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- Pianist David Helfgott, driven by his father and teachers, has a breakdown. Years later he returns to the piano, to popular if not critical acclaim.
- Early in 2017, Gulpilil was diagnosed with lung cancer. His doctors estimated six months for him but David, being David, was always likely to defy the odds. And he continues to do so with probably his last great work, My Name is Gulpilil.
- With intimate interviews, dance sequences, and archival material, this documentary follows Ella as she explores her identity and offers a glimpse into her life as an elite ballet dancer in the largest company in the southern hemisphere.
- In 1971, author and film scholar Donald Richie published a poetic travelogue about his explorations of the islands of Japan's Inland Sea, recording his search for traces of a traditional way of life as well as his own journey of self-discovery. Twenty years later, filmmaker Lucille Carra undertook a parallel trip inspired by Richie's by-then-classic book, capturing images of hushed beauty and meeting people who still carried on the fading customs that Richie had observed. Interspersed with surprising detours-a visit to a Frank Sinatra-loving monk, a leper colony, an ersatz temple of plywood and plaster-and woven together by Richie's narration as well as a score by celebrated composer Toru Takemitsu, The Inland Sea is an eye-opening voyage and a profound meditation on what it means to be a foreigner.
- Real-life story of Sylvia Ashton Warner's pioneering work teaching Maori children to read in the 1940's.
- One of three cars carrying lady bowls players is overdue. Unsure about which car, who the occupants might have been, or what might have happened to them, the locals embark on a chaotic course of action to try to solve the mystery.
- The Coolbaroo Club was the only Aboriginal-run dance club in a city which practiced unofficial apartheid, submitting its Aboriginal population to unremitting police harassment, identity cards, fraternization bans, curfews, and bureaucratic obstruction. During its lifetime, the Club attracted Black musicians and celebrities from all over Australia and occasionally from overseas - among them Nat "King" Cole, Harold Blair and the Harlem Globetrotters. Although best-remembered for the hugely popular Coolbaroo dances attended by hundreds of Aborigines and their white supporters, the Coolbaroo League, founded by Club members, ran a newspaper and became an effective political organization, speaking out on issues of the day affecting Aboriginal people. "More shaming than a hundred news stories, this chirpy, dignified and scathing documentary by Roger Scholes does more than just recall a less tolerant time and place. In a modest way, it lifts the lid on postwar relations in this country. Some wonderful interviews with feisty former club members, especially several still remarkably articulate old women. This is a shaming documentary but an educative and surprisingly forgiving one.
- Jack Buckskin is the sole teacher of a once extinct language. From the northern Adelaide suburb of Salisbury, Jack's mission is to teach the Kaurna language, the language of his ancestors, to as many people as he can in his lifetime. But this is not easy. The language was driven to near extinction over a century ago. Now, Jack and fellow language speakers are sculpting a new Kaurna language and culture, and through that bring a new way of being to the youth of suburban Adelaide, in the form of a new Aboriginal identity, and with that, hope.
- NEON is a celebration of the beauty, invention, design and heritage of the neon sign from internationally award-winning Director Lawrence Johnston.
- A documentary about one of Hollywood's most prolific yet forgotten filmmakers John Farrow. Part mystery, part biography, part film noir it follows the life and films of this Australian Oscar winning director.
- Throughout history, the perception of nurses has ranged from wise women to witches, sots to ministering angels, handmaidens to battleaxes.
- At the end of the nineteenth century soldiers from Australia came under fire in Africa - they were the first of one and a quarter million Australian men and women to serve their country in war and conflict and in every continent except the one they call home. Amongst them were the first of more than one hundred thousand to die in the service of Australia. The chronicle of Australia's soldiers from then till now is full of heroism, humour, mateship and larrikinism. It has bred perhaps the most enduring Australian icon - the digger. This is his story.
- Legendary Aboriginal Australian actor and dancer David Gulpilil discusses his life and career from his home in Yolngu country in Arnhem Land, NT.
- Set in the late 1800s, BLACKBIRD follows the story of Solomon Islander siblings, Kiko (16) and Rosa (24), who were kidnapped from their Pacific island home and forced to work on a sugar cane plantation in Queensland. In a world where exploitation of Pacific Islanders for cheap labour is legislated and conditions for islanders are akin to slavery, Rosa struggles to keep an eye on her spirited young brother as he journeys into adulthood. The film sheds light on a little known part of history - Australia's sugar slaves.
- VOTE YES FOR ABORIGINES interrogates the success of the Referendum and addresses current debates about what is meant by Australian citizenship and values and how they relate to Aboriginal history, identity and culture.
- A personal essay documentary about growing up with mental illness in the family, about a confusing and destructive mother/daughter relationship and about repressed grief and family secrets.
- Master violin maker, Charalambos Vatiliotis, is 85 and retired from making. When Romano, a violinist and friend of 48 years, persuades him to make one final violin, a heart-warming story unfolds.
- An aboriginal musical from Australia, set in a late hippie era and featuring production numbers with a dash of Bollywood.
- Jacob Nayinggul is a charismatic elder from Gunbalanya, an isolated settlement in Arnhem Land, northern Australia. Aboriginal people in this area believe that the landscape is inhabited by the spirits of their ancestors whose bones can be seen in crevices and caves. Nayinggul is aware that many of the old burial sites have been disturbed by scientists who collected human remains for museums. This presents the terrifying possibility that ancestral spirits were wrenched from their traditional country. Drawing on original footage from National Geographic, this carefully crafted documentary explores the impact of one notorious bone theft by a member of the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. Hundreds of bones were stolen and deposited in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. When the location of the bones became known to Arnhem Landers in the late 1990s, elders called for their return. This resulted in a tense standoff with the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian-and eventually in the repatriation of the bones. Made over eight years, Etched in Bone gives extraordinary insight into the deep and enduring conflict between scientific and traditional forms of knowledge. In moving footage, we see how the repatriated bones are removed from their museum boxes, coated in red ochre and wrapped in paperbark. In this way, Jacob Nayinggul draws on ancient knowledge to create a new form of ceremony that welcomes home the ancestor spirits and puts them to sleep in the land where they were born.
- At the urging of a socialist fellow Australian, filmmaker David Bradbury travels to Cuba and documents the current economic, social and cultural realities and disappointments of post-revolutionary Cuba.
- Biography of Lachlan Macquarie and his wife, Elizabeth, who arrived to govern the colony of New South Wales in Australia in 1810. In just over a decade, the couple transformed the prison colony into a proto nation.
- Follows newly weds Maggie Haertsch and clown doctor Jean Paul Bell, on their whirlwind mission to take medical aid and humour to the children of Kabul.
- Filmed during the inaugural year of the Ramsay Art Prize, Making a Mark is a chronicle of passion and creative trailblazing as a selection of finalists, all aged under 40, vie for the $100,000 prize. In a story that spans the globe from Europe to Outback Australia, we explore one of the most personally challenging and financially tenuous vocations, and find out just what it takes to live a life in the world of visual arts.