Tūhoe -- History Of Resistance documents the fight for justice of the Tūhoe people of Te Urewera, Aotearoa (New Zealand). Set on contested land in the Urewera ranges of the middle North Island, the film presents the ways of Māori--the indigenous peoples of the land.
In 1981, the New Zealand government invited the South African rugby team to tour New Zealand. This effectively split the country in half as the rugby tour was seen by some as endorsement of South Africa's apartheid regime. Patu! recounts the mass civil disobedience that took place throughout New Zealand during the winter of 1981, in protest against the South African rugby tour. Sports grounds and suburban streets became battlefields as the film recounts visceral images of massive protest actions met with police brutality. Patu! is a record of heroism, and for many young people taking to the streets, it was their 1968. Māori and Pākehā, children and grandparents, gang members and clergymen—all in a moment of rare consensus, stood together to affirm shared values.
In Australia between 1910 and 1970, one in three children were removed from Aboriginal families and placed in government institutions and foster homes. These children, in most cases, were never to see their family again. The film tells the story of three Aboriginal people who were removed. Bobby Randall, Cleonie Quayle, and Daisy Howard. Their stories are combined with interviews with well-known Australian historians Marcia Langton and Henry Reynolds, who describe the racist assumptions behind these policies. Removing children was a deliberate government policy and the aim was the eventual disappearance of Aboriginal people as a whole.
Fight For Country tells the story of one of Australia's largest ever land rights and environmental campaigns, to stop the building of a second uranium mine within the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, Australia. In 1998 the issue came to a head when Indigenous elders and activists called on people to come from around Australia and the world to blockade the construction of the mine and proposed 'uranium deposits', collectively called Jabiluka. The film follows activists and speaks with Aboriginal people about the impacts of the mine, following the community response and protest actions against the mines development, where over 500 people were arrested in the course of the eight-month blockade.
Utopia is both an epic portrayal of the oldest continuous human culture on the planet--indigenous Australia--and an investigation into a suppressed colonial past and rapacious present. One of the world's best kept secrets is revealed against the great Australian 'mining boom,' showing how the country's racially divided past and current-day media collusion play their parts in a system that is apartheid in all but name. The film examines the exploitation of the Aboriginal population, both as a people and of the land they have lived on for centuries, and how so many institutions have profited while people continue to suffer. The injustice stretches across countless generations and stories. Utopia reveals this universal story of power and resistance, driven by old imperatives, in a media age of saturation which is profoundly silent and complicit; a call to continue resistance.
The shocking story of a well respected Indigenous community leader in outback Western Australia who was locked in a metal cell in the back of a prison van and driven through the desert in the searing heat. Four hours later he was dead. Reporter Liz Jackson reveals the tragic train of events that led to this death, despite repeated warnings that Western Australia's prisoner transport system was unsafe and inhumane...
Bones of the Forest traverses the topic of deforestation through the lens of colonisation. Told through the eyes of both native and non-native elders, current and former loggers, environmentalists and protesters, the film shows the experience of the sights and sounds of threatened forest, alongside the plight of loggers and their families. The voices at times coalesce--loggers made redundant due to over-foresting, align with environmental activists who wish to save the forest from the destruction of this culture.
A group of conservation photographers travel to British Columbia, Canada, to capture the region in response to plans by several oil companies who want to build a pipeline for export from the Alberta tar sands, across British Columbia to the coast of the Great Bear Rainforest. The tar sands in northern Alberta are the largest, most destructive industrial projects in human history. The proposed pipeline not only threatens this area, but many others across Canada and indeed the world. Spoil follows several renowned photographers and videographers who show the Great Bear Rainforest's landscapes, wildlife, and indigenous culture; calling to act before it's too late...
Atomic Footprints uses archival footage and new material from the outback of Australia to examine the nuclear fuel chain, and the current push to expand uranium mines throughout Australia. This film speaks with local indigenous communities about the impact of already-existing uranium mining and refinement, and shows in clear examples some of the reasons why we should continue to oppose it around the world.