Phillip Noyce - 1977 - Gary Foley
BACKROADS
Overview
Premiering at the Sydney Film Festival in June 1977, the Film 'Backroads' was the first full length feature film by Australian director, Phillip Noyce. The Film had a budget of only $20,000 form the Australian Film Commission and is recognised as the first Australian film which has had a significant creative input from Indigenous Australians. The film was only ever screened once commercially in Australia, at the Longford Cinema in Melbourne.
The film was selected for the Berlin Film Festival in February 1978 where it was well received by European audiences. The film highlights the racial injustice of Indigenous Australians and highlights the political context in which this debate resides. The Film was restored in 2005 as part of the Kodak / Atlab Collection for the National Film and Sound Archive.
Synopsis
Jack, a xenophobic white vagrant, and Gary, a young aboriginal make an unlikely travelling team, nonetheless they steal a 1962 Pontiac Parisienne and head off around country New South Wales, with the intention of eventually making it to Sydney.
On a pilgrimage of shop-lifting from Roadhouses and service stations, over the course of the film, the pair are joined by three hitch-hikers, the first is Gary's uncle Joe, another is a Frenchman and the third is a young woman who has tired of the shackles of marriage and motherhood, and quite simply wants out.
While the film starts with a seemingly free-spirited tone, it gradually becomes dark and foreboding. Jack's raving monologues become increasingly embittered, and their robberies more violent. When Joe shoots a service-station attendant from whom the troupe are syphening fuel, a police-chase ensues and Gary is shot dead. Jack and Joe are arrested.
About The Film
