ALL THAT IS SOLID

Director John Hughes / 1988 / Australia

All That is Solid is speculative documentary taking the future in Australia as its subject.

Today, unlike the 1840s, 1930s or 1960s. There are no unifying visions of a progressive or humanitarian future. Instead, new technologies take on the outmoded mantle of the hero, diversity and difference arc celebrated, masking the real motor of social change which remains in the hands of self interested power elites. The world of the commodity extends to ever aspect of our lives

Meanwhile, the social and personal crises precipitated by savage transformations taking place in the transition to 'post industrial' modes or production haunt the daily lives of everyone A couple debate whether to have a child, young performance artists enact the 'Angel of History' blown backwards by the storm of progress, a separated couple are observed by their child, these little stones share an interest in the future. Of course, the interests are different and at odds, but that is the unifying dilemma around which All That is Solid constructs its vision.

Drama, comedy, with commentary from the left and the right, the Utopian and the dystopian, collide on a journey through a landscape of ideas where questions of politics, gender, and ideology arc brought into focus, only to melt away and return in transmuted forms.

"All that is solid melts into air, al! that is Holy is profaned, and men at last, arc forced to face the real condition of their lives and their relations with their fellow men " Or are they'' - John Hughes

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