Australia

A satirical enquiry into the origins of media, their distribution and their effects on the way we behave.

Those familiar with cartoonist Bruce Petty’s award winning film Leisure will enjoy the same sharp wit brought to bear on another institution, the media. This three-part film is a satirical enquiry into the origins of media, their distribution and their effects on the way we behave. The first part provides a brief history of print, radio, television and film. The second part proposes that a market-placed media produces the problem of monopolisation leading to mediocrity. Finally, Petty produces a caricature of the way ideas form in the mind from reading print, as distinct from passive looking and listening.Read More »

Bruce Petty, one of Australia’s greatest political cartoonists, created an Oscar-winning film from his inventive and amusing exploration of the history of work and leisure.

A fast-paced, humorous and thought-provoking film using animation by Australian newspaper cartoonist Bruce Petty. This Oscar-winning film emphasises the use of leisure time as an important aspect of life in our society today. Planning for recreation and leisure time should be undertaken both on a personal and on a public level.Read More »

Synopsis
The mesmeric story of a nine-year-old aboriginal Australian orphan boy who arrives in the dead of night at a remote monastery run by a renegade nun.Read More »

Fired from his job writing for a weekend magazine, Ted Wilson decides to visit his family in Hobart. He realises his loss could be an opportunity to pursue something more meaningful: “I want to write something beautiful about cricket. A piece of literary non-fiction. It will in some sense be about Tasmanian batsmen and it will be from the heart.” Ted embarks on a search for legendary Australian cricketer and exalted Tasmanian, David Boon. Yet when the search stalls, Ted finds himself reconnecting with his widowed mother and adult siblings now with young children of their own.Read More »

“A mysterious doctor travels through a surreal landscape of paranoia and despair in director Thomas Nöla’s of his own novel. Haunted by his seemingly dead former patient Miss Marilla Huxley (Lindsay Todd) and mournful over the death of his deceased wife (Melissey Castevet), the doctor is locked in a constant state of fear as a result of the pierrots and constables who hold an iron grip on his homeland. As madness begins to take hold, the frightened doctor will attempt to break the invisible chains that bind him and look inward to discover the secrets of death and nature.”Read More »

“What is Pearls Before Swine? Is it a controversial and iconoclastic look at the rise of a new form of fascism? The new film from Aussie director Richard Wolstencroft of Bloodlust fame? A rip-snorting ode to violence and sex in the tradition of A Clockwork Orange? The first feature film starring musician and philosopher Boyd Rice from NON? A radical change for the better in the recent lacklustre Australian film industry? A kick ass philosophical thriller about an assassin who is hired to kill an author of subversive literature? The answer is all of the above. And more.”Read More »

PLOT: At 17:00 every day, Andrew, a middle-aged man, drives home from work through Melbourne’s outer suburbs in peak-hour traffic. Occasionally, he offers a lift home to a younger colleague, David. Over a year, their tentative small talk gives way to a warm friendship and open conversation within the confines of the vehicle, incrementally revealing their lives.Read More »

At the turn of the twentieth century, three Australian army lieutenants are court-martialed for alleged war crimes committed while fighting in South Africa. With no time to prepare, an Australian major, appointed as defense attorney, must prove that they were just following orders and are being made into political pawns by the British imperial command. Director Bruce Beresford garnered international acclaim for this riveting drama set during a dark period in his country’s colonial history, and featuring passionate performances by Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown, and Jack Thompson; rugged cinematography by Donald McAlpine; and an Oscar-nominated script, based on true events.Read More »

One of the great unseen political epics of Australian TV, True Believers was an account of the Labor Party in the decade after World War 2, focusing on the towering political personalities of the day, Ben Chifley and H V Evatt, and their nemesis Robert Menzies. Starring Ed Devereaux and a host of other iconic Australian actors, the series was written by the great Bob Ellis and marks a high point in political television drama.Read More »