University life in the '90s
Uni
A four-part documentary by Simon Target
First episode screens on The Big Picture, ABC, November 6
Review by Marina Carman
In this new documentary about student life in the 1990s, Simon Target and crew follow three students through nine months of their university life, and a series of revelations and learning experiences.
The first episode introduces two of the subjects: Charles (second year political science student and leading member of the Labor left on campus); and his friend Andrew (honours student in English struggling with his thesis due to clinical depression, and being a musician and comedian).
The documentary gives a pretty accurate view of university life in the sandstone halls of Sydney University. However, the first episode tends to focus on a narrow selection of students — those grouped around the Arts Faculty Society, who organise the annual Arts Revue, drink Sambuccas in the bar instead of beer and argue the niceties of politics and philosophy at parties.
At least the element of humour is added — laughing at the pretentiousness of uni and courses "which even the lecturers don't understand".
In the second episode, some balance is provided through Cal, a psychology student struggling to make her way through uni working 30 hours a week in a nursing home. Cal doesn't have time to do the "usual" uni socialising, and is totally uninterested in campus politics and the annual SRC elections — which are also the main subject of this episode, in true Rats in the Ranks style.
Charles frets over the potential success of his election campaign headed by the wacky star of the Arts Revue, Sholto, and doing deals with the Liberals to oust the non-Labor left who have held the SRC for eight years. Meanwhile, Cal struggles over whether to continue her course.
Interestingly, even Charles toys with the idea that "student politics don't matter", reinforcing the separation between the SRC and the concerns of many students.
Following Charles, student politics comes across as a game that, not surprisingly, turns many students off. At least this is counterbalanced by interviews with the candidate of the incumbent SRC ticket, Katrina Curry, who argues that the SRC needs to be political and fight the recent education cuts of the Howard government in the interests of all students.
Episode three is based on the love interests of the three subjects. It drags a bit, but is still entertaining.
In the final episode, staff unions are fighting for a long-overdue pay rise, placing bans on teaching and marking, holding strikes and pickets. The view that staff are campaigning at the expense of students is given a bit too much credence, but is then contradicted by footage of students supporting the pickets and arguing the need for solidarity in the fight for more education funding.
The documentary gets right into the dispute, catching images from both sides. In the process it treats the arguments of Vice-Chancellor Gavin Brown a bit too favourably — that he just can't afford the pay rise because the government has cut his funding. Brown did not publicly contest the cuts and invited John Howard to attend a graduation ceremony at the end of the year.
Howard decides to accept the invitation to his old uni. The crew catches a wonderful contrast between the security overkill being used against protesters and innocent bystanders outside, while Howard sips tea with the VC.
University life in the 1990s seems not to be so politically flat after all.
The bare-all style is pretty captivating and sensitively done for the most part. The crew obviously invested a lot of time in the three subjects — to the point of sometimes getting a little too involved in the unravelling stories of their lives. Andrew's original music is put to good use as a soundtrack. Tune in!