Discoveries from Australia World Cinema

LGBTIQ+ individuals from across Melbourne engage in intimate conversation and share their lockdown experiences – despite having never met before.

“I was interested in how people behave at street crossings… particularly at ‘Walk’ and ‘Don’t Walk’ signs. With a 200mm lens I shot stills of people at traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. The look was flat and harsh. Again I used the matte-box image shifter, to create motion where there was no motion…to create a tension. I wanted to show the frustration you sometimes feel when the damn light doesn’t change. You stand there…in your mind you’re already moving…but you can’t move.” (Paul Winkler)

The film follows walking feet and progresses to a preoccupation with the dancing shadow of the camera and the filmmaker. Much of the footage was home-processed to obtain the golden colours and solarization effects. In part the film documents the marking out of suburban space. By that I mean, that in suburban property the front and back yards form a private domain. This film tries to illuminate that space.

Contemporary artist Trevor Paglen is known for his political and mind-blowing art pieces on global mass surveillance, data collection, and artificial intelligence. This visually stunning and immersive film follows Paglen as he travels through the desolate Nevada desert while discussing the motivation for his latest and most audacious project: launching a satellite into orbit. Stunning cinematography, trippy computer graphics, and a percussive score imbue this compelling documentary with an ethereal tone that perfectly captures the provocative and breathtaking beauty of Paglen’s work.

Lois, upon moving to the inner city and finding herself in an all-woman house, becomes most intrigued by her new roommate Kate.

In modern day Shanghai, a wealthy housewife’s life of luxury becomes increasingly disrupted by the presence of a young ghost.

During the 1980s, the transcript of a witch trial was found in the archive of a family property in south-west Germany. "Plant (879 pages, 33 days)" unfolds a conversation between mother and daughter that switches between historical facts and personal memories of the site.

​A camera-less portrait of the artist. Super 8 cartridges placed inside a black cotton bag, the film advanced via a hand crank. The tiny gaps in the fabric weave make for dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of tiny pinholes.

In The Shadow It Waits is a psychological horror film performed, shot, and edited live with actors performing from their own homes in different states across Australia. The audience is witnessing a film being made as they watch. 61 Scenes, 58 Camera Setups, and everything LIVE - this is definitely not a zoom call. The film tells the story of four twenty-something co-workers, bored with their day jobs and sick of being locked up in isolation, who play a silly online game and unwittingly prove the truth of an urban legend. However, whilst they may not be able to get out, that doesn't mean that something can't get in.

A visual poem dedicated to the families of the 3,500 homes lost in the 2019/2020 Australian bushfire season. In contrast to the widespread media coverage this natural disaster received, this is a reflective and topical piece, an interesting firsthand account of a tragic event depicted through wonderfully detailed imagery of almost total devastation.

Set sometime in the future, humans and robots are embroiled in war. To keep spirits high in the underground bunker, one robot performs in human drag for the robot army.

A groundbreaking short documentary that shines the torch on Melbourne, a city regularly alive with activity and fervour, that has since been felled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

An RMIT graduate short film by Andrew Onorato

The Aboriginal story has been buried deep beneath the 247-year-old accepted Australian narrative. In OCCUPATION: NATIVE, Aboriginal filmmaker Trisha Morton-Thomas, bites back at Australian history.

A short animation of Charles Lloyd’s dry points. Sound composition by Arthur Cantrill.

Idiot or genius? For many the jury has been out on Tommy Little, but he's here to set the record straight. Would an idiot bungee jump nude on live TV? Or sign up to run and Anarctic marathon with no previous experience or training? We rest our case. Tommy has refined the art of how not to live - see how truly entertaining that can be, with one of the year's most raucous hours of stand-up.

A video collage with images evoking what it may mean to be gay in a Chinese family.

A city of brick, tin and board, rent by internal tectonics and sliding into the sea.

Looby is the story of what happens when an artist chooses to speak out. For Australian painter Keith Looby, it cost him almost everything. Winner of prestigious art prizes and collected by major galleries at home and abroad, Keith's addiction to speaking his mind has left a string of failed business relationships, marriages and friendships. Bludgeoned into coherence by the film-makers, assessed by dealers, curators, critics and fellow artists, Looby is a chance to look at a brilliant artist who had his moment in the sun, and to ask whether he should have another.

The film Harry Hooton is conceived as a huge energy field combining the energy of light and colour, movement, editing and sound — a dense, vibrating, pulsating work, unrelenting in its thrust; a celebration of Hooton’s definition of art as the communication of emotion to matter.

An extraordinarily insightful and intimate exploration of the social and cultural landscape of India's most elite boys' boarding school. In following the boys' daily routines and dramas, the film also affords us a rare glimpse at processes of postcolonial Indian identity formation.

Helen finds a letter from her daughter postmarked nearly two years ago.

The future is communal. Populations are increaing. Cities are densifying. The idea of owning our own property seems like a faraway ideal; nowhere near the 22 year-old reality of Tom and Lou. What does the future of living look like?

Four very different women from Australia, India, Mexico and Turkey prepare for their weddings, each one with different significance.

Coal, Corruption and community resistance of one of Australias most controversial mining projects Whitehavens Maules Creek Coal Mine in the Leard State Forest. The stage has been set for one of the most intriguing David and Goliath battles in this countrys history. Black Hole is the story of the fight to save the Leard State Forest from one of the most controversial coal mining projects in Australia Whitehavens Maules Creek Coal Mine. Set against the backdrop of the mining industrys ever-increasing thirst for fossil fuels, Black Hole is an intense and riveting exposé of the tensions between large corporations, the Australian government and the community. In this revealing world premiere, Director João Dujon Pereira asks us to examine the future of coal, corporate responsibility and the rights governments afford to people vs polluters.

In regional Victoria in 1965, grasping onto the only meaningful relationship in her life – an affair with a woman – housewife Eleanor chains herself to the bar of a pub to protest discriminatory drinking laws. Her liberation risks security and the possibility of being outcaste in the town.

How long should you wait for the life you expected and imagined to turn up? How long is too long and should one wait at all? Angela, Beth, Peter and Adam each have a life: one is living it, one is desperately chasing it, and another has woken up to it while the other is still trying to figure it out. In Autumn is a film about walking out on the fears and self imposed life sentences that prevent us from living full and genuine lives.

After making over 300,000 Australians laugh on his last tour and taking a year off to star in his first feature film, Carl returns at his brilliant best with his brand new show.

A distinctive portrait in VR of street artist Rone, whose stunning large-scale portraits are often seen in forgotten spaces around the city.

In a moment of desperation and despair, Shiloh travels back in time to save her mother's life. What will changing the course of history for her mother do to her own future?

In Central Texas, Barbecue is more than a way to cook meat - it's a way of life, a path to salvation, and a sure-fire way to start an argument at the dinner table. This documentary covers five barbecue establishments.

Just voices in the night or sage advice from the other side?

“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

A homeless and child-like con-man enters an adult world filled with corrupt morals and jaded individuals when he stumbles into a karaoke while looking for a way to feed his hunger.

This fascinating documentary explores the collaboration between Marion Mahony, the first registered woman architect in the world and the longest serving designer in Frank Lloyd Wright’s practice, and husband Walter Burley Griffin. Their struggle with unyielding bureaucracy, the philosophies that underscored their life and work, and their passionate commitment to an architecture that expressed a balance between society and the environment and an affinity between the human spirit and the natural world. The film weaves together their personal and professional lives, drawing on archival and contemporary footage of their work, an extensive collection of photographs, the couple’s own correspondance and writing, and interviews with prominent architects, social historians and the people who knew them.

A father and his daughter spend a day planning a trip with a sailboat. Time passes gently as the father remembers their past days together. As the boat makes its way along the river, the past, the present, and the future become a gentle stream of consciousness. Memories of childhood overlap with the bittersweet autumnal taste of a life that mirrors itself on the shiny and glittering water of a river on a lazy afternoon.

When Sally, a lost soul stuck in the past, meets up with her part time lover Winnie at college, she must decide what's more important, her past with Kristian or present with Winnie.

A genetically-engineered world. All Layla wanted was to fit in and be happy. But her nemesis wouldn't let her.

In this scripted drama, a mad scientist realises his life's work - with deathly consequences. Borrows from classic horror movies of the period.

A self-assured, chain-smoking ballet teacher gives macho instruction to a small group of tender young ballerinas.

Henry's Show and Tell school project about a pet rabbit goes horribly wrong. The film was made entirely by the Lucas family in their backyard.

Millie Jackson, a nerdish introverted virgin, shares an old crumbling mansion with fellow uni student Sara. Sara's friend Britt, desperate to move in, hatches a cruel and cunning plot to push Millie out. Party drugged, Millie is seduced by Sara's boyfriend Nathan, to awake, naked and confused, with no memory of the night before. Deep in denial, Millie is confronted by startling images of her night of passion, filmed and mailed through the internet. Distraught, confused and plagued by conflicting emotions, Millie seeks help from her family psychiatrist Dr Charles Webster. During hypnosis, Dr Webster unwittingly awakes Millie's repressed alter ego, unleashing the wild, sexy Carmilla Hyde.

For almost a century the town of Grafton, NSW, has celebrated the magnificence of its jacaranda trees with an inspired festival.In the 1880s a German immigrant planted imported Jacaranda tree seeds along the avenues of Grafton in northern NSW. In 1935 the tree-lined avenues were of such splendour that the council of the day decided to hold a festival to celebrate the blossoming of the trees and the arrival of spring. This program shows how this festival has become an annual event that includes the crowing of The Jacaranda Queen.

Hercules, when returning to the city of Thebes, finds his home devastated and his family missing. After cursing the gods, they send him on the most impossible of journeys where he must battle mythical creatures and monsters of legends.

Controversial South African political satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys allows writer/director Julian Shaw into his previously off-limits inner world.

Australian wrestling was once a television obsession where the best in the world would clash. Now travel half way around the world with an Aussie wrestling champion to track down the greats of those glory days where generations cheered heroes, and booed villians. Here are the mad, bad and dangerous-to-know grand-daddies of the original reality television, where every move was Ruff, Tuff, and Real!

The 'Little Black Book' is now forgotten. before the mid 60s it meant having some human rights, being able to raise children in safely and interact with towns... Derby, W.A. - The Benning Family has a unique and amazing history as well as outlook. All the brothers had a natural musical talent and they are the first instrumental Aboriginal band, bringing the community together since the early 1950s... This Short Documentary is a narrative driven, oral history and pop interview based 'expos'e' which also explores 'Lateral Violence' - a theory that explains many trends in Aboriginal communities today.

3-colour separation film.

A war photographer in the Vietnam War is confronted when she finds the last shot may not be her own.

A macro look at the minute creatures that live among us. A world that is terrifyingly brutal yet amazingly beautiful. Struggles to the death, ingenuity beyond belief, the grotesque transformed into the wonderful. This award winning title features stunning cinematography from Emmy winning cinematographer Jim Frazier.

Fatty Finn is the six-year-old leader of a gang of kids in Woolloomooloo. They enter Fatty's pet goat Hector in the annual goat derby, but his rival Bruiser Murphy lets the goat loose before the race. After a series of adventures, Fatty finds the runaway goat and persuades a friendly aviator to fly him to the race-track in time for the main event.

Kevin Bloody Wilson - Let Loose Live In Ireland was captured at The Vicar St Theatre in Dublin at the completion of a 60 date tour over nearly 4 months throughout The UK, Wales, Scotland, Canada and Ireland. This performance sees him take his unique brand of Australiana to the world, performing sell-out concerts as part of the DILLIGAF World Tour. It features a catalogue of self-penned bawdy ballads that translate to every English speaking country in the world. In addition to the performance, we see another side of Kev. Also included are bonus film clips from Kev, as well as a special on stage performance from Kev’s support act on the tour - Jenny Talia from Australia. After 20 years at the top, Kev has deservedly achieved Legendary status - there is no stopping this True Aussie Icon, who continues to delight fans from all corners of the Globe!

Director Constantine Costi helms Verdi’s tragic masterpiece against the stunning backdrop of Sydney Harbour, starring Stacey Alleaume as the doomed courtesan Violetta alongside dashing tenor Rame Lahaj as Alfredo. Brian Thomson’s vibrant set design features a showstopping Swarovski crystal chandelier suspended over a vast stage, perfectly evoking a whirlwind world of glamorous Parisian parties. Australian-Mauritian soprano Stacey Alleaume delivers a magnetic performance as Violetta, sharing an intense chemistry with Kosovo-born tenor Rame Lahaj as her passionate lover, Alfredo. Conductor Brian Castles-Onion expertly guides the orchestra through the effervescent drinking song ‘Brindisi’ and the soaring emotional heights of ‘Sempre Libera’, making this a truly unforgettable evening under the stars.

A personal story of one man's tour of duty in Vietnam and his obsessive search to locate forty-two former enemy soldiers killed in action so that their bodies can be returned to their families and their spirits put to rest.

Gay life in 1960 Australia (or camp as it was then known) was underground but growing in confidence. The side and back bars that made up much of the discreet public gay scene at the time had been active since the early 20th century, along with a mix of beats, cafes, theatre foyers and more, but many wanted more. Interest in socialising away from the bars and outside of private homes lead to the development of new gay social groups in the early 1960s, in Sydney these included The Chameleons, The Pollynesians, The Karingals, The Tiffanys, and The Boomerangs.

The uplifting journey of the Western Bulldogs 2015 season, that transcended football and sport.

Evan Geiger is a 33 year old recently divorced father of one, who makes his living working as a theoretical physicist at the Monash Research and Development Laboratory. Evan tries to create black holes for a living, which is ironic, because that is exactly what his life is about to become.

The debut short film by Greg McLean, which won a gold award from the Australian Cinematographers' Society.

The universe aligns when two childhood best friends meet after years away from each other, and their friendship is rekindled. But life isn’t always fair

A "mysterious" figure comes in to help a group of friends auguring