Zone 39

Last updated

Zone 39
Directed by John Tatoulis
Written by Deborah Parsons
Produced by Colin South
Starring Peter Phelps
William Zappa
Cinematography Peter Zakharov
Edited by Peter Burgess
Music by Burkhard Dallwitz
Distributed byRoadshow (Australia)
Beyond Films (international)
Release dates
  • 22 May 1997 (1997-05-22)(Australia)
Running time
95 minutes
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish
Budget$4 million [1]
Box officeA$21,976 (Australia) [2]

Zone 39 (The Zone) is a 1996 Australian science fiction psychological drama film directed by John Tatoulis. It stars Carolyn Bock, Peter Phelps and William Zappa, and runs for 93 minutes. [3]

Contents

Plot

The film tells the story of a future where the environment has been ravaged, leaving the world desolate. Two surviving factions, the New Territories and the Federal Republics, have been at war for 40 years. Finally, they have agreed to peace terms thanks to the efforts of the Central Union (CU). One of the security experts for the CU, Anne (Bock), decodes the encrypted messages of her boss, only to discover that one of the security zones has suffered a deadly contamination. Mysteriously, she dies shortly thereafter, leaving her soldier husband Leo (Phelps) devastated. [4]

To recuperate, Leo is assigned to guard duty at the border outpost named Zone 39. The remainder of the film deals with Leo's struggle to cope with isolation and the death of his wife. [4] She appears to him in hallucinations, perhaps brought on by the tranquillizers he has been taking. [5]

Cast

Production

In Zone 39, I was exploring a couple of things. One was the way in which a person deals with grief, the loss of a loved on. I truly believe that someone doesn't die until we stop thinking about that person. I think once we forget that person, once that person ceases to live in our memories, then that person is truly dead. Often it takes a long time for that person to truly die in people's hearts. I wanted to explore this theme in an environment that I think we're heading towards, one of being like a society that is particularly unfriendly to the individual and particularly isolates the individual and controls that individual. [6]

Filming locations

The film was shot over seven weeks from late October to early December 1995 around inner city Melbourne and in Crawfords’ Melbourne studios, and the salt pan around Woomera, South Australia for the desert scenes.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Matheson</span> American fiction writer

Richard Burton Matheson was an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres.

<i>The Producers</i> (1967 film) Film by Mel Brooks

The Producers is a 1967 American satirical black comedy film. It was written and directed by Mel Brooks, and stars Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn, and Kenneth Mars. The film is about a con artist theater producer and his accountant who scheme to get rich by fraudulently overselling interests in a stage musical purposely designed to fail. Searching for the worst script imaginable, they find a script celebrating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and bring it to the stage. Because of this theme, The Producers was controversial from the start and received mixed reviews. It became a cult film and found a more positive critical reception later.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandy Cheeks</span> Fictional animated character from SpongeBob SquarePants

Sandy Cheeks is a fictional character in the American animated comedy television series SpongeBob SquarePants and the Nickelodeon franchise of the same name. She is voiced by Carolyn Lawrence and first appeared in the episode "Tea at the Treedome" that premiered on May 1, 1999. She was created and designed by marine biologist and animator Stephen Hillenburg who is also the creator of the series. Sandy is portrayed as an intelligent anthropomorphic squirrel who wears a diving suit and lives underwater.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Garner</span> Australian author

Helen Garner is an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip, published in 1977, immediately established her as an original voice on the Australian literary scene—it is now widely considered a classic. She has a reputation for incorporating and adapting her personal experiences in her fiction, something that has brought her widespread attention, particularly with her novels Monkey Grip and The Spare Room (2008).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Graves</span> American actor (1926–2010)

Peter Graves was an American actor who portrayed Jim Phelps in the television series Mission: Impossible from 1967 to 1973 and in its revival from 1988 to 1990. His elder brother was actor James Arness. Graves also played airline pilot Captain Clarence Oveur in the 1980 comedy film Airplane! and its 1982 sequel Airplane II: The Sequel.

<i>Mannequin</i> (1987 film) 1987 film by Michael Gottlieb

Mannequin is a 1987 American romantic comedy film directed by Michael Gottlieb in his directorial debut, and written by Edward Rugoff and Gottlieb. It stars Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall, Estelle Getty, Meshach Taylor, and G. W. Bailey. The original music score was composed by Sylvester Levay. The film revolves around a chronically underemployed passionate artist named Jonathan Switcher who lands a job as a department-store window dresser and the mannequin he created which becomes inhabited by the spirit of a woman from Ancient Egypt, but only comes alive for Jonathan.

Sex is the biological distinction of an organism between male and female.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HM Prison Pentridge</span> Prison in Victoria, Australia

HM Prison Pentridge was an Australian prison that was established in 1851 in Coburg, Victoria. The first prisoners arrived in 1851. The prison closed on 1 May 1997.

Suburban Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction, art, film and television, focused on anxieties associated with the creation of suburban communities, particularly in the United States and the Western world, from the 1950s and 1960s onwards.

<i>Queen of the Damned</i> 2002 film by Michael Rymer

Queen of the Damned is a 2002 horror film directed by Michael Rymer from a screenplay by Scott Abbott and Michael Petroni, and based on the 1988 novel The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice, the third novel of the book series The Vampire Chronicles, although the film contains many plot elements from the novel's 1985 predecessor, The Vampire Lestat. A stand-alone sequel to Interview with the Vampire (1994), the film stars Stuart Townsend, Aaliyah in her final film, Marguerite Moreau, Vincent Pérez and Lena Olin. Townsend and Matthew Newton replaced Tom Cruise and Antonio Banderas in the roles of Lestat and Armand, respectively.

<i>Celia</i> (1989 film) 1989 Australian film

Celia is a 1989 Australian horror drama film written and directed by Ann Turner, and starring Rebecca Smart, Nicholas Eadie, Victoria Longley, and Mary-Anne Fahey. Set in 1957, the film centers on an imaginative young girl growing up on the outskirts of Melbourne during the Red Scare, whose fantastical view of the world around her brings about grim results.

Bianca Chiminello is an Australian model and actress best known for her role as Jenavian Charto on the television series Farscape. She is also known for her role in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jenny Hocking</span> Australian political science writer and researcher

Jennifer Jane Hocking is an Australian historian, political scientist and biographer. She is the inaugural Distinguished Whitlam Fellow with the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University, Emeritus Professor at Monash University, and former Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. Her work is in two key areas, counter-terrorism and Australian political biography. In both areas she explores Australian democratic practice, the relationship between the arms of government, and aspects of Australian political history. Her research into the life of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam uncovered significant new material on the role of High Court justice Sir Anthony Mason in the dismissal of the Whitlam government. This has been described as "a discovery of historical importance". Since 2001 Hocking has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Lionel Murphy Foundation.

<i>Pure Shit</i> 1975 Australian film

Pure Shit is a 1975 Australian drama film directed by Bert Deling.

Travelling North is a 1987 Australian film directed by Carl Schultz and starring Leo McKern, Julia Blake, Graham Kennedy and Henri Szeps. Based on an original 1979 play of the same name by David Williamson, it is one of Williamson's favourite movies based on his works. The act of "travelling north" as used in the title, in the context of the southern hemisphere in which the film and its original play are set, denotes transitioning from the colder, business-dominated southern regions of the Australian continent to the notionally more relaxed and warmer subtropical or tropical northern regions such as northern New South Wales and ultimately, far north Queensland.

<i>Heart Beat</i> (film) 1980 film by John Byrum

Heart Beat is a 1980 American romantic drama film written and directed by John Byrum, based on the autobiography by Carolyn Cassady. The film is about seminal figures in the Beat Generation. The character of Ira, played by Ray Sharkey, is based on Allen Ginsberg. The film stars Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, and John Heard.

Walter Franklyn Barrett, better known as Franklyn Barrett, was an Australian film director and cinematographer. He worked for a number of years for West's Pictures. It was later written of the filmmaker that "Barrett's visual ingenuity was to be the highlight of all his work, but... his direction of actors was less assured".

The Rushing Tide is a 1927 Australian silent film about the search for a hoard of diamonds. It was not a success at the box office and is considered a lost film.

In Too Deep is a 1989 erotic thriller film.

Miles Howard-Wilks is an Australian artist. While working primarily as a painter, Howard-Wilks is also a ceramicist and animator and has worked in the Arts Project Australia studio since 2000. His diverse subject matter explores themes such as the Australian landscape, seascapes, and Australian Rules Football. With a fine attention to detail and a special interest in oceanic and environmental imagery, Howard-Wilks' works have been widely exhibited both Australia-wide and internationally. His works are held within many collections, most notably at the National Gallery of Australia and the Museum of Contemporary Art. He is viewed as an important figure in outsider art in Australia.

References

  1. Australia's Final Frontier by JIM SCHEMBRI The Age 23 May 1997 p 5
  2. "Australian Films at the Australian Box Office", Film Victoria. Retrieved 13 November 2012
  3. Staff (2004). The Scarecrow Movie Guide. Seattle: Sasquatch Books. p. 723. ISBN   1-57061-415-6.
  4. 1 2 Brennan, Sandra (2012). "Zone 39 (1996)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times . Baseline & All Movie Guide. Archived from the original on 26 October 2012. Retrieved 6 April 2011.
  5. Ruffles, Tom (2004). Ghost images: cinema of the afterlife. McFarland. pp. 64–65. ISBN   0-7864-2005-7.
  6. "Interview with John Tatoulis", Signis, 20 May 1997. Retrieved 21 November 2012