An Unusual Angle

He is the world’s greatest film director. His characters, his scenery, his costumes―all are authentic, zestful, artistic, artful.But nobody knows he is the world’s greatest film director. Maybe nobody ever will. For all of his masterpieces are stored in an impregnable canister: the head of the film-maker. Inside his brain, nestling safely, reel upon reel of film, magnificently photographed, brilliantly edited, not a frame of it accessible to the viewing public.An Unusual Angle is about the making of this great film. It is also the film itself. Here is a blazing epic of stupendous events: four years of an ordinary Australian secondary school. Few would have suspected before that an ‘ordinary’ school could provide the material of rich humour, zany lunacy and near tragedy.Greg Egan was born in Perth in 1961. He was educated at the University of Western Australia. He has worked for mercifully brief periods as a kitchen hand, a milk-vendor’s runner, and as a public servant. Meanwhile, his real efforts have been directed towards writing novels and short stories (four novels and a book of short stories written so far) and making amateur films (a 65-minute, 16 mm film completed recently).