Cirrus@Austlit

A short animated film developed from the 1996 novel The Way of the Birds: A Child and a Curlew Travel Across the World.

Parent production company Every Cloud Productions offers the following synopsis of the film:

'The Ways Of The Birds [sic] is the story of a little girl who thinks she is a bird. She never speaks to humans, but dances and twitters and talks with the willy wagtails, ravens, magpies and white-plumed honeyeaters that visit her garden. And then one day she finds a dying Eastern Curlew in the backyard and her spirit is transported to the Siberian plains where these great wading birds breed and hatch. She turns into a curlew herself and eventually goes with them on their journey across the world.

'When finally her spirit returns home, she wakes from her dreams and buries the curlew with the help of her mother and brother. The neighbour's kids who until then have thought her crazy, decide to join in and they work to create a haven which will provide a vital stopover for the migratory birds. Their labours bear fruit: One day an Eastern Curlew lands in the little swamp that they have created on the edge of their suburb, rests and feeds to regain strength for the rest of its journey.

And the little girl finds the words to speak to her mother for the first time.'

Source: Every Cloud Productions (http://www.everycloudproductions.com.au/about-us/fiona-eagger/twenty-20/the-way-of-the-birds/p/31). (Sighted: 18/10/2012)

'Set in a newspaper, MERCURY looks at the lives of journalists and their relationships with the paper and each other.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'Includes biographical information on the people behind the series; a brief history of the Indigenous people of Australia; synopsis of the scripts; discusses the four female characters depicted in the films; issues and themes; extracts from the critics; sample essays.'

'RATBAG HERO takes place around the picturesque towns of the Murray River during the 1930s. Set against the colourful background of loggers and bargees, the mini-series revolves around the Kelsall family and a generation not only coming to grips with their environment but of the ties that bind a family. We experience a young man's coming to terms with his father's expectations and his own destiny.'

Source: Screen Australia.

One of only four films directed by Arch Nicholson before his early death from motor neurone disease, Dark Age follows the attempts by wildlife ranger Steve Harris, his girlfriend Cathy Pope, and trackers Oonadabund and Adjaral to capture a seven-metre salt-water crocodile (already responsible for two deaths) and relocate it to a breeding sanctuary. Their attempts are thwarted by hunter John Besser, determined on revenge after surviving an attack by the crocodile. In the course of the hunt, one of the trackers realises that he has a psychic connection to the crocodile.

According to Gary Couzens's online review for The Digital Fix,

'Dark Age is not a kill-the-monster story but a save-the-monster one. In fact, the real monster is a human - as played by Max Phipps, scary enough and just the right side of overplaying the part. The seven-metre croc may kill people (including a young child in a scene many will find upsetting) but it at least is obeying its nature. We do get moderately gory attack scenes (adroitly directed by Nicholson), a not always convincing but well disguised mechanical giant crocodile and a sex scene, but it's as if Nicholson and Borg are "smugglers" (in the Scorsese filmmaking sense), slipping in eco themes into what could have been a more straightforward exploitation horror movie. In addition, the two principal Aboriginals [sic] in the cast are treated with considerable dignity and sensitivity and, thanks to David Gulpilil's input, the Aboriginal rituals seen here are accurate. Also, the female lead has more to do than be decorative and to help demonstrate the hero's heterosexuality - maybe due to a female scriptwriter? - and the relationship between Steve and Cathy does ring true.'

Made as part of a two-picture deal with RKO Pictures (the other half of which was The Lighthorsemen), Dark Age was never released in Australia, thanks to negotiations with an Australian distributor falling through shortly after completion.

Source: The Digital Fix (http://film.thedigitalfix.com/content/id/75041/dark-age.html). (Sighted: 7/6/2012)

Set during the Depression, the story follows a Queensland family who uproot and move to the goldfields after the father hears of a strike.

Dusty is part Kelpie, but his mother was a dingo. He was reared by dingoes but later bought as a puppy by an ageing bushman, Tom Lincoln, who trains him to be a champion sheep dog. When a spate of sheep killings begins, Dusty is the obvious suspect, and the old man and his dog take to the road and return to the bush.

A ground-breaking television series, Women of the Sun was, according to Moran in his Guide to Australian TV Series, born out of co-writer Sonia Borg's desire for a more balanced televisual representation of Indigenous Australians: 'Angry at the plight of Aborigines, she was concerned that many scriptwriters could conceive of Aboriginal women only as prostitutes.' To counter this tendency, she contemplated a series that showed Australian history from the perspective of Aboriginal women, a project for which she sought the colloboration of sociologist and social worker Hyllus Maris.

Because, as Moran notes, it 'portrayed the history of Aboriginal people since the incursion of the whites, focusing on the relations between blacks and whites over the previous 200 years', Women of the Sun 'was a direct counter to the various official histories in preparation for the Bicentennial celebrations in 1988'.

Women of the Sun is divided into four parts, each of which focuses on a different woman in a different period of history.

'Alinta the Flame' (set in the 1820s) shows the interaction between the two cultures as an Indigenous Australian tribe (the Nyari) nurse back to health two English convicts whom they find washed up on the beach, only to find the new settlers increasingly encroaching on Nyari lands--a process that ends in the annihilation of the entire tribe, barring Alinta and her young daughter.

'Maydina the Shadow' (set in the 1890s) follows Maydina, abducted and abused by a group of seal-hunters, from whom she eventually escapes with her daughter Biri (who is of mixed Indigenous Australian and European heritage). Taken in by Mrs McPhee, head of a church mission, Maydina is separated from her child and sent into service for the church. When she falls in love with an Indigenous Australian man and attempts to leave with him and Biri to return to a traditional lifestyle, Mrs McPhee has them pursued by troopers, who kill Maydina's lover and remove Biri from her care.

'Nerida Anderson' (set in 1939) focuses on the Cumeroongunga Walkout, showing the deterioration in conditions on the reserve through the eyes of Nerida Anderson, raised on the reserve and returning there after a period working in the city as a book-keeper. Her attempts to foster improvement on the reserve are greeted angrily by the reserve manager, who attempts to have Nerida and her family tried for treason; ultimately, Nerida incites a successful walkout.

'Lo-Arna' (set in the 1980s) focuses on 18-year-old Ann Cutler's discovery that she is not of French Polynesian descent as she believed, but actually the biological daughter of her adoptive father and Alice Wilson, an Indigenous Australian woman from a nearby town, prompting her to reconsider her relationship with her adoptive parents and with her own identity.

Moran notes of the series as a whole that 'Although each of the four episodes of Women of the Sun is self-contained, nevertheless, taken together the episodes powerfully suggest what 200 years of white contact has done to Aboriginal society'.

The inspirational boyhood story of Alan Marshall, born in rural Victoria in the early 1900s. As a young child, Marshall contracted poliomyelitis (polio), which left him crippled. He made it his goal to try to overcome his physical disability and live a normal life.

For a detailed, episode-by-episode synopsis, see Film Details.

Set in the South Australian town of Streaky Bay, Blue Fin is the story of a young boy's relationship with his father, owner of the fishing trawler Blue Fin, and the chance the boy has to prove himself.