Australia

A glue-sniffing boy and his girlfriend escape the government-controlled no-hope Aboriginal community they live in and go to the city, Alice Springs, looking for a better life.Read More »

Assange remains a remand prisoner at U.K.’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison as he appeals an extradition order to the U.S. where he could face 175 years in prison for his role in the release of classified U.S. diplomatic files.Read More »

Synopsis
For some, a dirndl is just a pretty, colourful dress with an apron; for others, it is a symbolically charged provocation. Just like items of clothing, places can also be contaminated. The narratives constructed around them are constantly changed and adapted by private family histories and historical circumstances – and with each generation, a new reading is superimposed on these layers. This Super 8 film dives deep down into the idyll of Austria’s Lake Grundlsee to reveal the chasms that lie beneath.Read More »

An Italian sports journalist arrives in Australia but finds no work. The only employment he can find is as a builder’s labourer. At first, he cannot comprehend the culture, but eventually he finds mateship and romance.Read More »

An essay film, staged as a short drama deploying a first person, diary film narration over exquisitely designed object oriented “still life” tableaus, Gillian Leahy’s My Life Without Steve (1986) was a sensational hit in the mid-1980s. It won the Grand Prix and the Irwin Rado Award for Best Australian Film at the Melbourne International Film Festival, and the General Category of the Greater Union Awards (today’s Dendy Awards) at the Sydney Film Festival. The film screened widely and generated passionate debate.Read More »

Quote:
Part political satire, part eco-horror, part road movie, TERROR NULLIUS is a political revenge fable constructed entirely from samples pirated from the Australian cinema cannon. Binding together a documentary impulse with speculative muckraking, Soda Jerk’s revisionist history opens a queer narrative space where cinema fictions and historical facts permeate each other in new ways. The apocalyptic desert camps of Mad Max 2 become the site of refugee detention, flesh-eating sheep are recast as anti-colonial insurgents, and the women of Australian cinema go vigilante on Mel Gibson. Working within and against the official archive, Soda Jerk’s feature remix offers an incendiary un-writing of Australian national mythologies. Funded by the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission in 2016, TERROR NULLIUS was notoriously disowned by the organization just days prior to the film’s premiere in 2018. Offended by its politics, Ian Potter’s Board of Trustees described the work as “a very controversial piece of art” and “unAustralian.”Read More »

Legends of the indie Oz Rock scene, The Go-Betweens provided a soundtrack to a generation of music enthusiasts throughout the 80s, developing a unique and compelling combination of song writing, both angst ridden and sensitive, that eluded the mainstream and all the trappings of popular success.

Four decades in the making, Right Here: Finding the Go-Betweens explores the quintessential Aussie band from formation in 1977 by Queensland University students Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, joined by Lindy Morrison on drums until the band broke up in late 1989, after six critically acclaimed albums. They reformed in 2000 for three more albums before McLennan died in 2006, aged 48.Read More »

Quote:
Julia (Heather Rose) is crippled with cerebral palsy, lives in a wheelchair, waits for her carer to come and clean her, feed her, in a daily cycle. Her latest carer, Madelaine (Joey Kennedy) is a strung up and lonely young woman whose love life is in disarray. The two women are interdependent; Julia needs her carer, Madelaine needs her job. But they don’t exactly hit it off. Along comes Eddie (John Brumpton), a handsome young chap who appeals to both women. But Julia is behind the eight ball in this love battle, what with her wheelchair – she even needs a voice synthesiser to speak. Her body is small and frail and twisted …. But she is not totally helpless, as Madelaine discovers.Read More »

Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis in her first major screen role) is the eldest daughter of a struggling Australian farming family in the 1890s. Bold and determined, she dreams of success as a writer. At a time when convention and sexism limit female ambition, Sybylla frequently challenges traditionalist expectations.

She accordingly rejects one highly desirable suitor but then falls in love with dashing Harry Beecham (played by a young Sam Neill). As events twist and turn, Sybylla is painfully brought to realise the emotional cost of placing her career over love.Read More »