Exposing the dark underbelly of modern animal agriculture through drones, hidden & handheld cameras, the feature-length film explores the morality and validity of our dominion over the animal kingdom.
Suellyn thought the Department of Community Services (DOCS) would only remove children in extreme cases, until her own grandchildren were taken in the middle of the night. Hazel decided to take on the DOCS system after her fourth grandchild was taken into state care. Jen Swan expected to continue to care for her grandchildren but DOCS deemed her unsuitable, a shock not just to her but to her sister, Deb, who was, at the time, a DOCS worker. The rate of Indigenous child removal has actually increased since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the apology to the ‘stolen generations’ in 2008. These four grandmothers find each other and start a national movement to place extended families as a key solution to the rising number of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care. They are not only taking on the system; they are changing it…
About trauma, resilience and post-traumatic growth in the medics who served with Australia's special forces in Afghanistan. From losing mates in the battlefield to treating horrifically injured Afghan kids in remote surgical theatres.
50 years on, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is the oldest continuing protest occupation site in the world. Taking a fresh lens this is a bold dive into a year of protest and revolutionary change for First Nations people.
Story of Annette Kellerman, the international swimming vaudeville and silent screen star whose life story inspired the MGM classic Million Dollar Mermaid starring Esther Williams, which featured lavish Busby Berkeley scenes.
Green Valley was a housing commission estate in western Sydney, much maligned by the media of the day. The residents were hurt by the criticism but lacked access to the media to respond. Supplied with equipment by Film Australia, they used this film to present a different image of themselves and their daily lives. In so doing, they answered the question of "Whatever happened to Green Valley?" The core of this film is the work of half a dozen residents, co-ordinated by acclaimed filmmaker Peter Weir in one of his earliest film projects. Weir also acts as the moderator at a public forum that is included in the film.
There's a mysterious predator lurking in the depths of Australia's wild Southern Ocean, a beast that savagely devoured a great white shark in front of cinematographer David Riggs 11 years ago. Riggs's obsession to find the killer leads him to an aquatic battle zone that's remained hidden until now. Here, killer whales, colossal squid and great white sharks face off in an underwater coliseum where only the fiercest creatures of the marine world survive.
From the ashes of Australia’s devastating bushfires, wildlife survivors begin their long journeys to recovery. Australia’s fauna have evolved to coexist with bushfire, but these Black Summer fires are unprecedented in their scale, speed and intensity. Many native animals are unable to escape, or endure, without human help. We follow iconic species like koalas, kangaroos, wombats, and an endangered parrot through their rescue, rehabilitation and eventual release. Remarkable tales of compassion and dedication are revealed along the way – from an orphan wombat growing too attached to her carer, to audacious helicopter airdrops to feed remote rock wallabies. When the fires finally burn out, Australia looks to the science, innovation and Indigenous knowledge that will be needed to safeguard fragile wildlife in an even hotter future.
Follows the deadly Australian bushfires of 2019-2020, known as ‘Black Summer’. Burning is an exploration of what happened as told from the perspective of victims of the fires, activists and scientists.
A backstage and on-stage look at Nicki Minaj's career during the Pink Friday Tour, festivals, and more.
The reception ebbs and flows as the unfamiliar landscape whirls by the window of a plane or train or car. Communication is delayed, fragmented, interrupted. Memories of a distant country.
takayna / Tarkine in northwestern Tasmania is home to one of the last undisturbed tracts of Gondwanan rainforest in the world, and one of the highest concentrations of Aboriginal archaeology in the hemisphere. Yet this place, which remains largely as it was when dinosaurs roamed the planet, is currently at the mercy of destructive extraction industries, including logging and mining. Weaving together the conflicting narratives of activists, locals and Aboriginal communities, and told through the experiences of a trail running doctor and a relentless environmentalist, this documentary, presented by Patagonia Films, unpacks the complexities of modern conservation and challenges us to consider the importance of our last truly wild places.
The film is a cinematic interpretation of the travel book “Armenia” by Russian poet Andrei Bely.
To popularize the idea of automobile travel, Ford Motor Company produced Ford Educational Weekly, a film magazine distributed free to theaters. One 1916 series featured "Visits to American Cities." In this episode, Los Angeles is featured at the very beginning of the boom created by oil, movies and aircraft. On the occasion of its centennial in 1953, Ford donated its film to the National Archives and Records Service; this copy derives from a fine grain master printed from the Archive's preservation negative. Music by Frederick Hodges.
Sports enthusiast Ernest is to cover 6,000 kilometers on his motorcycle in 15 days, crossing Austria, Italy, Switzerland, the Balkans and Czechoslovakia.
Botanical gardens in Bombay plus the highly decorative Jain Temple in Calcutta.
A place of biological superlatives with a flora and fauna that have only just begun to be researched: Lord Howe Island, between Australia and New Zealand. This is the first documentary on what may be the most isolated nature reserve on the planet.
The Australians call the endless deserts in the interior of the continent the "dead heart". Here lies the town of Birdsville, 23 houses and a bar with a liquor license. The long-awaited telephone connection arrived in 1979, 90 years after it had been applied for. For one weekend, this place at the end of the world turns into a cauldron when 5,000 Australians, tired of civilization, invade for the annual horse race, the "Birdsville Cup". They come in buses, off-road vehicles, motorcycles and sports planes and have become a veritable plague. Because here, everyone can do what they've always wanted to do: for example, get drunk until they drop and never get up again. The collective mass drinking reaches its peak on Saturday night. By Monday morning, the fun is over. What remains is a village with 23 houses, a bar and a street littered with 80,000 empty beer cans.
In her second film, MY LIFE AS I LIVE IT (1993), Essie Coffey returns to her home in Dodge City where she and the A-Team are running in the shire elections. Inter-cutting between 1993 and 1978, the film presents the fascinating contrasts of a society in transition. Some of the kids we met in the earlier film now have families of their own and are involved in education, art and sports. Others are drifting, trying to cope with alcohol and depression. Most significantly, community programs offer the possibility of dignity and self-determination. In this film, Essie shows us the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) making a real difference. Although the CDEP has now come under attack from the Federal government, MY LIFE AS I LIVE IT portrays the CDEP as providing meaningful work and services to an impoverished remote community.
While flying to the first stop on their latest tour, the four members of the Australian music group The Seekers recall in flashback the origins of the group and their rise to success.