Burn the Butterflies is an Australian 1979 TV movie about a government dealing with the controversy around uranium mining.
[4]Green says the idea to make the film came out of a week he had spent in Canberra for the Australian Writers Guild lobbying for the arts budget.
We brought up the highflyers from Australian Opera, and the ballet, and the Sydney Theatre Company—but we did the hard work.
And if I had decided that I would like to do a Canberra-based piece and set myself, and got up and become a member of the press corps for a few weeks I wouldn’t have got it.
It was being in there, and understanding the contradictions, and the layers of commitment and attitude, and so on, that brought it on, that gave me the confidence to write it.