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Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan

Vietnam War, 1966. Australia and New Zealand send troops to support the United States and South Vietnamese in their fight against the communist North. Soldiers are very young men, recruits and volunteers who have never been involved in a combat. On August 18th, members of Delta Company will face the true horror of a ruthless battle among the trees of a rubber plantation called Long Tân. They are barely a hundred. The enemy is a human wave ready to destroy them.

Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan

6.8 2019
Face of Unity

Face Of Unity is the definitive Nelson Mandela documentary feature and first retrospective to be released since the president's death in late 2013. It includes a never before seen speech where Mandela outlines the groundwork for peace and reconciliation to future generations. The piece also includes tributes to Nelson Mandela from President Barack Obama, Sam Jackson, Jack Nicklaus, George Lucas, Ray Charles, Morgan Freeman, and two former Australian Prime Ministers, among others.

Face of Unity

NR 2014
Deep Water: The Real Story

In the 1980s and 1990s a wave of murders bloodied the idyllic coastline of Sydney’s eastern suburbs. The victims: young gay men. Disturbing gang assaults were being carried out on coastal cliffs around Sydney, and mysterious deaths officially recorded as "suicide", "disappearance" and "misadventure". Individual stories are woven together by first person interviews and detailed re-enactments, piecing together the facts of these unsolved cases, decades later.

Deep Water: The Real Story

4.7 2016
Fallout

During the 1940s, Nevil Shute had a steady job as an engineer in the British military but in his spare time, he wrote novels that were being well-received. Once the war was over, Shute choose to move to Australia and focus on writing, soon becoming an internationally acclaimed novelist. His novel On The Beach, particularly hit a chord with the international community, depicting the impact of global nuclear destruction. This documentary studies Shute's career and the adaptation of his most famous novel into a feature film in Melbourne, as his predictions of a post-Hiroshima world seem to be foreboding in their accuracy.

Fallout

7.0 2013
Autopsy on a Dream

In 1968, John Weiley shot 'Autopsy on a Dream' - a film about the Sydney Opera House detailing its construction process and the politics of Jorn Utzon's dismissal. Weiley's film was controversial; it was screened once and then he was told it had been destroyed. Forty five years later a copy was discovered in the BBC vaults by an ABC producer looking for archive footage of the Opera House. Weiley was contacted and told about a film that had no sound track. Weiley was overjoyed; for years he had kept the original sound. So began the painstaking process of restoring this record of a unique moment in Australian culture to its former glory, complete with updated voice-over from the original narrator, Bob Ellis. It is set in context by a 30 minute prologue entitled 'The Dream of Perfection'. Made by the same filmmaker, John Weiley, forty-five years on, 'Dream of Perfection' tells the story of the 1968 film - from commission to destruction, to surprise resurrection.

Autopsy on a Dream

7.5 2013
Remembering the Man

At an exclusive Catholic boys school in Melbourne 1976, Tim Conigrave and John Caleo fell madly in love. Their passionate, tempestuous, operatic romance lasted for 16 years, facing disapproval, temptation, separation, and the looming shadow of the Grim Reaper. Their relationship has been immortalised in Conigrave's posthumous autobiography Holding the Man (now a major Australian film directed by Neil Armfield). This is the true story of how Romeo met Romeo and how first love can not only last but endure.

Remembering the Man

7.6 2016
Take

TAKE (te reo Maori: issue, promise, challenge) weaves mana wahine (female knowledge), dance and archival materials to retell the story of the removal of the ancestral Maori meetinghouse, Hinemihi o te Ao Tawhito, from Aotearoa, New Zealand to England in 1892. It is a call to return Hinemihi, embodied by Australian born Maori dancer and performance artist, Victoria Hunt. Set in the liminal spaces between history and emotion TAKE unfolds a story of origins, of traumatic events and colonial violence.

Take

NR 2019
Opera Australia: Aida

Verdi’s monumental music makes this historic epic an enduring favourite. Davide Livermore’s radiant production is a thrilling theatrical experience. Ten towering digital screens create ever-changing floor-to-ceiling set pieces. Immersive digital video design ranges from rich symbolism to vivid landscapes. Opulent costumes and props reflect the splendour of Egypt at the height of its power. Together with dramatic video, the massed grandeur of the famous Triumphal March is a visual and musical feast.

Opera Australia: Aida

NR 2015
Gallipoli from Above

Gallipoli from Above: The Untold Story is the true story of how a team of Australian officers used aerial intelligence, emerging technology and innovative tactics to plan the landing at Anzac Cove. It is now nearly 100 years since the landing and hundreds of books, movies and documentaries have failed to grasp the significance of the ANZAC achievement. Instead, the mythology has clouded the real story of how these two influential Australian officers took control of the landing using every innovation they could muster to safely land their men on Z beach.

Gallipoli from Above

8.0 2012
Leon Trotsky: A Personality in the 20th Century

Leon Trotsky is considered one of the most controversial revolutionary figures of his time. Was he a practical revolutionary or a naive idealist? On the practical side, he was the mastermind behind the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, and was totally ruthless during the ensuing Civil War. As an idealist, he was committed to the pursuit of international revolution, but created many political enemies. After Lenin's death, Trotsky lost in a power struggle with Stalin, and later was expelled from the Communist Party. Trotsky was exiled from the Soviet Union, eventually finding refuge in Mexico. In 1940, Stalin ordered his assassination, and Trotsky died after being struck in the head with an ice-pick. History records that Trotsky was a master theoretician, a skillful propagandist and a brilliant orator.

Leon Trotsky: A Personality in the 20th Century

NR 2013
Precarious

A haunting evocation of the aftermath of the explosion at Chernobyl, 25 years on. This visually stunning road movie takes the spectator on a bleak journey from the shores of the Black Sea to the frozen heart of Chernobyl, passing through desolate, snowy landscapes, littered with abandoned villages. Squatting in this icy wasteland, the ghostly sarcophagus of Reactor No.4 is a constant reminder of the threat still lurking below. Accompanied by testimony from a group of unseen veterans of the disaster, Precarious bears witness to both the folly and resilience of humans and to nature's fragility.

Precarious

NR 2011
Make Hummus Not War

Filmmaker Trevor Graham is an Australian 'hummus tragic'. Every week in his Bondi Beach home he observes the hummus making ritual, mashing chickpeas, lemon juice, garlic and tahina. But when the Hummus War erupted in 2008, among the usual suspects, Israel, Lebanon and Palestine, Graham was hungry for more. But this war ha no soldiers, bullets or tanks. Just chickpeas and hummus. Make Hummus Not War is a humorous homage to the chickpea's most distinguished dish. But there's a personal story, how Graham became a hummus tragic, a father who served in Palestine during WW2 and two lovers in his life, one Syrian, one Jewish, with whom he shared a great culinary passion.

Make Hummus Not War

4.0 2012
Forgotten Wars, Forgotten Victims

Forgotten Wars, Forgotten Victims (2012) John Tsambazis Over the last 20 years, Africa has experienced some 15 devastating civil wars with over 20 million victims in death, injury or displacement. Yet the West has turned a blind eye. This documentary sheds light about the conflict and post conflict reconstruction in particular in West Africa , discussing issues such as child soldiers and the many damaged victims of war and how they have found support. Missionaries have played a vital role in the restoration and healing process of post war conflict. The documentary is narrated by the former Australian Rock Star Themi Adams, who once toured with the Rolling Stones and who now heads the Orthodox Mission in Sierra Leone. He talks about how his mission in particular is contributing to the recovery process.

Forgotten Wars, Forgotten Victims

NR 2012
After the Apology

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…

After the Apology

NR 2017
King’s Seal

In the circle of life - birth, survival and death, Aboriginal people have a network of sites and tracks, embedded in the land, that connect them to all things and enable them to practice their laws, traditions and beliefs. Colonisation in Australia, denied Aboriginal people access to their land - breaking the life cycle for Aboriginal people. The Free-Settler Colony of South Australia was going to be different. King William IV recognised the continued rights to land for Aboriginal people in South Australia's founding document, the Letters Patent, in Feb 1836. The first ever Aboriginal rights granted in Australia's colonial history. Rights to the land, to occupy and enjoy their land for always, enshrined in law by the King's seal. What actually occurred in South Australia after colonisation in 1836 was treason. The King's Letters Patent was disobeyed and Aboriginal rights that were granted, to occupy and enjoy their land, were denied.

King’s Seal

NR 2014
Canberra Confidential

A journey through the dark, chilling and frequently unbelievable tales of power-broking and deceit from inside the nation's capital. Australian political journalist and commentator Annabel Crabb goes in search of Canberra's secrets over the past century, exploring the passionate interplay of sex, secrets and subterfuge that has long been carried out in the shadows of the national stage. How have our secrets changed over the past century and what does this reveal about us as a society? This is the history that Canberra has tried to hide.

Canberra Confidential

NR 2013