Kodak/Atlab Cinema Collection

A new 35mm print of the feature film, JOURNEY AMONG WOMEN, is now available. Courtesy of Tom Cowan, John Weily and the sponsors Kodak (Australasia) and Atlab Australia

National Film and Sound Archive Collection Title number 8304

Comments about the film by the director, Tom Cowan

Journey Among Women

JOURNEY AMONG WOMEN (1977)
Classification: R rating

Director: Tom Cowan

Year of Production: 1976

Duration: 93 minutes
Format: 35mm, Colour. Mono-optical soundtrack.

Production Company: Ko-An Film Productions
Producer: John Weiley
Screenplay: Tom Cowan, John Weiley and Dorothy Hewett
Director of Photography: Tom Cowan
Camera Assistant: Malcolm Richards, Jeni Thornely
Editor: John Scott
Music: Roy Ritchie
Costume Design: Norma Moriceau
Sound Recordist: Jef Doring

Cast: Jeune Pritchard (Elizabeth Harrington), Nell Campbell (Meg), Diana Fuller (Bess), Lisa Peers (Charlotte), Jude Kuring (Grace), Robyn Moase (Moira), Michelle Johnson (Bridget), rose Lilley (Emily), Lillian Crombie (Kameragul), Therese Jack (Kate), Kay Self (Sheile), Helenka Link (Jane), Ralph Cotterill (Corporal Porteous), Martin Phelan (Captain Richard McEwan), Tim Elliot (Doctor Hargreaves).

Synopsis

In the late eighteenth century a Judge Advocate's daughter runs away with a group of twelve women convicts. In the wild colonial bushland the women successfully defend themselves from wild men living in the wilderness and from the soldiers who try to capture them. When one of the women is raped and murdered, the others seek revenge.

Background

The film was shot on 16mm on location on the banks of the Hawkesbury River, near Berowra, north of Sydney. With a budget of $150,000, the film was subsequently blown-up to 35mm. The film attracted controversy in the media for its aggressive theme with lesbianism and nudity, which in turn made it a commercial success when it opened at the Rapallo Theatre in Sydney on the 18 August 1977.

A rare exploration of our convict origins, and a good example of the 70s attempt by an indie (sic) filmmaker to go "deeper". Cowan worked hard in the 70s and 80s to build up an alternative cinema culture. – Andrew Pike.

Journey Among Women

Preservation

The original A & B rolls, and 35mm printing components are preserved in the National Screen and Sound Archive. Only poor quality prints exist. There is no final mix available. A new print will be struck from the 35mm blow-up colour reversal interdupe (CRI) and sound negative.

Director's Notes

Journey Among Women - Notes on the making of the film by director/producer, Tom Cowan. 13 November 2001.

The film was made in 1976 as a workshopped film and ran for 13 weeks at a George Street Cinema in Sydney as well as selling in 22 countries.

The original idea for the story came to me from reading 'Les Guerillerres' by Monique Wittig, which was a French feminist fantasy. I combined that with my living in the bush near the Hawkesbury River and imagining how the Colonists and the escaped convicts viewed the 'bush'. How they viewed the strangeness and wildness of the bush seemed to parallel how we viewed the wild behaviour of radical feminists at the time. So it became a story of a group of wild convict women escaping and almost killing each other before they transform into a more organised and still persecuted group who finally disappear into the bush-fire.

The core cast of the convict women came from a feminist rock group called 'Clitoris' who rented my house in Glebe. The funds for this film came from an Australia Council grant.

Producer, John Weiley, had returned from the UK and I asked him to join the production as co-producer. John persuaded me that the story had so much obvious potential that it should be made as a properly budgeted and conventionally scripted film.

Dorothy Hewett agreed to write a script and we were convinced we would be able to raise the money for script development. The first act has Dorothy's stamp in the writing but when none of the bureaucrats, distributors or leaders of the film industry saw the potential of our proposal, I couldn't pay her for further work. We decided we would show them what we meant by doing a test shoot. So we proceeded to do the workshopped version with the money the Australia Council had granted me.

Dorothy Hewett's daughter, Rose Lilley, was cast as a teenage convict who falls in love with the woman they abduct and take with them into the wilderness. This was Jeune Pritchard who was playing the Judge Advocate's daughter, the do-good Elizabeth Harrington. Martin Phelan played a captain of the rum brigade who was this refined lady's fiancée.

The idea and the workshopping process were dynamite. The film blossomed as talented people joined the production and the production value soared. With nothing to lose but their ragged clothes, the convict cast gave vivid performances and the film had a lot of energy.

When the tumult of the shooting was over, we had no money left. I had already mortgaged my house to complete the shooting. But John Weiley found private investors and we obtained a loan from the AFDC for postproduction and a blow-up. The film was a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival and has continued to make sales through the years. It turned out to be highly commercial, probably the most commercial experimental film made in Australia.

The story of the making of the film would be a great comic epic of someone (me) bumping into Australian ghetto feminism. Merv Lilley wrote a big, funny and telling story for the Nation Review. Rose Lilley got front page in The Sun [newspaper] for being engaged in an orgy in the film while still a high school (Sydney High) student. Little Nell (Nell Campbell ran away to New York and opened a nightclub. There are many stories!