AustLit

Three men walk into India out of Tibet, having escaped a Siberian gulag and walked 4000 miles, across the desert and the Himalayas. The film tells their story, the stories of the four other men who escaped with them, and the story of the teenage girl who joined them.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Captain Jack Aubrey, in command of HMS Surprise, purses the heavier and more powerfully armed French privateer Acheron across the Pacific Ocean and around the Galapagos Islands, under orders to 'sink, burn, or take her as a prize'. But his friend, ship's doctor Stephen Maturin, worries that Aubrey is motivated more by pride than by duty.

An American woman and a Frenchman enter into a marriage of convenience to obtain, for her, a dream apartment and, for him, a green card, permitting him to work in the U.S. They marry, and go their separate ways. But when they attract the suspicions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, they are forced to live as husband and wife in an effort to convince the government that their marriage is not a sham.

Set in Indonesia, The Year of Livingly Dangerously is based on the real events that occurred in the country in 1965. The story revolves around Guy Hamilton, who has arrived in Jakarta on his first overseas posting for the Australian Broadcasting Service. Having had no time to build relationships or contacts, he stumbles around the city, attempting to cover the political tensions that are daily increasing. He is eventually taken under the wing of a small but well-connected Chinese-Australian cameraman, Billy Kwan, who recognises great potential in Hamilton. Hamilton is groomed by Kwan, who then sets up exclusive interviews for him while also engineering a romance with Jill Bryant, the young assistant at the British Embassy. Bryant warns Hamilton that violence is about to break out between right-wing factions and the Communist Party of Indonesia, but he pursues the story anyway. Billy Kwan, disheartened by all the people he once believed in, decides to make a public protest against President Sukarno. When the situation eventually escalates into violence, Hamilton is caught between his career ambitions, his conscience, and his feelings for Jill Bryant.

The narrative begins in Western Australia in 1915 and follows the paths of Archie Hamilton and Frank Dunne, before and after their enlistment in the Australian Imperial Forces. Hamilton is the patriotic son of a grazier and Frank Dunne is a drifter with no great desire to fight for the British Empire. They meet as runners in an outback footrace and become best mates. After training in Egypt, they land at Gallipoli, just as the great Allied assaults of August 1915 are to begin.

Source: Australian Screen.

'Jill and husband Brian are academics living on campus. Jill works on her thesis at home, when one morning she opens the door to the plumber. She is puzzled. There is nothing wrong with their plumbing. The plumber thinks differently and begins to take their bathroom apart searching for an elusive fault. What follows is five days of hell and mental torment for Jill that will change her life, and the plumber's. She opened her door to a nightmare.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 3/2/2014)

Based on an original idea by Peter Weir, The Last Wave concerns a young Sydney lawyer who, while defending four Aboriginal men against a murder charge, becomes troubled by dreams. He soon begins to feel the pull of magic forces beneath the surface of civilisation. A series of apparently random occurences assume a disturbing pattern and the city becomes a facade for a place of ancient ritual.

Set in early colonial Australia, Luke's Kingdom follows the various fortunes of Jason Firbeck, who emigrates to Australia with his three children, and his son Luke, who is far more suited to life in the new country.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the program 'is not only a drama concerned with a man's settlement in a savage, hostile wilderness but is also a psychological drama wherein the son displaces the father. Jason is shown to be ineffective in the new land in contrast to Luke, who is a down-to-earth pragmatist who takes what he wants.'

A British and Australian co-production--both financially and in terms of cast and crew--the program did well when it aired on the Nine Network.

On St Valentine's Day 1900, three schoolgirls and a teacher from an exclusive English-style boarding school go missing at the mysterious Hanging Rock in central Victoria. One of the girls is found alive a week later, but the others are never seen again. As morale within the school begins to disintegrate, the headmistress's increasingly incoherent anger is turned towards one student, leading to tragic consequences. Although the police suspect Michael Fitzhubert, a young English aristocrat, and his manservant Albert, who were in the area at the time the girls disappeared, the mystery is never solved. As Paul Byrnes (Australian Screen) notes, the suggested scenarios range from the 'banal and explicable (a crime of passion) to deeply mystical (a crime of nature).'

'A small town in rural Australia (Paris) makes its living by causing car accidents and salvaging any valuables from the wrecks. Into this town come brothers Arthur and George. George is killed when the Parisians cause their car to crash, but Arthur survives and is brought into the community as an orderly at the hospital. But Paris is not problem free. Not only do the Parisians have to be careful of outsiders (such as insurance investigators), but they also have to cope with the young people of the town who are dissatisfied with the status quo.'

Source: Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com). (Sighted: 22/6/2012)

A television series conceived around a violent, motorcycle-riding tranvestite boxer and his/her off-beat friends and acquaintances, The Aunty Jack Show ran from 1972 to 1973 on the ABC. From its first broadcast the show attained cult status with much of the country's youth.

According to Robert Hood,

'This was Weir's first solo feature, a black comedy about a strange assortment of characters who spend a holiday at the isolated Homesdale Hunting Lodge. They are forced to enter into strange deathly games by the even stranger staff, while the distinction between what is real and what is fantasy gradually deteriorates.'

Source: Robert Hood, 'Killer Koalas: Australian (and New Zealand) Horror Films'. Tabula Rasa (http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusHorror/OzHorrorFilms2.html). (Sighted: 6/7/2012)