VIVIAN BULWINKEL

Australia, 1988, 45 minutes, Colour.
Rachel Ward.
Directed by Rod Hardy.

Vivian Bulwinkel is one of Mike Willesee's Australians, a Bicentenary project of 13 biographies of significant Australians. Rachel Ward plays the nurse of World War II who is captured and helps fellow prisoners in the prisoner-of-war camps. The character is not as familiar as some of the others in the series - however, she stands for those many nurses who had a strong humanitarian sense and who rose courageously to crises during World War Two. The film was directed by Rod Hardy, director of telemovies and television series.

1. Vivian Bulwinkel as a choice for Willesee's Australians? Her contribution to Australia and its spirit?

2. The quality of the telemovie, its brevity of running time? Impact for Australian audiences and Australian spirit?

3. The re-creation of the war in Malaya and the now Indonesia? The staging of war sequences? The prisoner-of-war camp? Sense of period? Musical score?

4. Audience knowledge of Vivian Bulwinkel? Her being typical and symbolic of wartime nurses?

5. The focus on nurses and war? Their volunteering, their sense of humanity? Their work with injured and dying men? The cross-section of women? Their ordinariness? Dangers, evacuation, on the ship? Civilians? Their work, the dangers?

6. Vivian seen within this context? The group and. their work? The ship hit, its going down, survival?

7. Survival on shore, helping one another? The officer and his decisions? The locals and their fear? The decision to surrender? The coming of the Japanese, their severity and brutality? The comments about the war, conventions for prisoners?

8. The arrest of the men? The sequence of driving the women into the water and shooting them? Vivian and her wound, surviving?

9. The wounded Vivian, her having to cope, finding the injured man? Her support of him? Tending him, feeding him, water, warmth? Her own wound? Going into the village for some help? The officials in the village refusing her? The villagers helping her? Survival?

10. One the road, the decision to surrender? Going to the camp? The reunion? Her having to conceal the truth because of dangers? The Japanese and their treatment of the prisoners of war? The man and his dying and Vivian's tending him?

11. World War Two, the fighting men and their deaths, the service of the nurses, their deaths and imprisonment? A memoir and a tribute?