Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Titles tagged with ‘alcoholism’

23 titles - sorted alphabetically or by year

0-9

27A feature film – 1974

Robert McDarra won the 1974 AFI Award for his portrait of an alcoholic imprisoned in a Queensland psychiatric hospital. He died in 1975.

B

Boxing Day feature film – 2007

The unconventional production method helped give Boxing Day an unusually intense sense of foreboding, danger and unpredictability.

Brother short film – 1999

The biography of a brother, his cigarette butts, asthma and head lice.

C

Careful He Might Hear You feature film – 1983

In Sydney in the 1930s, two sisters fight for custody of a six-year-old boy.

Chequerboard Revisited – Episode 5: You Can’t Have A Child That’s Ugly television program – 2000

In 1969, Chequerboard made a program about child performers. Thirty-one years later, Max and Grant agreed to be filmed for Chequerboard Revisited.

Choir of Hard Knocks – Episode 3 television program – 2007

A group of homeless and otherwise struggling people join the Choir of Hard Knocks and allow their experience to be recorded.

A Cold Summer feature film – 2003

Three damaged individuals struggle to deal with pain and grief in different ways as their lives become entangled.

Correlli – Rat Tamer television program – 1995

Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness star in a drama about a psychologist and her relationships with the staff and inmates of an all-male prison.

E

Erskineville Kings feature film – 1999

This was Hugh Jackman’s first film role, before he had established himself as a star of musical theatre, and he gives a fine performance in a difficult role.

F

Father short film – 2008

A short animated film about a boy trying to understand his father.

The Flying Vet documentary – 1984

The bonus for the viewer is that the vet, and his wife, provide a real sense of what it’s like to live in remote Australia.

G

Goodbye Paradise feature film – 1981

This evocative picture of the Gold Coast as paradise lost includes a gaudy, sleazy fun park, tawdry politics and busloads of old ladies singing.

H

Harp in the South television program – 1986

The ‘harp in the south’ refers to Irish immigrants in Australia. A mini-series, based on Ruth Park’s book, follows the Darcys in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Hellfire Jack: The John Curtin Story documentary – 1985

A portrait of John Curtin, Prime Minister of Australia from 1941 to 1945.

I

I’ll Be Home For Christmas documentary – 1984

The film follows the lives of a group of men who have bonded through their addiction to alcohol.

M

Mary and Max feature film – 2009

Across two continents and 20 years, the tragic comedy of life is described through the friendship of penpals, Mary and Max.

O

The Old Man and the Inland Sea documentary – 2005

Warwick Thornton’s documentary about a 'noodler’ on the mining fields of Coober Pedy and the sense of community he shared with Indigenous people whilst doing this work.

P

Poor Man’s Orange television program – 1987

Harp in the South was so admired by Network Ten’s then head of drama, Valerie Hardy, that she immediately commissioned this second series.

S

The Sound of One Hand Clapping feature film – 1997

Sonja Buloh returns to Hobart 20 years after leaving her violent father, Bojan. Their reunion ignites painful memories of shattered family life.

State of Shock documentary – 1991

Alcoholic Alwyn Peter traces the events in his life – dysfunction experienced by an Indigenous family within a frame of dispossession and loss of cultural practice.

Sunday Too Far Away feature film – 1975

The defining elements of a great 1970s Australian film are all here – empty, confronting landscapes, hard-drinking Aussie blokes, and a sense of 'the great Australian loneliness’.

T

Tom White feature film – 2004

Colin Friels’s performance in the title role is one of the best of his career, and it is a key factor behind the film’s artistic success.

Toomelah feature film – 2011

A hard-hitting film about the impact of poverty, drugs and alcohol on the life of a young boy living in an Aboriginal community.