In the lecture we screened a short film called ‘End of the Line’ – the film shot in Broken Hill.  Please describe in 300 words or less if you think they achieved what they set out to do.

Whilst watching ‘End of the Line’, the short film shot in Broken Hill presented a lot of different opinions and perspectives of the townspeople and their view on life in their small town. My first impressions was that the film was quite off-putting and disturbing. I believe that the film makers set out to create a profile of the people within a rural town and to confront the audiences with the responses they received. There was great use of cinematic techniques employed throughout the film, including eerie sounding music, long takes of desolate landscapes. In the filmmakers approach to visual design, they claimed that they aimed to “take advantage of the natural landscape of Broken Hill and Silverton that we will be surrounded by.  The aim is to emphasize the beauty, the vastness and the harshness of the land.” I believe that they did this quite well. They coupled footage of the land with statements of the interviewees, and at times, they came across to be quite haunting. The old womans comments on death and her approach to dying are an honest (but still disturbing) commentary of what she believes. She is telling the truth. The footage of the harsh, barren land is also a truth. Bringing these two elements together should be nothing but raw honesty, un yet the manipulation through editing done by the film makers alters our interpretation. Many may not see it as beautiful as they are unable to look past the eerie and creepy confrontation on the screen.