Valentine’s Day Preview

Picnic at Hanging Rock

An ethereal, potent coming-of-age drama about a strange disappearance during a school trip to the Australian Outback.

  • Director

    Peter Weir

  • With

    Rachel Roberts, Dominic Guard, Helen Morse, Jacki Weaver

  • Australia 1975. 107min (Director’s Cut)

  • Digital 4K (restoration)

  • Certificate

    12A

  • A BFI release

Returning to the big screen to celebrate its 50th anniversary, Peter Weir’s adaption of Joan Lindsay’s novel has lost none of its mystique or mesmerising power. On Valentine’s Day 1900, students from Appleyard College, a girls’ private school in Victoria, Australia, embark on a field trip to an unusual but scenic volcanic formation called Hanging Rock. Despite rules against it, several of the girls wander off. It’s not until the end of the day that the group realise that some of their party have mysteriously disappeared. Weir’s wonderfully enigmatic film, with its ethereal cinematography, is possessed of a ghostly, foreboding atmosphere. A significant influence on the work of Sofia Coppola, Picnic at Hanging Rock has become a landmark for its dreamlike exploration of the intensely romantic, yet profoundly unsettling, experience of girlhood and burgeoning sexuality. It’s a wonderful, haunting Valentine’s treat.

Kimberley Sheehan, Lead Programmer

Restored in 4K in 2022 by Acid Pictures in collaboration with Second Sight Films at The Grainery laboratory, from the original camera negative preserved by Australian National Film and Sound Archive.

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