All titles produced in 1983
32 titles
A
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Allies documentary – 1983
When Gough Whitlam lead the Australian Labor Party to election victory in 1972, it altered Australia’s relationship with the US.
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All the Rivers Run television program – 1983
This program won a swag of awards and has arguably been watched by more people, more often, than any other Australian mini-series of the prolific ’80s.
B
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A Big Country – City Girls television program – 1983
A group of students from an exclusive girls’ school and a group of unemployed girls hike through the bush.
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BMX Bandits feature film – 1983
A young Nicole Kidman stars in a story of BMX bikes and wannabe bandits.
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Buddies feature film – 1983
Buddies is a comedy, dressed up as a frontier romance, and it is relatively unknown and underrated.
C
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Careful He Might Hear You feature film – 1983
In Sydney in the 1930s, two sisters fight for custody of a six-year-old boy.
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Coming Up from Down Under documentary – 1983
Filmmaking is in our blood,’ says actor Bryan Brown. 'We’d [Australia] made 14 films before Hollywood had made one’.
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Cop Shop – Episode 485 television program – 1983
This episode is a good example of the relatively adventurous single-episode stories featured in Cop Shop at this point in its run. These appeared alongside the more usual crime and soap-oriented plotlines.
D
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Dick Smith Explorer documentary – 1983
Dick Smith records his own solo around-the-world flight in a helicopter in 1982; his unfailing enthusiasm helps sustain interest.
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The Dismissal television program – 1983
On 11 November 1975, the Labor Prime Minister was dismissed. Great Australian drama based on actual events, produced less than a decade after they took place.
F
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First Contact documentary – 1983
It was a gift to the filmmakers: seven rusty cans of film documenting ‘first contact’ between PNG people and three white brothers.
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For Love or Money documentary – 1983
Using almost totally historical material, For Love or Money encompasses the role of Australian women in both paid and unpaid work, over a 200 year period.
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Four Corners – Aiding or Abetting television program – 1983
How is Australian’s aid to the Philippine Government being spent? This program was broadcast just before the overthrow of Marcos and his extravagant wife.
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Frame Up. Who Bombed the Hilton, Who Didn’t? documentary – 1983
Produced in 1982, an example of the power of the media in the controversial trial of three Ananda Marga members – the men were acquitted two years later.
G
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A Girl’s Own Story short film – 1983
In this short film by Jane Campion about changes afoot in 1960s society, teenage girls get in trouble for acting out Beatles concerts in the playground.
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Going Down feature film – 1983
Four women friends leave behind the feral days of youth after a night of uncontrolled excess in inner-city Sydney during the early 1980s.
J
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Jailanguru Pakarnu (Out from Jail) music – 1983
'Jailanguru Pakarnu’ ('Out from Jail’) was the first rock song recorded and released in an Aboriginal language (Luritja).
L
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Lousy Little Sixpence documentary – 1983
Lousy Little Sixpence highlights the injustice of withheld wages, and the fight for rightful payment to be made to Indigenous peoples.
M
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Man of Flowers feature film – 1983
An elderly aesthete who regularly hires a young woman to strip for him finds his life becoming entwined with hers.
N
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Ned Wethered short film – 1983
Lee Whitmore’s first animated film is a memoir of a frequent visitor to her home when she was growing up in the 1950s.
P
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Passionless Moments short film – 1983
Jane Campion’s student short film delivers funny, fragmentary tales with an unsentimental whimsy.
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Peach’s Gold – Eureka television program – 1983
This series exploits a range of first-hand sources for its vibrant retelling of the history, while Bill Peach appears from time to time to explain and analyse.
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Peach’s Gold – Finders Keepers television program – 1983
This series is a lively way to learn about history, skilfully blending actors, re-creations, paintings, songs and newspaper headlines to bring the era alive.
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Peach’s Gold – Land of Gold television program – 1983
This Bill Peach documentary is full of events, larger-than-life characters and all the madness and colour of this most extraordinary chapter in Australia’s history.
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Phar Lap feature film – 1983
The film is well constructed, both as a folkloric tale of a young man’s bond with a special horse and as an exciting spectacle with a couple of magically charged moments.
R
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The Rocks: Sydney, Australia documentary – 1983
The Rocks was considered a slum until it was restored in the 1970s. This sponsored documentary traces its redevelopment as a tourist precinct.
S
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Scales of Justice television program – 1983
The quasi-documentary style of this series adds a gritty reality to the typical car patrol of a police crew on any evening shift around Sydney streets.
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Serious Undertakings documentary – 1983
Serious Undertakings breaks new ground in understanding the construction of meaning and exemplifies the impact of 1970s screen theory on making independent films.
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Some of Many: Germans in Australia documentary – 1983
An Australian-based German filmmaker traces the changing fortunes of German immigrants to Australia from the first fleet to the late 1980s.
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Strikebound feature film – 1983
A docudrama based on the memories of Wattie and Agnes Doig, a miner and his wife involved in the Gippsland coal workers’ strike of 1937.
V
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A Voice for the Wilderness documentary – 1983
Jobs versus rainforest preservation – this 1983 documentary was part of a successful popular campaign to save the rainforest inland from Port Macquarie.
Y
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Yanks Down Under documentary – 1983
This documentary profiles Americans in the entertainment business, including a 16-year-old Marcia Hines brought to Australia by the musical Hair.