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The Quiet Room (1996)

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clip 'I don't want to talk about it' education content clip 3

Original classification rating: M. This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

The girl (Chloe Ferguson) listens as her parents argue in the next room. Kate, a babysitter (Kate Greetham), arrives as the parents are about to go to counselling. Kate asks the silent child if she has gone mad. Later, the child almost forgets she is not speaking.

Curator’s notes

The film is partly an exercise in sound and the human voice. We hear voices from other rooms, the internal voice of the child’s narration, sometimes two or three different voices at the same time, all of which are still intelligible. De Heer builds up a sense that each voice is separate, isolated from the others. The stillness of the camera work also sets up a sense of sterility within the family. There is order but not harmony. Certain shots also suggest a child’s way of looking at things – such as the way the child plays with her teeth, looking at them in the mirror, perhaps because the babysitter has braces and she wonders if she will have to have them later. In her narration, the words ‘practically an adult’ are like a terrible condemnation of the babysitter.

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All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

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  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

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