698 Matches Found
Helena Rubinstein is rightly seen as one of the pioneers of a market worth millions - the female beauty market. Born in Krakow, Rubinstein started her career in the early years of the twentieth century in Australia, from where she quickly went on to conquer Europe and the United States. What began with twelve jars of her mother's beauty cream was to develop into a company with 100 branches in 14 countries and a workforce of 30,000 employees.
Three-color separation imagery expands the experimental documentation of landscape. Alternating nuances of color conjure up; a formal beauty, which are echoed in birdsong and the buzzing of insects.
Various shots of streets.
A film-maker struggles to live. She makes films. She makes love.
This observational documentary follows an episode in the routine life on Collum Collum cattle-station in northern New South Wales. But, as the filmmaker notes, it's a story that could have occurred anywhere.
Cars, buildings, trees. A film about independence and life's ultimate redemption.
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.
“A friend had given me some old footage shot in Germany pre-WWII...during the ‘30s. Among all the images of sport, and people dancing, were images of Hitler making his early speeches. So this film is about the terrible tension of that period...jitterbugging on top of the volcano, the frentic activity to have a good life in the face of the brewing horror of Nazism. I used all kinds of techniques...travelling mattes, optical printer, rotoscoping and hand colouring, and scratching the film. The physical mutilation of the film frame, of Hitler's image...scratching out his eyes, brought fantastic relief. But I'm still not finished with Hitler, because no-one is. History never will be.” (Paul Winkler)
The Republic of Kiribati is one of the most isolated places in the Pacific and because of this it has been possible for its people to retain much of their traditional way of life. In this film, made on Tabiteuea Island four years after independence, we witness a special three-day ritual dating from pre-colonial times, in which Manerrua – a schoolgirl of 14 – celebrates her first menstruation
This concert, taped on 14 December 1986 at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, was the last of a series of concerts done throughout the last two months of 1986, which were part of John's Tour De Force of Australia and New Zealand.
Just Friends - A classic Australian children's telemovie about growing up, peer pressure, friendship and family. When Susan Foster moves to a new suburb she has difficulty fitting in. Susan's home life is uncomfortable with an unemployed father, a distant mother and an unexpectedly pregnant big sister. Susan seeks refuge at the local Roller Skate rink where she meets Buzz, the brash young gang leader and the best skater in town. Susan becomes part of Buzz's gang but is soon confronted with his selfish behaviour and cruel treatment of his friends. Susan must decide which is more important to her - fitting in or being fair. Just Friends is part of the Winners series of television programs created by the Australian Children's Television Foundation.
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.
When Geraldine Kawanka’s husband died, she and her children left their house at Aurukun on Cape York Peninsula. In earlier times a bark house would have been burnt, but today a ‘house-opening’ ceremony — creatively mingling Aboriginal, Torres Strait and European elements — has evolved to deal with death in the midst of new living patterns. Although sometimes suggesting a party, its underlying purpose is serious. This film records the opening of the house and Geraldine’s feelings about it in her informative and personal commentary.
A high school student, heartbroken, considers suicide.
Heavy rain. Then, a change. Melbourne.
“I made this film in the heyday of the ‘80s... a lot of people spending and making a lot of money in a kind of mad frenzy... advertisements, everywhere, interest rates up to 15%, 17%. Everything was for sale, one way or another... high pressure selling, lending. I figured ‘Good grief, this is all water off a duck's back.’ I used a lot of advertisements cut out of newspapers, and juxtaposed ‘important’ images (the Queen, Jesus, warships) and hectic activity with ducks, swimming around serenely in their ponds... things overwhelmingly important to some, totally unimportant to others. Ducks carry a lot of associations in the English language... ‘ducking for cover’, ‘sitting duck’ and so on.” (Paul Winkler)
Produced during a year-long residency in New York, Neo Geo is a vivid portrayal of the contemporary American cultural landscape.
A silhouette world of gothic horror, of spindly figures dwarfed by bleak landscapes and Jules Verne machines.
At Black Range (1984) was shot near the Grampians in Western Victoria, and features monumental monochrome rocks with rainbow shadows and “fringing” in the moving eucalypts, which create coloured vibrations like the filmic analogue of Impressionism. The skin of the film and the rock itself are both living surfaces of mobile textures: lichen becomes electric, pointilist, as the camera fades in and out of focus. The shadows of skinny tree trunks dart like electric blue lightning, veins or eels. Shivering leaves morph into undersea anemones, caressing the rocks in a teasing, sexual way. Somehow, the loosening of Taussig’s “straightjacket of the spectrum” allows for a loosening of the straightjacket of taxonomy as well; classes, phyla, and even kingdoms drop away, revealing an undifferentiated field of vibrant matter in which entities shapeshift. (Tessa Laird)
In the early 1980s Rodney Rude was hired by his friend Barry Wain to set up the first stand-up comedy venue in Sydney, The Margaret Lane Comedy Store. With Rodney Rude as the driving force, the comedy scene became huge and Rodney was as busy as a five peckered spider. This was the heyday of pub comedy and this video of the 'Rodney Rude Live, I Hate That' album, is a glimpse into this very funny period. This first Rodney Rude album epitomised his early comedy store period and along with his television appearances made Rodney Rude, with his catchphrase 'You Know What I Hate', a household name. The most frequently asked question over the years by Rude fans has been when will the 'Rodney Rude, I Hate That' video be available on DVD? The answer is: NOW
This film examines the implications of the Australian colonial era for the Gogodala people of the Fly River Delta, Western Papua New Guinea. Excessive missionary zeal, tolerated and encouraged by the government, contributed to the almost total destruction of Gogodala art and culture. More recently, an indirect grant from the Australian government has enabled the people to reconstruct a traditional longhouse, along with a new meaning and function: as a cultural center.
A look at the history of Australia's 1 Commando Regiment during the period in which commandos were all members of the Australian Army Reserve, rather than full-time soldiers.
An animated satire on television violence, set in a world where the skeletal Don Death runs a popular variety show called “Dance of Death”.
A young man finds a box by the seashore. On looking inside it, he sees a view of the ocean floor, travelling through seaweed and other sea life.
Cabaret-style show bringing together songs, prose and poetry that celebrate women.
An autobiographical documentary written and directed by Michael Blakemore in 1981 in which he plays his own father. The film was made on 16mm and first screened in the UK at London's National Film Theatre.
The faith of a heart and the faith of a look. A period in the life of a young Australian couple.
This is the account of the Aboriginal People of Perth on protest to protect the Ancestral First Grandmothers' and Grandfathers' Beliefs of the Sacred Ground of the Waugul at the old Swan Brewery on the Swan River in Perth, W.A.
I'll be Home for Christmas cuts through social taboos to explore the subculture of people commonly dismissed as ‘derelicts'. In its portrayal of five homeless men, the film challenges conventional views of alcoholism and homelessness by depicting these men as members of a social network with a highly developed sense of mutual concern and camaraderie.
This film was made with the Aboriginal Education Unit at Melbourne State College (Phil Johnson). GUNANA is an account of everyday life on Mornington Island in Australia’s far north - homelands of the Aboriginal theatre group The Mornington Island Dancers. The film includes excerpts of their dance performance at Mt Druitt Primary School.
This beautiful, unsettling experimental documentary is a meditation on Australian suburbia and notions of home.
A 13-year-old boy comes home from school and goes out. He meets up with a friend and they go to various places together, interacting with various people. An unassuming and meditative, observational film exploring that dead time between "schools out" and evening. A film of small moments but big meanings.
In 1978 the police attacked demonstrators at the Sydney (Australia) Mardi Gras celebrations. This film details the communities' responses.
Lois, upon moving to the inner city and finding herself in an all-woman house, becomes most intrigued by her new roommate Kate.
A man arrives home from work and relaxes. Who is he?
A 1982 animated sci-fi adventure that still resonates today. The world is running out of energy - war looms between the 2 superpowers. A mysterious Black Planet is discovered in the universe. Secret Agents Freddy Fairweather and Marigold Muffet set out on hair-raising adventures that take them under the sea, across the country, and into outer space to find a secret formula which could well decide which side will land on the Black Planet first.
Examining the change of culture in the small island after American television began being broadcast.
The world of things and movements traces itself backwards and forwards in an ecstatic vertigo of metaphysical allusion, whilst we sublimely subordinate the will to desire. "Look out", Marguerite Duras says, "you see the end of the world".
Directed by Helen Grace.
"Lost forever in the vortex of Eastern European anxiety, our puppet hero Hector languishes in scene after scene of contrived torment. Antiquity is thus his total realm, his self... This is the flipside of Perestroika; the solid weight of monuments and walls crashing down on waiting faceless figures." - David Cox, Cantrills Filmnotes, Issue 63/64, December 1990.
After purchasing magical wax, a local window cleaner becomes a surfing legend with his teleporting surf wax. Music by Gang-GaJang
The story of an Aboriginal stockman, Sunny Bancroft, and his family at Collum Collum and their growing enthusiasm for "picnic races" on bush tracks in New South Wales.
Onus On Us began as a cinema verite movie of my own life, but ended as a film-performance staged at events such as the annual Super 8 Film Festival in Melbourne in 1986 and 1987.
“You can have a weatherboard house, a fibro house, or a brick and tile house. Here in Australia real estate is very strong, and ‘brick and tile’ is what we call a solid house. In this film I experimented with optical printing for the first time [i.e. re-combining images after shooting, rather than in-camera]... pretty much purely for my own aesthetic pleasure. I showed the film at a documentary festival in Germany but the audience were less than impressed when I explained that the film would hopefully assist potential home builders to select their desired brick and tile combination.” (Paul Winkler)
Pseudo-documentary footage of a jazz session that features the singing of a mythical jazz legend named Della Ray (Ceberano) who, in the spirit of Billy Holiday, died tragically at an early age.
Women's unwritten history is passed down through memories. Shows women talking about their experiences of the Great Depression in Australia. Covers such areas as: aboriginal women; paid and unpaid work; mothering; marriage; women's participation in the political struggles of the 1920's and 30's.
The film shows two Melbourne youths and their summer activities. One makes films and the other holidays at Phillip Island. But, despite their differences, they both, in their own ways, aspire to infinity.
A teenager living in suburbia finds a jewellery-case and it changes his life. A tribute to Spielberg and "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial".
SAS Australia: Battle for the Golden Road documents the entry conditions, training, and lifestyle of Australian Army's Special Air Service Regiment (SASR).
Rare documentary chronicling Keith Haring's visit to Australia in 1984, including working and painting at the National Gallery of Victoria and the New South Wales Art Gallery.
1989. The British government and the UN react to the outcry over the situation in Cambodia.
Explores the tension between a Japanese theatrical mask-maker and the mask itself.
Joe Leahy and his complicated relationship with the Guniga people in the Papua New Guinea highlands.
A film about waiting for love.
Buried Alive exposes some of the ugly truths about the nature of Western Democracy, the world media and third world colonialism. But the story of East Timor also presents the potential for individuals to effect change. The history of East Timor from its time as a Portuguse colony, rise of Fretilin Party, declaration of independence, civil war, desertion by Portugal and the rest of the world and invasion by Indonesia. Shows the struggle of Jose Remos-Horta to draw attention and support at the United Nations for the plight of East Timor.
The story of Bev Francis' attempt to become the world women's power lifting champion 1983.
Animated images of the Tasmanian tiger are depicted in different environments: a zoo, suburbia and bushland, as local people recall their sightings of this now extinct animal.
A photo of a woman, some heavenly skies, and the Pixies' "Hey".
Frances and Dorian live through the last few weeks of their dysfunctional relationship.