A portrait of Papua New Guinea, a society clutched by Australian colonialism and hovering uneasily between its head-hunting past and Western civilization, at the time of the nation’s independence festivities.
Tag: AUSTRALIA
Primary school aged Orville has a fascination for model planes which intensifies when he encounters Harry who owns a sadly neglected but real Tiger Moth. Orville becomes obsessed with the notion that the Tiger might fly once more and the adventure begins when he and Harry set out to achieve that goal.
Bert Deling’s surreal, button-pushing and hallucinogenic paean to the emerging possibilities of avant-garde and homemade filmmaking. Telling the tale of a violent ex-cop searching for the man who killed his partner, the film takes an unexpected turn when he encounters drug lord Plastic Man and a tribe of LSD enthusiasts. What follows is both literal and metaphorical mayhem as the boundaries of the film start collapsing and our idea of what’s real is pushed to its very limits.
When a scientist finds a cocoon a woman emerges from it. She is being chased by two faceless monsters who are collecting specimens for a museum.
A woman living in Dallas discovers that her husband, from New Zealand, is actually a crazed serial killer who murders prostitutes. She helps the authorities arrest him, and he is sent to a hospital for the criminally insane. Just when she’s starting to get her life back together, she learns that he’s escaped from the institution and is after her. She flees to Australia and winds up staying in a house owned by a wealthy young man, who turns out to have dark secrets of his own.
Tex Kinnane, posing as a stage driver, goes to Australia to investigate a series of robberies at Goldstar. He makes friends at the saloon with Baldy Muldoon and barmaid Stella Grey. Lawyer Vincent Moller, the leader behind the robberies, learns Tex’s real identity, and frames a plot to blame the crimes on Tex.
A convent teacher spreads a little happiness and makes enough money to support her crippled brother’s habit by selling her favours regularly on a cross-country night sleeper. She makes sure she is in control of each encounter until one client reaches her more than she expects.
Norman Panama’s penultimate directorial effort, Barnaby and Me was originally filmed for Australian television. The title character is a talented Koala Bear, who is to Australian fans what Benji is to Americans. Pausing in his escape from a vengeful mobster, American con artist Caesar falls in love with Juliet Mills, whose daughter Sally Boyden keeps Barnaby as her pet. The kooky koala teans up with Caesar for a series of picaresque adventures.