Picnic at Hanging Rock (Director's cut) [DVD]

In the summer of 1900 three girls from a private school and their teacher unaccountably vanish on a St Valentine’s Day school picnic to a mysterious rock in the midst of the Australian bush. The Victorian girls’ school for the daughters of the privileged gradually becomes contaminated and destroyed from within by its inability to understand the forces confronting it. Based on a novel which mythologises the emergence of sexuality, the film atmospherically follows various tangents without distilling a sense of explanation. Unease is evoked by the horror of not knowing. Based on the novel by Joan Lindsay. Cast includes Rachel Roberts, Dominic Guard, Helen Morse and Jacki Weaver. This special 25th anniversary edition is a widescreen, restored director’s cut version containing 7 minutes less footage than original version.