James Manché

In the early 1970s, a theatre collective - the Australian Performing Group - based itself in a building called the Pram Factory, now synonymous with the people and events that laid the groundwork for a renaissance in Australian culture. The Pram was a ‘scene’, a 24-hour happening, a radical alternative to the mainstream. Those who lived and worked at the Pram expected the world to come to them - and for a while it did. (The building was eventually demolished to make way for a supermarket.)

The Singer and the Swinger tells us as much about Australia's relationship to American pop culture as it does about Johnny O'Keefe's to Lee Gordon. Two different men brought together during the years 1953-63.

He's a mild mannered accountant from out of town; She's an extraterrestrial from the planet Ultra Terra; They're three very 'evil', 'wicked' and 'nasty' characters from out of the past behind the wheel of '59 Chevrolet in hot pursuit... Filmmaker Brendan Young, re-works, remasters and 'reduxes' his 1989 short sci-fi comedy chase film 'Wild Planet' and propels the eccentric genre-mash up into the 21st century for a whole new lease of life.

Sixteen-year-old Mars wants more from her life than just a fistful of flies which, to her, is a fistful of nothing. Stifled and dominated by her family, Mars just wants to be free. Denied relationships with the people who truly understand her, Mars battles her family on her own, and in her quest to be treated as a grown-up she gives her mother the courage to act and forces her father to make the choice of his life. A story about how a young girl finally finds the courage to have faith in herself.

Short animation by Wendy Chandler.

A documentary film with some acted sequences sprinkled throughout, The Butler is about the special bond between the director and her brother Nino, in Melbourne, Australia. Kannava, re-establishing her life after developing a chronic health condition (scleroderma) at the age of 30, is assisted by her brother to live her life, and she in turns provide company and support to him, as he attempts to alleviate his loneliness.

Two complete strangers, Lola and Chelsea, intervene in a fatal carjacking while waiting at a suburban bus stop, and are subsequently thrust into a chase from authorities across Australia with a vehicle filled with cash. The strangers must rely solely on each other while on the run.

When thirty-year-old Miki Anderson returns to her home town in rural Victoria after fifteen years in prison, she wants nothing more than to put her life back together. To figure out who she is on the outside. But her presence dredges up long-held secrets from the past and Miki realizes everything she thought she knew was wrong. And it is far from over.