Documentary Australia Foundation

Simone Young AM has earned many accolades across her dazzling 30-year music career. All have been hard won. Knowing the Score gets up-close and personal with Simone in an engaging, luscious music documentary revealing two key themes; the long struggle for gender parity in the high art of classical music and the heart breaking struggle for artists to be valued in times of crisis, or sometimes even at all. Though one of the world’s great contemporary conductors, Simone’s work continues to be viewed through a gender lens. Simone is the first woman to be appointed Chief Conductor of The Sydney Symphony Orchestra in all its 90-year history, a post she takes up in 2022.

Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen's plans to create an epic work depicting his homeland's tumultuous recent history.

This remarkable documentary tells the story of Professor Jenny Hocking, the historian who took on the Australian Government and HM Queen Elizabeth II in a landmark legal battle - and won.

An examination of the connection between relentless government intervention since colonisation to the trauma and disadvantage experiences by Indigenous Australians - the two key drivers of incarceration.

Western Australia's iconic black cockatoos are in crisis. Their numbers have fallen dramatically over the past few decades and all three species in the south west of WA could become extinct in just 20 years unless something is done to protect their habitats. With the loss of the banksia woodlands on the Swan Coastal Plain to housing, Carnaby's Black Cockatoos have come to depend on the once vast exotic pine plantations on Perth's northern fringe.

Contemporary artist Trevor Paglen is known for his political and mind-blowing art pieces on global mass surveillance, data collection, and artificial intelligence. This visually stunning and immersive film follows Paglen as he travels through the desolate Nevada desert while discussing the motivation for his latest and most audacious project: launching a satellite into orbit. Stunning cinematography, trippy computer graphics, and a percussive score imbue this compelling documentary with an ethereal tone that perfectly captures the provocative and breathtaking beauty of Paglen’s work.

The extraordinary story of the Melbourne community campaign that put a stop to the $18billion East Wast toll road link.

‘memory film: a filmmaker’s diary’ is an immersive poetic documentary based on Jeni Thornley’s Super8 archive (1974-2003) filmed during the decades of her political and personal filmmaking, while producing ‘Maidens’, ‘To the Other Shore’, ‘Island Home Country’ and the collaborative feature ‘For Love or Money’. Documenting the activism of three decades amidst the intense sexual politics of radical feminism and social change, ‘memory film’ tells the inner story of a journey of liberation – gender fluidity, utopian feminism, love and its tribulations, the pleasure and pain of motherhood, violence against women, the desire for a world free of war and colonizing, and ultimately mortality and impermanence.

An upbeat, witty, and timely exploration of a global community of artists creating innovative work in their quest to rediscover and revitalise the endangered Yiddish language. From behind-the-scenes with an acclaimed Yiddish-language version of Yentl in Melbourne, to enjoyably transgressive punk-Klezmer musicians, and Barrie Kosky’s latest trailblazing production in Berlin – the endangered Yiddish language is alive and well in this rousing documentary. The language originated amongst the Jewish community in Eastern Europe, but almost disappeared when more than half of the world’s Yiddish speakers were murdered during the Holocaust. Most of the artists and performers (aka Yiddishists) in the film didn’t grow up speaking Yiddish, but all have found solace, identity, and inspiration in its rich traditions and culture. Ros Horin has mapped a fascinating cultural history.