AustLit

'In early 1997, Anu Singh, a beautiful law student at the Australian National University, began to tell people she planned to kill herself. With doctors unable to help, Anu’s engineer boyfriend, Joe Cinque, attempts to get to the bottom of her condition. But as Anu’s mental and emotional state disintegrates, her plans grow more macabre and more public as she convinces fellow student Madhavi to help her. With Joe beginning to understand the true nature of their relationship, Anu starts talking of killing him as revenge for having made her ill. After an elaborate farewell dinner party attended by friends, Anu attempts to kill Joe but fails. She tries again and this time she succeeds, injecting Joe with a lethal dose of heroin. Nobody tried to stop her. ' (Production summary)

The Balanda and the Bark Canoes is a 52 minute documentary that is concerned not only with the day to day production issues, including the practicalities of working with non-professional actors in crocodile infested Arnhem Land, but also the complex consultations with the Aboriginal cast and community members (many who speak little or no English) and who put forth views on the path Ten Canoes ought to follow. The film similarly explores the cross-cultural issues tackled by directors Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr and their Aboriginal collaborators, while illustrating storytelling methodology on both sides of the cultural divide.

A story within a story and overlaid with narration, Ten Canoes takes place in two periods in the past. The first story, filmed in black-and-white as a reference to the 1930s ethnographic photography of Donald Thompson, concerns a young man called Dayindi who takes part in his first hunt for goose eggs. During the course of several trips to hunt, gather and build a bark canoe, his older brother Minygululu tells him a story about their ancestors and the old laws. The story is also about a young man who had no wife but who coveted one of his brother's wives, and also of the stranger who disrupted the harmony of their lives. It is cautionary tale because Minygululu is aware that Dayinidi desires his young and pretty third wife.

The second story (shot in colour) is set much further back in time. Yeeralparil is a young man who desires the third wife of his older brother Ridjimiraril. When Ridjimiraril's second wife disappears, he suspects a man from another tribe has been seen near the camp. After he spears the stranger he discovers that he was wrong. Knowing that he must face the man's relatives he chooses Yeeralparil to accompany him during the ritual payback. When Ridjimiraril dies from his wounds the tribe's traditions decree that Yeeralparil must inherit his brother's wives. The burden of these responsibilities, however, is more than the young man expects.

'When Tom White goes missing, many lives are affected. A family man with two young kids, the pressures of life and his work as a draughtsman have pushed him to the edge. One day he simply doesn't go home. Without word or reason to his wife or friends he takes to the streets - a homeless man in his own city - befriending in turn, different people on the fringes of society.'

Source: http://www.screensound.gov.au/bigscreen04/locations/yeppoon/yeppoon_films/yeppoon-tom_white.htm (Sighted 16/8/04)

'A seemingly unresolvable love triangle between three people doomed to chase each other through shared accommodation hell in a never-ending, unrequited daisy-chain of desire.'

Source: Screen Australia.

A woman from Epsilon, known only as She, lands accidentally on Earth, where she meets The Man, trekking through the Australian outback. Devastated to find herself on a planet renowned throughout the universe for its filthy environment and the unconcern of its people, She takes The Man on a journey across the planet to try and force him to see what humanity is doing to its planet. As they travel, they also grow closer and closer to one another.

For thirty-five years, Bubby's entire knowledge of the universe has stopped at the walls of an inner-city, two-room slum. He knows only the existence of himself and his mother and spends each day playing with cockroaches and a feral cat all the while believing (as his mother has told him) that Jesus is watching his every move. Then one day his father comes home, starting a sequence of events that leads Bubby to kill his cat, his father, and his mother. Bubby then ventures outside, and suddenly life becomes very complicated.