Unfolding Florence

Gillian Armstrongs' "Unfolding Florence" is an Australian documentary on the life and death of Florence Broadhurst, a charistmatic person who seems was either loved or hated, but respected for her determination and dedication to her work. Her life ended in her brutal murder, and the killer is still unknown. However it is certain that she had lived an amazing life, constantly reinventing herself to make her life more interesting to others.


The film was the only Australian film selected for the 2006 Sundance film festival, and interestingly tells the story of Florence Broadhursts life with regular flashbacks to her walk to her factory, where she was killed, on the last day of her life.

I feel that the film catches the audiences attention initially, although I believe this may have something to do with Florence Broadhurst herself, and how interesting she was, rather than production techniques and structure. The interviews can become slightly uninteresting after some time, but they have been nicely been broken up with flashbacks, and cute stop frame style animations in between. I found the interviews with the son most interesting, because it was odd to see how Florence, who was so involved in her work, and so lively in most aspects of her life, had in a way completely neglected her own son.

Some parts of the film are humorous or interesting, but I feel overall, the film lacked pace and interestingness that I feel Florence Broadhurst would have deserved. This is because I feel that even though her past life was completley different then what she would have you believe, and she probably took credit for things that she shouldn't have, she was still an incredibly interesting person, and this documentary wasn't an incredibly interesting film. That said, it did however have some nice production elements to it.