Australian Aboriginal - We of the Never Never
The four dimensions of aboriginal life. Kanyini - The word Kanyini means responsibility and unconditional love for all of creation and it envelops the four principles of aboriginal life:
Tjukurrpa – Creation Period (or what non-aboriginals call ‘dreamtime’)
Kurunpa – Spirit, Soul, Psyche
Walytja – Family, Kinship
Ngura – Land, Home, Place or Mother
Tjukurrpa – Creation Period (or what non-aboriginals call ‘dreamtime’)
Kurunpa – Spirit, Soul, Psyche
Walytja – Family, Kinship
Ngura – Land, Home, Place or Mother
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- DirectorWarwick ThorntonStarsRowan McNamaraMarissa GibsonMitjili Napanangka GibsonA 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.
- DirectorMelanie HoganStarsBob RandallAustralian Aborigine Bob Randall presents his spiritual philosophy.
- DirectorIgor AuzinsStarsAngela Punch McGregorArthur DignamMartin VaughanJeannie 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.
- DirectorPhillip NoyceStarsEverlyn SampiTianna SansburyKenneth BranaghIn 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.
- DirectorIvan SenStarsDannielle HallDamian PittJenna Lee ConnorsLena 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.
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsBruce SpenceWandjuk MarikaRoy MarikaA geologist employed by an Australian mining company finds himself disputing the rights of some aborigines who believe their land to be sacred.
- DirectorBeck ColeStarsShai PittmanMarcia LangtonQuinaiha Scott'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.
- DirectorBrendan FletcherStarsDean Daley-JonesLucas YeedaGreg TaitTJ's quest to find the son he's never known, takes him on a journey across the remote and stunning Kimberley landscape. On the road, TJ questions his life of violence... he meets a host of amazing characters who open up a way of life infused with music and hunting and community
- DirectorNicolas RoegStarsJenny AgutterDavid GulpililLuc RoegTwo 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.
- DirectorRolf de HeerPeter DjigirrStarsCrusoe KurddalJamie GulpililRichard BirrinbirrinIn 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.
- StarsAaron PedersenErnie DingoUrsula YovichFirst Australians chronicles the birth of contemporary Australia as never told before, from the perspective of its first people. First Australians explores what unfolds when the oldest living culture in the world is overrun by the world's greatest empire. Over seven episodes, First Australians depicts the true stories of individuals - both black and white - caught in an epic drama of friendship, revenge, loss and victory in Australia's most transformative period of history. The story begins in 1788 in Sydney, with the friendship between an Englishmen (Governor Phillip) and a warrior (Bennelong) and ends in 1992 with Koiki Mabo's legal challenge to the foundation of Australia. First Australians chronicles the collision of two worlds and the genesis of a new nation.
- DirectorTony KrawitzDocumentary about the events on Palm Island that follow the death of local indigenous man Cameron Doomadgee on November 19, 2004.
- DirectorIvan SenStarsDaniel ConnorsChristopher EdwardsMichael ConnorsIn 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.
- DirectorMitch TorresStarsErnie DingoDarcy AndersonDavid BeurteauxIn 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.
- DirectorAmiel Courtin-WilsonStarsJack CharlesAn 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.
- DirectorTracey MoffattStarsGayle MaboCheryl PittJanelle CourtNice 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.
- DirectorTracey MoffattStarsMarcia LangtonAgnes HardwickJimmy LittleA middle aged Aboriginal woman nurses her dying old white mother till the mother dies.
- DirectorDarlene JohnsonStarsCarrie ProsserTessa LeahyJie Pitman
- DirectorDon FeatherstoneStarsMichelle TorresBob MazaKevin SmithRole 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.
- DirectorRachel PerkinsStarsJimi BaniDeborah MailmanEwen LeslieMabo 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.
- DirectorSarah SpillaneStarsHunter Page-LochardChristina RicciAaron L. McGrathAn Aboriginal boy is torn between his unexpected love of acting and the disintegration of his family.
- DirectorRolf de HeerStarsDavid GulpililGary SweetDamon GameauFanatic 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.
- DirectorBruce BeresfordStarsKristina NehmJustine SaundersBob MazaStory of an aboriginal family who tries to move out of the fringe into the main white community.
- DirectorStephen JohnsonStarsJohn Sebastian PilakuiNathan DanielsSean MununggurrAn 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.
- DirectorPeter WeirStarsRichard ChamberlainOlivia HamnettDavid GulpililA Sydney lawyer defends five Aboriginal Persons in a ritualized taboo murder and in the process learns disturbing things about himself and premonitions.
- DirectorSinem SabanDamien CurtisStarsJonny BurrmulaJudy DjanunbeDjiniyini GondarraA documentary on the Australian Aboriginal struggle for their land, culture and freedom - a story that has been silenced by the Government and mainstream media. Featuring the stories of the remote Yolngu of Northeast Arnhem Land, one of the last strongholds of traditional Aboriginal culture in Australia, as well as the voices of national indigenous leaders, historians and human rights activists, the film explores the ongoing clash of cultures that is threatening to wipe out the oldest living culture in the world.
- DirectorHenri SafranIan GoddardStarsGreg RowePeter CumminsDavid GulpililMike is a lonely Australian boy living in a coastal wilderness with his reclusive father. In search of friendship he encounters an Aboriginal native loner and the two form a bond in the care of orphaned pelicans.
- DirectorGerald BostockAlec MorganStarsGeraldine BriggsFlo CaldwellChicka DixonTells of Aborigines' removal from their families to be sent to work as servants for white people and the rise of the first Aboriginal organisations in the 1930's, in particular the Aborigines Progressive Association.
- DirectorRolf de HeerStarsDavid GulpililPeter DjigirrLuke FordDispleased with the intervention of whitefella laws, Charlie takes off to live the old way and sets off a chain reaction of enlightening difficulties.
- DirectorNicole MaA documentary about an Aboriginal man living in Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia that maps out his ancestors' spiritual connection to the land and his family's continuing custodianship of it.
- DirectorCatriona McKenzieStarsDavid GulpililCameron WallabyJoseph PedleyTen-year-old Pete lives with his grandfather in an old abandoned outdoor cinema in the desert. When the old drive-in is threatened with demolition by developers, Pete and a friend set off on an epic journey in the hopes of saving his home.
- DirectorJohn CurranStarsMia WasikowskaAdam DriverLily PearlA young woman goes on a 1,700-mile trek across the deserts of West Australia with four camels and her faithful dog.
- StarsAaron PedersenErnie DingoUrsula YovichFirst Australians chronicles the birth of contemporary Australia as never told before, from the perspective of its first people. First Australians explores what unfolds when the oldest living culture in the world is overrun by the world's greatest empire. Over seven episodes, First Australians depicts the true stories of individuals - both black and white - caught in an epic drama of friendship, revenge, loss and victory in Australia's most transformative period of history. The story begins in 1788 in Sydney, with the friendship between an Englishmen (Governor Phillip) and a warrior (Bennelong) and ends in 1992 with Koiki Mabo's legal challenge to the foundation of Australia. First Australians chronicles the collision of two worlds and the genesis of a new nation.
- DirectorGerald BostockAlec MorganStarsGeraldine BriggsFlo CaldwellChicka DixonTells of Aborigines' removal from their families to be sent to work as servants for white people and the rise of the first Aboriginal organisations in the 1930's, in particular the Aborigines Progressive Association.
- DirectorSteven McGregorStarsLarissa BehrendtCheyenne CruseValerie LinowA confronting insight into the history and legacy of the domestic servitude enforced upon Aboriginal girls in Australia, told through the stories of five women and shot with admirable craft and humanity by documentarian Steven McGregor.
- DirectorPaul Damien WilliamsStarsGeoffrey Gurrumul YunupinguMark GroseMichael HohnenGURRUMUL is a portrait of an artist on the brink of global reverence, and the struggles he and those closest to him faced in balancing that which mattered most to him and keeping the show on the road.
- DirectorDaniel GordonStarsAdam GoodesStan GrantNova Peris"The Australian Dream" is a theatrical feature documentary that uses the remarkable and inspirational story of AFL legend Adam Goodes as the prism through which to tell a deeper, more powerful story about race, identity, and belonging.
- DirectorLaurence BillietStephen PageStarsCathy FreemanCathy Freeman's win at Sydney 2000 is one of the greatest collective experiences in Australian modern history. Twenty years later, FREEMAN explores the beauty of this singular moment and celebrates the power of human connection.
- DirectorMaya NewellStarsCarol TurnerDujuan TurnerMegan TurnerAn intimate and compassionate observational documentary from the perspective of a 10-year-old Aboriginal boy in Alice Springs, Australia, struggling to balance his traditional Arrernte/Garrwa upbringing with a state education.
- DirectorMolly ReynoldsStarsDavid GulpililSara BaileyMary DhapalanyEarly in 2017, Gulpilil was diagnosed with lung cancer. His doctors estimated six months for him but David, being David, was always likely to defy the odds. And he continues to do so with probably his last great work, My Name is Gulpilil.
- DirectorMartin ThomasStarsMartin ThomasJacob NayinggulJacob Nayinggul is a charismatic elder from Gunbalanya, an isolated settlement in Arnhem Land, northern Australia. Aboriginal people in this area believe that the landscape is inhabited by the spirits of their ancestors whose bones can be seen in crevices and caves. Nayinggul is aware that many of the old burial sites have been disturbed by scientists who collected human remains for museums. This presents the terrifying possibility that ancestral spirits were wrenched from their traditional country. Drawing on original footage from National Geographic, this carefully crafted documentary explores the impact of one notorious bone theft by a member of the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. Hundreds of bones were stolen and deposited in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. When the location of the bones became known to Arnhem Landers in the late 1990s, elders called for their return. This resulted in a tense standoff with the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian-and eventually in the repatriation of the bones. Made over eight years, Etched in Bone gives extraordinary insight into the deep and enduring conflict between scientific and traditional forms of knowledge. In moving footage, we see how the repatriated bones are removed from their museum boxes, coated in red ochre and wrapped in paperbark. In this way, Jacob Nayinggul draws on ancient knowledge to create a new form of ceremony that welcomes home the ancestor spirits and puts them to sleep in the land where they were born.
- DirectorStephen JohnsonStarsGuruwuk MununggurrWakarra GondarraMark GarrawurraIn a bid to save the last of his family, Gutjuk, a young Aboriginal man, teams up with ex-soldier Travis to track down Baywara, the most dangerous warrior in the Territory, his uncle.
- DirectorMartin ButlerBentley DeanStarsGrant JudsonThelma JudsonYuwali NixonIn 1964, Yuwali was 17 when her first contact with white men was filmed. Her group of twenty women and children were the last aboriginal mob living traditionally, without any knowledge of modern Australia, in the Great Sandy Desert. Now 62 she tells the story behind this extraordinary footage.