AustLit

'Karli is going to New York to escape her out-of-control life in Sydney. On her last night, three girlfriends take her out on the town. Jackie buys some speed at a nightclub as a going away present. Their depressed alcoholic friend Jane goes off with the members of a glam punk band, while unemployed Ellen hooks up with Greg, an eccentric man on rollerskates. Drug squad detectives search Karli and Jackie as they leave the club; Karli realises that the $3,000 her father gave her for New York is missing from her bag. She suspects her cynical friend Michael, an aspiring bohemian, but he denies it.

'Michael steals the takings at a benefit dance for the Aboriginal land rights campaign, and offers her half the money. One of the Aboriginal organisers catches him in Kings Cross and beats him badly. Jackie has an interview for a job in a brothel, but realises she can't face the work. Ellen and Greg get stoned and head for the beach in a stolen car. Jane accuses Karli of deserting her friends. As dawn breaks, Karli realises that she must go or get stuck in a haze of drugs and booze, like her friends. From separate directions, in varying states of consciousness, the four friends converge on the airport to say goodbye.'

(Source: Australian Screen website)

A middle-aged alcoholic joins Alcholics Anonymous and, after a psychiatric evaluation, he is committed indefinitely to a psychiatric institution under section 27A of the Queensland Mental Health Act. Storm was apparently inspired to write the screenplay after reading a newspaper report about a similar incident, and spent some months researching the film in psychiatric institutions and prisons.

The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) says of this film:

'Shot when director Esben Storm and producer Haydn Keenan were in their early 20s, inspired by the work of directors Cecil Holmes and Ken Loach, 27A was a milestone of the 1970s Australian feature revival, with a social realism at odds with much of the commercial Australian filmmaking then around it. The title refers to fine print once in the Queensland mental health act, which allowed for the indefinite detention of 'troublesome' patients. Robert Darra - one of the most honest and humble of acting presences on the local screen in the 1960s and '70s - plays the battered but resilient Queenslander Bill McDonald, struggling first with the grog, but then with a Kafkaesque system which keeps him on the leash of his bullying "nurses".'

Source: NFSA Calendar (http://www.nfsa.gov.au/calendar/event/3670-27a/). (Sighted: 11/10/2012)