October 12, 2024
One Mind. One Heart. One Soul.
The extraordinary story of the Yirrkala Bark petitions that sparked the flame towards recognition of Aboriginal rights. In August 1963, bark petitions – traditional documents prepared and signed by Yolngu people – were sent to the Australian parliament and became the first documentary recognition of Indigenous people in Australian law.
Two sit in Parliament House, one is in the National Museum of Australia. When a fourth bark petition is located in Derby, Western Australia in 2022, the community begin the ceremony of guiding its journey back to Yolngu Country. The repatriation provides the opportunity to track the long political campaign — through petition, song, dance, campaigning — to keep culture strong and to have a voice for country.
Produced by Pursekey Productions
July 1, 2023
Explore in innovation and ingenuity of Australia’s First cultures
Rob Collins goes on a journey through time and Country with our next generation of knowledge holders to investigate our ancestors innovations and inventions. Our series offers the most up to date, evidence based and culturally inclusive research this country has ever seen around First Nations inventions and innovations.
For the first time we’ve gathered Australia’s leading young Indigenous researchers, archaeologists, astronomers & Cultural rangers to join Rob Collins on this extraordinary adventure across Australia’s vast and ancient land, islands and sea. The First Inventors celebrates the ingenuity, resilience and inventiveness of our people. Knowledge that is as relevant today as it has been for millennia.
Produced by Ronde Media and Moogie Down Productions
February 22, 2022
“I’m black and I’m proud of it”
The day Nicky Winmar lifted his shirt and declared “I’m black and I’m proud of it” came at a time of great social upheaval. This iconic moment gave license to thousands of Indigenous sports men and women to be proud, to stand up and not to accept racist sledging in any circumstances.
Over 25 years on, what has changed? Does Nicky Winmar’s simple protest still resonate with new generations of players?
Produced by EQ Media
February 19, 2022
The history you carry on to the field is the culture that makes you strong.
Featuring Australian Rules Football players Michael O’Loughlin, Michael ‘Sonny’ Walters, and Tarryn Thomas, Warriors On The Field celebrates Aboriginal Australia and its long history and association with the AFL.
Produced by the Australian Football League, EQ Media and Amazon Studios, this one-hour documentary is exclusively on Amazon Prime in Australia and in over 240 countries and territories worldwide
50 years of First Nations activism in Australia through the lens of contemporary Australian Aboriginal artist Richard Bell
Richard Bell is one of the most important contemporary artists in Australia and one of the most important First Nations contemporary artists in the world today. Richard’s work challenges preconceived ideas about Aboriginal people and art, taking part in national and international debates surrounding identity and politics. From his first works in Redfern in the 1970s to having his installation work, Tent Embassy, headline Documenta and take over the Turbine Room at the Tate Modern in 2021, You Can Go Now tracks the course of Richard’s remarkable career as an artist and provocateur. It also look at his strong ongoing commitment to the politics of Aboriginal emancipation and self-determination. He is an activist masquerading as an artist.
A supporting cast of artists, academics, musicians and more will flesh out this journey of over 50 years. Richard’s often collaborative art practice is a lens through which to examine First Nations activism in Australia: how much it has achieved and how much is yet to be done.
Winner of Best Documentary, Maoriland 2024.
“… a warming and compelling watch…” Luke Buckmaster
An intimate portrait of a man driven to share his culture with the world. In 2012, a group of Indigenous NRL players including Dean Widders, Preston Campbell, Timana Tahu and George Rose came together to develop a pre-game ceremony that would be a response to New Zealand’s much loved, universally recognised and hugely respected haka. Rather than simply taking an existing dance, the players came up with a series of movements that reflected cultural symbols – the clan, the warrior, the boomerang, the spear. They concluded their new dance with a moment of reflection to show that, in Indigenous culture, the silences are as important as the words. Now they want to take the performance to the world.
December 15, 2019
When the Dust Settles, Culture Remains.
The Maralinga Tjarutja story is of the history of the Maralinga people from their institutionalisation at the Ooldea Mission in the 1920s to their dispossession from the Maralinga Lands by reason of the British Nuclear Test Program between 1953 and 1963 to their struggle to achieve a clean-up of the resulting radioactive and other contamination, to secure compensation, rebuild their traditional communities and achieve the Handback of the Maralinga Village and Test Sites in 2009. This is an inspiring story of a community’s strength, resilience and unbroken connection to country in the face of the most aggressive form of colonisation.
June 3, 2018
Suellyn thought that FACS would only remove children in extreme cases until her grandchildren were taken in the middle of the night. Hazel decided to take on the FACS system after her fourth grandchild was taken into state care. Jen Swan expected to continue to care for her grandchildren but she was deemed unsuitable by FACS, a shock not just to her but to her sister, Deb, who was, at the time, a FACS worker. The rate of Indigenous child removal has increased at an exponential rate since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the apology to the ‘stolen generations’ in 2008. These four grandmothers find each other and start a national movement to place extended families as a key solution to the rising number of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care. They are not only taking on the system – they are changing it.
80 minutes
Supported by Screen Australia, Adelaide Film Festival, CreateNSW, Kojo and the National Film and Sound Archive
Awards:
Australian Directors Guild Award 2018, Best Direction in a Feature Documentary
August 1, 2015
Rosemary Valadon is an award-winning Australian artist, now based in the historic town of Hill End. In the tradition of Grace Cossington Smith and Margaret Preston, she has reinterpreted a distinctly Australian femininity and domestic aesthetic.
Valadon has done several series of works that seek to celebrate femininity and sensuality. Her Muses series, and more recently, Wicked Women, reinterpret myths and stereotypes of women in a way that captures a very contemporary feminism.
This film explores Rosemary Valadon’s life story, her influences and her practice. It traces her the major work – large triptych still-lifes that capture the seasons of Hill End. Against the dramatic change of seasons, this film is a portrait of one of Australia’s under-appreciated women artists and the Hill End community that has been a deep source of strength and creative inspiration for her.
Find out more about Rosemary and her remarkable body of work at her website.
February 15, 2015
Djon Mundine is an expert in Aboriginal art and an eccentric, iconic figure.
As a curator and artist, he has brought together many shows and supported the career of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. In 2012, Mundine put on a show at the Mosman Art Gallery that brought together a raft of artists to look at the curious historic Aboriginal figure – Bungaree. Artists included in the exhibition are Frances Belle Parker, Mervyn Bishop, Daniel Boyd, Karla Dickens, Fiona Foley, Adam Hill, Warwick Keen, Gary Lee, Peter McKenzie, Danie Mellor, Caroline Oakley, r e a, Gordon Syron, Leanne Tobin and Jason Wing.
Like Mundine, Bungaree was a complex figure – highly curious, highly intellectual. He was a pragmatist, a performer and an intrepid traveller – the first known Aboriginal person to circumnavigate Australia. In February 2015, Mundine is opening the next iteration of the show – one where he has brought artists together and pushed them to look at the material through intangible expressions. Against the backdrop of the show we will look at the course of Mundine’s life that saw him become one of the countries leading experts on Indigenous art, his fascination with Bungaree and what he thinks the future holds for the next generation of Indigenous artists.
Larissa wrote and directed this film. It was made with John Harvey of Brown Cab films and funded by NITV.
This film was commissioned by NITV. Screened
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