BONZA - Australia & New Zealand Database

Title

Moving Out

Released

1983

Production Year

1982

Director

Michael Pattinson

Synopsis

Michael Pattinson's "Moving Out," a low-budget film scripted by Jan Sardi, is a poignant tale of life in the then immigrant areas of the inner city (Fitzroy).

The story centres around Gino, the son of Italian immigrants. Because Gino is the only one in the family who is fluent in English, he acts as go-between for his parents with the small part of Australian society they interact with. Outside of the home though, he refers to his family as "wogs" and is aggressively Australian.

During the film, Gino negotiates the arrival of relatives, the last two weeks of school term, a very short relationship with an Australian girl, and the prospect of the family moving to Doncaster, which one of his Australian friends terms "Wogsville." Different pressures and issues arise from these events; the anxieties of the adolescent are aptly combined with the anxieties of the displaced immigrant.

"Moving Out" is more or less a critique of the confrontation between insular Italian values and the cultural panzer divisions of Australian assimilation, a battle that leaves both sides alienated and confused.

Said Pattinson about his film:

"You are dealing with characters in a conflict situation, in a dual identity crisis and so on. On one hand, you have kids going to school and being Australians, and on the other, these kids come home from school and have to be what their parents do not want to lose sight of. That is where they come from and what their heritage is."

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