FREE ON YOUTUBE Peter Weir - Picnic At Hanging Rock

FREE ON YOUTUBE  On a sleepy Valentine's Day around 1900, a class of schoolgirls from a strict Australian boarding school set off on a trip to Hanging Rock. Three of the girls and a teacher will disappear during the trip. As if they disappear into thin air. One of them is found a week later. She can't remember anything. The rest will never appear again. On this basis Peter Weir filmed his greatest film. A work about dark secrets and hidden sexual hysteria. It is also a film about the gap between the European settlers of Australia and their new home. And a film about the devil himself? When I founded the Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo, Picnic At Hanging Rock came out uncut on DVD after it had not been available for a long time. Yes, disappeared, like the girls. Unusual: Weir's "Director's Cut" takes out material instead of adding some! A work free of plot and explanation. It's the same for us as for the participants of the trip. The girls just disappear. Point. The story is based on facts. Or is it not? Did the girls disappear from our time line? Or did they just fall into a column? And the girl you picked up a week later? She had lost her shoes - but her feet were intact. There are several theories, but of course we are talking about the fact that there is NO explanation. Hanging Rock swallows its visitors. And watch Weir film the trip: Isn't it as if the group of outsiders were being watched? Are there no faces recognizable in the rock? There were such stories before in film history. The woman who simply disappears during a trip to a Mediterranean island. Or the corpse, which can be seen enlarged on photos - but was never found in the place. Theoretically analysed for the first time: There are things in the Victorian age, disturbing secrets that the spirit of modern life cannot translate or process. This is the message of Picnic At Hanging Rock. It all starts at Am Appleyard College in Woodend, Victoria. There, discipline and ladylike behavior replace real learning. The teacher Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) herself seems to have unfulfilled needs and punishes a rebellious girl with exclusion from the hike. The other students set off in the carriage for Hanging Rock. Their parasols shine in front of the dark rock. We hear girls laughing - in contrast to the inhospitable landscape. The sun breeds. Insects kill and eat themselves. Underlaid with disturbing music. Everything seems like a hallucination. Does the repressed sexuality have anything to do with the disappearance of the girls? Somehow their most secret desires seem to intertwine with the dark rock. A girl, Edith, runs screaming back to the group. The others would have disappeared! Later she remembers seeing the missing teacher in her underwear. Remnants of lace underwear are found. We remember Mrs. Appleyard's unspoken sexual feelings... The director Peter Weir, in any case, should then stage films more often about outsiders who are in places to which they do not belong. It seems as if Weir is afraid of these places. Wouldn't it be better to stay at home? You'll be fine at home, but in strange places like Hanging Rock you might just disappear. Worse still, that you will be haunted...