National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (Firm)

Meet the Kapsalides - a close-knit family of mum and two daughters who are proud of what they’ve achieved as a sole-parent household.. Helen was born in Australia to a Greek father and Lebanese mother. She met her Greek husband when she was 23 and had two children before she discovered from police that he was a bigamist. Although she divorced him, her daughters Julie and Simone say the family has never said a bad word about their father, who has...

Daymbalipu Mununggurr was one of the most respected and influential leaders of the Yirrkala Aboriginal community. This film deals with his concerns during the tumultuous years when the Nabalco bauxite mine first came to the Gove Peninsula. In particular the film shows the quiet but strong way he communicated with the people who came to the area as a result of the mining project.. The film is made up of four discrete sequences shot in 1971 and 1974....

The Djapu clan has always had strong links with Caledon Bay, some 70 kilometres south of Yirrkala. In 1971 they gathered here to plan the building of a major homeland centre.. A purification ceremony is held for a woman who has been injured at Yirrkala. After preliminary singing, the injured woman sits in a depression in the sand. This represents her clan's sacred well. The singing relates to the ancestral spirit beings associated with her country....

Paintings, together with their related songs, dances and ritual events, form an integral part of the religious life of the Yolngu people of Northeast Arnhem Land. Every painting or design is owned by a particular clan. Every painting tells of events in a clan’s Ancestral Past, when the present order of the universe was laid down and each clan was given its land, language and customs. Every painting is, in a way, a map of a particular area of clan...

A religious order in the heart of Melbourne moves from St Francis monastery into a pub during renovations. Father Donald Cave, however, moves to his former home to write a book on the order’s founder, while Brother Bernard, at the age of 100, is too old to stay at the pub and must be cared for elsewhere. Father Ken Boland, in charge of the building works, vents his opposition to the renovations. Brother Gerard Develin parts with his pet budgie for...

In 1984, the Australian Tourist Commission launched an advertising campaign promoting Australia to the world. The commercials not only made the country a number one holiday destination, they also put forward an image of Australia that, to this day, remains fixed in foreign perceptions. Nearly 20 years later, actor Paul Hogan is back for the latest campaign and it’s proving the most successful ever. But does the image of Crocodile Dundee on a beach...

“Woman like she refuses to divulge the name of him who wronged her.”. This 1918 Australian feature is one of the most significant surviving treasures of a silent film heritage which is now largely extinct. Comprising three interconnecting storylines, it finally resolves into a dramatic saga of love, honour, betrayal, seduction and revenge.. The story takes the concept of primitive justice – an eye for an eye – and extends it to ‘a sister...

In 1976, Ian Dunlop was invited by Dundiwuy Wanambi, a leader of the Marrakulu clan, to Gurka’wuy on Trial Bay in the Gulf of Carpentaria. He wanted Film Australia to record the first major Marrakulu ceremony to be held at Gurka’wuy since its recent establishment as a clan settlement. While they were there, a baby boy died. The Madarrpa men, including the child’s father and Dundiwuy, asked for the funeral to be filmed.. Mortuary rites of the...

Images of the outback and indigenous culture have been used to sell Australia for decades, yet few Australians have had significant contact with either. In this episode, two sets of tourists seek an authentic Aboriginal cultural experience: one a busload of 38 Americans on a whirlwind package tour; the other, a small group of mainly Australians heading for a remote desert community where they will take part in five days of traditional song and dance...

Attending a reunion, two Australian ex-servicemen reminisce about their exploits in France during WW1. These include lying in a field hospital where they feigned deafness to extend their recuperation, stealing jars of rum from the Quartermaster and inventing an elaborate ruse to hide them and finally, the night before returning to the front relaxing in a French cafe where romance blossoms between the soldier and waitress as told through the song Mademoiselle...