Two films of extraordinary vitality, both from Australia, are now in a double bill at the Scala Cinema.

Backroads directed by Phil Noyce is a road film of raw urgency and political content which tells the story of two desperate characters who meet up and take off in a stolen car in New South Wales.

Bill Hunter plays the alienated, loud-mouthed drifter. Gary Foley, the Aborigine on the run from an unsuccessful marriage with a domineering white woman. The two men are determined to wreak revenge on a society which has rejected them.

Their reckless drive takes them past the Aborigine Reserve where Gary was born. Bill is disgusted at the squalid shanty town where groups of aimless men lie drunkenly in the sun.

"This is what the Gubbahs (whites) have done to us," says Gary bitterly. "but we are still proud of our language, customs and culture. They can't take away our natural heritage."

Through their drunken, amorous, sprawling and overlapping conversations one gets sharp insights into their hopes, despairs and humiliations; over-shadowed by the sheer enormity of what the white race has inflicted on the Aboriginal people.

The conflicts and contradictions escalate into violence, the outcome is inevitable.The odyssey ends on a desperately pessimistic note, but that only adds poignancy to reality, Gary Foley being a radical black activist as well as a talented actor.