This was an ultra-low-budget arthouse film, made when the Australian film industry was at its lowest - in the mid-60s. The film took 5 years to complete and its 64 minutes were filmed between 1965 and 1969.
It's self-consciously arty in the manner of European films of the time, filmed in black-and-white with no dialogue from the characters, but only a narrative which sometimes explains the action, and sometimes comments through children's nursery rhymes. The camera cuts often from the characters to details of the scenery and back again, concentrating on strangers' faces, local vistas or interesting angles.
The boy-meets-girl story is straightforward enough, but the film is partly a comment on Australian society at the time, with the class differences and changes in fashion, music and manners that were creating a new society in the 60s.
The film managed the inaugural AFI Best Film Award in 1969, a year in which there was very little competition. Today it is interesting more for the glimpse of Australian society it captures than for its artistic merit, but it was a brave attempt to make an arthouse Australian film at a time that there was no film industry to speak of.
It's self-consciously arty in the manner of European films of the time, filmed in black-and-white with no dialogue from the characters, but only a narrative which sometimes explains the action, and sometimes comments through children's nursery rhymes. The camera cuts often from the characters to details of the scenery and back again, concentrating on strangers' faces, local vistas or interesting angles.
The boy-meets-girl story is straightforward enough, but the film is partly a comment on Australian society at the time, with the class differences and changes in fashion, music and manners that were creating a new society in the 60s.
The film managed the inaugural AFI Best Film Award in 1969, a year in which there was very little competition. Today it is interesting more for the glimpse of Australian society it captures than for its artistic merit, but it was a brave attempt to make an arthouse Australian film at a time that there was no film industry to speak of.
