Dennis O'Rourke

"First Contact" is a 1983 documentary by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson which recounts the discovery of a flourishing native population in the interior highlands of New Guinea in 1930 in what had been thought to be an uninhabited area. It is based on the book of the same name by the same authors. Inhabitants of the region and surviving members of the Leahy brothers' gold prospecting party recount their astonishment at this unforeseen meeting. The film includes still photographs taken by a member of the expedition and contemporary footage of the island's terrain. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Cunnamulla, 800 kilometres west of Brisbane, is the end of the railway line. In the months leading up to a scorching Christmas in the bush, there's a lot more going on than the annual lizard race. Here, Aboriginal and white Australians live together but apart. Creativity struggles against indifference, eccentricity against conformity.

Dennis O’Rourke’s documentary investigates the 1954 Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test in the Marshall Islands and its long-term consequences. Combining declassified U.S. military footage, archival material, and interviews with Marshallese islanders and American servicemen, the film recounts how radioactive fallout affected residents of Rongelap and Utirik Atolls and explores the political and scientific context of Cold War nuclear testing.

A companion to Yumi yet, O’Rourke and Kildea’s Ileksen (derived from the English 'election’) documents Papua New Guinea’s first general election in 1977. The film records a broad cross-section of candidates who, without an extended media network at their disposal, rely on relentless campaigning, ingenuity and personal charisma to attract votes. Emphasising the divide between coastal people and highlanders, Ileksen looks at the election campaign, election day and the political manouvering that goes with the formation of a government.

ANGELS OF WAR captures the experiences of villagers who lived through the Papua New Guinea campaign. Caught up in a war they could not understand or influence, they had no choice but to obey whoever held the gun. Their homes were bombed. They starved as refugees in the bush. They were conscripted as carriers. They fought as infantrymen and guerillas. In Japanese-held areas, they were forced to collaborate or risk execution; some were later hanged for treason by the Australians.

Reveals how Australia's first people are still suffering from social oppression, with many living on reservations where alcoholism is rampant and unemployment the major occupation. Aboriginal land rights are a central theme: Miller clearly demonstrates the contrast between the attitudes of European Australians, who see the land only as a resource to be mined, farmed, grazed and built upon, and Aboriginal Australians, who regard the land as sacred. Archival footage compares the original lifestyle of Aboriginal Australians to their current pitiful condition, and shows how European settlers attempted to "civilise" mixed blood children by taking them away from their parents and enrolling them in boarding schools.

The film follows a number of European and American ecotourists as they travel from village to village throughout the Sepik River area in Papua New Guinea, driving hard bargains for local handcrafted items, paying to view formerly sacred ceremonies and taking photographs of every aspect of "primitive" life. With some prodding, the tourists unwittingly reveal an unattractive and pervasive ethnocentrism to O'Rourke's cameras. The tourists thus become somewhat dehumanized by the camera, even as the tourists themselves are busy exoticizing even the most mundane aspects of Sepik River life.

The people of the Bikini Atoll were removed from their homelands as a result of American testing of nuclear bombs in the Pacific. They now live on another island, dependent on American food and support. They can never go back to Bikini Atoll because it is poisoned beyond the possibility of habitation. This film is a poignant, impressive study of a people whose culture has been vanquished.