Director Michael Thornhill in person!

The time is the late 1970s, the place Bankstown in the suburbs of Sydney, where best mates Kevin (Paul Couzens) and Bob (Carl Stever) work in a wrecking yard by day and spend most of their free time cruising around in the titular babe magnet–a staple of the Oz roadways produced locally by GM in the 1950s. When Kevin falls for Anne (Eva Dickinson), a shopgirl raising her two younger brothers and caring for her dissolute father (the excellent Ray Marshall), it threatens his bromance with Bob as well as his carefree lifestyle. Fueled by a classic Oz rock soundtrack (including Ol ‘55, Skyhooks and Renee Geyer) and featuring the screen debut of future leading lady Sigrid Thornton (The Getting of Wisdom), The FJ Holden is an uncommonly acute distillation of a particular time and place, care of screenwriter Terry Larsen and director Michael Thornhill.

“One of the most vital, energetic, honest and uncompromising of Australian films.” —David Stratton

Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia’s Kodak/Atlab Collection.