Denise Haslem

In this charming documentary, director Gillian Leahy combines her two great passions: dogs and film. She openly reveals her life story through a canine prism – lovers may come and go, but there are always the dogs. Leahy also weaves in her filmmaking career, starting out at the Women's Film Workshop in 1970s Sydney and the newly formed AFTRS. Dogs have carried her through childhood illness and heartbreak; in return she lavishes care, and frets over their waywardness. Today, she shares her life with a big brown Labrador called Baxter. There are echoes of Leahy's award-winning My Life Without Steve, a study in love and loss, in this meditative and romantic film.

On June 3rd 1992, six months after Eddie "Koiki" Mabo's tragic death, the High Court upheld his claim that Murray Islanders held native title to land in the Torres Strait. The legal fiction that Australia was empty when first occupied by white people had been laid to rest. Mabo-Life of an Island Man tells the private and public stories of a man so passionate about family and home that he fought an entire nation and its legal system. Though his greatest victory was won only after his death, it has forever ensured his place - on Murray Island and in Australian history.

On June 3rd 1992, six months after Eddie "Koiki" Mabo's tragic death, the High Court upheld his claim that Murray Islanders held native title to land in the Torres Strait. The legal fiction that Australia was empty when first occupied by white people had been laid to rest. Mabo-Life of an Island Man tells the private and public stories of a man so passionate about family and home that he fought an entire nation and its legal system. Though his greatest victory was won only after his death, it has forever ensured his place - on Murray Island and in Australian history.

For much of the 20th century, successive Australian governments pursued a policy of deporting and barring entry to any race of people they considered undesirable. This was known as the White Australia policy. Admission Impossible is the true story of the behind-the-scenes political forces and the propaganda campaigns that attempted to populate Australia with “pure white” migrants.

Through the story of one woman’s year in a room with a view, the film catches its audience up in the collective memories of all those who have loved and lost. Through a study of Liz’s obsession and loneliness, the film mixes the particular with the universal to cover the whole gamut of feelings and theories about lost love. Ranging from the popular to the more erudite, snatches of songs, quotes and diary jottings are all stitched together with stories from Liz’s past and descriptions in minutiae of her current existence. The B side of love is richly played out through the words of an A team of interpreters from Split Enz, Laurie Anderson and Bob Dylan to Freud, Marge Piercy, Collete and Roland Barthes.

A docu-drama made with support and assistance from a Warlpiri Community in Central Australia, to highlight the community's effort to control the fate of their heritage and future. Alan Jungarrayi wants to move with his family to the nearest town in the hope of finding work. His wife, Jean Napanangka, wants to remain in the community to fulfil her tribal obligations and to bring up their children in their culture. She fears that if they leave the children will lose their language and grow up 'with too much Western ways and thoughts', and thus lose their Warlpiri identity and their place within the world.

A deliciously compelling look under the lei, and why the Hula Girl is one of the most potent and sexually alluring images in popular culture today.