In 1971 Wandjuk Marika organised a Djang’kawu ceremony at Yirrkala. It was to be a memorial for his father, Mawalan, who died in 1967. Mawalan had been the highly respected head of the Rirratjingu clan, for whom the Djang’kawu are primary Creator Ancestors. The two Djang’kawu Sisters came from across the sea and travelled through northeast Arnhem Land, shaping the landscape and giving birth to the first children of the Dhuwa moiety. The Djang’kawu...

HOMELAND STORY is an intimate portrait of Donydji, a small Indigenous community in North East Arnhem Land in the far north of Australia. Homelands are situated on the land of the people who live there. They are of central importance to their identity and culture. The film charts the Donydji community's transition from nomadic life to the digital age, from the 1960s to the present day. One family is featured, across three generations, from the traditional...

How does the startling beauty - and humour - of Aboriginal art intertwine with reverberations of the past and our present?

In 1965 and 1967, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies sponsored film trips by the then Commonwealth Film Unit to the Western Desert region of Australia. The object of these trips was to film the daily life of nomadic Aboriginal people living in the Gibson Desert of Central Australia. Although this land is one of the most arid regions of Australia, the people who lived there regarded it as rich in resources. This longform film series is...

Desert People was shot in 1965 in the Gibson Desert of the Australian Western Desert. There was still a handful of family groups perhaps three or four, living a nomadic hunter-food gatherer life, somewhere in the heart of the desert. Desert People tells simply of a day in the life of two families of the Western Desert. Djagamara and his family were filmed where they were found. They were camped by an unusually plentiful supply of water, a pool in...

From the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy to the creation of the Black Panther Party of Australia Sam Watson has been one of the leading voices in the struggle for justice for black Australians. In this posthumous and exclusive record Sam looks back on the street fighting years under the iron grip of the right wing Government of Jo Bjelke-Petersen in Queensland. He and colleagues like Dennis Walker were watched 24/7 by the Queensland Police...

Despite his success as filmmaker and musician, Grant Leigh Saunders feels there is something missing in his life. As a fair-skinned Aboriginal man, with a Norwegian wife and two young “Koori-Wegian” kids, Grant is struggling with his identity. He latches onto an opportunity to quit everything to go fishing with his father. He convinces his father to pass on the family trade in his home country on the beautiful Manning River of Taree in central...

Produced in association with Waringarri Aboriginal Arts at Kununurra in Western Australia, this moving documentary features three women who talk about their paintings as an expression of their relationship to their country. The women share a sense of belonging to their place and express this belonging through dance and song and all of their artistic expressions. On a trip into the bush around Cockatoo Lagoon near Kununurra, they explain the stories...

The film is a galvanising portrayal of large-scale environmental achievements being made by community groups, Aboriginal communities and rangers, conservation landholders, farmers and scientists. Together, they are restoring and healing land around the Porongurup and Stirling Ranges in south-western Australia. In this region some of Australia’s most biologically diverse ecosystems were destroyed when land clearing for broad-acre agriculture was...

A sensitive portrayal of a young office worker who alleges sexual abuse by her employer. She loses her job as a result of her claims. This dramatised situation looks at the ways in which an employee can be victimised in an office environment without those around being aware of the situation. It pursues notions of truth such as legal truth, truth of experience and who possesses truth. It also studies sex and desire, not as an expression of love, but...