TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO: Recommended Australian Films For English Learners - Part 1 - Priscilla Queen Of The Desert

Hi everyone, its Nicole from Sydney English Teacher and from The Successful English Learner by Sydney English Teacher, and I'm back again answering another one of your questions.

Recently, I recorded some great new videos for you, recommending movies that you should watch if you'd like to practise your English skills, your listening, your vocabulary etc, so I, yeah, I shared with you my favourite movies, and movies that I think are really helpful for English learners. If you haven't seen that yet, please go back and watch it, I'm sure you'll find it really helpful.

But, as a result of that video, as a result of those recommendations, a few of my students have come to me, asking me to also recommend some Australian movies. They know that I'm Australian, and that I live here in Sydney Australia, and they're quite, I suppose, fascinated by Australian English and by our slang, so the best way for them to be introduced to our language and our culture is by watching an Australian film or two, and I agree.

I think it's great, we've got some really funny films - Australian humour is quite different to humour around the world, so what we find funny, you might not find funny at all. However, I'm sure that you'll still enjoy the movies. Also, in our movies, there's a lot of slang, a lot of shortening of words, a lot of idioms, and really relaxed expressions because that's the way we speak when we're with friends in Australia, we automatically make words shorter, or we automatically make words cuter, I suppose, we automatically use slang and colloquial expressions, probably without realising it.

So the movies that I recommend over the coming weeks will really be movies where you probably won't understand most of it, but you will learn a lot about our culture, our humour, the way of life here in Australia, and some new vocabulary obviously too.

So, what I'd like to do is to record a series of videos, and in each of these videos what I will do is I will focus on one Australian movie and tell you a little bit about it to see if you're interested, and then you can go and watch it, if you'd like to.

The first movie that I'd like to tell you about is quite an iconic Australian movie, and it's called ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert.’ ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert.’ It's got nothing to do with the queen, it's actually about drag queens. Do you know what they are?

Drag queens are men that dress up as women, usually for for the stage, or for a show, or for dancing, or for music, a performance. So, in Australia, part of our culture, I suppose, is the drag queen culture, and especially in Sydney, you will see a lot of pubs and hotels that have special drag queen entertainment. It's quite interesting, and quite funny really. 

Anyway, this movie is about a group of three drag queens and they get in a bus, a pink bus, and they drive to the centre of Australia, they drive through the desert, through the Outback, and they put on some performances in a hotel in central Australia, in the middle of Australia, and it's really about their adventures, about them growing up and learning about themselves, and becoming good friends.

Not only is it quite a funny movie, but it also tells you a lot about the Australian culture and traditions. You will hear a lot of slang, a lot of colloquial expressions, and you'll get to see some beautiful parts of Australia as well.

So, yeah, Priscilla Queen of the Desert is one that I recommend - you might find it a little bit more difficult than the regular usual movie, but give it a chance, you know, watch it, maybe even put the subtitles on if you need to, but watch it and learn a little bit about our culture and our people and our humour, and if you’ve got questions, you can ask them down here in the comments section, I'm happy to help.

Yeah, but anyway, go and watch Priscilla Queen of the Desert. I will be back again with another video recommending another Australian film really soon.

In the meantime, enjoy Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and yeah, learn some Australian English, why not! Bye.