space just for us.
Is there a room from your past that has stayed with you?
My grandmother had a small greenhouse in her suburban backyard that I used to love to visit, and my mum and I would spend a lot of time in there when I was a kid. Sometimes I dream I’m back in there checking on the mushrooms, and I wake up so happy. Almost as good as one of those dreams where you discover an extra room in your house (the best kind).
What makes a room feel like home and not just a space?
Evidence of life I suppose. I like to see someone’s personality in their home – weird little objects that they’ve picked up or if they’re not that way inclined, simple utility or just a general consideration of the space and how it best functions for the individual. Whenever I move somewhere I often think of a story from an old Milly Molly Mandy story, where she is surprised with a “new” bedroom but her family have just given everything old a lick of paint and redyed the curtains, and set out some nasturtiums from the garden – it doesn’t have to be fancy, you know? You can make any room a home.
Scenes from the home of Kate Jinx
What sort of rooms do you try and avoid?
This convent room at night! Starts to feel a bit spooky after dusk falls.
Is there a kind of room you’re always drawn to?
I love to sit up at a bar with a little notebook and pen when I’m traveling. You can get the lay of the land, peek into the kitchen and eavesdrop to your heart’s content. Slightly down-at-heel and with a sense of history in the space is the preference, generally.
What is your all time favourite room?
I’m not sure it’s my favourite but the room that had the most impact on me is Gillian Holroyd’s combined apartment/shop in the 1959 film Bell, Book and Candle, in which Kim Novak plays a late-beatnik-era Greenwich Village witch who pads about shoeless and says things like “I’ve always lived for and by the special.” Great lounge, beautiful lamps and the most chic Christmas tree you ever did see. I’d describe it all as mid-century with a bit of oddly specific clutter, perfect.
Bell, Book, and Candle
