Directed by Peter Weir • 1975 • Australia
Starring Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse
This sensual and striking chronicle of a disappearance and its aftermath put director Peter Weir on the map and helped usher in a new era of Australian cinema. Based on an acclaimed 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK is set at the turn of the twentieth century and concerns a small group of students from an all-female college who vanish, along with a chaperone, while on a St. Valentine’s Day outing. Less a mystery than a journey into the mystic, as well as an inquiry into issues of class and sexual repression in Australian society, Weir’s gorgeous, disquieting film is a work of poetic horror whose secrets haunt viewers to this day.
Directed by Wim Wenders • 1977 • Germany
Starring Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz
Wim Wenders pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with THE AMERICAN FRIEND, a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel “Ripley’s Game.” Dennis Hopper oozes quirky menace as an amoral American a...
Directed by Larisa Shepitko • 1976 • Soviet Union
Shepitko's emotionally overwhelming final film won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and has been hailed around the world as the finest Soviet film of its decade. Set during World War II's darkest days, THE ASCENT follows the path ...
Directed by Bruce Beresford • 1977 • Australia
Starring Susannah Fowle, Hilary Ryan, John Waters
Told with a delicate blend of satire and nostalgia, this award-winning coming-of-age tale introduces one of Australian literature’s most beloved characters, Laura Tweedle Rambothan (Susannah Fowle), ...
