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Crossing Tracks - Saturday Night, Sunday Morning: War paint
Title:
Crossing Tracks - Saturday Night, Sunday Morning: War paint
NFSA ID
601507
Year
1999
Warnings
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons
A man tells his daughter he is going to the pub. Melanie (Alyssa McClelland) is waiting for her friends to pick her up and take her to the dance. A car pulls up. Three youths step out and want to purchase petrol. The man tells them that he wants to see the money first. The youths show him the money, after which he refuses them service. Perry (Jie Pittman) hits him with the barrel of a shotgun. Elvis (Luke Carroll) helps himself to the till and whatever else he can scrounge. He is interrupted by Melanie (Alyssa McClelland). The car speeds off along the highway.
Summary by Romaine Moreton
A somewhat violent introduction to all of the main characters in Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. We get the sense that Melanie is existing in a rather volatile environment with her single father (Peter Browne), and is suddenly caught up it the drama of three youths desperately trying to abscond from their own predicament.
Saturday Night, Sunday Morning Synopsis
A short film based on a story by Archie Weller, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning is the story of a robbery gone wrong, an unplanned kidnapping and its consequences. A young white girl is kidnapped by three youths – two black, one white.
Saturday Night, Sunday Morning Curator's Notes
Saturday Night, Sunday Morning almost qualifies as a case of Stockholm Syndrome, with the relationship between the kidnap victim and the kidnapper Perry (Jie Pittman) depicted as a romantic one. Melanie (Alyssa McClelland), the daughter of a single parent, seems adrift, when she is suddenly caught up in the drama of a kidnapping. The character Perry prevents Willy (Sam O’Dell) from raping her, and for this she is thankful. The empathy shared by Perry and Melanie is framed as a possible romance that disrupts the relationship between the two cousins, Perry and Elvis (Luke Carroll). The film offers few answers or a resolution as to what the experience means to Melanie, and in the end what is presented is perhaps a possibility of characters trapped in an experience from which all are seeking some form of liberation.
Other films in the AFC Indigenous Branch drama initiative Crossing Tracks (1999) are Harry’s War and Wind.
Notes by Romaine Moreton
Production company
Core Original
Producer
Pauline Clague
Director
Rima Tamou
Writers
Archie Weller, Rima Tamou
Acknowledgements
Produced with the assistance of the Indigenous Branch of the Australian Film Commission
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.