‘A road movie in a frock’ is one way this much acclaimed, award-winning movie has been described.

Three showgirls with a difference set off in a bus across the Australian desert to play a cabaret engagement in Alice Springs. As they cut a swathe of satin and tulle across the country, there are chance encounters, some disappointments, a surprise revelation and much hilarity.

'... a wickedly engaging non-linear analysis of the film that pulses with odd juxtapositions and unexpected associations connecting up disparate elements into a 'map' of the film and the culture it conjures and from which it has grown'
Keith Gallasch, Real Time No.85, June-July 2008
To read the full review, click here.


The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is the seventh title in Currency's Australian Screen Classics Series.

For background information and an extract from the introduction to Priscilla, visit Philip Brophy's website: www.philipbrophy.com

You might also be interested in Al Clark's production memoir The Lavender Bus: How a Hit Movie was Made and Sold. For more information, click here.

‘A wonderful read: I feel like I've been excavated and carbon dated.’ Graeme Blundell

One of the seminal films of the 1970s, Alvin Purple depicts Alvin’s struggles with his irresistibility to women—from his school days and time as a waterbed salesman to his short-lived career as a sex therapist. The ‘definitive ocker comedy’, Alvin Purple survived a critical mauling and went on to become the most commercially successful Australian film of the 1970s.

Catharine Lumby takes a fresh look at the film, the social and political era in which it was made and the forces that fuelled its success. She revisits claims that the movie is little more than an exercise in sexploitation and argues that the film is far more complex than its detractors have allowed.

Interviews and reviews:
To read our author interview with Catharine Lumby, click here.

An extract of Catharine Lumby's critique has been published in the Australian. To read, click here.

To read Philip O'Brien's article for the Canberra Times, click here.

Lally Black is a psychiatrist who struggles to keep the lid on her doubts about her own funds of compassion. Yu Siying is a Chinese woman who has caught HIV in Australia. Afraid of China's judgement, Siying has one last chance to claim asylum, and believes Lally is the key to her appeal. Lally finds herself enticed into an imagined China, unfolding in the gulf between herself and Siying, causing her to acknowledge the threads that run between complacency and brutality.

Inspired by real-life events, Australian Marriage Act tells the story of sixteen-year-old Victoria seeking permission to marry her 22-year-old fiancé Rod. When she is refused permission from both her parents and the courts, she takes her case to the Supreme Court. In the course of the hearing, the couple discover they are pregnant and—to secure their future—they buy into several media contracts.

Australian Marriage Act is a frank, humorous and moving account of a young couple’s fight for love. Exploring sexual relationships and the age of consent, personal identity, discrimination, privacy and the law, Australian Marriage Act is bold, original and raw theatre.

An epic chronicle of the refugee experience, Beautiful Words weaves together three very different stories of survival, told through the eyes of three children in different times and places. The outcome is heart-rending, humorous, and surprising by turns. From the horrors of Auschwitz Concentration Camp in the final days of World War II, to Taliban-ruled Kabul, to present day Australia, this enthralling play presents a rich tapestry of human experience, overlapping lives, and the bonds that unite generations.

Over three hours, with some 20 characters, Beautiful Words tells an engaging story with poignant comedy and unashamed feeling.

A story of adventure, ball control and hope.

Jamal and Bibi have a dream. To lead Australia to soccer glory in the next World Cup. But first they must face landmines, pirates, storms and assassins. Can Jamal and his family survive their incredible journey and get to Australia?

Adapted for the stage by Patricia Cornelius from Morris Gleitzman's best-selling novel, Boy Overboard depicts a deeply human side of the 'asylum seekers' issue by following the journey of Jamal and Bibi from Afghanistan to Australia. Based on real life events, this is a moving play about young people overcoming the confusion of war, politics and the search for a safe haven.

Morris Gleitzman’s excellent unsparing novel for young adults in an accurate, theatrically imaginative and robust staging adaptation by Patricia Cornelius, deals with both the money grubbing and perilous mechanics of a refugee journey and the eternal hunger of hope. Stephen Dunne, Sydney Morning Herald

Set in central-western New South Wales in the 1890s, Fred Schepisi’s film of Thomas Keneally’s award-winning novel is a powerful and confronting story of a black man’s revenge against an unjust and intolerant society. 

Raised by missionaries, Jimmie Blacksmith, a young half-caste Aboriginal man, is poignantly caught between the ways of his black forefathers and those of the white society to which he aspires. Exploited by his boss and betrayed by his [white] wife, he declares war on his white employers and goes on a violent killing spree.

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith was one of the most significant films of the 1970s ‘renaissance’. It was the first Australian feature in which the whole story is told from an Aboriginal perspective and it broke new ground in dealing with one of the most tragic aspects of Australian history: the racist treatment of the Aboriginal population. The spectre of the violent and vengeful black had barely been touched upon and the depth of rage that the film put on screen was unprecedented in Australian film at the time.

To read an extract of Henry Reynolds' critique as published in The Australian, click here.

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is the eighth title in our Australian Screen Classics series. To have a look at the series, click here.

Photographer-storyteller William Yang returns to a motherland he never knew - the Australian-born Chinese a stranger in his homeland

Yang takes his audiences from the streets of Beijing, where electronics superstores jostle with echoes of the Cultural Revolution and the Ming Dynasty, to the sacred mountain Huang Shan, a must-climb for every Chinese pilgrim-tourist; from a wild night in a Mongolian herdsman’s hut, to the apartments of ordinary Chinese, a few months after the Tiananmen Square incident.

Part social documentary, part personal observation, China creates a meditative space, a journey of reflection on the meaning of culture and belonging, for performer and audience alike.

‘Yang's China offers fascinating insights and paradoxes… China is a polished, wryly observed and typically low-key monologue’  Bryce Hallet, SMH