Hospitals Don't Burn Down! is a 1978 pseudo-documentary short film directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith about a fire at a hospital.
| Hospitals Don't Burn Down! | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Brian Trenchard-Smith |
| Written by | Anne Brooksbank Chris McGill |
| Produced by | Peter Johnson |
| Starring | Jeanie Drynan Mark Edwards Ray Marshall Ralph Cotterill Ken Goodlet |
| Cinematography | Ross Nichols |
| Edited by | Bill Stacey |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Film Australia |
Release date |
|
Running time | 24 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $90,000[1] |
Cast
edit- Jeanie Drynan
- Mark Edwards
- Ray Marshall
- Ralph Cotterill
- Ken Goodlet
Plot
editA tossed cigarette from a patient causes fire to break out after midnight in a multi-storey hospital, cutting the top floors off from escape. It spreads quickly and despite the prompt action of the fire department, lack of fire safety training results in several fatalities.
Production
editThe movie was widely screened around the world and won a number of prizes. Trenchard-Smith says it is one of the movies of which he is most proud:
[It] won all sorts of industrial safety awards all over the world, and was Australia's highest-selling industrial film for 25 years, used all over the world. We staged a fire, cutting a multi-story hospital in half, bursting from the laundry chute out onto one floor. And the film was designed to have a whole series of lessons to be learned in a lecture afterwards. There were alarming incidents of smoking-related fires in their hospitals. It actually became a fire-safety film worldwide. It's actually a film I’m proud to have made, and I made it for very little money, but I’m very pleased that I spent the four months that I did making that. I was told that one hospital changed their arrangements after seeing the film, and moved the non-ambulatory patients from the fourth floor to the ground floor, and several months later, the fourth floor caught fire.[2]
References
edit- ^ "COMPACT". The Australian Women's Weekly. National Library of Australia. 21 June 1978. p. 57. Retrieved 4 February 2013.
- ^ "Interview with Brian Trenchard-Smith", Ithaca, 26 November 2012 accessed 3 February 2013
External links
edit- Hospitals Don't Burn Down! at IMDb
- Notes for trainers using the film
- Complete copy of film on YouTube at Film Australia YouTube Channel
- Hospitals Don't Burn Down at Documentary Australian Foundation
- Hospitals Don't Burn Down at Oz Movies
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