The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation

The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation tells the gripping story of Robert King, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, men who have endured solitary confinement longer than any known living prisoner in the United States. Politicized through contact with the Black Panther Party while inside Louisiana’s prisons, they formed one of the only prison Panther chapters in history and worked to organize other prisoners into a movement for the right to live like human beings. This feature length movie explores their extraordinary struggle for justice while incarcerated in Angola, a former slave plantation where institutionalized rape and murder made it known as one of the most brutal and racist prisons in the United States. The analysis of the Angola 3’s political work, and the criminal cases used to isolate and silence them, occurs within the context of the widespread COINTELPRO being carried out in the 1960’s and 70’s by the FBI and state law enforcement against militant voices for change. (2008, 109mins.)

Angry Brigade

"You can't reform profit capitalism and inhumanity. Just kick it till it breaks.” - Angry Brigade, communiqué.

Between 1970 and 1972 the Angry Brigade used guns and bombs in a series of symbolic attacks against property. A series of communiqués accompanied the actions, explaining the choice of targets and the Angry Brigade philosophy: autonomous organization and attacks on property alongside other forms of militant working class action. Targets included the embassies of repressive regimes, police stations and army barracks, boutiques and factories, government departments and the homes of Cabinet ministers, the Attorney General and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. These attacks on the homes of senior political figures increased the pressure for results and brought an avalanche of police raids. From the start the police were faced with the difficulty of getting to grips with a section of society they found totally alien. And were they facing an organization - or an idea?

This documentary, produced by Gordon Carr for the BBC (and first shown in January 1973, shortly after the trial), covers the roots of the Angry Brigade in the revolutionary ferment of the 1960s, and follows their campaign and the police investigation to its culmination in the “Stoke Newington 8” conspiracy trial at the Old Bailey—the longest criminal trial in British legal history. (2008, 60mins.)

Between the oil and the deep blue sea

Set in Mauritania this story follows the investigations of a respected Mauritanian and world renowned mathematician, Dr Yahya Hamidoune. The Professor, as he became known, introduces us to many Mauritanians, from government Ministers through to local people earning less than $1 a day, in his campaign against an Australian company whom he sees as exploiting his country and his people. Mauritania is presently governed by a transitional military junta. A coup in August 2005 saw the previous president Taya deposed and Colonel Vall replace him. (2006, 25mins, $28.)

Big Noise Dispatches

Against a tide of ignorance, isolation and cynicism, Big Noise Dispatches take you around the world to look war and crisis in the face, but also to witness a shared struggle for survival and dignity. Four volumes are available, each over an hour in length, collecting reports and news from around the globe. Big Noise Tactical Media is a collective of media-makers 'dedicated to circulating beautiful, passionate, revolutionary images'. (2008, 4 volumes.)

Black And Gold: The Story of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation

In 1994, the Latin Kings - the largest and most powerful street gang in New York - became the Latin King and Queen Nation. They claimed to have abandoned their criminal past and to be following in the footsteps of the Black Panthers and the Young Lords. With over 3,000 members in New York, some saw the Latin King and Queen Nation as the most important political voice to rise from the streets in decades. The NYPD did not agree, calling them a vicious gang with a PR campaign. One thing is certain, the City was never the same after the Nation went downtown. In 1997 Big Noise films became the only media group ever given unrestricted access to the Nation. For two years they ran with the Kings and Queens in New York City, filming on the front lines of their everyday struggle for survival. (2008.)

Demon Fault

The Demon Fault delves into the lives of several very different Australians, who find themselves drawn into a deadly serious yet crazy battle over a gold mine. Prejudices and accusations abound when miners, farmers, environmentalists, police, politicians, and Aboriginal people take their fight from the battlefields of NSW’s Great Dividing Range (on the Timbarra plateau above the Demon Fault line) to the law courts of Australia. All kinds of weapons from legal loopholes to dirty tricks get brought into this real-life Australian drama. (2002, 52mins, $28 .)

Dying to leave

The first episode on this DVD, 'Human Cargo' examines the dramatic increase in illegal smuggling of people, usually involving the voluntary passage of those in search of better economic or social conditions. It tells the story of Faris Kadhem from Iraq, stateless for 21 years, who lost his wife and daughter at sea when their overcrowded boat sank while trying to reach Australia. It investigates the continuum of governments' inability to offer real sanctuary to people like Faris.

The second episode on this DVD, 'Slaves of the Free Market' explores human trafficking - smuggling activity that includes a new find of indentured servitude where impossible debt is combined with brutal working conditions. Migrants are trafficked by the hundreds of thousands into the world's sex industry each year and increasingly they are also being enslaved in agriculture and construction. This episode continues the story of Nina Matveyenko, charting her terror upon realising she has been sold into prostitution and, after three years, her eventual escape from torment. (2004, 104mins, $28.)

The Hacktivists

A one hour documentary that explores the world of on-line activists. These are computer experts who are using the Internet and cyberspace as very effective new means of protest against global capitalism and the power of large transnational companies. (2002, 52mins, $28.)

Helen's war

Director and writer Anna Brionowski follows her aunt, Dr Helen Caldicott, for a year. Dr Caldicott is seen in the USA promoting her book and giving public addresses as an antinuclear activist. The documentary cuts between Dr Caldicott during her campaign in the 1980s, setting up an office in the USA to promote her cause and spending limited time in Australia with family. (2004, 52mins, $28.)

I remember 1948

'If I live one thousand years, you think I will forget that?' - Fouad Charida.

Speaking in Arabic and English, Soliman Al-Halawani, Dr. Mahmoud Hourani, Fouad Charida, Dib El Chami and Rafica El Chami Batach tell of their life in Palestine before 1948 and give eye-witness accounts of the tumultuous days of 'Al Nakba' (the catastrophe), May 15th, and its aftermath. As children and young adults, they and their families were among 750,000 Palestinians fleeing for their lives, as Zionist terror gangs began seizing villages to enlarge the recently created State of Israel.

The stories told by these speakers are poignant, unexpected and sometimes surprising, expressing not only the tragedies but also the small miracles which occur in a human catastrophe of such dimensions. Prevented from returning to their homes, the speakers lived as refugees, eventually making their way to Australia. (2005, 24mins, $28.)

Intervention, Katherine NT

The Intervention was shot over a an 8-month period and features the lives of ordinary community residents as they experience the Intervention first hand, as well as the various government and business workers who all come together to implement it. "An insightful, if dispiriting, vision of the bureaucratic dysfunction, endemic poverty and alcoholism that still plagues parts of central Australia and how the Intervention, despite some improvements, made some people's difficult lives even more so. The film poses the question of whether the Intervention was really worth it, given so few convictions for sexual abuse have been recorded. Decide for yourself." - The Guide, Sydney Morning Herald. (2008, 52mins, $28.)

Lockout

This is the story of Australia’s most violent Industrial Conflict. In 1929, in the face of collapsing demand for coal, mine owners in the Northern Coalfields of NSW, announced (with the support of the conservative State Government) that they would reduce miners’ wages by 12.5 per cent and strip them of their hard won industrial rights. When their union, the Miners Federation, refused to agree to these terms the mine owners locked the gates. They were to remain closed for 15 months. 10,000 miners, pit boys and their families now found themselves without a job, forced to subsist on government handouts and charity. What began as an undeclared war on industrial labour ended up overpowering a government, crippling an industry and besieging a community. (2007, 56mins, $28.)

One place

An inspiring film about a unique Islamic Cultural Centre: a place of worship and of study, a library and a centre of learning, it is also a building where families gather, an integral part of a community that speaks more than thirty languages, comes from more than forty countries and shares a single faith. (2008, 27mins, $28.)

Our Community

Our Community is a film that reveals that, despite the cultural diversity and the challenges before them, the people of the Walgett, Lightning Ridge and Sheepyard communities share a pride, passion, resilience and an inexorable spirit of ‘belonging’. Throughout the film, past misconceptions about racial and economic divisions are clarified and benevolent bonds are celebrated. (2006, 24mins, $28.)

Pacific Solution

The remarkable story of “the Tampa boys”, young Afghani refugees who were rescued off the coast of Australia by the MV Tampa, the new home they found in New Zealand, and the remarkable quest of their families to join them. Through the prism of their journey, this intimate documentary examines the political context, and the looming refugee crisis facing our world. (2005, 50mins, $28.)

River of No Return

From early childhood Frances Daingangan, a 45-year-old Yolngu woman, dreamed of being a movie star - a dream that came true when Rolf de Heer cast her in the film Ten Canoes. River of No Return documents her extraordinary story. (2008, 52mins, $28.)

Rocking the Foundations

An outstanding historical account of the Green Bans first introduced by the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation in the 1970s in response to community demand to preserve inner-city parkland and historic buildings. One of the first women to be accepted as a builders labourer, filmmaker Pat Fiske traces the development of a quite singular union whose social and political activities challenged the notion of what a union should be. (1986, 92mins, $28.)

Secret and Sacred

This film examines all aspects of Badtjala life inclusive of Creation/Dreamtime stories, Birthing, Male Initiation, Totems, Marital, Tribal/Ceremonial events & Burial practices including how the Badtjala lived and interacted with their tribal neighbours. SECRET & SACRED also examines events beginning with the arrival of European settlement and ending with the current status of the tribe as it exists today. This ambitious project, 12 years in the making, is designed to educate all Australians about their Indigenous history and culture by building bridges of understanding, leaving a lasting documentary record. The Elders have made this project possible because of their desire to tell their story before it is too late. (2008, 53mins, $28.)

Stolen Generations

Between 1910 and 1970 in Australia, 1 in 3 children were removed from Aboriginal families and placed in institutions and foster homes. These children, in most cases, were never to see their family again. The film tells 3 stories of Aboriginal people who were removed. (2000, 52mins, $28.)

Temple of dreams

Fadi Rahman is one of a new breed of Australian Muslim leaders. Young, charismatic and politically ambitious, he runs a youth centre/gymnasium in Sydney’s west in what was once a Masonic Temple. The Centre struggles in the face of council planning regulations and funding shortfalls. Fadi sets out to solve all their problems with the help of three determined but often argumentative young women – Alyah, Amna and Zouhour. (2007, 90mins, $28.)

Together We Win: The Fight To Organize Starbucks

A short video documentary on the ongoing fight of the IWW to organise Starbucks, in New York City, and across the US. (2006)

Twelve Canoes

In the wake of the international success of Ten Canoes, Rolf de Heer has collaborated again with the Ramingining community of north Arnhem Land in making this series of twelve short documentaries that together paint a visual and audio portrait of the people, history, culture and place of the Yolngu people. (2008, 66mins, $28.)

Two Mums and a Dad

2 Mums and a Dad is the story of the rocky road of 3-way parenting, a unique exploration of the nature of family in today's complicated society, as well as an insightful resource for everyone concerned with issues regarding the raising of children such as access, parent's rights and family conflict. (2007, 51mins, $28.)

Venezuela: Revolution from the inside out

This doco is a voyage into one of Latin America’s most exciting experiments of the new millennium, exploring the history and projects of the Bolivarian Revolution through interviews with a range of its participants, from academics to farm workers and those living in the margins of Caracas. This introduction offers in-depth interviews, images and a lively soundtrack. It explores Venezuela’s “Socialism of the 21st Century - its failures and successes, its warp and woof. Through it all runs the frayed but unbreakable thread of a people in struggle. that will open new vistas onto this hopeful human project. (2008, 85mins.)

Wanja

Wanja is a documentary about ‘the Block’, through the eyes of Auntie Barb and the life of Wanja her blue heeler dog, recently deceased. The community on the Block’s many and varied stories of Wanja reflect on the issues affecting this indigenous community in the heart of Sydney.

Auntie Barb is an elder of Redfern’s community, who lived on the Block for twenty years with her family and dog, Wanja. Wanja was an integral part of the community, known to all for her ability to sniff out the police – in uniform and undercover –“the Block’s guardian angel”.

The stories of Wanja tell us how the tension between the community and police escalated, why the housing has continued to deteriorate and largely been demolished, and why the strength of the community - it’s elders, moved on. Aunty Barb was one of the last elders forced off the Block. In spite of this, Aunty Barb continues to call the Block her community and home. (2008, 25mins, $28.)