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Big Wednesday

Date1978

Object number00015755

NamePoster

MediumPrinted ink on paper

DimensionsOverall: 690 x 430 mm, 0.05 kg
Display Dimensions: 1045 x 692 mm

ClassificationsPosters and postcards

Credit LineANMM Collection Purchased with USA Bicentennial Gift funds

Terms

DescriptionThis publicity poster for the 1978 Warner Brothers film, 'Big Wednesday', features a photograph of three surfers on a beach with a surfboard wedged upright in the sand. Both the figures and the board are rendered as silhouettes. Text located below the image reads, ' A day will come that is like no other... / And nothing that happens after will ever be the same / Big / Wednesday'. The colour lithograph was printed in the United States.HistoryIn the 1960s surf art moved off the cover of surfing magazines and onto film posters promoting movies featuring young male surfers riding large waves in exotic locations. By the 1970s surfing films had shifted from 1960s Hollywood beach party musicals produced for the broader community, to the 'soul-surfing' exploration of counterculture lifestyles. During this era films were either created in a documentary style, which targeted the surfing enthusiast, or as a fictional feature film with the focus on the surfing lifestyle. 'Big Wednesday' falls into this second category, with a storyline following the lives of three Californian surfers facing the realities of young adulthood and the Vietnam War. The changing surf is used as a metaphor for changes in life.SignificanceThis United States one-sheet poster illustrates the role of surfing in Australian popular culture, and is a late example of the surf movie genre.