7:00 - GUERILLAS IN AUSTRALIA: THE CAMERA AS WEAPON
(1968-71) c.130 mins

This compilation program chronicles one of the most vital moments in the history of Australian radical filmmaking – when students, artists, animators & cinephiles took their cameras to the streets to document the seething dissatisfaction with Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. It includes the collective film Or Forever Hold Your Peace (1970) 58 mins, the first film to be funded by the Experimental Film Fund (to be introduced by Richard Brennan); an animation by celebrated Australian cartoonist Peter Nicholson, Your Country Needs You (1970) 5 mins; & the truly seminal Beginnings Scott Murray, Andrew Pecze, Rod Bishop & Gordon Glenn (1970) 58 mins, filmed largely at La Trobe University during the 1970 anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.

Prints courtesy of NFSA.

9:30 - THE 17TH PARALLEL: THE PEOPLE’S WAR
Joris Ivens & Marceline Loridan (1968) 113 mins

Shot over two months in the area that marked the divide between North & South Vietnam, this distressing and powerful film documents the lives of the people living under relentless US bombing raids. Ivens & Loridan lived amongst the community whilst filming & thus bring an urgency & frank intimacy to their film which, alongside the denouncement of American “bandits”, is saturated with the sounds of exploding arsenal & cries of terror.

Print courtesy of NFSA.