- Australia
- 1975
- 107 minutes
- 1.78:1
- English
- Spine #29
This sensual and striking chronicle of a disappearance and its aftermath put director Peter Weir on the map and helped usher in a new era of Australian cinema. Based on an acclaimed 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock is set at the turn of the twentieth century and concerns a small group of students from an all- female college who vanish, along with a chaperone, while on a St. Valentine’s Day outing. Less a mystery than a journey into the mystic, as well as an inquiry into issues of class and sexual repression in Australian society, Weir’s gorgeous, disquieting film is a work of poetic horror whose secrets haunt viewers to this day.
Disc Features
DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION:
- Remastered high-definition digital film transfer, supervised by director Peter Weir, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Extended interview with Weir
- New piece on the making of the film, featuring interviews from 2003 with executive producer Patricia Lovell, producers Hal McElroy and Jim McElroy, and cast members
- New introduction by film scholar David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
- A Recollection . . . Hanging Rock 1900 (1975), an on-set documentary hosted by Lovell and featuring interviews with Weir, actor Rachel Roberts, and source novel author Joan Lindsay
- Homesdale (1971), an award-winning black comedy by Weir
- Trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by author Megan Abbott and an excerpt from film scholar Marek Haltof’s 1996 book Peter Weir: When Cultures Collide (dual-format only); a new paperback edition of Lindsay’s novel, previously out of print in the U.S. (dual-format only)
New cover by Eric Skillman
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