In 1982, a young filmmaker documented the groundbreaking twelfth edition of the Adelaide Festival of the Arts and its iconoclastic Artistic Director. The resulting film, The Hall of Mirrors: A Festival, features interviews with legendary artists from Pina Bausch to Patrick White, and records an Adelaide on the cusp of an explosion of creativity.
The filmmaker and the director would be at the vanguard of cementing Adelaide’s place on the global cultural map: Scott Hicks’s Shine went on to earn seven Oscar nominations, and Jim Sharman remains one of Australian theatre’s most beloved figures and successful exports. The 2024 Wal Cherry Lecture brings together these two dynamic artists in conversation, alongside a rare screening of the original 1982 documentary.