Silver City

The debut feature of Australian Film and Television School graduate Sophia Turkiewicz, this story, penned by the director with Thomas Keneally, suffers from a heavy-handed earnestness common to so many historical films that attempt to illustrate particular moral and socio-cultural issues. The issue here is the experience of Polish immigrants, or "refos", in Australia in the immediate post-war period.

Based on the director's short film, Letters From Poland (1978), and informed by her own mother's experience, Turkiewicz's film tells in flashback of the romance of Nina (Gosia Dobrowolska) and Julian (Ivor Kants) in the setting of a migrant compound of tin huts that give the film its name. Whilst the production values demonstrate a careful attention to detail, the script, acting and direction betray Turkiewicz's lack of experience, dragging the viewer through over-familiar scenarios and rolling out a roster of stereotypes on both sides of a cultural divide. Steve Bisley and Anna Maria Monticelli (credited as Anna Jemison) both won AFI Best Supporting Actor Awards and Jan Hurley won one for Costume Design, whilst Turkiewicz went on to television directing.

FYI:  The director revisited the source material for this film in a fine 2014 documentary, Once My Mother..

 

Want something different?