Facing the Music

Every September Sydney's inner-suburban Leichhardt Council re-elects it mayor. Incumbent Larry Hand was popular with the citizenry but they don't vote for mayor - the 12 councillors do - and after three years of Larry, at least four councillors were after his job. When film-makers Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson settled in at Leichhardt Council in early 1994 the knives were already being sharpened. A battle royal was in the making, and so it came to pass. By the end of September Larry had fought the fight of his life, with Connolly and Anderson documenting every bit of it on film. Ambition, courage, envy, hatred, loyalty, betrayal, disaster, triumph... in other words, a classic study in politics.

Joe Leahy and his complicated relationship with the Guniga people in the Papua New Guinea highlands.

Joe Leahy is the half-caste son of one of the first explorers of the Papua New Guinean interior. The documentary explores his relationship with the tribes that work his coffee plantation and explores what happens when the coffee market situation becomes more difficult.

"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.

Follows amateur botanist Antonius Moscal's raft journey down the Franklin River (Tasmania, Australia).