Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

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A Day at the Beach (1956)

This is an education film for children aged six to eight years, in which a young Australian family, the Mitchells, head to the beach on a Saturday for a day of fun in the sun. The children, Bruce and Anne, ... [read more]

Dogs in Space (1986)

Melbourne, 1978. A large group of young people share a dilapidated house in the inner-city suburb of Richmond. Sam (Michael Hutchence) sings in the rock group Dogs in Space. His girlfriend, Anna (Saskia Post), works in a nursing home and ... [read more]

Water Rats – Dead in the Water (1996)

The Sydney Water Police are called in when there is an explosion on a charter boat full of schoolgirls and soon find themselves searching for more unexploded bombs in the harbour. Then a ferry is hijacked – could the two ... [read more]

Service in the Sun (1957)

In 1956, after Australians have enjoyed the Melbourne Olympics, members of the American and Hawaiian surf lifesaving teams come to Sydney to show the latest surfing techniques, on their new lightweight balsawood boards. Young Australian boys meet the great Hawaiian ... [read more]

Around the World in 80 Ways (1986)

Senile and almost blind, Roly Davis (Allan Penney) is aghast when he discovers wife Mavis Davis (Diana Davidson) has embarked on a round-the-world holiday with his next-door neighbour and business rival Alec Moffatt (Rob Steele). Roly’s sons, Wally (Philip Quast), ... [read more]

A Fortunate Life (1985)

A dramatisation of Albert Barnett Facey’s award-winning, widely read autobiography of the same name, this mini-series covers about three-quarters of the book. It begins with Facey’s arrival as a toddler in Western Australia in 1899, traces the various physical and ... [read more]

27A (1974)

An alcoholic man in the Queensland prison system is transferred to a psychiatric hospital at his own request, for treatment. What he doesn’t realise is that under section 27A of the Queensland Mental Health Act, he can be held indefinitely. ... [read more]

A Girl, a Horse, a Dream (2003)

A Girl, a Horse, a Dream follows the top Australian female jockey Bernadette Cooper for a year as she travels around the country competing at country, provincial and metropolitan racetracks. The film interrogates the belief that horseracing is one of ... [read more]

A Hard God (1980)

A Hard God tells the story of the Cassidys, an Irish-Australian family in Sydney in 1946, struggling to reconcile their faith with the harsh realities of life. Dan (Graham Rouse) and his family suffered most during the Great Depression and ... [read more]

While There is Still Time (1941)

This is a short wartime documentary made by Charles and Elsa Chauvel for the Commonwealth Department of Information (DOI). It encourages Australians at home to work and save to help their loved ones overseas fighting the war. Grace (Dorothy ... [read more]

Bridewealth for a Goddess (1999)

Bridewealth for a Goddess follows the preparation and performance of a sacred ritual by the Kawelka people, who live on their tribal land near Mount Hagen in the Wahgi Valley in Papua New Guinea. Ru Kundil, a ‘Big Man’, is ... [read more]

A Morning at the World’s Greatest Agricultural Show (c1926)

This fragment is from a documentary about the Royal Agricultural Show held at the Sydney Showground in approximately 1926. Horses and cattle are prepared for display prior to the agricultural events. We see children grooming, saddling and riding ponies in ... [read more]

Wake in Fright (1971)

John Grant (Gary Bond) is the bored teacher at a one-room school in Tiboonda, a tiny railway junction on the far western plains of New South Wales. On his way to Sydney for Christmas, he stops overnight in Bundanyabba, a ... [read more]

Living in the 70’s (1974)

This iconic seventies song and debut album by the Melbourne band Skyhooks took Australia by storm. In 1975, soon after the devastating Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin, the band was dubbed ‘Cyclone Skyhooks’. Their album featured the witty lyrics of Greg ... [read more]

Death in Brunswick (1990)

Carl (Sam Neill) takes a job as cook at a seedy nightclub in Brunswick, an inner suburb of Melbourne. He is verging on being an alcoholic loser until he meets Sophie (Zoe Carides), the club’s 19-year-old barmaid. They fall passionately ... [read more]

Fighting in Flanders (1917)

Australian soldiers prepare for a ‘stunt’ with physical exercises and rifle drill. Well-rested troops display their prowess at marching, as artillery units prepare for a major offensive against German positions east of the Belgian city of Ypres. Field Marshal Sir ... [read more]

The Australians’ Final Campaign in 1918 (c1919)

The footage spans from September 1917, after the Third Battle of Ypres, to almost the end of the war a year later. Soldiers dig and revet trenches, laying duckboards to bring the trench floor above the mud. Railway crews build ... [read more]

Dead-end Drive-in (1986)

In the 1990s economic and environmental disasters have reduced society to chaos. To combat looting and marauding ‘car boys’, authorities convert the Star Drive-in into a jail for unemployed young people. Captives are given action movies to watch and junk ... [read more]

ALP Cinema Advertisement: In the Wake of the Storm (1946)

This is an ALP cinema advertisement for the 1946 federal election. It encourages the Australian electorate to stay with the Labor Party, which has successfully led the country through the last four years of the Second World War and ... [read more]

Episodes in Disbelief (2000)

A series of childhood memories and seemingly random thoughts about scientific discoveries are juxtaposed and presented as brief ‘chapters’ by the narrator, who attempts to come to terms with the death of her father and its effects on her family. ... [read more]

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