Australian
Screen

Clip description

In the streets of inner-city Sydney, residents gather to protest against the demolition of their houses and the dissipation of their local community. As a local strums on his guitar and sings a protest ballad, we then see a montage of powerful images and freeze frames of residents and police, camera crews, bulldozers and partly-demolished houses. An angry resident can be heard in the background. The beginning of Bob Dylan’s Desolation Road plays over further images of struggle.

Curator’s notes

This clip is from the opening moments of the video and Zubrycki’s strength as an empathetic, insightful and skilled filmmaker is clear, even in these early days. He manages to construct a highly emotive sequence through sounds and images that quickly establish the context and engage the viewer in the residents’ struggle. The use of a segment from Bob Dylan’s Desolation Road connects this local struggle to a broader context of political and social change and upheaval. The social impact of urban redevelopment is placed within the framework of human rights and protection of community, albeit in an indirect way. Remember that this is essentially an advocacy video for the residents of inner-city Sydney. While it certainly captures events as they unfolded, the work is carefully composed to convey the views and experiences of residents as the plan for the expressway impacts on their sense of place, belonging and community.

The plan for the North-Western Expressway was eventually scrapped in 1977 by the Wran government.