
Cyclone Tracy 40 years on, exploring the myths and revealing new perspectives on one of the worst natural disasters in Australia's history.

Cyclone Tracy 40 years on, exploring the myths and revealing new perspectives on one of the worst natural disasters in Australia's history.
2014-12-23
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Cyclone Tracy: The Storm That Stole Christmas
5.0The TNO (Unorganized Territory) Lac-Boisbouscache is a 150 square kilometer public forest located in the Lower St. Lawrence region of Quebec, Canada. Through the eyes of the forest's residents and users, the film paints a portrait of a territory that has long been coveted by private groups with diverse interests. Boisbouscache is a story of dispossession based on current commercial uses combined with the absence of any political will.
0.0About Aborigines and Australian politics. On 13 March 1978 the Queensland Government announced its intention to take over management of the Aurukun Aboriginal Reserve from the Uniting Church. The people of Aurukun complained bitterly, believing that the Church was more sympathetic to their aims and fearing that the State was merely seeking easier access to the rich bauxite deposits on their Reserve. When the Federal Government took the side of the Aborigines the stage was set for national confrontation. Shows the situation at Aurukun during those crucial three weeks.
0.0A moving portrait of actress Tantoo Cardinal, travelling through time and across the many roles she’s played, capturing her strength and her impact—and how she shattered the glass ceiling and survived.
0.0As locals are gearing up for Christmas festivities, a devastating cyclone is brewing in the Arafura Sea. Feeling dragged down by sleepy domestic day-to-day life, Morris dreams of a life elsewhere filled with adventure. Meanwhile, Gregory, a meteorologist of the Darwin Weather Bureau, is content with his steady-paced lifestyle. Both, along with their loved ones, have their worlds turned upside down when Tracy rears her head and devastates the city on Christmas Day. The film culminates with individuals collectively triumphing over tragedy in the face of one of nature's most formidable forces.
0.0This documentary focuses on the goose hunt, a ritual of central importance to the Cree people of the James Bay coastal areas. Not only a source of food, the hunt is also used to transfer Cree culture, skills, and ethics to future generations. Filmmaker Paul M. Rickard invites us along with his own family on a fall goose hunt, so that we can share in the experience.
6.5Francois the Tree Man is far from his wife and three small children in Quebec, selling Christmas trees and living in a van on the streets of New York City. He does it for them. But this is home, too. Like the hundreds of Christmas tree sellers who descend upon the city from Canada, New England and even Europe, Francois delivers the magic of the season over a grueling month in his adopted neighborhood. He's a star, a storyteller, a Santa Claus in a sap-stained coat, a confidant, a friend, and a father figure to the local characters who are his New York family. They also need him. TREE MAN is the story of Francois's journey, how he arrived here, what holds him, and the conflict that will cause him to leave. As one of Francois' long-time customers says: "This has nothing to do with the trees anymore."
7.4France, 1914, during World War I. On Christmas Eve, an extraordinary event takes place in the bloody no man's land that the French and the Scots dispute with the Germans…
Taping at the iconic Joe’s Pub inside the historic Public Theater in downtown Manhattan, Joe’s Pub Presents: A Holiday Special will feature a variety of holiday themed performances from acclaimed comics, singers and actors including Bridget Everett, Jo Firestone, Jen Kirkman, Nick Thune and many more. Funk and soul group THE DAP-KINGS will serve as the house band for the evening.
6.5A look behind the scenes as the world's most profitable toy maker opens its biggest ever Lego store, in London. Designer Justin's first ever kit finally hits the shelves, and Lego pro Duncan prepares to make the largest model ever - a replica of Tower Bridge.
0.0First Nations fight to end grizzly bear trophy hunting in the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia. The Heiltsuk, Kitasoo Xai'xais and Gitga'at First Nations enforce a ban by using Coastal Guardian Watchmen, while the Raincoast Conservation Foundation purchases trophy hunting licenses in the area to prevent a hunt from taking place. The film offers unique access to Canada's First Nations and a breathtaking view of the majestic animals inhabiting the Great Bear Rainforest, including the elusive Spirit Bear.
6.5In 1944 France, an American Intelligence Squad locates a German Platoon wishing to surrender rather than die in Germany's final war offensive. The two groups of men, isolated from the war at present, put aside their differences and spend Christmas together before the surrender plan turns bad and both sides are forced to fight the other.
7.4Henry II and his estranged queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, battle over the choice of an heir.
0.0Legendary Canadian documentarian Alanis Obomsawin digs into the tangled history of Treaty 9 — the infamous 1905 agreement wherein First Nations communities relinquished sovereignty over their traditional territories — to reveal the deceptions and distortions which the document has been subjected to by successive governments seeking to deprive Canada’s First Peoples of their lands.
0.0Discover the endless highway in British Columbia where over 40 indigenous women and girls (by unofficial estimates) have disappeared since the 1970s.
6.2In the city that never sleeps, five families hustle each winter to turn sidewalks into holiday outposts.
0.0In the 50 years since he carved his first totem pole, Robert Davidson has come to be regarded as one of the world’s foremost modern artists. Charles Wilkinson (Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World) brings his trademark inquisitiveness and craftsmanship to this revealing portrait of an unassuming living legend. Weaving together engaging interviews with the artist, his offspring, and a host of admirers, Haida Modern extols the sweeping impact of both Davidson’s artwork and the legions it’s inspired.
0.0Simon Russell Beale takes a journey through Italy, Britain, Germany and Austria as he explores how the sound of Christmas has evolved in response to changing ideas about the Nativity. His story takes us through two millennia of music, from a fragment of papyrus preserving the earliest known piece of Christian music to the stories behind Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Silent Night and In the Bleak Midwinter, and the work of popular Christmas composer, John Rutter. Music is performed by Harry Christophers and his choir, The Sixteen.
6.9In 1843, despite the fact that Dickens is a successful writer, the failure of his latest book puts his career at a crossroads, until the moment when, struggling with inspiration and confronting reality with his childhood memories, a new character is born in the depths of his troubled mind; an old, lonely, embittered man, so vivid, so human, that a whole world grows around him, a story so inspiring that changed the meaning of Christmas forever.
3.0Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.
6.5Leipzig, December 1734: Christmas brings the Bach family together. The first snow has fallen and the children Gottfried and Elisabeth are delighted about the arrival of their older brothers Friedemann and Emanuel. The Thomaskantor has retired to his music room. Anna Magdalena supports her husband, as there are only a few days left and his latest work, the six-part "Christmas Oratorio", must be finished on time. It is awaited with suspicion by the city council and the gentlemen of the consistory, who have long found Bach's waywardness a thorn in their side and fear that, after the premiere of the St. Matthew Passion a few years earlier, the St. Thomas Church will once again be filled with "operatic" music. With the oratorio, Johann Sebastian Bach hopes that he will finally become court composer in Dresden. And, as always, he demands that all members of the family join forces to help him. But differences of opinion are increasingly delaying the completion of Bach's most famous work.