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''Exits'' is a 1979 Australian drama-documentary directed by
Paul Davies Paul Charles William Davies (born 22 April 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, a professor in Arizona State University and director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He is affiliated with the Institute ...
. It centres on the effect of the 1975 dismissal of the Labor Government of
Gough Whitlam Edward Gough Whitlam (11 July 191621 October 2014) was the 21st prime minister of Australia, serving from December 1972 to November 1975. To date the longest-serving federal leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), he was notable for being ...
on a handful of characters wandering around
Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...
. It is the earliest of several treatments of the event, which include ''
Home on the Range "Home on the Range" ( Roud No. 3599) is an American folk song, sometimes called the "unofficial anthem" of the American West. Dr. Brewster M. Higley (also spelled Highley) of Smith County, Kansas, wrote the lyrics as the poem "My Western Hom ...
'' (
Gil Scrine Antidote Films is a Brisbane-based independent film distributor, formerly known as Gil Scrine Films, specialising in arthouse films and social documentaries. Established in 1973 as a vehicle for distributing the documentaries of Gil Scrine, tod ...
, 1982) and '' The Dismissal'' (1983).http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/readingroom/serial/AJCS/1.2/Cunningham.html "The only filmic treatments of the events of 11 November 1975, ''Exits'' (Paul Davies, Pat Laughren, Carolyn Howard, 1979) and ''Home on the Range'' (Gil Scrine, 1982) circulate marginally as independent 'political' films, each with tangential, though significant, modes of intersection with the politics of the dismissal. ''Exits'' situates Whitlam's dismissal in terms of its existential impact on the lives of 'ordinary' people undergoing their own relational and vocational 'exits', juxtaposed somewhat incoherently, or, to gloss it positively, 'experimentally', with rhetorical gestures toward CIA involvement in the dismissal. ''Home on the Range'' does more than gesture toward such CIA intervention, indeed, it marshals a persuasive array of evidence linking the imminent expiry of leases on U. S. military and intelligence bases in Australia in 1975, the CIA, and Whitlam's dismissal. Comparing this analysis and what is offered in ''The Dismissal'' on the CIA is instructive.


References

1979 films 1975 Australian constitutional crisis 1970s Australian films {{1970s-Australia-film-stub