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A wild and unruly landmark feminist film about female sexuality, that not only touches the areas of paranoia, fear and doubt, which women experience in relation to their bodies and physical self-image, but which is also joyful, erotic and funny.

“I now knew that I'd found a style to interpret an emotional event filmicly. The unabating atrocities of the Vietnam War, the growing protest movement in Australia, and the ghastly images we witnessed each day in newspapers and on TV formed my material. I wanted to get into the minds of the protesters, into their (my) anger. Protest rallies and the horror of the press were captured with a frantic camera and very fast zooming. The power of sound and image was heightened with often-rapid (sometimes single-frame) montage.” (Paul Winkler)

Alabama governor George Wallace made his name as a segregationist remembered for standing “in the schoolhouse door” of the University of Alabama in 1963 in an attempt to stop the enrolment of black students. John Pilger subsequently interviewed Wallace on the campaign trail during two general elections.During the second, in 1972, Wallace was shot in an assassination attempt, leaving him paralysed and in a wheelchair. In The Most Powerful Politician in America, made in 1974, Pilger looks at the likelihood that a reinvented Wallace will run for the White House two years later, manipulating contemporary American passions and exploiting his influence in the powerful “Dixie” states controlled by the Democratic Party.

Two women living in the same apartment block are drawn to each other as if through the power of a shared fantasy.

“This was my first film using the matte-box. Using images of my own backyard, I found that I could create a kind of mysterious story, an almost supernatural effect. The mystery is never revealed, but there is something there. By photographing tiny vertical slivers through different mattes and lenses, carefully rewinding the film in the camera, then exposing bit by bit, I achieved this ‘corrugated’ effect. All of a sudden you get motion in something where there is no motion.” (Paul Winkler)

The footage for this film was shot in London during our research into the Vorticist movement. It is a montage of images from the Vorticist magazine Blast, including Vorticist drawings and texts from the manifestos. A screen made from a collage of photographic enlargements from the magazine was prepared for the screening of this film. The soundtrack evokes the sounds of World War I, which were, in a way, the climax of the Vorticist movement in England. During the Expanded Cinema presentations, excerpts from Blast were read during the film screening. (Arthur Cantrill & Corinne Cantrill)

“In a wry exploration of women’s sexuality, the character Pussy demonstrates the play between the masculine and the feminine, the strong and the passive, the observer and the observed, as she metamorphoses between female, feline and male figures. As the film demonstrates, animation is a form ideally suited to render the process of metamorphosis.” —Dr. Marian Quigley

“An ‘avant-garde’ film of the seventies. A man obssessed with Phantom comics fantasises himself as the contemporary Phantom. Shot on location in Sydney, various Sydney visual artists play characters in this short comic story intercut with images from Phantom comics. Gary Shead is a visual artist who utilised cartoon imagery in his work, hence the idea for this film.” (Screensound)

“I wanted to make a sequel to Chants…the gold against black, but I wasn’t quite sure how. One day I went to St Mary’s Cathedral here in Sydney. After looking at the stained glass windows for some time, on the way out I noticed that they were selling slides of the interior…and whoever photographed the stained glass had used a red filter. This was the image I was after…red against black. By simply photographing and rephotographing the slide (up to 200 times, in some cases)…and varying the exposure by changing the distance between the light source and the slide, I was able to give the feeling of looking up…which is what you do in a church…from the knave up to the stained glass up to the ceiling…up to heaven in this red light. The upward motion was layered without visible edits by superimposing strips of the varyingly exposed film, in the lab.” (Paul Winkler)

An Italian boy with an aversion to water and unable to speak English is forced into a swimming lesson with the boys at an Australian school

This self-funded verité comedy starring John Duigan is something of a swan song for the “Carlton ripple” and reflects the movement’s characteristic vacillation between intensely local and distantly international influences.

Documentary about innocent people confined to prison on remand. John Pilger reports that more than half of the 500,000 people remanded in custody by magistrates each year are eventually found not guilty, fined or, as in the case of “Helen”, given a conditional discharge. Helen, charged with stealing a pair of slippers but with no previous convictions, recalls her day in Holloway Prison, London, which started at 7am when she joined 96 other prisoners in a rush to use four toilets whose conditions were “disgusting”. Between then and lunchtime, all prisoners were locked up, with just half-an-hour’s walk round a large yard for exercise. Lunch was eaten in cells, with tea at 3.30pm, before they were locked up until the following morning.

This classic ethnographic documentary, by the renowned filmmaking team of David and Judith MacDougall, explores the nomadic life of the Jie of Uganda. During the dry season the Jie leave their homesteads in large numbers and take their cattle to temporary camps (nawi) in western Karamoja District, where water and grass are more abundant.

A short documentary about Father Christmas' annual six-day trek through the Australian desert aboard the Tea and Sugar Train.

A videographic film exploiting the phosphor textures on the cathode screen. Video images are filmed, filter-coloured and supered in the camera.

The potential dangers of nuclear weapons and the planned new breed of plutonium-fuelled reactors are the subject of An Unjustifiable Risk, made in 1977. John Pilger begins by explaining that just a speck of plutonium, the main component of an atomic bomb, can cause cancer, but there is no absolutely safe way of storing, protecting or transporting it. Although the government is planning to build the first commercial nuclear power station fuelled by plutonium – a so-called fast-breeder reactor intended to solve the country’s energy problems – an independent royal commission has declared the process dangerous.

“After three very hectic films, I needed something to soothe my nerves. I came across these Coptic crosses in a Greek souvenir shop. and at the time I also heard some Gregorian chants. I thought these cheap plastic crosses looked really beautiful...and I shot them against black velvet so that they appeared to float, emanating something, in a deep space...kind of heavenly images. Nothing much happens...it's really a meditation. Funnily enough I found that the Hare Krishna Movement (which was flourishing at the time) rented the film out a lot to use at their camps. Another time Albie [Thoms] used some of the footage on GTK [ABC TV's youth/pop program], where it looked very odd indeed. I believe that Gregorian chants were in the hit parade only recently. This sort of spirituality touches all kinds of people...” (Paul Winkler)

Short film produced to promote Queensland to the world.

Shortly after his 1977 Daily Mirror reports on dissidents in the Soviet Union, John Pilger entered Czechoslovakia undercover to film A Faraway Country… a people of whom we know nothing, a title taking the words that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain used to describe Czechoslovakia dismissively in 1938 when it was invaded by the Nazis.

Gary Young's "Wheels On Fire" is one of the classic motor sports documentaries of all time. Mostly filmed in Liverpool, Sydney, in 1973, the documentary appeals to both "rev heads" and the wider audience, who want to relive the Australian history of the drag strip.

TWO WOMEN records our passage through the tribal lands of the Central Australian region – a personal charting of this mythical landscape. The film is shaped by an unedited recording made of a Pitjantjatjara women’s song cycle: "Two Women", which describes the travels of ancestral women through this region. The film is not a literal interpretation of the song story, and there is no translation of the song. We are outsiders to this culture, and must therefore learn what we can from the ‚surface’ of the song cycle – from the voices singing, talking, whispering, coughing, laughing, reprimanding children.

The 360 degree camera movements in opposing directions on each screen are filmed from the centre of the crater. A stereo track of wind, crows and bowed cymbal was added in 2009. (Arthur Cantrill & Corinne Cantrill)

In A Nod and a Wink, John Pilger demonstrates how the charge of conspiracy is being used as a means of political suppression in Britain, comparing this with statutes in police states such as Brazil and the Soviet Union, which use “a vague law” to silence and imprison people for their political or religious views.

This short documentary produced by Australia’s national science agency CSIRO in 1979 traces the introduction of the European rabbit to Australia and subsequent attempts to control its population.

“Tourists, postcards, different views of the same icon. The Bridge is a piece of geometry so I figured the film had to be geometric, too. The matte box allowed me to create postcards within postcards within postcards. It was all done in-camera…very demanding, it took all winter! The matting had to be carefully calculated and each image rewound by hand, then rephotographed, in the right position and at the right exposure. I surrounded the Bridge with a mass of water…vertically and horizontally. The water is by turns soft and then metallic as it reflects in the low winter sun. The movement, the steel and the water create an interplay as harbour sounds, wind chimes, boats…tinkle.” (Paul Winkler)

Documentary from 1975 on the plight of mentally handicapped children held in appalling circumstances in the UK.

Michael Lee uses various techniques with a Bolex 16mm camera to observe a vase of flowers. The film is silent.

Australian Short Film directed by Sonia Hofmann

In 1976, Ian Dunlop was invited by Dundiwuy Wanambi, a leader of the Marrakulu clan, to Gurka’wuy on Trial Bay in the Gulf of Carpentaria. He wanted Film Australia to record the first major Marrakulu ceremony to be held at Gurka’wuy since its recent establishment as a clan settlement. While they were there, a baby boy died. The Madarrpa men, including the child’s father and Dundiwuy, asked for the funeral to be filmed.Mortuary rites of the Yolngu are extremely complex. Despite some practical modifications to traditional ceremonies as a result of life on mission stations, ritual remains extremely strong.

"Shell" is the story of a young man whose life has been one disaster to another.

Letters from a young girl to her father.

Footage of this film was found in his belongings of director Mark Zenner after his death. A classic slice of Australian punk, both literally and figuratively, as razor sharp editing and collage techniques enliven the documentary on several punk bands.

One of the main “mysteries” of working with the lab involves grading the print: adjusting or “correcting” the color balance for overexposures, underexposures, or unwanted color shifts in the original. Grading is done by adding or removing degrees of red, green, or blue light on the copier: the standard setting for an average exposure in our lab is 30 Red, 30 Green, and 30 Blue. Filmmakers often leave this work to the lab technician, and they only have a general understanding of the process. In our case, we wanted to use this film to learn more about it. We filmed a scene, under the light, of our son Ivor holding a Kodak Colour Patch Card (a male version of the "Kodak Lady" often spliced ​​for quality control purposes on a print). This normally exposed scene is subject to a range of 84 different print light settings out of 132,651 possible combinations. The soundtrack consists of a voice announcing the print light variations used. (Arthur Cantrill & Corinne Cantrill)

The events took place in June/July 1973 and the film was made with the help of the Mowanjum Community

Because of work commitments and the influence of Christian Missions, traditional mourning ceremonies among the Tiwi people of Melville Island were becoming rare at the time of making this film (1974). The full, elaborate ceremony, called the Pukumani ceremony, lasted several days and involved large numbers of people in ritual roles. It was performed here with full awareness that this may be one of the last times such a ceremony would be staged in the traditional way. The ceremony was prepared by the Mangatopi family of Snake Bay after the death of a 35-year old family member killed by his wife. The dead man’s father, Geoffrey Mangatopi, and his family requested this film to be made as a public record of a disappearing tradition. Unique to the Tiwi people of Melville and Bathurst islands, the Pukumani ceremony was not only performed to safe-guard the passage of the dead person into the spirit world, but to re-affirm kinship relationships and traditional Tiwi culture.

Originally filmed as an archival record of a Warlpiri (Walbiri) ceremony in 1967 by Roger Sandall, the film footage was re-worked 10 years later by anthropologist Nicolas Peterson and filmmaker, Kim McKenzie, to make this short version for public viewing. Involving large numbers of both men and women, Ngatjakula is one of the most spectacular ceremonies of central Australia, employing fire, and several days of singing and dance, to resolve conflicts and re-affirm social order among the Warlpiri (Walbiri) people. One of Sandall’s many films about ceremonial life, including several of Warlpiri rituals, the film was part of the program of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies to record traditional aspects of Aboriginal life and culture. McKenzie’s collaboration with Peterson (who had been present at the time of the original filming) to edit this public version, is a meticulous representation of the fire ceremony, much of which took place at night.

On 7 July 1978, the Solomon Islands regained its independence from Britain. This documentary, filmed by cinematographers John Hosking and Academy Award winner Dean Semler, looks at the people of these islands and their views on independence, and records aspects of their way of life, including their songs and dances. It also describes some of the problems facing the new nation and what is being done to combat them.

The life of a man who sells papers for a living, his interests, and his relationships. A copy of the print, a student film from the Carlton New Wave, was preserved by Nigel Buesst at his own expense.

Well-known Australian anthropologist CP Mountford narrates his experiences on a journey through central Australia with a group of Aboriginal people. Mountford's films are an irreplaceable ethnographic record of the life of the Pitjantjatjara people of this area, before extended contact with European culture. It records food gathering and preparation, hunting, fire making and family life as well as scenes near and on the sacred rock formation, Uluru. This film was made from unrestricted footage shot by Mountford in 1940 and 1942 for his two 1946 films, Walkabout and Tjurunga.

The film crew for An Introduction to Motor Cycling had to improvise with their equipment to capture the full experience of riding a motorbike. Here we see a motorcycle fitted out with handmade dual-angle cameras to simultaneously film the rider’s point of view and the bike’s rear view.

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

John Pilger returns to Vietnam in 1974. America had withdrawn its ground forces at the beginning of the previous year, he reports, yet the war had not ended. During this ‘peace’, more than 70,000 soldiers and civilians had been killed.

A feature length episode of the Australian Police series, Homicide.

A study of the desert plain that is not left out of foliage or geological structures, inviting us to compare it with the plain of the sea and the horizon of the previous film. Near Coober Pedy is divided into three parts: "Heat Waves": camera fades combined with the heat flickers of the horizon; "Horizon Play": compositions of the horizon line within the frame; "Fields of Vision": a view from a moving vehicle exploring the tendencies of the flat landscape, revolving around a point on which the eye is fixed. The camera systematically scans the plain, which gets closer and closer, disappearing into the horizon. (Arthur Cantrill & Corinne Cantrill)

Children growing up in poverty is the subject of Smashing Kids, 1975. John Pilger meets the Hopwoods, of Liverpool, where hunger has become a way of life during father Harry’s unemployment as his family of five survive on £1 a day. The wallpaper in their council house is torn and there are no clothes in the couple’s wardrobe and no sheets on their bed. The family have never had a holiday and Harry tells Pilger: “It would be easier to serve time than to put up with this.”

Traditional music of the Trobriand Islands is played on a variety of flutes, from simple curving stems to panpipes. Songs (wosi) are also an important part of Trobriand music, and although everyone may compose and sing, people with special talents are encouraged to develop their skills. A range of songs are filmed and translated here: gardening and sailing songs, kula trading songs, songs of love and enticement, of grief and mourning. The film also reveals glimpses of everyday and ritual life: villages, gardens (and their magic), exchange, harvest dances, children in the rain.

A groundbreaking work dispelling myths about homosexuality and featuring candid testimony from homosexual men and women as well as their parents.

A movie shot in India

An experimental film dedicated to the "blink". Dynamic abstractions (created through the use of prodigious optical printing and directly working the film frame) investigate the nature of human optics. Music by Maurizio Kagel.

Discusses bush walking and camping safety procedures using humorous sketches and common sense sequences.

This program looks at a bilingual education program in the Northern Territory, where children are taught in English and Aboriginal languages. As there are many different Aboriginal languages, subjects are taught in a language appropriate to the subject matter. The aim of the program is to help Aboriginal children to see their language and culture as something worthwhile and so nurture their self-confidence and self-respect.

A study of life on remote Nukumanu Atoll, a Polynesian outlier of Papua New Guinea. Traditional culture has survived, but over-population and extensive emigration of workers to developing areas are bringing rapid change to the small community.

A short documentary looking at the highlights of the second Sunbury Festival in 1973. Includes black and white footage of Mississippi, Billy Thorpe, Johnny O'Keefe and other Australian acts.

This 'lost' Australian sexploitation film is a time capsule of Kings Cross, shot inside the Barrel Theatre on Bayswater Road and depicting androgyny, bisexuality and the vibrant bohemian flamboyance of Sydney's '70s queer scene.

A short film created during the second-wave feminist movement in Australia. It uses experimental and realist sequences to depict the societal and personal dilemmas faced by a young woman in the early 1970s. The film explores themes of women's labor and consciousness.

Short film from Australia directed by Debbie Kingsland

"Deadly Earnest's Spooky Colour Marathon" was a hosted horror and science fiction movie marathon with Hedley Cullen as "Deadly Earnest" screened on ADS Channel 7, Adelaide, South Australia on 1 March 1975.

Genni Batterham was a young healthy 24-year-old student when she contracted multiple sclerosis (M.S.). Within 18 months she became a paraplegic. This film follow Genni through the continual frustrations of the day. PINS AND NEEDLES takes a poignant look at overall reactions, treatment and acceptance of disabled people and offers some enlightened alternatives to the options presently available to the disabled.