Australian cinema: transforming youth issues over time

Long ago, Australian filmmakers discovered that it was the issues of universal interest that could ensure worldwide success of their films. One of such issues was the leftwing youth protests expressing the unwillingness of the young people to live according to the rules of the older generation. These protests peaked in the late 1960s and immediately found their way onto the screen. The importance of the problem ensured an almost inevitable international success of the films which dealt with those events.

Yet there was another reason for the close attention paid by Australian filmmakers to the May 1968 events. Many of them (including the authors of the analyzed films) matured during those tempestuous years. Like many young people in Europe, they were fed up with the hypocrisy and lies of the older generation. They wanted to believe that changes were about to come. What interests the filmmakers of today is not so much the leftist movement itself or the revolt of the young against the society of their fathers but the results which transpired twenty years after the events, following the disillusionment and the shipwreck of youthful hopes. Some found solace in conformism and indifference, others in despair and nihilism.

But luckily the filmmakers saw a third path: that of love and care for the destitute; and, by consequence, that of the belief in the coming changes for the better.