Screening times:
Saturday, July 5, 6:00 PM

Haydn Keenan | Australia | 1983 | 89m
featuring Tracy Mann, Vera Plevnik, and Julie Barry (and a 10-year old Claudia Karvan!)

Middle-class Karli, alcoholic Jane, unemployed Jackie, and square Ellen are four friends living together and barely scraping by in suburban Sydney. But when Karli’s father offers her a little money and a one-way ticket to New York, she finally sees a way out of her dead-end life — that is until the money goes missing, kickstarting a final night out on the town that none of them will ever forget.

Going Down is a vivid and intense time capsule of early '80s youth culture — specific to Australia but undeniably universal — with a screenplay written by and based on the lives of two of its stars, performances from local bands Pel Mel and the Dynamic Hepnotics, and supporting appearances by a handful of beloved Ozploitation regulars — including David Argue (BMX Bandits) and Hugh Keays-Byrne (Mad Max). It's a largely unseen landmark of Australian cinema, revived thanks to a distributor having stumbled on a copy at a video store. It was shot on 16mm but is now restored in an eye-opening 4K edition.

Existing somewhere between Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens and Juliet Berto and Jean-Henri Roger’s Neige in its depictions of the thrills and dangers of urban life, Going Down is a visceral testament to friendship and making it at any cost.

"More than 40 years on, the film is a remarkable certificate of Sydney’s past life." - Charles Carrall, The Guardian UK

"There are certain films that capture a time and place so vividly that they feel more like fragments of the past–– or dirty handprints on a bathroom mirror – than trips to the theater. So it is with Going Down." - Payton McCarty-Simas, Film Inquiry

Tickets $12 ($11.40 cash at the door if available)
Prices include HST.