Picnic at Hanging Rock R2 Deluxe Edition in June

Second Sight have announced the UK DVD release of Picnic at Hanging Rock (Deluxe Edition) on 30th June 2008 priced at £19.99. On Valentine’s Day, 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College took a trip to Hanging Rock near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. Some of the party left the rest of the group and having climbed higher stopped to rest and fell asleep. They awoke as though still in a dream and silently ventured further through a passage in the imposing rock face. Some of the girls were never seen again.

Peter Weir’s haunting and evocative film is released as a three-disc Deluxe Edition which features The Director’s Cut as well as a host of bonus features including the original version of the film and ‘A Dream Within A Dream’, the 120 minute ‘making of’ the film.

Disc 1 - The Director’s Cut (16:9 anamorphic widescreen, 5.1 / 2.0 audio, English SDH subtitles)
Disc 2 - The Original Version * (1.66:1 (cropped) anamorphic widescreen, 2.0 audio, English SDH subtitles)
Disc 3 - A Dream Within A Dream’ (120 min documentary), ‘A Recollection – Hanging Rock 1900’, Joan Lindsay interview, Hanging Rock and Martindale Hall – Then and Now’, ‘The Day of St Valentine’ (1st screen adaptation), Audio Interview with Karen Robson, Stills and Poster Gallery, Scenes deleted for The Director’s Cut

* This longer original version of the film has been brought to DVD using the best elements available. A new transfer of the film was not possible however an archive master was discovered. Although anamorphic widescreen this was found to have a small degree of image cropping. While not usual practice for Second Sight to present a film in such a way, given the lack of any viable alternative the decision was made to undertake restoration work and include this version as a bonus feature, giving the viewer a now rare chance to see the original theatrical release.