Documentary Award (1969-)
Subcategory of AWGIE Awards
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Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2021

winner (Public Broadcast or Exhibition) form y separately published work icon Ablaze Alec Morgan , Tiriki Onus , ( dir. Alec Morgan et. al. )agent Australia : 2021 23287682 2021 single work film/TV

'Ablaze tells of Bill Onus, a Yorta Yorta/Wiradjuri man from Victoria, a truly heroic cultural and political figure who revived his peopleʼs culture in the 1940s and ignited a civil rights movement that would, against enormous odds, change the course of history.

'Through rare archival footage, state-of-the-art animation, vividly created digital motion graphics and eye-witness accounts, Ablaze is the compelling tale – part detective story, part contemporary opera – of how Bill and supporters brilliantly orchestrated their campaign for equality through performance, entertainment, film  and sheer audacity outsmarted mighty forces seeking to destroy Indigenous cultures, languages, and communities.

'Ablaze is an enlightening film for today’s turbulent times.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2020

winner form y separately published work icon Own the Sky Gregory J. Read , ( dir. Gregory J. Read ) Australia : Paper Bark Films Firelight Productions , 2019 20262446 2019 single work film/TV

Biographical documentary tracing Australian management consultant David Mayman's bid to develop a jetpack.

Year: 2016

joint winner form y separately published work icon The Silences Margot Nash , ( dir. Margot Nash ) Australia : As If Productions , 2015 10273215 2015 single work film/TV

'A personal essay documentary about the tangled bonds, secret histories and unspoken traumas of family life, that stretches from New Zealand to the Australian suburbs. It is an exploration of early childhood and the “silences” of the past that resonate in the present. It draws upon a wealth of photographs, letters, oral histories, documentary footage and clips from the filmmaker’s previous work. It unfolds a mother’s story of lost opportunities, lost love and grief; a father’s story of work, mental illness and war; and a daughter’s story of trying to piece together a more complex picture of the confusing ties of love, loss and kinship between a mother and daughter.'

Source: As If Productions.

With Baxter and Me (Gillian Leahy).

Year: 2015

winner (Public Broadcast) form y separately published work icon Sam Klemke’s Time Machine Mathew Bate , Sandy Cameron , ( dir. Mathew Bate ) Australia United States of America (USA) : Closer Productions , 2015 8225096 2015 single work film/TV

'In 1977, Sam Klemke started obsessively documenting his entire life on film. Beginning decades before the modern obsession with selfies and status updates, we see Sam grow from an optimistic teen to a self-important 20-year-old, into an obese, self-loathing thirty-something and onwards into his philosophical fifties. The same year that Sam began his project, NASA launched the Voyager craft into deep space carrying the Golden Record, a portrait of humanity that would try to explain to extra terrestrials who we are. From director Matthew Bate (Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure), Sam Klemke's Time Machine follows two unique self-portraits as they travel in parallel - one hurtling through the infinity of space and the other stuck in the suburbs of Earth - in a freewheeling look at time, memory, mortality and what it means to be human. ' (Production summary)

Year: 2014

winner (Public Broadcast) form y separately published work icon A Woman's Journey into Sex Sally McKenzie , ( dir. Sally McKenzie ) Australia : theCoalface , 2013 7802791 2013 single work film/TV

'A WOMAN’S JOURNEY INTO SEX investigates female sexuality through the eyes of Private Detective Lacey as she travels the world to investigate if dames need emotional commitment to orgasm. Her journey takes us into the world of cougars, bachelorettes, women paying for sex, Rent-A-Dreads, romance dependency and holiday liaisons. With her we encounter masseurs, escorts, prost-i-dudes along with Heidi Fleiss, Miss Cougar International and a range of ordinary babes. This social history and lifestyle documentary weaves animation, archive, dramatizations, interview and verity to peep into the seldom-explored world of women’s sexuality.'

Source: Screen Australia.

Works About this Award

ABC TV's Message Stick Celebrates NAIDOC Week Margaret Smith , 2012 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 27 June no. 529 2012; (p. 35)
ABC TV 's Message Stick contribute a powerful documentary about early Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander theatre, and profiles of Indigenous achievers to NAIDOC Week in 2012.
Doing 'the Other' Over : Narrative Conservatism in Radical Popular Culture Susanne Gannon , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Australasian Cinema , vol. 3 no. 1 2009; (p. 29-45)

'Tom Zubrycki's documentary film Molly and Mobarak (2003) and John Doyle's television mini-series Marking Time (2003) were both released during the most vehement anti-refugee governmental regime of contemporary Australian history. Whilst the Howard government and the Ruddock and Vanstone ministries were intent on dehumanizing refugees, these film-makers - amongst other Australian artists - were intent on humanizing them. Afghani refugees were portrayed in these films attempting to create viable lives in rural Australia, as thousands of Afghani asylum seekers were detained by government policy in remote and offshore detention centres. This article considers Zubrycki's and Doyle's portrayals of Afghani refugees as political and aesthetic interventions into official discourses distancing the interests of 'Australians' from those of the refugee 'others' (Gannon and Saltmarsh 2006, 2007). At the same time as applauding these interventions, this article also attempts to map their limits by asking in particular whether the conventions of film narrative inevitably contain and tame. Does narrative carry with it, in these instances at least, a conservatism where empathy becomes most possible when the other is made over to become like 'us'?' (Publisher's abstract)

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