Tracy Moffatt's 1993 horror classic is the first Australian feature by an Aboriginal female director.
Inspired by Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1965), Moffat plays out three ghost stories from her childhood. The first is a tale of an American soldier who drowned in a swamp, the second is about a haunted Outback railroad, and in the third, a dead couple haunts a warehouse.
Tracy Moffat’s horror triptych BeDevil recreates the ghost stories of her childhood. Using artificial studio sets and a mix of dance, documentary film and theatre, Moffat creates an atmosphere that’s more surreal storytelling – an imagining of the Australian landscape – than traditional horror. Her unique style, drawing on her Aboriginal heritage and filmmakers like Masaki Kobayashi, Vincente Minnelli and Yasujiro Ozu, resulted in one of the most remarkable Australian cinema debuts ever. Thirty years after its Cannes premiere, a beautifully remastered version of BeDevil was released. This is the version screening at Imagine.
