Cirrus@Austlit

'RACHEL Ward has lived many lives: from the depths of the English countryside, to the bright lights of 1980s Hollywood, to the sunny shores of her adopted Australian home. Now this acclaimed director, screenwriter and actress has turned her hand to writing, pushing the boundary between fiction and non-fiction as she examines the privileges and heartbreaks of her life though a web of interconnecting short stories. Alternately tender, funny, nostalgic and surprising, the stories in Dirty Linen pulse with the push and pull of concealment and revelation.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Palm Beach is a drama/comedy about a group of lifelong friends reuniting to celebrate a special birthday, with Sydney’s iconic Palm Beach providing a stunning backdrop for the unfolding drama. The good times roll, with loads of laughter, lavish meals, flowing wine and fantastic music, but slowly tensions mount and deep secrets arise.'

Source: Screen Australia (https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/sa/media-centre/news/2018/02-07-all-star-cast-announced-for-palm-beach). (Sighted: 12/03/2018)

'A grand experiment of free love and modernism that liberated Australia and unleashed one of its greatest talents.'

Source: Screen Australia funding approvals.

'Harry Lambert, a shy and gentle man, shamed by his rural Australian town into joining the armed forces as a baker in the service corps. When the bakers are thrown into the front line, Harry deserts. In countryside swarming with gendarmes, Harry barely avoids capture when Colombe Jacotot takes pity on him. Colombe is a stoic farm-wife, bowed by hard work and tragedy. Within her bare cottage, Harry and Colombe discover a love that is as powerful as it is unexpected.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 31/3/2014)

'Set among the turquoise waters and lethal wildlife of Australia's Far North Queensland and the Torres Strait, The Straits is an exotic, darkly humorous crime drama.

'The Montebellos are not your average Australian family. Modern day smugglers, their family business is transporting drugs into Australia and guns and exotic wildlife out, making use of ties of blood and loyalty in the Torres Strait Islands.

'When Harry, the head of the family, starts to plan his succession, a power struggle is sparked between brother and brother, wife and daughter. Under attack from ambitious bikies and mercurial PNG Raskols, the family must hold together through torture, assassination and imprisonment.'

Source: ABC1 website, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/thestraits/
Sighted: 30/01/2012

The story of one place on earth told by the children who live there from 1878 to before white settlement. The second part of MY PLACE, the series is based on the Nadia Wheatley/ Donna Rawlins book. (Source: Screen Australia website)

'On any single day, Cleaver Greene is described as many things. Whilst his ex-wife may call him 'unreliable", his son will call him "a mate". To his learned friends at the bar table he is "a real wag", to his jurors he is "hilarious", and to most judges he is "an outrage". To the Tax Office, he is "a defendant", to a certain brothel owner "a legend", and to his former cocaine dealer "a tragic loss".

'The clients he loves the most - the cases that thrill him - are those that appear to be utterly hopeless. There's something about being on the wrong side of conventional wisdom that feels right to him, be it at the bar table or the dinner table.

'He will do whatever it takes to defend and save life's truly lost souls. The big sinners. Its drug lords. Its cannibals. Its bestialites. And at the same time, he will struggle to save himself, to stop himself falling back into the abyss that has characterised most of his self-destructive adult life thus far.

'Despite his own hopelessness, his wit and charm have won him hordes of companions over the years. Most nights of the week, there is no shortage of invitations: dinner with a judge at the RMC (His Honour pays), or with some drug dealers in Chinatown (Manos pays), or with some of his copper mates at the Matador (no one pays).

'Any gaps in his diary will inevitably be filled by either all night sessions in chambers preparing for court or similarly lengthy sessions at his favourite brothel, simply referred to by those in the know as "the Club" (here, Cleaver is more than happy to open his own wallet). He tends to wake up bruised. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. Usually it's a combination thereof. He spends a nano-second wondering how his life came to this - living in a studio above a café in the Cross, without his wife and son, in love with a prostitute, defending hopeless cases. Then he gets up, puts on his dressing gown and a pair of brogues and goes downstairs for a coffee. Then it's out into the world - onto the battleground that is Cleaver Greene's day.'

Source: ABC Television website, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/
Sighted: 1 November 2010.

'A writer visits his isolated family home to say goodbye to his dying father, but memories of his beautiful twin sister awaken long buried secrets from their past.'

Source: New Town Films website, http://www.newtownfilms.com.au/
Sighted: 19/05/2009

A follow-up to Twisted Tales, Two Twisted was another anthology-style program, presenting short, dark narratives, each with a surprise ending. The producers put out a call for emerging script-writing, choosing the fourteen final scripts from the initial pool of applicants, then selecting a mixture of emerging and established directors, each of whom had four days to shoot their episode and a further four days to edit it.

Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Twisted). Sighted: 1/3/2012.

'MARTHA'S NEW COAT gives an understated and authentic portrait of adolescent experience. Martha is driven by her fantasy that the father who abandoned her as a child will provide a happier home than her erratic mother.'

Source: Screen Australia.