This week, the Cornell Cinema at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, will screen the 1971 film Walkabout, Nicolas Roeg’s entrancing meditation on nature and civilization. Loosely adapted by the influential British playwright Edward Bond from James Vance Marshall’s 1959 novel, the film marked Roeg’s first solo directorial effort and was made shortly after he codirected Performance with Donald Cammell in 1970. This elliptical survival tale follows a pair of siblings who are abandoned in the harsh Australian outback and rescued by an adolescent aborigine in the midst of his “walkabout,” a journey into the wilderness that signals his transition into manhood. Stunningly lensed by Roeg himself, Walkabout captures the rich colors and hypnotic beauty of the vast landscapes, while also exploring the clash of cultures at the heart of Australian society.
For those in Ithaca, you can see the film on 35 mm this Wednesday. In the meantime, enjoy the gallery of behind-the-scenes photos below and revisit these passionate appreciations from Roger Ebert and Paul Ryan.
To realize Walkabout (1971), his surreal vision of the 1959 novel The Children, by James Vance Marshall, Nicolas Roeg set out into the Australian outback with a skeleton crew and a script just fourteen pages long. Working as his own cinematographer, Roeg used only natural light to capture his young stars interacting with the mysterious and beautiful landscape. Recalling the production forty years later, Roeg talked about his cast and crew as “a group of people living the film.” Here are some behind-the-scenes images from this strange and brooding adventure movie.
from The Criterion Current http://ift.tt/2biUZ2c
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