AustLit

'The 2019 short docs are part of an initiative of the South Australian Film Corporation, ABC Arts iView and Arts South Australia, to showcase artistic talent among Aboriginal families and emerging  filmmakers.' (https://tvtonight.com.au/2018/12/deadly-family-portraits-series-for-iview.html)

'How can you understand one day without understanding the day before? At the beach one summer day, a little girl goes missing. Twenty years on, her sister finds the courage to rearrange the pieces of her broken life...and create a new beginning.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'Sacred Ground is a poignant and moving story of resilience, dispossession and powerlessness. The film was five years in the making for Quenten Agius and his family who fight to save what is left of their heritage and culture'. (Koori Mail 30/01/2008)

From the opening scenes, the discovery of human skeletal remains in the middle of a multi-million dollar housing development, to the thought provoking climax, this is a contemporary story - challenging, enriching and emotional - that takes us into an Aboriginal world that is rarely seen or heard

This multi-layered film is a microcosm of what is happening to Aboriginal peoples all over Australia. In the lucky country, 40,000 years of ancient heritage, culture and traditions are being swept away - it's a national disgrace. (Film Synopsis)

In 1910, Alan Marshall is a thirteen-year-old boy is dealing with the after-effects of polio but still dreams of being a famous horseman like the town's hero, East Driscoll. That summer, however, he learns a lesson that will ultimately shape the rest of his life.

An Australian-Japanese co-production written by Terry Larsen and directed by Andrew Prowse, Ultraman: Towards the Future was an update of Tsuburaya Productions' Ultraman character, who first appeared in a 1966 television series. The series draws from the Japanese genres of tokusatsu ('superheroes') and kaiju ('strange beasts'/monsters).

Two astronauts, part of the first manned expedition to Mars, witness a battle between the enormous humanoid Ultraman and the slug-like Goudis, during the course of which one of the astronauts is killed. When Ultraman is on the verge of victory, Goudis transforms into a virus and travels to Earth. Needing a human host to survive on Earth, Ultraman melds with the surviving astronaut, Jack Shindo. On Earth, Jack joins the Universal Multipurpose Agency (UMA) to fight Goudis and the other monsters that it has created or awoken.

The program has a strong environmental overtone, with many episodes including environmental themes and the temporal limitations of Ultraman's powers being explained by the Earth's polluted atmosphere.

'In the great tradition of Agatha Christie... family and friends gather each spring at Aunt Alice's farm for a weekend of good company, sunshine and apple picking. When Damien arrives uninvited, followed closely by murder, the weekend turns sour... the pickings grim indeed. The stage is set for a riveting finale as the killer tries to remove anyone who poses a threat, and the innocent as well, in one devastating blow.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 17/6/2013)

This 1988 mini-series is based on the novel by D'Arcy Niland, and follows the successful 1957 feature film adaptation, starring Peter Finch (made by Ealing Studios, but filmed in Australia).

The narrative follows Macauley, who tramps through outback Australia looking for work. At first, he's content to leave his daughter Buster with her mother in the city, but when he discovers his wife's infidelity, he takes Buster with him (as the 'shiralee' or 'burden' of the title). As the taciturn Macauley tries to bend Buster to his ways, Buster slowly softens her father's often brutal nature.

Moran notes, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'the series was the hit of 1989. It had excellent ratings of 38 nationally and peaked in Adelaide at 45. On BBC2 it had an audience of fourteen million over two nights.'

Set in Sydney over two distinct eras, Playing Beatie Bow begins in 1985, with teenager Abigail discovering that she can communicate beyond the grave with a person who lived in Sydney in 1873. As their communications continue, Abigail suddenly finds herself transported back in time, where she discovers a great deal more about herself than she would have done had she remained a discontented teen in modern times. Through her adventures, she also contributes to the lives of those around her.

Set in the late 1800s, Robbery Under Arms is the story of bushranger Captain Starlight, told from the perspective of young Dick Marsden. Dick and his brother Jim follow their father's footsteps, on the wrong side of the law. After they succumb to the impetuosity of a tossed coin and participate in the theft and subsequent sale of fifteen hundred head of cattle, the pair team up with the mysterious Starlight (the renegade son of a British noble family), and evolve from petty criminals to outlawed bushrangers, terrorising the countryside, often in partnership with their father Ben and Starlight's Aboriginal offsider Warrigal. Throughout this story, the brothers find themselves at odds with both their mother and sister and with the lives they could have otherwise led.

An adaptation of Robbery Under Arms, released as both a feature film and a mini-series: this is the latter version.

This mini-series is an adaptation of Helen Simpson's novel, previously adapted by Alfred Hitchcock in 1949. The narrative traces the domestic life of former convict Samson Flusky and his alcoholic wife Lady Henrietta, and the tensions that creep into their life and marriage when they meet Charles Adare, newly arrived in New South Wales with his uncle, the new governor.

Moran notes, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, that the mini-series was more overtly Australian in focus and feel than the original film, which 'was a noir mystery/romance that happened to have a period setting':

The mini-series is certainly a mystery/romance but it is also part of the Australian historical or period cycle of feature films and mini-series which have recreated the nation's history. Thus this mini-series immediately belongs to a cycle that includes not only such nostalgic quality films as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Irishman, Gallipoli and others, but most especially such mini-series of the early convict settlement as Against the Wind, Sara Dane and For the Term of His Natural Life.

Moran concludes that the mini-series was not an overall success: 'the mini-series, while containing the film noir nuances, moves the narrative firmly in the direction of being both Australian and historical in its concern with the early convict/emancipation phase of Australian settlement, much like Against the Wind and The Timeless Land. There is much detail of settlement life and this fits rather oddly with the psychological drama. One understands the hesitation of the Nine Network in marketing the series.'

When someone from Eve's terrorist past traces her to Australia, she grabs her teenage daughter Chrissie and runs not only from him but also from the men chasing him.

Ernie is a fourteen year old who lives with his alcoholic father in the harsh and lawless opal fields of inland Australia. When his precious cache of opals is stolen, Ernie determinedly sets out with a friend to find the thief.

A television mini-series based on the best-selling 1955 novel by Catherine Gaskin and produced by the South Australian Film Corporation, Sara Dane is set in the days of early colonial Australia. It portrays the rags-to-riches story of a woman with a driving ambition to achieve independence, power, and wealth, despite having been sent to a New South Wales penal colony for a crime she did not commit.

While Sara is being transported by ship to Australia, officials discover that she is educated. She subsequently becomes a governess for a free couple. She later accepts a marriage proposal from an officer, Andrew Maclay, and together they establish a small property and homestead for their family. When Andrew is killed during the Irish rebellion at Castle Hill, she mourns for a period of time before remarrying, this time to French aristocrat Louis de Bourget. They too have children before de Bourget is killed by a fall from a horse. Vowing to never marry again, despite a close friendship with her Irish overseer Jeremy Hogan (himself a former convict), Sara returns to London with her children. There she meets Richard Barwell, the long-ago sweetheart who gave her the gold necklace that led to her conviction for theft. While they are now free to marry, Sara decides not to stay in England. Instead, she returns to Australia, so as to be among the first to establish farming and grazing land in the newly opened region west of the Blue Mountains.

Ron is an angry young man with few work prospects, having been sacked from his latest factory job. Rebelling against a society that offers him little hope, he lapses into fantasies of driving the highway in a sports car with a beautiful girl, and finally decides to steal the Porsche of his dreams. After he escapes onto the open road, he meets the errant Sally, who wants to retrieve her baby, sent to live with foster parents. Chased by the law and their own demons, both risk all in a last attempt to fulfill their dreams.

A story about two airline pilots flying for a small South Pacific airline. Both are attractive to women, but one has a problem sustaining his erections, while his friend is more successful with the beautiful women who cross their paths.

Adapted from the play of the same title by Kenneth Ross, Breaker Morant is based on the 1901 Boer War court martial of three colonial officers in the Bushveldt Carabineers, who are sacrificed to the dictates of imperial expediency. The interweaving of courtroom drama with the re-creation of the events leading to the court martial (the supposed murder of twelve prisoners and a German missionary) is given a degree of moral complexity, but the balance of sympathies is manipulated to favour the three Australian 'irregular' soldiers. The accused (Lieutenants Harry 'Breaker' Morant, Peter Handcock, and George Witton) are defended by Major Thomas, an inexperienced Australian lawyer who struggles to have his case heard.

When a local housewife is found murdered, suspicion centres on a Polish immigrant, despite the lack of any evidence to connect him to the crime. The men of the town mount a search into the surrounding hills after the fleeing man. The posse includes the local sergeant, desperate to restore his reputation after his negligence led to the deaths of two youths, and misfit Rabbit, who doubts the man's guilt but is urged into the pursuit by his wife.