Celia: The Mask – Digital Restoration

The NFSA has completed a digital restoration of Celia (1989), the debut feature from Ann Turner. The film explores Australian suburban childhood in the 1950s through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl.

In this clip, an excerpt from the NFSA's digital restoration of the film, Celia (Rebecca Smart) and her friends are playing with a Japanese mask that she has taken from her grandmother's room. Another girl steals the mask and runs away with it into the woods. Celia gives chase but is stopped in her tracks by what seems to be an eerie and unsettling supernatural force moving through the woods. 

In the film, Celia lives with her conservative parents (Nicholas Eadie and Mary-anne Fahey). When her beloved grandmother dies, a devastated Celia befriends her new neighbour Alice (Victoria Longley) and her young children.

When Alice is outed as a communist sympathiser, Celia's father forbids her from seeing Alice or her children. Then Celia's pet rabbit is taken from her – a result of the 1950s government program to eradicate the rabbit plague. As Celia's world spirals out of control, her blurred perceptions of real life and fantasy have tragic consequences.

You can rent or purchase the full film from Umbrella Entertainment.