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Well known in Super 8 circles for the films they've made both individually and as a team, Sydney based The Marine Biologists (O'Brien, Frost and Meyers) with the increasing assistance of Catherine Lowing and Rowan Woods, make the move from 8mm to 16mm in their most ambitious project to date, loosely inspired by the filmmakers' obsession with the films of the early seventies.
It's a humorous, unpredictable boys-own-road movie that takes its three hapless heroes (an AWOL sailor, an angst-ridden novelist and a rejected lover) on a journey from the designer sleaze of Sydney's inner-city to the exuberant kitsch of Surfers Paradise. With their fate watched over by a suitably post-modernist guardian angel-cum-pizza delivery girl
Most importantly, the project signals the first significant crossover between the thriving Australian Super 8 scene and 'conventional' 16mm/independent narrative productions Equipped with the improved technical presentation quality of 16mm particularly the soundtrack which was entirely post-dubbed) yet still demonstrating the flexibility and freedom the 8mm camera allows The Big Lunch exhibits much of the now familiar Super 8 visual style and energy
In doing so The Marine Biologists inject a dose of inspired energy and adventure and -heaven forbid - humour - into Australia's independent film practise.
PHa/TB