Is There Anything to Celebrate in 1988?–(1985) - 60 minutes - Producer, Pat Kavanagh - Music, No Fixed Address - VHS
This is a television forum from 1985 chaired by Michael Mansell in which the question is asked whether or not the Bicentennial Celebrations are appropriate for Aboriginal people. The forum participants raise a number of issues relating to Aboriginal land rights, health and cultural survival. Some of the participants propose that the Bicentennial should be used as an opportunity for educating rather than celebrating.
Among the major speakers are Gary Foley, Naomi Mayers, Rob Riley, Jo Willmot, Bob Weatherall, Kath Walker and Pat Dodson. Also includes interviews with tribal and urban groups from around Australia.
As we watch this document, made in anticipation of 1988, we can perhaps ask what has and has not changed since that time in the way we observe Invasion Day/Australia Day.
Strangers in Paradise – A Documentary Satire – (1989) – 54 minutes - Producers, directors, Gil Scrine, Tom Zubrycki - VHS
Experience the wonder down under: Australia, one of the most exciting, unspoilt and undiscovered destinations left on earth.
Strangers in Paradise follows a group of North American and British tourists on a ten-day tour of Australia to find out what the tourists think and if the brochures really deliver. They arrive in the midst of the Bicentennial celebrations and are swept along in the alcoholic tide of white Australia's 200th birthday. Shocked by the Aboriginal protests, they beat a hasty retreat to their international hotel and the familiar diet of souvenir shops, flora and fauna.
The tourists provide an enthusiastic but captive audience to series of vignettes presenting the richness of Aussie culture — the typical sheep station, the War Memorial, koala spotting, the Vegemite song — all delivered with aggressive hospitality by their Australian tour guides.
In central Australia, the tourists visit a 'typical' Aboriginal camp, and here the careful stage management fails. This is not what the tourists expected. Behind this version of the noble savage, they see only sadness and injustice.
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