Affectionately known as “Smithy”, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith astonished the world in 1928 with his pioneering Trans Pacific flight from America to Australia. He went on to establish Australian National Airways and set many air distance and endurance records. Director Ken G. Hall’s last feature film is a gripping and inspiring tribute to a national hero and his fellow pioneers. Contributing to the stunning aerial shots, Smithy’s famous plane, the Southern Cross, appears in what was to be its last flight. Released in 1946, the film was a smash hit and achieved worldwide recognition.
Author: Jon W.
Samoa consists of two major islands. Western Samoa is inhabited by a very proud race of people who don’t particularly like Westerners so tourism is not really encouraged. Catherine and John try to understand Fa Samoa, the source of intense pride in their culture. They visit Robert Louis Stevenson’s house. They witness the Samoan art of tattooing, covering most of body. Charlie is of chiefly caste. He introduces us to Samoan culture and finds the most beautiful seascapes – the sort of sights that shape our image of the South Pacific.
Depicts the quality of life in a small American town in Iowa, which is representative of thousands of such towns across the United States. Illustrates an old farm couple’s memories of play, work, family life, courtship, and marriage.
A compelling examination of the lives of three artists forced to work in secret while living in Nazi death camps during WWII: Jan Komski, Dinah Gottliebova, and Felix Nussbaum, who more than fifty years ago witnessed and painted the horrors of the Holocaust.
Sticky My Fingers, Fleet My Feet is a film about a man accepting his old age. The film is playful, as its characters have an exaggerated infatuation with their games of touch football, the main character even keeping a book of stats for himself. John D. Hancock utilizes sound in order to help with the over dramatization, as the suspense builds before kick-off, where comically a young girl picks up the ball before they can begin. The sound again emphasizes the child in these older men, when the main character returns home to a bath. He imagines now he is playing tennis with a brush, leaving the viewer, in the bit of parallelism, to see he can’t be humbled by his age for long.
The made-for-TV When She Says No takes a prismatic, Rashomon approach to its story of sexual assault. Kathleen Quinlan plays an anthropology professor who, during a roisterous campus party, has sex with three of her colleagues. She takes the matter to court, insisting that she’s been raped. The three men insist that Quinlan led them on–even when saying “no.” Both testimonies are presented in flashbacks which substantiate the words of whomever happens to be testifying. When She Says No refuses to cop out with easy answers: the “lady or the tiger” denouement allows the viewer to draw his or her own conclusion.
Volpone, an elderly Venetian, connives with his money-crazed servant to convince his greedy friends that he is dying, knowing that each will try to curry favor with him in order to be named his heir. He is inundated with valuable gifts, and soon finds himself entangled deeper and deeper in a web of lies.
In this drama, set during WWII, a teacher at a military school is derided by his students because he has not joined the military. The man is deeply disturbed by their ridicule and disrespect and so pleads with the draft-board to reconsider his “essential” status and allow him to join. He is allowed to enlist, but still, because he has a punctured ear-drum, is not allowed to join. Unable to face his students, the teacher gets a job at a shipyard, then deceives his students into believing that he is at war by having a buddy at boot camp forward their letters to him.