Press and Publicity

The Eternity Man is a new film by Julien Temple of the contemporary opera by Jonathan Mills and Dorothy Porter. It is the first feature-length opera by Temple, whose films and music videos have helped to define rock on the big screen (The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle, Absolute Beginners, Bullet and Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten).

The film tells the story of Arthur Stace, a reformed petty criminal, World War One veteran and recovering alcoholic, who haunted Sydney's seedy bars and brothels until a revelation one night in a soup kitchen chapel. Stace then spent nearly 40 years chalking a timeless message on the city's streets: the single word, written in copper-plate, 'Eternity'. The real Arthur Stace died in 1967, but his impact on Sydney's psyche ensured that, as the year 2000 began, his word 'Eternity' was lit up in fireworks on the Harbour Bridge and broadcast around the world.

The Eternity Man powerfully explores a battle against despair and addiction, together with an embrace of zeal and obsessive passion, but it also charts the processes shaping Sydney in the 20th century – of immigration, of gentrification, and of Americanisation. It is a film about one man, but it is also a film about urban experience, about the ghosts of history and the allure of the future.

The Eternity Man's music is by Jonathan Mills (Sandakan Threnody, The Ghost Wife) with a libretto by Dorothy Porter (The Monkey's Mask), and stars Australian baritone Grant Doyle, now UK-based, who is an emerging opera talent already familiar to opera aficionados as a dynamic performer with a superb and powerful voice. Christa Hughes plays Arthur's sister Myrtle Stace.

Contacts

Press Contact
Justine Bower
jbower@channel4.co.uk

Picture Publicist
Jamie Fry
jfry@channel4.co.uk

Production Company
Illuminations Ltd

Commissioning Editor
Jan Younghusband