Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1979


Burn the Butterflies

Buy Burn the Butterflies now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




'Burn the Butterflies' is an Australian 1979 TV movie about a government dealing with the controversy around uranium mining.Ed. Scott Murray, 'Australia on the Small Screen 19701995', Oxford Uni Press, 1996 p21 It stars Ray Barrett as the Prime Minister of Australia.

There was some criticism in the press, but it won a Logie in 1980 for best single drama.[http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C403878 'Burn the Butterflies'] at AustLit

It was written by Cliff Green. who described it as an "experiment".

Cheeky me wanting to push the boundaries and do a drama within another drama, which moved in real time and was relatively cheap to make... There was a crisis in Government and there were news teams filming what was happening. And that was the documentary that was a fake documentary. And all the action, all the on-stage action (if that is the right word) was happening in the Prime Minister's suite in Canberraso the way he was reacting, and who he was talking toit was almost a one-man show. And it was beautifully performed. By Ray Barrett. It was wonderful.[http://www.awg.com.au/news/storyline/storyline-online/336-cliff-green.html Oral history of Cliff Green, 'Australian Writers Guild'] accessed 13 July 2013


Green says the idea to make the film came out of a week he had spent in Canberra for the Australian Writers Guild lobbying for the arts budget.

We brought up the highflyers from Australian Opera, and the ballet, and the Sydney Theatre Companybut we did the hard work. We knocked on the doors and we faced the politicians. And I understood, at the end of that, how that place worked. And it was nothing like how we thought it worked. And if I had decided that I would like to do a Canberra-based piece and set myself, and got up and become a member of the press corps for a few weeks I wouldnt have got it. It was being in there, and understanding the contradictions, and the layers of commitment and attitude, and so on, that brought it on, that gave me the confidence to write it.


References




Buy Burn the Butterflies now from Amazon

<-- Return to movies from 1979



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1095672100.