The underlying dynamic between all characters is one of youth, and the dream of another place, chronic themes of the young in isolated areas. The relationship between Perry and Elvis is one of culture, language and blood, but Melanie offers Perry something else – the chance to entertain the fantasy of ‘what if’. The violence of the situation that has thrown them all together eventually ends with a volatile break up; and perhaps here is the subtext of the film – the social relationship between an Indigenous male and a non-Indigenous female is contextualised first by violence, even though both are dreamers set adrift and alienated by society.

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning synopsis

A short film based on a story by Archie Weller, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning is the story of a robbery gone wrong, an unplanned kidnapping and its consequences. A young white girl is kidnapped by three youths – two black, one white.

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning Curator's Notes

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning almost qualifies as a case of Stockholm Syndrome, with the relationship between the kidnap victim and the kidnapper Perry (Jie Pittman) depicted as a romantic one. Melanie (Alyssa McClelland), the daughter of a single parent, seems adrift, when she is suddenly caught up in the drama of a kidnapping. The character Perry prevents Willy (Sam O’Dell) from raping her, and for this she is thankful. The empathy shared by Perry and Melanie is framed as a possible romance that disrupts the relationship between the two cousins, Perry and Elvis (Luke Carroll). The film offers few answers or a resolution as to what the experience means to Melanie, and in the end what is presented is perhaps a possibility of characters trapped in an experience from which all are seeking some form of liberation.

Other films in the AFC Indigenous Branch drama initiative Crossing Tracks (1999) are Harry’s War and Wind.

Notes by Romaine Moreton