Hugh Lunn was Reuter’s Indonesian correspondent in 1969. He refused to leave West Papua despite orders from the London Head Office and stayed to report on the UN Act of Free Choice – a referendum which would decide the fate of 800,000 West Papuans. The Act of No Choice is based on present day interviews […]
A filmmaker’s critique of the American penchant for Empire. Australian filmmaker David Bradbury has been coming and going to the United States for the last forty years. A one-man band political activist who always travels with his camera, the twice Academy Award nominated Bradbury was easily able to slip into gear and start filming in […]
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From the festive New Years Evening in Byron to the controversial rock wall on millionaires’ row at Belongil beach. The weird and colourful…the everyday stuff that makes Byron shire unique. From the vibrant – the first Women’s Festival in Mullum; the exotic – the Mayan equinox rituals at Island Quarry. The outrageously funny – Mandy Nolan (when she […]
The mattock smote the side of the Tiger attack helicopter. Thud! After pedalling across the airport tarmac on a red tricycle, Bryan Law in his signature ten gallon hat and business suit had executed his mission. Seconds later, he was surrounded by military troops and security guards. This was not the action of a crazed […]
Brian Cleaver, a National Serviceman conscript whose number came out of the lottery barrel was sent to Vietnam to serve his country. His experiences there would change the course of his entire life. Through the vehicle of Brian’s continuing quest to lay the ghosts of his past – and atone for some of the horrors […]
On Borrowed Time – a documentary by filmmaker David Bradbury about veteran Australian filmmaker Paul Cox. In early 2009, Paul was diagnosed with liver cancer and given six months to live. Bradbury picked up his story in mid 2009. Paul had little chance to live given Australia’s poor track record for organ donation and Paul’s rare […]
An account of the Vietnam war as seen through the camera of Australian journalist Neil Davis. Vietnam was a television war, a war said to have been lost in the lounge rooms of middle America and not on the battlefield. A multi-award winner (including an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary) the film examines the […]
Traversing five countries China, France, UK, Japan and Australia, A Hard Rain exposes the hidden agendas behind the latest push for Australia to go nuclear and presents a compelling and frightening argument against allowing this to happen. This is a documentary that had to be made! Twice Academy award nominee and five times AFI winner […]
A film that expresses the passionate vitality of the Cuban people and their willingness to embrace life and “get on with it” despite the challenges facing the island nation. Jim Mitsos is an 86 year old millionaire socialist who has not lost ‘the faith’, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union. He still believes that […]
For most of his working life, controversial Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett chose to report from the “other side”. His unorthodox views and activities caused him to be labelled a traitor by many. Burchett was the first Western journalist to report on the devastating after effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He believed that […]
A portrait of Raul Castells, a modern day Argentinian Robin Hood. This is a warts-and-all portrait of a man driven to change the world and a frightening insight into the politics of poverty. Raul Castells was born in the city of Rosario, birthplace of the legendary Che Guevara. He is a walking, talking, pushing, barging […]
A deeply disturbing film about the use and effects of DU munitions in wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, and how this danger is now coming to our backyard. Blowin’ in the Wind examines the secret treaty that allows the US military to train and test its weaponry on Australian soil. It looks at the impact […]
Finished in 1997, a gutsy cinema verite look at the battle in the frontlines of the forests of northern NSW between the loggers and so-called ‘feral’ environmentalists. A very personal film because it started when Bradbury woke up to find the serenity and peace he sought, living on the edge of a rainforest in northern […]
Bradbury produced, filmed and co-directed with Richard Mordaunt was about the Byron Shire community coming together to halt inappropriate development. It tracked the struggle over four years of the community to stop developers, including Club Med, making Byron shire into another Gold Coast. This film tells the story of how an impassioned community committed to […]
Bradbury combines his film making talents with long-time university friend and environmental activist, Peter Garrett. Aired nationally on the commercial Seven network, it was instrumental in stopping sandmining going ahead in the largest area of untouched wilderness on the East coast of Australia south of Cape York. Shoalwater: Up for Grabs (1992) saw Bradbury combine […]
The documentary follows Dr John Wamsley’s attempt to acquire a parcel of land in the Grose Valley NSW for use as a wildlife sanctuary. A wealthy man in his sixties with a PhD in mathematics, Wamsley is taking on the conservation establishment. Underneath his famous feral cat hat, Dr John Wamsley is a man with […]
The struggle of the Mirrar people against the Jabiluka Uranium mine. “Jabiluka is about us, blackfellas, whitefellas together…and our belief in the future of our nation.” In 1997, Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) pushed to open a new uranium mine surrounded by the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park. The traditional Aboriginal owners told the […]
The 1981 murder trial of Alwyn Peter made Australian legal history when his defence lawyer successfully argued that charges of murder and manslaughter were inappropriate for dispossessed, semi-tribal Aborigines. In December 1979 at the Weipa Aboriginal Reserve on Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula, Alwyn Peter killed his girlfriend Deidre Gilbert. She was 19. He was 22. […]
David Bradbury’s documentary examines how the political and economic struggle in Central America is expressed through the music of the people south of the border, from Mexico to Managua. The United States has always liked to call the shots South of the Border. In Central America where the press is censored, the radio and TV gagged, […]
A portrait of a brutal military dictatorship made during a three month visit to Chile in 1985 by David Bradbury. This powerful documentary traces the 12 years from 1973 to 1985 of General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship and whose forces seized power in a bloody, US-backed coup. Marxist president Salvador Allende was left for dead and […]
In 1979 the revolutionary Sandinista movement came to government after 43 years of organised resistance and the death of 50,000 Nicaraguans. They inherited a country bankrupt and with a foreign debt of US$1.5 billion. Through the central figure of leading Sandinista Tomas Borge, David Bradbury examines the past, present and future of this small Central American […]
An expose of Japanese attempts to buy the vote of small countries in the Caribbean and South Pacific to block a proposal for a sanctuary for whales in the Antarctic. Presented by Olivia Newton John, it was shown nationally by the Nine network in Australia and sold to Discovery and PBS in the USA, England, […]
Filmmaker David Bradbury follows Australian photojournalist Philip Blenkinsop, who goes to extremes to expose human rights abuses and forgotten wars in south-east Asia. During the heyday of classical magazine photojournalism in the l970s, Cornell Capa of Magnum Photo agency coined the phrase concerned photographer to mean “a photographer who is passionately dedicated to doing work […]
Founding editor of the independent Byron Shire newspaper The Echo who with mirth great insight opposed rampant development before his tragic death in 1996.