In recent years a number of Australian films have won acclaim in Canada, as elsewhere, for their sympathetic and realistic depiction of colonial life in the years before World War 1. The common theme of such films as The Getting of Wisdom, My Brilliant Career, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Breaker Morant is the process of maturation from colony to nation: they are preoccupied with Australia's ambivalent relation to British social traditions and Britain itself. These are notable examples of successful regional art-works that command an international audience for a subject that might have been of merely local interest.

English-speaking Canadians may well be jealous. There are so few films in English that give a vivid sense of Canadian life and almost none on our evolution from a colonial past. The Australians' success is not only a sad commentary on the Canadian film industry but reveals a curious gap in Canada's cultural records. Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town should never be ignored if one is looking for insight into English-Canadian life in the period after the pioneers and before World War I, but Leacock's perspective is of course neither serious nor realistic.

I want to thank Peter Allen, "NARRATIVE UNCERTAINTY IN DUNCAN'S THE IMPERIALIST," in Studies in Canadian Literature, Volume 9, No.1, 1984---for these wards and insights. I share them with Cinema Threads for their interesting commentary.-Ron in Tasmania

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married for 43 years, a teacher for 35, a writer and editor for 10 and a Baha'i for 51