Cinema
Strikebound
Richard Lowenstein · 1984
Synopsis
In 1937, at the Sunbeam coal mine in Korumburra, in Gippsland, the miners protest against their wages and dangerous conditions; the manager, Birch, refuses to negotiate, and the men go on strike by occupying the mine. The union organisers Idris Williams and Charlie Nelson coordinate the action. Wattie Doig, a Scottish miner and communist, becomes the strikers' spokesman, while his wife, Agnes, a member of the Salvation Army, founds a women's committee to support them.
Context
The screenplay draws on the oral-history interviews collected by the director's mother for a book of 1978, and on an unfinished manuscript whose title appears in the credits. Conceived at first as a fifty-minute dramatised documentary, the film was shot notably in a disused mine at Wonthaggi and at Maldon, for 750,000 dollars. It opens on the real Doigs, who recall the events some fifty years later. Presented at Cannes in May 1984, it was released in Australia on 20 September and took 157,000 dollars.
Who it is for
A film in English from Australia, a rare political film about a major strike in the country's labour history.
Prizes and reception
Grand Prize of the Karlovy Vary festival and AFI award for production design; for Australian Screen, one of the most impressive debuts of the decade.