Perhaps the Australian director who would go on to have the most successful American career with films such as Dead Poets Society (1989) and The Truman Show (1998), Peter Weir’s early works at home, such as The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) and the recently rereleased Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975), fit more easily in the cult film category. The Last Wave, whose influence can be seen on the likes of Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter (2011), takes place in an Australia beset by unusual weather. Public defender David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) is appointed to the case of four Aboriginal men accused of murder. He begins to have strange, apocalyptic dreams whose potency leads him further into Aboriginal myth and legend.

Notes by Kevin Coyne.

Screening as part of the Australian Dreams season.