FILM

A sombre and despairing bush film, made after the untimely death of the poet Charles Buckmaster (1951−72), to whom the film is dedicated, and shortly before the Cantrills’ move to the USA in 1973. Unlike Earth Message, At Eltham is slow and somnambulant, observing with wearied, blinking eyes a bush scene in Eltham (an outer suburb of Melbourne). The film is haunted by a sense that they ​‘could no longer work as filmmakers in Australia’ (Corinne Cantrill).