50th Anniversary Screening! 4K Restoration!
New 4K restoration of the eerie Australian gothic!
"What we see and what we seem are but a dream—a dream within a dream.”
In this atmospheric tale, students at a girls’ boarding school mysteriously vanish with their chaperone while on a Valentine’s Day picnic. Is it a simple tragedy, or the fatal power of the elemental? Based on the beguiling novel by Joan Lindsay, Peter Weir’s gauzy and inscrutable 1975 landmark of the Australian new wave has influenced culture from Twin Peaks to The Blair Witch Project and The Leftovers —and perhaps most famously, Sofia Coppola’s breakout debut The Virgin Suicides.
The petticoats, ruffles, and delicate embroidery would be peak sad girl aesthetics all on their own, but they become hypnotic under hyper-feminine, romanticist effect of Russell Boyd’s dreamlike BAFTA and Saturn award-winning cinematography. Add to that Romanian folk musician Georghe Zamfir’s eerie pan flute and Weir's study of girlhood, tragedy and its aftermath becomes as disquieting as it is ethereal. The unnerving central mystery resists resolution, forever beyond our grasp.
Presented with an introduction by series host Nathalie Atkinson.