AustLit

'According to the great Australian Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, Another Country is what happened when his way of life was interrupted by ours. This documentary film speaks to the havoc caused by superimposing a new culture over an old culture and the consequent clashes about all manner of things, such as time, money, garbage and errant kangaroos.' (Source: Screen Australia website)

Rolf de Heer and David Gulpilil collaborate to create a tragi-comic portrait of Charlie's struggle to understand how he should define himself as an Aboriginal in modern Australia.

In 1907, scientist Dr Plonk discovers that the world will end in 101 years, but no one from his own time will believe him. Together with his put-upon assistant Paulus, he builds a time machine to attempt to gather definitive proof of the end of the world.

A silent, black-and-white film, Dr Plonk is consciously of the Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin school of film-making.

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.

A regular suburban family man comes home 'from work on his birthday to find a deserted house and a videotape waiting to be played... '

Source: Screen Australia.

'A set of mountain ranges in the outback, 1922 ... horseback country, and the Fanatic leads the two other white men, the Follower and the Philosopher, and the Tracker, in the pursuit of the Fugitive. Through massacre and murder the hunt continues, until the clear-cut notions of truth and justice are subverted and the questions become not will the Fugitive be caught, but what is black and what is white and who is leading whom?'

Source: Screen Australia.

'Julia (Heather Rose) has severe cerebral palsy and lives by herself in suburbia. Since she can’t speak, get out of bed, walk or bathe by herself, she’s heavily dependent on her carer, Madelaine (Joey Kennedy). Her most significant freedom is the ability to speak using a portable voice computer that she types on from her wheelchair. Madelaine is too self-absorbed and self-pitying to be an effective carer. She resents the demands Julia places upon her and treats her rudely. Julia chafes at this mistreatment. One day she asks a passer-by, Eddie (John Brumpton), for help. He starts to drop by and they develop a friendship. Madelaine, who’s been having boyfriend troubles, finds Eddie attractive. But so does Julia. The stage is set for a showdown…'

Source: Australian Screen.

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.

When ex-con Eddie takes a job working on his older brother's isolated farm, all seems well--but not for long. Dead birds fall from the sky, pets attack their owners, and seemingly stable people go suddenly insane. What is happening at Raven's Gate?

According to science-fiction review site io9,

'Despite the relative thinness of its premise, Encounter At Raven's Gate is not all that bad a movie. The performances are solid, the characters more richly textured than you might expect and the cinematography has the lonely, big sky feel of art house Australian films like Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave and John Hillcoat's The Proposition. [...] If this seems like an awfully long way to go for an alien invasion/demon possession movie...it is. Like M. Night Shyamalan's similarly structured (and one might even go so far as to say totally rip-off) film Signs, Encounter At Raven's Gate is at its best when it's not pursuing the alien invasion story. The tension between the characters is so organic that when the inevitable magnetic anomalies, smoke machines and disco lights kick in, they rob the film of its distinctive flavor.'

Source: io9 (http://io9.com/5854464/the-australian-alien-invasion-flick-encounter-at-ravens-gate-is-like-signs-but-with-football-hooligans). (Sighted: 15/6/2012)

'Orville is a 10-year-old aircraft buff whose ambitions can't get off the ground because his inner-Sydney peers won't admit him to their model-plane circle. Then he meets old Harry and soon his wildest dreams come true.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 18/6/2014)