DALMAS

Murder, LSD and metaphysical musings on the nature of cinema in 1970s Melbourne.

They called it the "Carlton ripple", a burst of inspired, corrosive and experimental filmmaking that emerged out of Melbourne University in the late 60s and early 70s. Taking their cues from the psychedelic explosion and the films of the French New Wave, these were movies of strange ambition and peculiarly Australian vintage, pushing the country's nascent filmmaking scene in bold and provocative new directions.

Dalmas was Bert Deling's surreal, button-pushing and hallucinogenic paean to the emerging possibilities of avant-garde and homemade filmmaking. Telling the tale of a violent ex-cop searching for the man who killed his partner, the film takes an unexpected turn when he encounters visionary drug lord Plastic Man and his tribe of dedicated LSD enthusiasts. What follows is both literal and metaphorical mayhem as the boundaries of the film start collapsing and our idea of what's real is pushed to its very limits.

Courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia