Desert People
★ 5 · 1967 · 51m · Documentary
Two Aboriginal families live like their ancestors have for centuries in this anthropological documentary. The gathering of food is the main focus as women harvest grass seeds to make a primitive flour for bread. Grubs, lizards, and fruit are also on the menu, with the only contact with the modern world being their trek to a government compound for much-needed drinking water.
More Like This
Collum Calling Canberra
1981
Gordon Smith, head of the Collum Collum Aboriginal Co-operative which operates a cattle station in northern New South Wales, and Sunny Bancroft, the station manager, are negotiating with the Aboriginal Development Corporation in Canberra for a loan. Finance is needed to stock the property with breeding cattle so that the station can become financially independent.
More info →
Audrey Napanangka
2023 · ★ 8
The story of a Warlpiri woman, Audrey, and her Sicilian partner Santo as they navigate through colonial systems to keep the children they care for together. Audrey Napanangka was born at a time when the world was changing for the people in the Central Australian Desert. Settler colonisation was permeating the desert and forced changes and the fusion of two worlds shifted Audrey’s life forever. Today, Audrey raises young people to walk in many worlds, by centering culture, language, and Law in their lives alongside mainstream education. The intimate footage filmed over 10 years in Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Yuendumu and Audrey’s Warlpiri country Mount Theo, showcases a heartwarming story about the power of kinship and family in what is known as Australia.
More info →
Big Boss
2012
The story of 95-year-old Aboriginal elder Laurie Baymarrwangga and her work to maintain the language and cultural traditions of the Yan-nhangu people of Murrungga.
More info →
The Ripple Effect
2021
The Ripple Effect is a powerful documentary primarily centred around St Kilda legend and proud Noongar Nicky Winmar's generation-defining stand against racism at Victoria Park in 1993.
More info →
Our Warrior: The Story of Robbie Thorpe
2025
A story of resistance across generations, the power of family and the unrelenting struggle for justice in a country that remains in denial.
More info →Australia's Aborigines
1988
Shows the Kakadu lands in Northern Australia and the people who live there, the Gagudju Aborigines, their story and their culture.
More info →
The Bowraville Murders
2021 · ★ 7
The epic David vs Goliath battle for justice waged by the families of three Aboriginal children murdered in a small rural town 30 years ago, the system that failed them, and what it reveals about racism in Australia today.
More info →
My Survival as an Aboriginal
1979
Essie Coffey gives the children lessons on Aboriginal culture. She speaks of the importance of teaching these kids about their traditions. Aboriginal kids are forgetting about their Aboriginal heritage because they are being taught white culture instead.
More info →
In My Own Words
2017
The raw, heartfelt and often funny journey of adult Aboriginal students and their teachers as they discover the transformative power of reading and writing for the first time.
More info →
Yellow Fella
2005 · ★ 7.3
In 1978, Tom Lewis appeared in the Australian feature film, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. The life of the character he played was hauntingly close to his own, a young, restless man of mixed heritage, struggling for a foothold on the edge of two cultures. Tom's mother is a traditional Indigenous woman of southern Arnhem Land, his father a Welsh stockman who he never really knew. Yellow Fella is a journey across the land and into Tom's past, as he attempts to find the resting place of his father and to finally confront the truth of his most inner feelings of love and identity.
More info →
The Art of Incarceration
2021
Narrated by Uncle Jack Charles and seen through the eyes of Indigenous prisoners at Victoria’s Fulham Correctional Centre, this documentary explores how art and culture can empower Australia's First Nations people to transcend their unjust cycles of imprisonment.
More info →
A History of the Australian Aboriginal
1997
Colin Jones is of Aboriginal, Polynesian and English decent. The Aboriginal side of his family are from the Kalkadoon and Nunuckle tribal groups. His grandfather taught him about Aboriginal traditions and the art of his people. Colin is now a noted Artist. At present Colin is studying for his Masters Degree in Humanities. Much of the history that he talks about in this video comes from his own studies and research, conducted over many years. Colin's reason for making this video is to explain from an Aboriginal point of view based on his historical data, what has happened to his people over the past two hundred years since the white man arrive in Australia.
More info →