Discoveries from Australia World Cinema

Through a box of photographs, a hauntingly intimate portrait emerges of friendship, grief, and the raw, creative soul of Darlinghurst in the 1980s.

A Ukrainian stock image model vows to own her image, once and for all.

NRL stars Addo-Carr, Bateman, Olam and Kamikamica rose from humble beginnings worldwide to rugby league fame. Now they're using their success to give back to communities and create positive change globally.

Born of a poor family in Paris, Guy Detot transforms himself through passion and luck into an international ballet dancer, dancing with Pina Bausch in The Rite of Spring and the Ballet Rambert. In 1982 Guy moves to Australia for love, and works with the Australian Dance Theatre, before being retired out of ballet and embarking on a journey to use his love of movement to create emotion-driven wood sculptures, based in Penola, South Australia.

A unique burlesque experience...

Two friends discuss their dreams and nightmares as they go about their daily routines in Tekal de Venegas, Mexico.

Three childhood friends gather one last time to bid farewell after one gets a terminal diagnosis only to find themselves with nothing in common, sitting in a hospital room bickering over their actions 30 years prior.

Sammy goes to stay with her grandma and tries to figure out how to grow up.

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)

A short film that centers around two characters named Jack as they battle for a pie.

A video clip of some lights flickering in and out of sync

A street performer who never says a word begins to change lives with his very special act in this tale exploring what it means to be human.

People with disabilities are amongst the most discriminated in Bolivia. Fed up with being ignored they embark on an unimaginable journey, marching 380km over the Andean mountains in their wheelchairs to speak with president Evo Morales. Yet they’re met with riot police, barricades, teargas and water cannons.

A gradual removal of filmic elements to create focus on the individual.

In his campaign video, Jack showcases his passion, dedication, and vision for a better school community. With fresh ideas, a commitment to inclusivity, and a genuine desire to make every student’s voice heard, Jack is ready to lead with integrity and enthusiasm. Vote Jack Davidson!

This series explores how Australia has shaped the Australian house - and in turn, how the Australian house has shaped the lives and cultures of Australians. Throughout the series, John Doyle will chart the journey of the Australian house so far, through observations and conversations with a range of experts, enthusiasts and home owners around the country.

Rob Hunter's notorious live talk show featuring sketches, interviews and various things that are arguably some sort of comedy. Filmed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2022.

The scars etched upon the souls of those fighting for freedom of speech and belief transcend the boundaries of race and nationality. In different corners of the world, individuals are often confronted with agonizing choices. It’s akin to the dilemma faced by a soldier forced to decide between harming an innocent girl or sacrificing themselves in a distant northern land. Or, in the case of a young lesbian girl, the heart-wrenching decision of whether to intervene when her lover is arrested by oppressive regime security forces in a Middle Eastern country or save herself.

"Between Mountains and Oceans" follows Chencho, a Bhutanese immigrant in Australia, as he navigates isolation and cultural displacement with the help of his friends Duba and Ugyel.

"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.

Breanna is pursuing a career as a professional artist, which is a challenging path for anyone. She has recently started identifying as a neurodivergent individual. Her parents are her strongest supporters and advocates, wanting to protect her. However, sometimes we need to navigate the world on our own to truly find our way.

As human-induced global climate change threatens the viability of nearly every ecosystem on earth, small refuges, the microrefugia, may provide safe havens for the organisms that can successfully survive there. Small plants, fungi and species yet to evolve may yet be long-term survivors, if only we give them a chance...

A young girl witnesses a small glimpse of what the secret life of her father looks like as an immigrant parent.

In the dusty trails of the Wild West, two bumbling outlaws, Randall and Jonathan, stumble upon a stroke of luck – the lifeless body of the notorious outlaw, Two-teeth Tony. With visions of fortune dancing in their eyes, they hatch a plan to claim the hefty bounty on Tony's head. However, as the allure of wealth takes hold, the lines of loyalty begin to blur, and one of them succumbs to the temptation of greed. Amidst the comical misadventures and campfire revelries, "Dead Meat" unfolds a tale of betrayal, where the pursuit of riches leads down a treacherous path. It ain't fair in the Wild West...

With her partner behind the wheel, 21-year-old Dana decides to take control for the sake of her three-year-old daughter.

A mother-son relationship takes a strange turn when his addiction is discovered.

The film follows the boy who is escaping within himself. He is caught up in fantasies in the woodland that reflect the trials he faces in the real world. As these occur, there are glimpses of his parallel life in the real world, experiences of the boy who chose not to follow the divergent path, but to return home to an uncomfortable situation. It is a coming of age fairy story that has some gripping episodes, where an audience will feel pity and fear for the survival of the twin protagonists and ultimately delight as all is resolved.

A series of fleeting occurrences

A 1920's silent spy film about a spy on an espionage to save a hostage from a mafia boss.

Two strangers connect over shared feelings of aimlessness, loneliness and the desire for genuine friendship.

Threshold is a deeply personal exploration of what it means to have a little machine as part of your body, a portrayal of the Deaf experience rarely seen. The acceptance of a cochlear implant is not an automatic, seamless entry to a world of sound but rather a chaotic understanding of what it is like to hear.

A Teen is suffering with suicidal Thoughts, he tries to battle them but might not be strong enough.

An environmental documentary about a Chinese Australian queer woman Jing who finds a sense of belonging in the Australian landscape through organised litter-picking. Jing also finds a sense of belonging with other multicultural queer women in Victoria.

A short film about stillness, movement and the cinema.

A life veiled, by a very old tree. Rock solid. One shot. From darkness to light, the aperture opens. Only one thing can be said: vale Karen Carpenter.

A woman goes out, boards a tram, and looks at things.

An incredible, electrifying experience culminating the year to find the true meaning of MAD.

A documentary about Graeme Campbel MP, an Australian federal member of Parliament.

This short film explores what it means to be a queer femme person in modern Australia. What are some of the unique challenges femme people face? What are some of the beautiful parts? Femme offers a look into life as a femme person through the perspectives of 12 unique people.

Song of the Outback combines music with travel as one of Australia's most successful musicians, John Williamson, journeys through the arid zone of the Australian outback.

Steve the drag queen struggles with being a single dad.

Facing the lowest of low points during his battle against addiction, an anonymous, whimsical mouse character finds solace in wreaking havoc on a steamboat of low class workers.

A girl finds a mysterious object

I Found Water is an autobiographical experimental film that employs textured images drowned in darkness, to examine deteriorating memories and the mysterious logic of their preservation.

Mt Isa neighbours, Rex and Frankie, hit the road to Sydney's Mardi Gras to piece together the missing pieces of their lives before they lose all the colour in their lives and fade away forever. Both are searching for the impossible: Rex for his dead boyfriend and Frankie for her future self. As the landscape changes from vast outback to eucalypt woodland to shiny urban sprawl, their banged-up Corolla gets a flat tyre, the engine melts, and all seems lost when they swerve to avoid a feral pig. Only with the unexpected help of a Bikie and a Grey Nomad, do Rex and Frankie transform, find what they've lost, and celebrate with pride.

Celestial Bodies which tie together the sea and the cosmos as vast bodies that sit above and below an ascending yet sinking ship. It is a poetic attempt to embrace glittering spectral bodies; at once our own and all else born of dead stars. Created as haunting silvery vessels of sound, 16mm expanded cinema, strobe, fog, a death shroud, and digital projection.

When the son of a billionaire (Riley Hillman) is required by the government to complete his English Degree in order to gain access to his inheritance, worlds collide when he walks to class and brushes up against the schools resident bully (Dallas Rodgers).

A look inside the deadly conflict between bikies, the Hamzy and Alameddine crime families, and the depths of Sydney's underworld

New York 1978. A great time to be a gangster.

The Burnt Half is a powerful, complex, engaging and gripping, character-led, observational documentary. It’s a film that goes to the heart of a shattered community in the wake of the 2020 bushfires that destroyed two-thirds of this idyllic island, which was the jewel in the crown of South Australia and a global tourism icon.

Made from reimagined/recycled images and sounds from the filmmaker’s archive and other found materials, Undercurrents is a poetic essay documentary about the undercurrents of history playing out in the present. It is also (at its heart) about the power of resistance.

Comedian, architecture enthusiast and design nerd Tim Ross takes us across Australia to meet the families whose lives have been shaped by the exceptional designs of their iconic homes.

Australian Nature in Time Lapse, Sunsets, Sunrises, Flowers, Landscapes and Waterfalls filmed all over the Country. Images with background music.

Morphē is a short film conceived by multidisciplinary artist Lucy McRae in collaboration with Australian skincare brand Aesop. It playfully presages a new juncture for science and beauty, transforming an old Amsterdam church into a meticulously ordered space that references Aesop’s own laboratory. Here, a painstaking Scientist employs an assortment of gels, liquids, and weird contraptions to minister arcane beauty treatments to a sleeping Muse. The skin and hair play key roles for the female specimen fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a new kind of super-sensory beauty treatment. McRae describes her film inspired chiefly by nineteenth-century scientist and philosopher Hermann von Helmholtz, and his revolutionary research on human perception: ‘Everything’, wrote Helmholtz, ‘is an event on the skin’. ‘I wanted to suggest a journey inside a world beyond skin care, one that involves farther realms of perception within the sensory landscape of the human body.'

Explores a one-of-a-kind high school for teen parents in Canberra, who must find their way through a complex system and overcome many challenges to make it to graduation and a new future.

We travel throughout the eastern part of Australia discovering the great Landmarks this Island-Continent offers to the visitor, all reachable by car, ferry or aeroplane, outstanding and unique places on Earth.

Venezuela, Guiana Shield, Tepuis, Canaima, Gondwanaland, magical words in the Nature World, this documentary explores the adventure of travelling to the highest falls in the world, Angel Falls, passing thru dangerous rapids, fantastic falls, otherworldly.

A man is playing with his toddler, but it ends badly.

An independent film director casting for his new movie encounters a young actress who is prepared to turn the audition back on him.

Peter Combe: Little Groover