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The actor narrates a 40-screen immersive exhibition of Australian land and wildlife, shot by 25 cinematographers. ‘This environment is our heritage and our responsibility,’ he says

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Before he became one of Australia’s best-loved actors, Jack Thompson had already been many things. At the age of 15, he became a jackaroo in the Northern Territory, working on the remote cattle station of Elkedra. There, he says, he observed a life that no longer exists. At camp, he was the only white person among the adult Alyawarra men.

It was fine preparation for his cinematic work in the 1970s and early 80s when he became an icon of the Australian New Wave, taking leading and supporting roles in classics including Sunday Too Far Away (1975), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Breaker Morant (1980) and The Man from Snowy River (1982).

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Red deserts, sweaty brows, scalding sand and swimsuits. Nowhere does summer quite like Australia – and nowhere is it captured better than on film. But how well do you know your classics?

They’re A Weird Mob

Puberty Blues

Age of Consent

The Daughter

These Final Hours

On the Beach

Blackrock

All Men Are Liars

The Overlanders

The Sundowners

The Back of Beyond

Mutiny on the Bounty

Welcome to Woop Woop

Priscilla: Queen of the Desert

Muriel’s Wedding

Red Dog

Road Games

Fair Game

Long Weekend

Dead Calm

The Killing of Angel Street

Newsfront

Heatwave

The Year of Living Dangerously

Wake in Fright

Sunday Too Far Away

The Water Diviner

The Man From Snowy River

The Man From Snowy River

The Water Diviner

Australia

The Silver Brumby

Goldstone

Dead Heart

Babe: Pig in the City

Mystery Road

Bungala Boys

Bra Boys

The Coolangatta Gold

The Four Minute Mile

Crocodile Dundee...

A schoolteacher's stopover in an outback town turns into an alcoholic bender in this infamous movie

Once in a while, a long-lost movie will resurface and completely realign one's understanding of an entire national cinema. Such a film is Canadian Ted Kotcheff's 1971 Australian outback-set Wake In Fright, a box-office flop, mauled by a critical establishment in thrall to the cultural cringe, then almost entirely forgotten and thought lost for 40 years. And no wonder: Wake In Fright is among the most excoriating demolitions of the cult of masculinity ever put on film – its Australian variant in particular – and it must have been troubling indeed to gaze into that mirror.

John Grant (Gary Bond), a cultured schoolteacher travelling from his isolated bush schoolhouse to Sydney, gets trapped on a stopover that turns into a never-ending alcoholic bender in a wild outback mining town populated entirely by drunken ockers who gamble, guzzle tinnies,...

The Australian Independent Distributor.s Association has presented its Independent Spirit Award to industry veteran John Politzer.

The award was presented at the Australian International Movie Convention by last year.s recipient, Bob Parr, and accepted on Politzer.s behalf by entertainment publicist Fiona Nix. The award recognises individuals who have devoted much of their lives to independent film.

.We.re sorry John cannot be here tonight . he is a great champion of Australian cinema,. Parr said.

.John started working at Twentieth Century Fox in the late-50s and moved into distribution at Village Roadshow when Greg Coote offered him a job. From there he went into exhibition at Greater Union from 1979 . 1995 as the programming manager. His love of and commitment to Australian films and the local industry became evident. John secured screens for Australian films so producers and distributors could be confident of strong, wide releases and was a...

The Australian Film Commission took its first steps to privatising its completion guarantor operations after compiling a damning internal assessment of filmmakers. cost overruns, according to documents released for the first time by the National Archives of Australia. The survey of 59 films funded by the Afc between 1975 . 1980 covered the budget overruns of local classics including Sunday Too Far Away, Newsfront, Breaker Morant, Don.s Party, Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith. The survey found roughly two out of three films went over budget while nearly one in three films were more than 15 per cent over budget . the normal fee-free level allowed by the Afc under its completion guarantee terms. It was a period of spiralling costs...