Made by The Commonwealth Film Unit 1964. Directed by Richard Mason and Jack Lee. A scriptwriter and a director argue their approaches to the problem of a comprehensive documentary about Australia: one favours an experimental style, the other a more conventional approach. Excerpts, wittily observed, from both proposed films indicate the faults of each, and the problems of making such a film are chronicled with considerable humour.

From the Tropics to the Snow gently acts out with comic irony a soft critique of the sunny image of Australia the Commonwealth Film Unit was expected to deliver overseas. Almost every year from its inception the Unit was expected to deliver one of these travelogues 'selling Australia' to prospective migrants; this version is a hilarious parody of that genre. The film is often cited as a turning point between the 'classic' documentary at the Unit and the emergence of a more adventurous period. It dramatises the very 'tensions' at play in the Unit between a new generation of young filmmakers with that of the old guard, while the Producer-in-Chief figure mediates between them. We see him reassure the Minister on the phone and fold and unfold a paper clip while his staff pitch him their differing visions for the grand travelogue film. The attractive secretary sits quietly in the corner taking short hand, occasionally acknowledging the admiring glances of the Producer-in-Chief.

Winner of the Gold Award & the Kodak award for colour photography at the 1964 AFI awards, From the Tropics to the Snow is the best known of the travelogue films on Australia made by the Unit. To appreciate it fully, you should really see a dozen short films and travelogues of the previous few years first see Australian Diary. Then the scathingly witty script and music, the imagination of the production, the throwaway parodies of every known travel film clich_, are even more forceful. The film was, and still is, successful with all kinds of audiences. It became the landmark for the start of the new and lively period of government filmmaking which grew over the next decade.

See a production still from the film here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nfsa/8755914814/