One Summer Again

One Summer Again is a 1985 Australian mini series about the painter Tom Roberts and the Heidelberg School.

McQueen welcomed the new approach but he was concerned that viewers might be confused by mixing the present with the past since viewers ideas of what the past looked like had been formed from costume dramas. This approach would distance them from the characters. In the event, the audience response was very positive and the show was both a critical and ratings success. The technique showed that the audience was open to history being screened without the usual period trappings. And it was precisely their knowledge of the conventions that allowed the subversion of them to be entertaining as well as intellectually provocative. Instead of undercutting, the radical structure actually flagged and supported the radical historical interpretation the series was offering.In the late 1880s Australian Impressionism was itself breaking the rules of academic painting. By also breaking the rules, the series opens a new space for the viewers imagination, offering a way of considering both the representation of the past and history. While the blatant anachronism initially shocks the eye, the mind soon accepts the new convention. By rendering anachronism irrelevant, attention is focussed on elements other than the detail of period reconstruction. The themes of the series are able to emerge less encumbered with period foliage. The marginalisation of women, the hegemony of the gatekeepers, the power of celebrity, the state of the economy and even the danger of STDs surface strongly. The question of an Australian art that had so concerned the artists was exercising ABC television viewers in 1985 as the problem of national identity. ........

Source: Wikipedia