An interrogation of a pedestrian tunnel in Commonwealth Park, Canberra and the relationships that exist between the tunnel/passageway’s northeast and southwest entry points. The West Portal Cafeteria (opened in 1969, also known as the Pavilion), a building designed by architect and town planner William Holford using principles of the Golden Mean, is featured in the opening scenes. This cafeteria was a part of the Anzac Park East and West Buildings complex that was constructed to establish Canberra as Australia’s federal administrative center in the 1960s. At the southwest entrance are the landscapes of Sylvia Crowe, designer of Commonwealth Park (completed 1966), who worked with Holford to link both the gardens and the architecture of the cafeteria.

The intention of the film is to establish visual rhythm within and between images rather than on narrative development. The Line of a Common Boundary shares many aesthetic resolutions that overlap with concepts of Structural film (explorations of the nature of perception and the ways that images could be structured to create meaning), but differs in its treatment of subjects. The film proposes that the materiality of its subjects embody and expresses an inherent narrative symptomatic of their design, construction, location, and conditions (environmental or otherwise). The narrative is neither good, nor bad, nor indifferent, but one that is distant and conditional.