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The Real Dirt on Farmer John

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Case Studies

Search case studies of Australian and/or International documentaries by keyword or issues. See how documentary filmmakers, grantmakers and charities often share the same interests and how they can work together for the benefit of all.

 

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The Oasis

The Oasis

Tough kids from tough backgrounds living dangerous lives – these are the young people of Oasis, a gr...

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The Isabellas - The Long March

The Isabellas - The Long March

On New Year's Eve 1991, Chen Xing Liang landed in a wooden fishing boat - code named ISABELLA on the...

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Birth Rites

Birth Rites

Birth Rites draws powerful comparisons between birth in outback Australia and the icy regions of Can...

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Kanyini

Kanyini

KANYINI is a story told by an Aboriginal man, Bob Randall, who lives beside the greatest monolith in...

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Hospitals Don’t Burn Down

Hospitals Don’t Burn Down

Fire breaks out after midnight in a multi-storey hospital, cutting the top floors off from escape. I...

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Blackman's Houses

Blackman's Houses

This film is a re-examination of Tasmanian history. In particular it explored the reasons for the de...

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Following The Fenceline

Following The Fenceline

This is an important documentary about breast cancer and an innovative approach to public awareness ...

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No Place To Live

No Place To Live

This film looks into the housing issues facing urban Chicago now and in the future and at the histor...

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Return To Eden

Return To Eden

Follows the progress of the most ambitious counter-attack on ferals ever mounted in Australia and th...

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Land Mines - A Love Story

Land Mines - A Love Story

Land Mines - A Love Story is the latest film from Dennis O'Rourke (Half Life, Cannibal Tours, The Go...

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Everest Sea to Summit

Everest Sea to Summit

The idea of climbing Everest from Sea level was conceived by Michael Dillon and he persuaded an Aust...

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Least Said, Soonest Mended

Least Said, Soonest Mended

Through telling the story of my own family and that of my twin sister in particular, this film explo...

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900 Neighbours

900 Neighbours

In February 2006 Australia’s media was rocked by headlines, SKELETON MAN FOUND IN HOUSING COMMISSION...

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Outsourced!

Outsourced!

Outsourcing is the new frontier of globalisation, pitting call-centre workers around the world again...

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Ayen’s Cooking School for African Men

Ayen’s Cooking School for African Men

The women of Sudan do not allow their men into the kitchen because, (amongst other reasons) they bel...

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The Good The Bad and The Ugg Boot

The Good The Bad and The Ugg Boot

A spaghetti western following a heroic bunch of small family businesses, as they take on a giant US ...

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Hephzibah

Hephzibah

“The story of Hephzibah Menuhin is as rich as a novel by Henry James”.

A child prodigy li...

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Blindsight

Blindsight

Set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Himalayas, Blindsight follows the gripping adventure of...

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Make It Real

Make It Real

A story of determination and hope. Like Harry Potter, Kevin is an orphan. But unlike Harry, he is re...

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Mabo - Life Of An Island Man

Mabo - Life Of An Island Man

On June 3rd 1992, six months after Eddie "Koiki" Mabo's tragic death, the High Court upheld his clai...

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A Hard Rain

A Hard Rain

Australia sits on 40% of the world’s known uranium supplies and is about to give the green light to ...

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The Burning Season

The Burning Season

Every year, there is a burning season in Indonesia. Across the vast archipelago, swathes of rainfore...

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Battleground Minnesota

Battleground Minnesota

Minnesota hip-hop activist Shakademic takes a journey through the election campaign in his hotly con...

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The Mascot

The Mascot

The Mascot is the story of one man's struggle to discover his stolen identity. It traces the journey...

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The Man Who Stole My Mother’s Face

The Man Who Stole My Mother’s Face

Two days before Christmas in 1988, a woman was sexually assaulted and savagely beaten in her home by...

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Thirst

Thirst

Thirst is a documentary by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman that questions global water privatisation...

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Hurt

Hurt

Domestic violence in Australia is a horrifyingly widespread, but almost entirely hidden, phenomenon....

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An Evergreen Island

An Evergreen Island

In 1989 the landowners of Central Bougainville closed one of the world's largest copper mines that w...

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Vietnam Nurses

Vietnam Nurses

Arriving in Saigon amidst the stifling heat and the overwhelming US military presence, six young Aus...

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Refugees

Refugees

For Mike Siv, the trip begins innocently enough: "Me and my homies, David and Paul, we're going to C...

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Molly and Mobarak

Molly and Mobarak

Molly and Mobarak is the story of Mobarak Tahiri, a young Hazara refugee, who is living in the town ...

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Dying To Leave

Dying To Leave

"Dying to Leave" explores the current worldwide boom in illicit migration and human trafficking. Ev...

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Hurt

Hurt

HURT is a docu-drama like no other. 250 young Australians from rural areas and small towns have been...

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In The Company Of Actors

In The Company Of Actors

“From a rehearsal room in Sydney through to opening night in New York, a company of actors reveals t...

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Children Of The Crocodile

Children Of The Crocodile

Children of the Crocodile explores cultural identity, resistance and survival through the intimate s...

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Swim Across Australia

Swim Across Australia

This is a film about a group of ordinary Australians who come up with a crazy idea to swim across Au...

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Divorce Stories

Divorce Stories

Around 200,000 Australians marry every year. Over 43 per cent of these marriages will fail. This thr...

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The Fog Of War

The Fog Of War

The Fog of War is the story of America as seen through the eyes of the former Secretary of Defence, ...

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Nobody’s Children

Nobody’s Children

A documentary insight into the growing youth underclass in Australia - with a major focus on homeles...

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Lost Boys of Sudan

Lost Boys of Sudan

Lost Boys of Sudan is an Emmy-nominated feature-length documentary that follows two Sudanese refugee...

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Omar and Pete

Omar and Pete

Omar and Pete are determined to change their lives. Both have been in and out of prison for more tha...

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All About Olive

All About Olive

All About Olive is the story of Olive Riley going back to Broken Hill where she was born in 1899. Ol...

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It's Like That

It's Like That

“It’s like that” is a 7 minute animated documentary made by the Southern Ladies Animation Group (S.L...

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Welcome 2 My Deaf World

Welcome 2 My Deaf World

Bethany Rose and Scott Masterson are schoolmates, a couple of energetic and charming teenagers who s...

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4

4

In four corners of the world, in the four seasons, four brilliant violinists take us on one extraord...

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Cannibal Tours

Cannibal Tours

When tourists journey to the furthermost reaches of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, is it the i...

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Techno Tribal

Techno Tribal

In Vis à vis: TECHNO TRIBAL, two highly-committed individuals from different parts of the world take...

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Inheritance: A Fisherman’s Story

Inheritance: A Fisherman’s Story

In the year 2000, the Hungarian river Tisza is flooded with tons of cyanide from an Australian-Roman...

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Hatred

Hatred

HATRED is a wide ranging documentary that travels from Berlin to Harlem to the Middle East and Austr...

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My Country, My Country

My Country, My Country

Iraqis line up to cast their vote in the January 2005 elections. Inspired by a New Yorker article wr...

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Trafficked

Trafficked

Haunted by a decade-old case, a former police officer investigates how a young Thai girl was sold as...

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Chinese Take Away

Chinese Take Away

"CHINESE TAKE AWAY is a cinematic adaptation of an acclaimed physical theatre show that tells the st...

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Plumpton High Babies

Plumpton High Babies

Plumpton High, in Sydney’s outer western suburbs, is one of the few schools in Australia with a prog...

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Half Life

Half Life

This compelling and beautifully crafted film reveals the effects of United States nuclear testing on...

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Our Brother James

Our Brother James

James Dalmann killed himself in 1996. He was 20. In this very personal film, director Jessica Dougla...

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Silma's School

Silma's School

Facing the Music meets Erin Brockovich and The Castle in a moving, funny and suspenseful feature len...

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My Khmer Heart

My Khmer Heart

It is estimated that over half a million children were orphaned during the genocide committed by the...

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Muddy Waters: Life and Death on the Great Barrier Reef

Muddy Waters: Life and Death on the Great Barrier Reef

By 2010, forty per cent of the world’s coral reefs may be dead. By 2030, half of the Great Barrier R...

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Sculpture by the Sea : 10th Anniversary

Sculpture by the Sea : 10th Anniversary

SCULPTURE BY THE SEA (SXS) is a unique sculpture exhibition along the Bondi Beach to Tamarama coasta...

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Frank Hurley – the Man Who Made History

Frank Hurley – the Man Who Made History

One of the last great imperial adventurers, Frank Hurley captured some of the earliest images of the...

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A Well-Founded Fear

A Well-Founded Fear

The Australian Government sends back asylum seekers it doesn’t think are refugees. International law...

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Trembling Before G_d

Trembling Before G_d

Shot in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, London, Miami, and San Francisco, Trembling Before G_d exp...

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knot at home

knot at home

Narratives, songs, stories, vignettes of memory ; images from young people and their families from a...

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Crossing The Line

Crossing The Line

When two young, non-indigenous medical students go to work in a remote Aboriginal community, their p...

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Lets Get Real

Lets Get Real

Let’s Get Real explores the problem of bullying in middle schools in the US in a honest and thought-...

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Year Of The Dogs

Year Of The Dogs

A year in the life of the Footscray Bulldogs provides an extraordinary insight into the inner sanctu...

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Us Mob

Us Mob

Us Mob is a 7-part 'choose your own adventure' series set in the central desert of Australia.
...

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Political Football

Political Football

The story of six Wallabies, who after touring South Africa in 1969, realized that playing Internatio...

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Witch Hunt

Witch Hunt

Investigative documentary that exposes the corrupt foundations of the so-called ‘Greek Conspiracy’ d...

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A FIGHTING CHANCE

A FIGHTING CHANCE

Nermin Sabanovic is a strong willed man. At 42 years of age, his main goal in life is to win a world...

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Bomb Harvest

Bomb Harvest

Laos: Australian bomb disposal specialist Laith Stevens has to train a new young “big bomb” team to ...

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Freedom Machines

Freedom Machines

Freedom Machines demonstrates how assistive technology can change the lives of people with disabilit...

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Painting With Light In A Dark World

Painting With Light In A Dark World

For over a decade, street photographer Peter Darren Moyle has been trawling the depths of Sydney’s u...

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The Real Dirt on Farmer John

The Real Dirt on Farmer John

"The Real Dirt on Farmer John" is a personal documentary about John Peterson, a farmer, artist, and ...

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Child Soldiers

Child Soldiers

A telling global exposé of children who have become soldiers, who have been through the trauma of ch...

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Remembering Rain

Remembering Rain

In the face of the worst drought on record, rural Australians have gambled their dreams on the chanc...

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Music From The Inside Out

Music From The Inside Out

The intersection of art and life are at the core of MUSIC FROM THE INSIDE OUT™, Academy Award® nomin...

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Maria

Maria

Maria parallels life in Australia with the maelstrom of Czechoslovakia’s history. It links three gen...

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Farmingville

Farmingville

Farmingville is an 87 minute documentary by Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini about the complex ...

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The President Versus David Hicks

The President Versus David Hicks

In December, 2001, Australian David Hicks was picked up in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance and ...

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Fog Of War

Fog Of War

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary

It is the story of America as seen thro...

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The Broad Street History Project

The Broad Street History Project

The Broad Street History Project is a collection of documentaries made by middle and high school stu...

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Saving Andrew Mallard

Saving Andrew Mallard

SAVING ANDREW MALLARD is the story of a man allegedly betrayed by the West Australian justice system...

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Hope

Hope

Four hundred people were pitched into the sea when their people-smuggling boat from Indonesia sank i...

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Alone Across Australia

Alone Across Australia

On the 18th May 2001 Jon Muir and his dog, Seraphine, began an odyssey to cross Australia on foot, f...

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But We Are Strong

But We Are Strong

BUT WE ARE STRONG tells the stories of five young women who survived Sierra Leone’s civil war. This...

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Dhakiyarr vs the King

Dhakiyarr vs the King

The family of the great Yolngu leader Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda is searching for answers. Seventy years af...

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Buyer Be Fair: The Promise of Product Certification

Buyer Be Fair: The Promise of Product Certification

BUYER BE FAIR: THE PROMISE OF PRODUCT CERTIFICATION takes viewers to Mexico, the Netherlands, the UK...

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Raising Children

Raising Children

The Raising Children DVD is a comprehensive parenting resource, covering all the basics from birth t...

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The New Heroes

The New Heroes

The New Heroes, hosted by Robert Redford, is a four-hour PBS series that tells the stories of ‘socia...

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A Calcutta Christmas

A Calcutta Christmas

During India's celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of its independence, filmmaker Maree Delofski...

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Blue Vinyl

Blue Vinyl

Blue Vinyl follows filmmaker Judith Helfland as she sets off on a quest uncovering the toxic ramific...

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Born into Brothels

Born into Brothels

Amidst the apparent growing prosperity of India, there is a dark underbelly of poverty of another si...

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Tosca - A Tale of Love & Torture

Tosca - A Tale of Love & Torture

Mid-winter and money is tight at Opera Australia as rehearsals begin for Puccini’s perennial favouri...

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An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth

Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right...

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Waging a Living

Waging a Living

If you work hard, you get ahead. That's the American Dream in a nutshell — no matter what your race,...

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More Than Horseplay

More Than Horseplay

Précis: More Than Horseplay is straight from the horse’s mouth. Experts explore the benefits of hors...

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Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks

Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks sparked a revolution by sitting still.

Rosa Parks struck ...

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The Tenth Dancer

The Tenth Dancer

Under the brutal regime of Pol Pot over ninety percent of Cambodia’s artists were killed, including ...

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Chunky Move: Just Add Water

Chunky Move: Just Add Water

Chunky Move: Just Add Water examines the pressures and tensions in the lead up to the premiere of a ...

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The Civil War

The Civil War

The Civil War is an ambitious documentary series by Ken Burns that tells the story of the bloodiest ...

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Downside Up

Downside Up

Downside Up is about how MASS MoCA, America’s largest museum of contemporary art, has transformed Ma...

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Two In A Tinnie

Two In A Tinnie

Scientist Tim Flannery and satirist John Doyle embark on a quixotic journey down the Murray and Darl...

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Losing Layla

Losing Layla

LOSING LAYLA is a video diary documentary that bears witness to a loss that has often been unrecogni...

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Legacy

Legacy

This documentary follows one family, living in one of the oldest and most dangerous public housing p...

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River Of Dreams

River Of Dreams

RIVER OF DREAMS explores the radically divergent approaches to ‘country’ between Indigenous and non-...

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No Limits (series)

No Limits (series)

No Limits is a community television show that looks at living life to the fullest with a disability....

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Telling The Truth

Telling The Truth

In November 2006, former US vice president Al Gore traveled to Australia with an explicit purpose, t...

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Johnny Warren’s Football Mission

Johnny Warren’s Football Mission

For half a century Johnny Warren was synonymous with soccer in Australia. His often lonely mission ...

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> THE DOCUMENTARY AUSTRALIA FOUNDATION

Find guidelines and application forms to make or receive a grant, plus a list of documentaries on our Approved List for philanthropic support.

> KEY CASE STUDIES

A selection of documentaries that have been funded partly or entirely by private funding. They offer a model of potential collaborations around shared issues and themes.
View key case studies.

> PHILANTHROPY AUSTRALIA

The national body for Australian philanthropic trusts and foundations offers a comprehensive directory with links, networking opportunities, services and information to promote philanthropy.
www.philanthropy.org.au