Before I left Australia to come to Colombia, I went to Hanging Rock in Victoria, Australia as a personal pilgrimage. Hanging Rock is an archetypal character in the movie. I felt great nostalgia wandering this ethereal and dreamy landscape. I can understand why some of the cast and executive producer were afraid to return to Hanging Rock. According to IMDB executive producer Patricia Lovell said she went back once in 1985 and she left almost immediately and refuses to go back to this day.
– Picnic at Hanging Rock 1975- Peter Weir (Friday’s Finest)
Today we go back to the beginning of it all. The Australian art-house cinema classic Picnic at Hanging Rock directed by Peter Weir launched my movie series – ‘Friday’s Finest‘ in August, 2019. Its theme music Doina: Sus Pe Culmea Dealului by the Romanian (pan flute) musician Gheorghe Zamfir is a traditional Romanian panpipe piece and the subject of today’s post. There is currently no official soundtrack commercially available of Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Zamfir is known for playing an expanded version of normally 20-pipe nai, with 22, 25, 28 or even 30 pipes, to increase its range, and obtaining as many as eight overtones (additional to the fundamental tone) from each pipe by changing his embouchure. Zamfir is known as “The Master of the Pan Flute“. Between 1976 and 1983, Zamfir had six albums peak within the Australian top 100 albums charts, with The Flutes of Pan, his best, peaking at number 26 in 1980.
Zamfir’s first appearance as soloist interpreter in a movie soundtrack was in Vladimir Cosma’s 1972 Le grand blond avec une chaussure noire, whose soundtrack became a worldwide hit. He was asked by Ennio Morricone to perform the pieces Childhood Memories and Cockeye’s Song for the soundtrack of Sergio Leone’s 1984 gangster film Once Upon a Time in America. His performance can also be heard throughout the 1984 film The Karate Kid plus the sequels. One of Zamfir’s most famous pieces is The Lonely Shepherd which featured in Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 film Kill Bill: Volume 1.
References:
1. Picnic at Hanging Rock (film) – Wikipedia
2. Gheorghe Zamfir – Wikipedia
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
Cool. I really enjoyed this.
See this movie if you can Tom. You won’t regret it.