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Queen of Hearts (2003)

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What is it like to die?

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

Clip description

Children splash around in a desert waterhole. Penny (Kirsty McDonald), face down in the water, is holding her breath. Suddenly, she is pulled up. Her cousin Steven (Rhimi Johnson Page) demands to know what she was doing. She tells him, imagining what it is like to be dead. The children around a fire, pass a bit of burning leaf between them, and puff on it as though it were a smoke. Penny grabs the pretend smoke off her cousin, and throws it in the fire, then scrambles up the rocks away from the group. The children arrive home without Penny. Penny is walking along the train tracks, when her mother Sue pulls up in the car.

Curator’s notes

by Romaine Moreton

The success of this script is its ability to communicate complex issues simply. The children at the waterhole are oblivious to Nanna’s illness and her dying, yet for Penny, there is a sense that the innocence enjoyed by the other children is being slowly corroded by her learning of her Nanna’s inevitable death.

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