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JOURNEY TO THE END OF NIGHT
16mm. Colour. 70 mins.

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The recollections of a shattered and traumatised man, a former escapee from the advancing Japanese army relates the horrors of war, his doubts and misgivings of the support of comrades, his fear for the loss of his best friend, and of course, his own fear of dying.

"Journey to the End of Night" is the diary of a soldier. Although it was filmed forty years after the event, it is a timeless universal testimony because of its power and emotion. It is the voice of an individual raised against the violence, the horror and the futility of war.

The film raises one question which continues to haunt us: a soldier is trained to kill, but not to commit murder. Who can draw the line?

"...so compelling that one accepts long passages of monologue as if they were action-packed depictions. From this harrowing confessional emerges one more example of war's essential obscenity." The Herald, Keith Connolly 1982

" ... which draws the spectator into an hallucinatory psychodrama." Ghent Film Festival , Belgium, 1983

"In one sense Bill Neave's is the single greatest performance in the Festival; in a more teasing sense, it seems of course scarcely a performance at all. By collapsing past and present, Tammer has created a remarkable sense of forty years of one man's life." Brian McFarlane, Cinema Papers, August 1982

Awards:

Melbourne Film Festival 1982
The Ten Award For Documentary Excellence

Australian Film Awards 1982
The Jury Prize

Also selected for showing at:-

Sydney Film Festival 1982
Edinburgh International Film Festival 1982
Berlin Forum 1983
Ghent Film Festival 1983
San Francisco International Film Festival 1983

 

 

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