John Hughes
As notions of civil rights transformed across the world, so was the screen landscape reformed by the ascension of grassroots film movements seeking to challenge the mainstream. Some aspired to push form to its limit; others worked to destabilise what they saw as a homogenous industry, or to provoke questions around gender, sexuality, migration and race.
Filmed over a ten-month period throughout Australia, this probing documentary examines the political controversy surrounding Native Title and the Australian Federal Governments proposed amendments to the Native Title Act, 1993. It follows the Indigenous representatives in their attempt to fight the amendments in the media, in the bush, and in the halls of Parliament House, Canberra.
This intellectual, witty Australian drama offers an intriguingly sophisticated look into adultery. Too say too much about this plot would give away the secrets and surprises that gradually unfold, so what follows is the barest sketch. The story features two couples from Melbourne (both played by the same actors) whose lives and romantic troubles seem to overlap or perhaps intertwine in unexpected ways. University lecturer Christopher and his wife Sorrel comprise the main couple. A recent trip to Europe seems to have brought their marriage close to ruins. Avery and Gillian also experience marital turmoil when Avery gets involved with an older French seductress, Catherine.
Partly funded as a Bicentennial commission through the University of Queensland Art Museum and the ABC, Hughes’ speculative, essayistic documentary is an examination of the future of Australia in light of the processes of post-industrialisation, Walter Benjamin’s ruinous “angel of history” and Marx’s quixotic vision of modernity.
A film that is built around a simple narrative about the concerns of a reporter in public radio whose work takes her from the tele-room in March '83 when the present Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke came to power, to the biennial Labor Party Conference and through to the elections in Dec. '84. Traps throws up a host of questions and leads on the nature of power and politics.
During the height of the Cold War, the Waterside Workers' Federation Film Unit produced eleven (11) films for several trade unions on political and industrial issues. Independent film-makers worked with them to develop critical dialogue from one generation of concerned film-makers onto another. FILM-WORK looks at sequences from 4 of these films and interviews some of their makers, raising a diversity of issues pertinent to current debates in film, history and politics. The 4 films that are looked at are PENSIONS FOR VETERANS (1953, NSW Branch, WWF), THE HUNGRY MILES (1954, WWF), NOVEMBER VICTORY (1955, WWF), and HEWERS OF COAL (1953, Miners Federation). PENSIONS FOR VETERANS covers the issue of the need for pensions to be given to workers who have worked on the waterfront all their life. THE HUNGRY MILES shows the strength of the workers, the union and its democracy. HEWERS OF COAL is about the coal miners and their struggle to get better working conditions and pensions.
