Wake in Fright

Ted Kotcheff, Australia/USA, 1971, DCP, 1.85, colour, 108′

FRI September 19 / 23.00 / Kinodvor

“Sweat, Dust and Beer… There’s Nothing Else Out Here Mate!”

Awe-inspiring, brutal and stunning, Wake in Fright is the story of John Grant, a bonded teacher who arrives in the rough outback mining town of Bundanyabba planning to stay overnight before catching the plane to Sydney. But his one night stretches to five and as he befriends the jovial Tim Hynes and his mates Dick, Joe, and the inscrutable Doc (Donald Pleasence in a tailor-made role) he plunges headlong toward his own destruction. When the alcohol-induced mist lifts, the educated John Grant is no more. Instead there is a self-loathing man in a desolate wasteland, dirty, red-eyed, sitting against a tree and looking at a rifle with one bullet left…

Alongside Mad Max (George Miller, 1979) and Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971) widely acknowledged as one of the seminal films in the development of modern Australian cinema. Together with Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) the only film to be screened twice in Cannes (in 1971 premiering in official competition, in 2009 upon the request of Martin Scorsese in Cannes Classics section), itis a prime example of what we like to call films that transcend generic boundaries and defy classification. But one thing is certain: Wake in fright is the ultimate masterpiece of the cinema of bizarre. Forget Lynch. The most sun-scorched cinematic nightmare was made by Ted Kotcheff.

Believed lost for many years, Wake in Fright has been painstakingly restored by Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive and AtLab Deluxe.

“Wake in Fright is a deeply – and I mean deeply – unsettling and disturbing movie. I saw it when it premiered at Cannes in 1971, and it left me speechless. Visually, dramatically, atmospherically and psychologically, it’s beautifully calibrated and it gets under your skin one encounter at a time, right along with the protagonist played by Gary Bond. I’m excited that Wake in Fright has been preserved and restored and that it is finally getting the exposure it deserves.”
– Martin Scorsese

“May be the greatest Australian film ever made.”
– Rex Reed, The New York Observer