AustLit

'Peter FitzSimons’s new book on Breaker Morant is full of surprises, writes Bruce Beresford As a teenager in the 1950s, I remember reading a number of books by Ion Idriess, who, along with Frank Clune, was one of the two writers that concentrated on Australian characters and Australian history. Nonfiction books such as The Cattle King, The Drums of Mer and Lasseter’s Last Ride were exciting tales about my own country and made me realise that films could be made — one day — that told Australian stories.' (Introduction)

'Set in the summer of 1959, when the impact of European migration and the rise of women’s liberation is about to change Australia forever, a shy schoolgirl (Lisa) takes a summer job at the prestigious Sydney department store, Goode’s. There she meets the 'ladies in black', who will change her life forever. Beguiled and influenced by Magda, the vivacious manager of the high-fashion floor, and befriended by fellow sales ladies Patty and Fay, Lisa is awakened to a world of possibilities. As Lisa grows from a bookish schoolgirl to a glamorous and positive young woman, she herself becomes a catalyst for a cultural change in everyone’s lives.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'Kathy Lette was famous, or at least notorious, in Australia when she was only 16, following the 1979 publication of Puberty Blues, which she wrote with Gabrielle Carey. The novel was a startling, even frightening, account of the surfie culture around Cronulla in the 1970s.' (Introduction)

'This entertaining collection of pieces from the acclaimed director of Breaker Morant, Driving Miss Daisy and Mao’s Last Dancer features memoirs, brief lives and revealing accounts of the film world.

'Alongside unsung heroes from behind the camera and producers of dubious repute are Madeleine St John and Clive James, Margaret Olley and Jeffrey Smart, as well as a particularly seductive 1963 EH Holden - and Bruce Beresford’s father, whose strange and startling decline in old age is charted in a brilliant, poignant essay.

'Opinionated, wry and engaging, The Best Film I Never Made will provoke and delight in equal measure. It is the ideal gift not only for cinema buffs but for anyone interested in music, art or literature. '  (Publication Summary)

'In the 1980s, director Bruce Beresford and producer Sue Milliken were mid-career in a world that welcomed film makers. They worked together on a number of projects, some of which never made it to the first day of filming, and stayed in touch by fax machine. As well as taking care of professional business, the faxes are chock full of industry gossip and news, ruminations on books they had read or films that they had seen. It’s a fun, fascinating, informative and ultimately charming read.' (Publication summary)

Paradise Road is based on the true stories of hundreds of English, Australian, and American women imprisoned in Sumatra by the Japanese as the latter swept through South-east Asia in 1942.

The narrative begins with Japanese fighter planes sinking the ship on which the women are attempting to flee Singapore. The captured prisoners face extreme cruelty and hardship, and are forced to seek any means for survival. Two of the women, Adrienne Partier and Margaret Drummond, conceive the idea of forming a choir. Both are both trained musicians, and Margaret has memorised many scores. She writes them down in children's notebooks, and dozens of women, in constant danger of extreme punishment or even execution, conspire to practice surreptitiously. When the choir performs its first number, 'Largo' from Dvorak's New World Symphony, the voices transform the dense tropical air with sweet, haunting strains and the guards, who have come to break up the illegal gathering, sit and listen with awe.

The Fringe Dwellers tells the story of the cultural conflict experienced by Trilby, a young Aboriginal woman, and her desire to get out of the fringe camp in which she lives and to enter mainstream society.