Hard Light x GFH: Heavenly Creatures (1994) / Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Hard Light Cinema is excited to be partnering with GOOD FOR HER FILMS for our second double feature of 2025, a ✨dreamy✨ pairing of Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures and Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

On St. Valentine’s Day in 1900, a girls' boarding school sets out on a trip to the volcanic formations of Hanging Rock. Some members of their party disappear without a trace.

Peter Weir directs this 1975 adaptation of the novel by Joan Lindsay. The rugged Australian rock formations and bushlands and mesmerizing score lend itself to the ever-growing mystery surrounding the students of Appleyard College.

The film explores themes of repression and desire, wealth, class, and colonialism, and the dangerous allure of the natural world. And while not explicitly a queer film, there are many moments that can be read as such.

— Sylvie Miller, Hard Light Cinema

Heavenly Creatures (1994)

When outcast Pauline meets new student Juliet, the pair begin a bond over their mutual love of make-believe that quickly develops into a deeply intimate and intense friendship. Their passion for fantasy and for each other creates visually stunning worlds set against the ordinary backdrop of 1950s New Zealand. As their relationship grows more enmeshed, their parents grow more concerned with the obsessive nature of their relationship. Threatened by their parents’ attempts to keep them apart, the schoolgirls use their imaginations to come up with a plan to stay together forever that takes them to the darkest and deadliest corners of their minds.

Based on a true story and Fran Walsh’s vision, this 1994 psychological drama blends the real-life horror of true crime with the fantastical worlds we create to make sense of ourselves and our circumstances. Heavenly Creatures is not only known as the transformative turn of Peter Jackson’s directorial career, but the feature film debut of actors Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet, gaining them critical acclaim for their devastating performances as the very real Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme.

— Morgan Carey, Good for Her

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