'Helmut Bakaitis is an actor, writer and director. He arrived in Australia at the age of six in 1950 on board the Wooster Victory, a special vessel for displaced persons. His parents fled Lithuania in 1943 in fear of the advancing Russian army, and during their journey, Helmut was born in the town of Lauban near Dresden in Germany, (it became Luban and is now in Poland). Bakaitis spent his first five years in transit camps run by the UN in Germany and Austria, as his father worked as a translator.(1) In Australia as a boy Bakaitis found life difficult. He was persecuted because of his name and his accent and as a result, he immersed himself in books and movies. He would sneak off from home in Bankstown on Saturdays to go to the cinema on his own. When his mother discovered he had watched Those Redheads From Seattle she banned him from the movies. But a few years later his parents purchased the Pacific Milk Bar next door to the Kings Cinema in Balmain. As a teenager he would dash in to the movies and rush out again five minutes before interval in order to help serve milkshakes and coffee to the cinema patrons.' (Introduction)