Actress Julia Blake and Last Dance director David Pulbrook. 

Showing right now on Rialto, Australian film ‘Last Dance’ could be termed merely a damn great thriller, but I (and many others) believe that it's something much more than that. Highly topical in light of current happenings at several conflict spots around the globe, it’s also a film about tolerance and forgiveness, the unspeakable effects of religious and racial hatred and the power of kindness and basic humanity to change lives.

Actress Julia Blake and Last Dance director David Pulbrook. 

It’s also an unusual and special film in that director David Pulbrook was in his sixties when he made his debut in that role, after many years as a successful editor. His story of Ulah Lippmann (Julia Blake) - an elderly widow and Holocaust survivor - and her encounter with a hooded stranger who forces his way into her apartment and ties her to a chair (Sadiq Mohammed played by Firass Dirani), is harrowing and beautiful to watch, and clearly a work with great love behind it.

We discover that Mohammed is one of a gang of terrorists who have set off a bomb in a local synagogue, and as the story goes on it turns out the unlikely pair has much in common. Ulah lost her family in the death camps; Sadiq saw his family killed by Israeli tanks. Both harbour shared sorrow, but Pulbrook and co-writer Terence Hammond have been careful not to take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ‘Last Dance’ is definitely not a political film. It does make you think - and think deeply - however, and I spoke to the director about his passions and motivations behind the making of his highly respected debut.

You didn’t make this film until you were in your sixties, and it was your directorial debut. Was it the film that you always wanted to make or something that had recently come to you in a creative sense?

DP: No, it wasn’t the film I’d always wanted to make, the fact is I’d had the idea broadly for probably 30 years.  I’d never developed it, it was just an idea, and I thought it could be set in London as I was living there at the time.  A few years back I was talking to my friend Terrence Hammond, who was a writer in advertising and a frustrated screenwriter.  My idea appealed to him and he wrote a 60-page story outline that was pretty good. We then expanded and polished it up to the 90-page shooting script we worked from. Another thing that attracted me to this story was the contained nature of the piece, thus making it relatively inexpensive to produce and allowing me - a first time feature director - the opportunity.

Where did you find the background for the story, was it drawn at all from personal experience?

DP: The conflict in the Middle East is well documented, and as there is a large Jewish community in Melbourne (the biggest in Australia) and also a large Lebanese Muslim community, it was not unreasonable to make the assumptions contained in the story.  Neither Terence nor I are Jewish or Palestinian.  The appeal in this particular story was the ability to delve into the conflict in a very contained and personal way.  Although, the real story is obviously about a mother and son, and the fact that they are a Muslim and a Jew becomes less important as the story unfolds.

You have said that you worked very hard to keep the film’s viewpoint balanced in a political sense - was that difficult when you were plotting the tale?

DP: Yes, we were in constant communication with both communities, and went to great lengths to keep “both sides” as happy as possible. They came to all screenings along the way, and seemed broadly happy, although there were always comments. 

Do you think that the subject matter could be applied to any similar political or religious situation?

DP: Yes probably, but there are no situations as vexed as the Middle Eastern conflict.  I think that is a fairly universally held view, and for that reason, our film has deeper relevance.

In the current climate it is especially topical - do you personally see any resolution in sight for the Palestinian/Jewish conflict?

DP: Well, we live in hope, but it seems almost insoluble, and it seems to me that both sides are unwilling to give enough to facilitate any kind of resolution.

How did your work as an editor inform your work as a director?

DP: It is a widely held view by many directors - i.e. Spielberg, Scorsese, and many others - that editors make good directors.  This makes sense to me given the amount of time editors spend pouring over material, angles, shots, takes, performances etc to build the most convincing sequences. Plus, early in my career I had directed quite extensively at a production company in Melbourne called Crawford Productions.  That was in my early 20s, so I guess I had a fairly rounded understanding of the job.

What is your next project?

DP: Well, funny you should mention that, I’ve just finished doing a director’s vision of my next project, which is completely different to ‘Last Dance’. It’s a classic thriller, with all sorts of twists and turns.  With luck, we will be shooting mid next year in Melbourne and Queensland.



Last Dance  - Screening Times:
07/09/20140 - 9:25pm
08/09/2014 - 10:25am