Seaside searching

Seaside Searching consists of interviews with ‘traditional’ local residents about St Kilda and surrounds and how the area is changing, in the context of 100 years history. Speakers include working girls, homeless, welfare workers, and aboriginal residents. While the technical quality is not great, vision and sound are clear.
At first the viewer is not sure where the journey is going, and whether the speakers’ words will be enough to hold our attention given the relative lack of visual stimulation. However as the program continues we are drawn in and held by the honesty, openness and truth of what we hear. The exterior interview locations grow on the viewer as markers of place. We realise that these uneducated or unsophisticated voices are saying important and meaningful things about community, change, class and status, and how regional social change affects the individual. By the close, one likes and believes in these ‘ordinary people’, and learns the value of community voices irrespective of their apparent form.