Australia Day is an excellent time to discover, or revisit, classic Australian films. Here’s a rundown of highlights screening on the big – and small – screen this year.
National Indigenous Television (NITV) offers a rare chance to catch Ningla A-Na (1972), an eye-opening historical record of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. NITV’s 'movie of the month’ also screens on 26 January: Phil Noyce’s feature debut, Backroads (1977).
Noyce will introduce Backroads at an Australia Day screening at The Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York. It’s part of a season, The Last New Wave: Celebrating the Australian Film Revival, including key early works of Noyce, Bruce Beresford, Tim Burstall, Fred Schepisi and others.
The NFSA’s Arc Cinema in Canberra celebrates the top Australian films of 2012, ahead of next week’s AACTA Awards, with free Australia Day screenings of Burning Man, Wish You Were Here, Mental and The Sapphires (pictured).
The Sapphires also screens at ACMI in Melbourne on the Australia Day weekend and is one of three sessions highlighting the work of Indigenous directors at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. Also screening at QAGOMA on 28 January are Tracey Moffatt’s BeDevil (1993) and Rachel Perkins’s One Night the Moon (2001).
The national holiday weekend is also a fine time to explore the government-produced films available to view online on the NFSA’s Film Australia Collection YouTube channel. Series highlights include Life in Australia and Australian Diary.
