My Brilliant Career(1979)

Australian director Gillian Armstrong(Oscar And Lucinda, Mrs. Soffel) grew up in Melbourne during the 1950’s. At that time there was still the widely held societal expectation that girls should grow up to become wives and mothers, and the few careers open to women included nursing and secretarial work. Armstrong wanted to follow a different path. She was inspired to become a film director. She studied filmmaking at the Swinburne Film and Television School, and then enrolled on a directors course at the newly opened Australian Film and Television School in 1973. She went on to make various short films, including the acclaimed One Hundred A Day, which is set during the 1930’s, and focuses on a young woman forced to go back to work at a factory immediately after undergoing a backstreet abortion. Her feature debut, My Brilliant Career, was released at the height of the Australian New Wave movement, and saw Armstrong become the first female director in Australia since Paulette McDonagh –…