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Antigone arrives in Sydney from Greece to have an arranged marriage with Telis, but is rejected by him as he expected a younger woman. Telis's older brother, Manolis, sympathizes with Antigone.

A cartoon adventure featuring Captain Goodvibes, the pig of steel, and his sidekick Astro.

The lives of the people of Port Melbourne in the early 1930s are recreated in this award-winning short film.

Exposé of the ill-treatment of Aboriginal workers by white men. A dramatised documentary about the June 1957 Aboriginal strike on Palm Island reserve, off the north Queensland coast.

This musical tells the story of the 1854 Eureka Stockade rebellion by the gold miners in Ballarat. It was adapted from a play by novelist Kenneth Cooke.

Traces the life and artistic development of the Aboriginal painter, the late Albert Namatjira. His environment, his introduction to painting, his subsequent success with beautifully original landscapes and his influence on fellow Aborigines are recorded.

Sinbad relates the story to his son of his adventures in trying to reclaim the Caliph's magic lamp from the Old Man of the Sea.

Hancock, (who was voted Britain's best-ever comic 35 years after his death) leaves his home in Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, England for warmer, more challenging climes. He encounters the Australian natives on his terms having dragged his attitudes with him halfway across the world.

Michael Lee uses a 16mm Bolex camera to explore various zooming and framing techniques to photograph images from National Geographic Magazines. The silent film was made in 1972.

Take in Sydney from the rooftops in this gently surreal, wordless short. With a cheeky animated interlude and sweeping harbour views, this is 1970s city life with a twist.

Each screen shows exposure variations in a room with a seated figure, the sunlit bush seen through large windows, its tonality altering with the exposure changes. A stereo track of birdcalls and voices was added in 2010.

Documentary about life on the road with the Swiss Circus Royale as it tours outback Australia. Intercuts performance scenes with shots of the less glamorous aspects of circus life. Suitable for secondary school level.

“A woman stands ironing near a window. You never actually see the ironing, but you experience the repetition and the boredom. You see her from a multiplicity of viewpoints. Finally she opens the bloody window for a breath of fresh air.” (Paul Winkler) [Made for Oberhausen Film Festival, which invited a number of filmmakers to make a three-minute film on the theme of a window.]

Located 18 miles west, Katatjuta (The Olgas) is a recurring presence in the background of Uluru. Believed by Aboriginal people to have been inhabited by mythological ancestors, it is a place to be approached with caution. There is a sense of mystery and apprehension at Katatjuta, with the complex domed structures with their own rows of "windows" suggesting an abandoned temple city where, due to its mysterious symmetry, space circulates. The uneasy feeling of having intruded and being watched influenced the filming. (Arthur Cantrill & Corinne Cantrill)

American defence policy under Gerald Ford, successor to a disgraced president, is the subject of Mr Nixon’s Secret Legacy. John Pilger says that military thinkers in Washington are for the first time “thinking the unthinkable” and Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union announced by Ford and Henry Kissinger are “no more than a sham”. Before resigning over Watergate, President Richard Nixon had given Pentagon generals a flexible strategy that would blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear warfare.

A love affair between a Greek and a middle-class Australian divorcee.

The Legend of Lasseter is a 1979 Australian documentary about Lasseter's Reef. Lasseter's Reef refers to the purported discovery, announced by Harold Bell Lasseter in 1929 and 1930, of a fabulously rich gold deposit in a remote and desolate corner of central Australia.

An orphan girl chooses an old book from a box of donated charity items. In this book, she reads a story that she makes her own. When she collides with an old man, the story comes to life.

A skinny, virginal mechanic is taken into erotic captivity by three lovely nymphs who decide to give him an enlightening course in sex education. Their goal: to transform a naive nerd into a sexual dynamo for the voluptuous Gerttie.

Writer, historian and art critic Robert Hughes presents a survey of Australian art from the time of the First Fleet to the present day, based on the social background of the times and the overseas prototypes from which much of Australia's art revealed.

This film explores the pressures experienced by Aboriginal women living in the city, and the effect that these pressures also have on their men and their children. In spite of all life's difficulties, the women seem to survive the urban environment better than the men. Their humour, intelligence and resilience in the face of adversity shines through.

A BAFTA award nominated feature. Walls of stone, surrounded by water isolate the National Gallery of Melbourne, Victoria from its inhabitants. Stone, glass and water are the constantly repeating motives of this gallery. A mosaic of quick reciprocal action arises from the mixture of architecture and nature, sculptures, pictures, masks and people. A subjective look at the National Gallery of Victoria, the film expresses visually and audibly the visitors' reaction to the Gallery, and the Gallery's reaction to its visitors

Australian surfing documentary directed by Bruce Dowse

Part 2 of the History of Australian Cinema series. Covering the 1920s and 30s. From an origin that promised so much, the Australian film production industry faced new challenges from abroad which ultimately proved to be more than they could cope with. Unfortunately very few films from then now survive.

A rich winemaker dispatches a woman lawyer and male surveyor-geologist to assess a farm property whereby it is discovered that terrorists are preparing to invade a middle east country.

A documentary portrait of the Jie of northeastern Uganda, examining pastoral life during a dry season as government policies and economic pressures challenge traditional patterns of herding, movement, and subsistence.

An animated short which uses a photographic montage of old buildings to show the sometimes ruthless destruction of aged buildings and the almost absolute power of progress. (text via the National Film and Sound Archive)

In the first of a trilogy of documentaries made in the United States, John Pilger reveals American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s policy of refusing aid to countries that do not support his government in the United Nations and the existence of a “Zap Office” – officially, the Office of Multilateral Diplomacy – specially set up in the State Department to monitor voting patterns.

Nuclear war breaks out and the staff and patients of a mental hospital take refuge in an underground bunker and accidentally get locked in. Disciple soon disintegrates and the patients, led by Richard, start to resist authority. Richard devises a scheme for a new social order where the sane will take no part. The doctors try to resist but are ultimately overcome.

“I don’t drive, but I know people who’ll drive 100 metres to go to the shops. Our society is obsessed with the car, with coming and going, getting somewhere. I used very intricate matting, some shaped like knives. I wanted the cars to slice each other in two, creating a kind of hurdy gurdy atmosphere…an abstract rushing to and fro, going nowhere. The first half of the film is silent. The second half, a grainy dupe of the same images, has sound and is far more urgent and aggressive.” (Paul Winkler)

This is a still from the film 'Where are we Heading?' which was made by The Commonwealth Film Unit in 1971 and directed by Arch Nicholson. The film presents an open ended look at the effects that different parental attitudes to life and the family unit have on adolescents. Directed mainly at adult audiences, especially parents and community leaders it deals with the social issues around all types of drug use.

This is the story of John Andrews, world-famous Australian architect. In the mid-1960s, when only 29, Andrews was commissioned to design Scarborough College at Toronto University. One of the world’s first ‘megastructures’, it was an important experiment in urban and educational planning. Andrews also designed the Canadian National Tower in Toronto, which was the tallest freestanding structure in the world at the time it was built.

“The destruction of trees in Sydney...chainsaws, the trees really screaming out. Rapid zooming, often close up shooting. In Edgecliff and Paddington, near where I lived, I'd travel around with the council workers as they lopped established trees, made way for progress...power lines, new buildings. On the Cahill Expressway, across from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, huge old Moreton Bay Figs were being butchered. As they were ripping and cutting into the trees, I was ripping into them…very physically, rapid zooming. I wanted a very strong message. It was way over the top, really…screeching chainsaws and woodchip machines. There was no real Green Movement in those days. When I showed the film, people came up to me and said I’d made them feel guilty for lopping down trees in their own yard. The aggression of the film still causes people trouble.” (Paul Winkler)

Fremantle Arts Centre is visited by a ghost who lived a terrible life when the Centre was a lunatic asylum.

Ayers Rock is examined in the light of its ancient human and animal associations. It is seen under various light effects which create different colour and texture impressions. The timelessness of the monolith is suggested by negative colour, the result of using fine-grain Eastmancolour print stock in the camera, a slow speed material which required the intense Central Australian light for adequate exposure. A half-speed recording of the local bird call and insects contributes to the sense of cross eras. Human perception of time, colour and sound is questioned. As Einstein said: 'The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.'

Corinne Cantrill’s film At Eltham from 1974 explores her fascination with Australian landscapes and introduces her interest in playing the 16mm camera functions as a musical instrument. In an essay, Corinne notes she subtitled the film ‘A Metaphor on Death’ referring to their despair, at the time, about their future as filmmakers in Australia and their decision to leave the country temporarily.

An experimental feminist film which questions the goals of love and romance as a woman’s ultimate fulfillment. Emma, vivacious but suicidal terrorist is reunited with Cecily, her old school chum. They meet a ‘bionic bike dyke’ called stretch and break open the jelly beans. Will they stretch a point over the pool table? Will tap-dancing and vaginal exercises be enough for Cecily? Will Emma metamorphose into Esther Williams?

A student of criminology is completing a thesis on Melbourne mass murderers. With the aid of a German professor he visits the scenes of the crimes of Frederick Deeming, Norman List, Arnold Sodeman and Edward Leonski and reconstructs them.

In this short self-portrait, Ubu Films co-founder Perry mines his archive of family photographs, home videos and exhibited 16mm film to fast-forward, reverse and freeze-frame narratives and reminiscences.

John Pilger documentary from 1974.

3-colour separation film.

Short directed by Bruce Petty.

Describes life on the Aboriginal reserve of Palm Island in Queensland. Old men from Dyirbal language group tell stories of the massacres and poisoning of their people when they first came in contact with the white settlers.

In the 1960s, as West Indians, Pakistanis, Indians and Africans began to arrive in Britain from former British colonies, race became a political issue. In the 1964 General Election, a swing to the Conservative Party in Labour’s Smethwick constituency and Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech on immigration four years later put attitudes towards ethnic minorities on the political and social agenda. In One British Family, made in 1974, John Pilger focuses on Gus and Julie Gill, who arrived in Britain from Trinidad in 1961. They now had three children and their own house on Tyneside, where they were the only black family in the street. “They take less from the social services than the equivalent white families,” says Pilger. “They’re not on any council’s housing lists and they’ve never been out of work.”

Using hidden camera techniques and synchronous sound recording, the film presents an Australian Rules football game exclusively in terms of the reactions of the watching crowd.

A visual onslaught of artistic ideas, showing how art relates to and intertwines with our daily lives. Art, personified here as an opera-singing Valkyrie, hang-glides down from the clouds to check on the state of the arts in Australia - from painting, writing and music to dance, theatre, puppetry and sculpture. Featuring John Bell, Anna Volska, Reg Livermore, Rory O'Donohue, David Gulpilil and the work of Thomas Keneally and Patrick White among others, this is a phantasmagoria of filmic effects.

John Pilger’s first documentary on the aftermath of the Vietnam War, To Know Us Is to Love Us, features a caring, humane American community in Fort Smith, Arkansas, welcoming South Vietnamese refugees just months after the United States’s defeat and humiliation in south-east Asia – while their own dead of the war lie in the town’s graveyard.

“Using footage shot during the first Aboriginal Land Rights demonstrations in Sydney, and when the police tore down the ‘Aboriginal Embassy’ in front of Parliament House in Canberra, Dark juxtaposes this violent struggle with images (taken from a tourist slide) of an old Aboriginal warrior imprisoned, in his mind, in his own country. As an immigrant to Australia I’d understood what it feels like to be a stranger, and had experienced hurtful comments and prejudice (…‘bloody German’). So I thought, this is funny, these people have been here for donkey’s years, and they to go out in the streets to fight for their own land. I used various mechanisms to let this injustice, this anger out…in particular, zooming through a comb onto the image of the old warrior…letting his emotion stream out through the bars.” (Paul Winkler)

At Jie cattle camps in Uganda men often gather under a special tree to make leather and wooden goods and talk, relax, and sleep. This brilliant ethnographic documentary by renowned filmmakers David and Judith MacDougall captures one particularly riveting discussion one afternoon under the men's tree. The conversation on this particular afternoon becomes a kind of reverse ethnography, centering on the European's most noticeable possession, the motor vehicle. This is a uniquely delicate and intimate film, filled with the humor of the Jie and, implicitly, the ironic wit of the filmmakers.

At the request of a dying Tiwi man and his family on Melville Island, this film was made of the pukumani (bereavement) ceremony to follow his death. The film observes the family through the long period of preparation for the ceremony, following age-old traditions. Dancing and face-painting are rehearsed, to the family’s satisfaction, and because “things should be right for this film”. For the two days of ceremony, the community moves to Carslake Beach where a smoking ritual is held to protect the participants from spirits. The cemetery poles are erected, traditional dances are performed along with personal dances by family members. Facial and body decoration is elaborate and spectacular. After saying a final farewell to the old man, the community and the family leave the Beach and return to the village where routine life resumes.

Part 3 of the History of Australian Cinema series. The story of the Australian film industry in the 1930s, from the pioneering days of talkies through to the decline of the industry with the coming of WWII.

“I wanted to make grass grow...to show the life force of a tree. Bark-Rind was shot totally single-frame...each shot exposed three times...close-up, mid shot, long shot. I used the sound of insects, signifying pollination, life...and I tried to make their sound visible. The camera starts on the grass, flowers, then works its way up the trunk, into the crown of the tree, then onto the next tree. The film vibrates...switching from sound/film...film/sound. You wonder whether you're looking at a film image or at the sound itself.” (Paul Winkler)

"Freaky Black Friday Spook Special" was a hosted horror movie television special hosted Jill Forster as "Vampira" screened on ATN 7 (Sydney) between 13 and 14 November 1970.

Public information film aimed to educate the Australian public about exercise in a fun and non-threatening manner.

1976. A candid look at the highs and lows of Australian society.

“One day at the beach…a typically Australian day…something I really looked forward to, when I first came here as a migrant (Bondi was the first surfing beach I’d ever seen). In the early ’60s there was hardly a weekend I didn’t go to the beach. But it wasn’t until many, many years later that I was filmically advanced enough to make a film about it. The simplicity of just turning the camera on and letting people do what they wanted to in front of the lends appealed to me…the carefree atmosphere appealed to me…the carefree atmosphere of the beach captured with the innocence of early cinema. I didn’t even look through the lens. Shooting horizontal mattes allowed me to play with the density of what was going on…the surreality of the beach, the waves of water and people, the hot and cold of sun and surf, overexposure…heat rising up, surfers riding waves in the sky and into buildings, seagulls ducking beneath the mattes, then re-appearing.” (Paul Winkler)

An experimental film to see how much information the eye can take in from continuous single frame images and from single frames of widely different type.

Hector has just married Milly, and before they drive off, he checks his bride’s safety belt. Their first house guest is Uncle Tom, a silly old man lacking all road sense. It takes all Hector and Milly’s time saving him from trouble. Words and music by Charles Marawood, Damien Parer - Unit Manager. Costumed characters performed in pantomime musical style.

A three colour separation study filmed at Pearl Beach, which examines the same scene of Amethyst Avenue during the progression of a winter, then a summer day. With the sea in the background, the moving objects such as the pedestrians, cyclists, traffic are transparent and ephemeral while the stationary objects are opaque and retain a permanent quality. A strange, almost surreal quality illustrating the transitional nature of life.