AustLit

Set in a migrant camp during the years following World War II, a period when some four thousand Polish families came to Australia, the narrative focuses on Julian. Although married to Anna and with a son, he falls in love with Nina and she with him. As they and others face the new situations and prejudices that await immigrants and as they take on aspects of Australian culture, old-country values reassert themselves. Julian is eventually forced to make a decision between love and family.

Debbie and Sue are accepted into Greenhill Beach's gang, an elite group of teenagers occupying a particular stretch of Cronulla beachfront. As surfie groupies, Debbie and Sue find out that they are expected to submit to male whims and play out 'strange' rituals, such as not eating or going to the bathroom when a boy is around. The girls' life mainly consists of doing what everyone else does: watching the boys surf, having sex with them (in the back seat of cars and at home-alone parties), and getting drunk. The narrative maintains a humorously ironic distance from the awfulness of the scene, particularly through the use of narration. The boys, though portrayed as collectively dominant, are individually consigned to the margins, while Debbie and Sue ultimately break out of the confines of male-imposed rules.

'In the 1920s Mr Pym, his son and his pianist travel the backroads to bring the excitement and sophistication of the silver screen to small country towns. Pym is an old-fashioned showman who comes into conflict with an American rival trying to take over his territory.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 1/4/2014)