AustLit

An intensely personal and autobiographical observation of the Melbourne artistic community of which director Tim Burstall was a part in the mid-1960s, Two Thousand Weeks is one of the first feature films of the modern era in Australian cinema.

The narrative concerns Will Gardener, a Melbourne journalist at a crossroads in his life. He wants to be a novelist, but he has a wife and two kids to support and at the same time finds himself struggling with the Australian cultural wasteland. His world begins to career into a series of crises as he finds himself having to choose between his mistress (who is about to leave for London with or without him) and family (including his father, who is dying in hospital). To make matters worse, an old university friend, Noel Oakshot, is returning in triumph from London, where he has become a darling of the media.

A collaboration between surrealist Dusan Marek and director Tim Burstall, The Magic Trumpet is an animated film (using the style of cut-out animation on which Marek focused in the early 1960s) recounting the story of a magic trumpet that brings fame and fortune to an old tramp.

A children's show created by Tim Burstall for ABC Television in 1963. Sebastian was a marionette puppet, created by Peter Scriven and operated by Igor Hyczka: he interacted with human actors in a variety of scenarios.

The story of 'a little boy who won a black and white goat as a prize at the hoop-la, and then had it stolen by two hooligans'.

Source:

'Of Jet Engines and Desperate Dragons', Canberra Times, 16 March 1963, p.20.