Indigenous Cinema

A glue-sniffing boy and his girlfriend escape the government-controlled no-hope Aboriginal community they live in and go to the city, Alice Springs, looking for a better life.

Australian Aborigine Bob Randall presents his spiritual philosophy.

Jeannie Gunn faced being the only civilised woman in an uncivilised land. A story of personal triumph about one woman who reached out in a hard, hostile, prejudiced world and managed to find love.

In 1931, three half-white, half-Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their houses to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a journey across the Outback.

Lena is the daughter of an Aboriginal mother and Irish father and Vaughn is a Murri boy doing time in a minimum security prison in North West NSW. Dramatic events throw them together on a journey with no money and no transport.

A geologist employed by an Australian mining company finds himself disputing the rights of some aborigines who believe their land to be sacred.

'Here I Am' is driven by three generations of Aboriginal women - Karen Lee Burden, her mother Lois and her daughter Rosie. When Karen is released from prison, through a series of chance encounters the women learn that freedom is hard to find when hearts are still broken.

Seeking his long-lost son, TJ travels the remote Kimberley, where encounters with captivating characters and their tradition-rich lifestyle compel him to reconsider his violent choices.

Two city-bred siblings are stranded in the Australian Outback, where they learn to survive with the aid of an Aboriginal boy on his "walkabout": a ritual separation from his tribe.

In Australia's Northern Territory, a man tells us a story of his people and his land. It's about an older man, Minygululu, who has three wives and realizes that his younger brother Dayindi may try to steal away the youngest wife.

From 1788-1992, the oldest Australian culture clashes with British colonization, following individuals in an epic friendship, revenge, and nation-building saga culminating in the Mabo legal challenge.

Documentary about the events on Palm Island that follow the death of local indigenous man Cameron Doomadgee on November 19, 2004.

In a remote Aboriginal community, 10 year old Daniel yearns to be a gangster, like the male role models in his life. Skipping school, getting into fights and running drugs for Linden, who leads the main gang in town.

In Jandamarra's War, we learn how in the 1890's the European colonialists arrive in the Kimberley with vast herds of sheep and cattle, determined to make their fortune by feeding a rapidly growing population in the South. But the settlers soon discover they are in land populated with indigenous tribes, ready to fight the red-faced invaders. Jandamarra is born into this turmoil in 1873. His spirit country, on his father's side, is a land called Djumbud. His mother Jinny, a powerful and independent woman, belongs to the Lennard River flat lands. At the age of six, Jinny takes Jandamarra onto William Lukin's million-acre cattle station at Lennard River Flats. Jandamarra quickly excels in all pastoral skills - much to the pride of Lukin who, like other settlers, boasts about his stockmen's abilities as tribute to his own skills of tutelage and management. Jandamarra remains at Lennard River Flats until it is time for him to be initiated into Bunuba law. His uncle Ellemarra is a very powerful influence during this period of intense education and rapid personal growth. But Jandamarra's passage into manhood is interrupted when they are both arrested and jailed for spearing a sheep. When he is released from custody, Jandamarra is banished from Bunuba society because sexual relationships he has had with various women, have broken strict kinship rules. With nowhere else to go, Jandamarra is assimilated into settler culture and ends up working with Constable Richardson who is, himself, an outsider in his own community. Their relationship is a strange one and oddly close - until that fateful night when Jandamarra kills Richardson, and returns to his people. Now fugitives, Jandamarra, Ellemarra and others attack a party of stockmen who are driving a large herd of cattle into the heart of Bunuba land. Two of the white men, Burke and Gibbs, are killed. This is the first time that guns are used by Aboriginals against European settlers in an organised fashion. Across Western Australia, enraged white colonialists bay for vengeance. A posse of 30 heavily armed police and settlers attack Jandamarra, Ellemarra and their followers at Windjana Gorge. In the ensuing battle, Ellemarra is killed and Jandamarra is seriously wounded, but escapes through a labyrinth of caves. Jandamarra recovers and leads a guerilla war against the settlers from hideouts in the caves and surrounding ranges of Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek. But the rebellion comes at a very high price as police and station owners embark on a military-style operation against Aboriginal camps throughout the region. Many Aboriginal people are killed in the massacres that ensue. Jandamarra responds by modifying his tactics. He doesn't kill any more settlers but embarks on a three year terror campaign - killing stock and stealing provisions from under the settlers' noses at night - deliberately leaving behind footmarks and other traces that tell the settlers that he's been there and could have killed them very easily, if he had wanted to. The police try to pursue Jandamarra after his raids but he always seems to find a way to elude capture.

An intimate documentary of Jack Charles, a.k.a. "Jackie", the legendary Australian aboriginal actor who co-founded Australia's first indigenous theatre company and struggled with his identity later in life.

Nice Coloured Girls is a short film classic by Tracey Moffatt, one of Australia's foremost visual artists. Three Aboriginal women cruise through Kings Cross and pick up a 'captain' (a drunken white man). They encourage him to spend his money on them and to drink until incapacitated while they steal his wallet and race off to catch a cab, self-satisfied. Nice Coloured Girls contrasts the relationship between Aboriginal women and white men in the past and present. The film juxtaposes contemporary images of black women taking advantage of a white man with a voice over of journal extracts from early white settlers and sailors, in order to question the validity of conventional white history and to deny the image of Aborigines as passive and powerless. Through counterpoint of sound, image, and printed text, the film conveys the perspective of Aboriginal women while acknowledging that oppression and enforced silence still shape their consciousness. The soundscape recalls a rural environment, while the voice-over of extracts from the diary of colonist Lieutenant William Bradley recalls the first settlement.

A middle aged Aboriginal woman nurses her dying old white mother till the mother dies.

Role reversal study of the historically inaccurate "plight" of Australian Aborigines in modern Anglo-Saxon society. Indigenous "whities" [sic] are being persecuted by racist black people who invaded the fictitious country of BabaKiueria. Politically incorrect and inconvenient facts about infant mortality rates are ignored by a "reporter" who lives with a typical white family in a white "ghetto" for six months.

Mabo tells the story of one of Australia's national heroes - Eddie Koiki Mabo, the Torres Strait Islander who left school at age 15, yet spearheaded the High Court challenge that overthrew the fiction of terra nullius.

An Aboriginal boy is torn between his unexpected love of acting and the disintegration of his family.

Fanatic is a government trooper who is heading an expedition to find an Aboriginal man accused of murdering a white woman. Others in the expedition are the Follower, a greenhorn trooper, the Veteran, and the Tracker.

Story of an aboriginal family who tries to move out of the fringe into the main white community.

An Indigenous teen and his friends embark on a challenging journey to Darwin from Arnhem Land to meet a tribal leader with the aim of creating a better future after troubles take them away from their dreams.

A Sydney lawyer defends five Aboriginal Persons in a ritualized taboo murder and in the process learns disturbing things about himself and premonitions.