Vision for a New World (1968)

Stumbling upon this obscure short came by happen stance. When combing newspaper clippings for a creative research project of mine, I managed to dig up this fascinating article in the Sydney Morning Herald reporting on the filming progress of this movie. It quickly came to my attention that this local piece of media lacked an entry on any of the major film databases. So, I took the pledge to add it to TMD myself once tracking a low res copy of it in the hidden depths of YouTube. In its liminial and foreboding atmosphere, Vision for a New World centers on a young man named Phillip, who finds himself in a purgatory reality that's littered with clues of his past life. From the discovery of his own corpse to the mysterious connection with a woman scheduled for an abortion, Phillip slowly reveals this doomed fate by his own hands. It's plot is no doubt ambiguous and borderline convoluted. But one can still extract themes of suicide, love, tragedy, life and breakups from this near half-hour psychedelic trip. Even with its near absence of dialogue, there's definitely a story being told in this strange rendition of Sydney we find ourselves in. Visuals can flourish at times and my delight seeing local landmarks is definitely the best part of it all. Especially getting a brief scene of the pre-renovated Domain Express Walkway (the site that led me to discovering this film). Overall, it's a fascinating relic and precursor of the underground Aussie cinema that would soon follow after the release of this film.