A director who had a particular concern for social themes is the Melbourne native Fred Schepisi, whose first foray in the industry was with newsreels, commercials and documentaries. His first feature, and an inspired one at that - was 1976's strongly autobiographical The Devil's Playground. The film examines the expressive life of Catholic seminary boys during the 1950's. Schepisi would follow up this magnum opus with The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, based on Thomas Keneally's (the man who would later pen Schindler's Ark) eponymous novel, an angry indictment of the egregious treatment of the Aborigine peoples.
Schepisi soon traveled abroad to America to make an ambitious Western, Barbarosa, which starred Gary Busey and Willie Nelson and featured stunning photography from Ian Baker, the award-winning cinematographer who has long been the director's right-hand man, the film. Barbarosa would be heavily anticipated, unsurprisingly down to the director's pedigree and lauded by the critics and moviegoers alike. 1984's Iceman was an astute study of alienation concerning the unearthing and revival of a frozen prehistoric man, played to perfection by Timothy Hutton. In 1990, Schepisi would helm an espio-thriller The Russia House which made history for being one of the very few films shot in the then Soviet Union.
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| I'm an Iceman, oh I'm an ice, ice man, oh I'm an Iceman |
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| A decided Kodak moment with Busey and Nelson. (Barbarosa,1982) |
The director's most recent film, Words and Pictures (2013) starring Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche, a film about erratic erudites who find themselves enmeshed in existential dilemmas of another kind, showed that at 84, the director surely has still got it and oh we ain't done with Fred just yet; the upcoming Andorra which also stars Owen is waiting in the to be released wings.