Table Read: Death in Brunswick

Before Muriel’s Wedding, He Died with a Falafel in his Hand and The Castle lit up Australian screens, there was the 1990s comedy classic Death in Brunswick, best remembered for its iconic grave-digging scene. 

That scene is among the most famous in Australian cinema. It’s a sequence of dark absurdity that captures not just a moment and a mood in Melbourne, but also a certain grisly comic sensibility unique to Australian filmmaking. 

Based on the hilarious novel of the same name by Boyd Oxlade (acclaimed at the time for its ‘finely tuned comic depiction of Melbourne’s ethnically diverse northern suburbs’), with a screenplay by Oxlade and John Ruane, the slacker comedy was released in cinemas in 1990 and quickly became a cult classic. Starring Sam Neill, Zoe Carides and John Clarke, Death in Brunswick offers a macabre snapshot of multicultural Melbourne, pre-Pauline Hanson, at the end of the 1980s.

In a special event as part of the MIFF 68½ Talks program, we’re marking the thirtieth anniversary of Death in Brunswick with a digital reading of the film script, directed by John Sheedy and produced remotely under Victoria’s Stage 4 coronavirus restrictions. Grab your shovel – or maybe don’t, actually – and join us from home.

MIFF Talks presented by the Melbourne International Film Festival and the University of Melbourne. #MIFF2020