At the Threshold of Revival: Australian Cinema and the Moment of '2000 Weeks'

Widely dismissed upon release and nearly impossible to see today, Tim Burstall's first feature is an outlier in the Australian cinematic canon, emerging on the cusp of the decade in which the national film industry found its voice again. Drawing on personal interviews with the director and other screen figures of the day, Peter Galvin characterises the film as an imperfect but nonetheless distinctive work, and one that reflects the shifting values of its late 1960s milieu: a culture wrestling with A long-held inferiority complex, and tentatively stepping towards self-acceptance.

Additional keywords:
Australian film revival, Australian New Wave, film renaissance, Columbia, Eltham Films, Stork, Alvin Purple, Petersen, United Kingdom, Great Britain, cultural cringe, AA Phillips, Robert Menzies, Harold Holt, Gough Whitlam, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, United Artists, Communist Party, Clive James, Australia Council for the Arts, Barry McKenzie, new nationalism