197 Films & TV Shows Set In Oceania During The 20th Century
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The Riddle of the Stinson
Queensland The 1930sIn 1937, a routine passenger and mail flight crashes during bad weather on a flight between Brisbane and Sydney. A local bushman begins a search, and finds the wreckage and two survivors ten days after the crash.
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The Year My Voice Broke
New South Wales The 1960sIt was incredible. It was the year that changed everything. Forever. — Set in 1962, a young prepubescent boy in rural Australia watches painfully as his best friend and first love blossoms into womanhood and falls for a thuggish rugby player, changing the lives of everyone involved.
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The Umbrella Woman
🇦🇺 Australia The 1930sIn pre-WWII Australia, a love triangle develops between a man, his wife and the man's brother.
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Ngati
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1940sSet in and around the fictional town of Kapua in 1948, Ngati is the story of a Māori community. The film comprises three narrative threads: a boy, Ropata, is dying of leukaemia; the return of a young Australian doctor, Greg, and his discovery that he has Māori heritage; and the fight to keep the local freezing works open.
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Australian Made: The Movie
🇦🇺 Australia The 1980sAustralian Made: The Movie is a 1987 live concert film of the Australian Made tour from December 1986 to January 1987. The tour featured internationally performing Australian acts, INXS, Divinyls, Models, The Triffids, The Saints, I'm Talking, and Jimmy Barnes. Concert segments were linked by Troy Davies interviewing audience members and musicians.
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The Shiralee
South Australia The 1940sA Four-foot, Blonde Nuisance...A Drifter Dad...A Love Story — Macauley is a swagman on the road in the 1940s looking for work. He's a laid back, laconic sort of bloke but when he gets landed with his daughter after his drunken play-girl wife in Adelaide makes him face up to what she believes are his responsibilities, neither he nor his daughter are ready for each other. But in the beginning he's all she's got, and at the end, she's all he's got. —David Kinne
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Crocodile Dundee
Northern Territory New York The 1980sThere's a little of him in all of us. — When a New York reporter plucks crocodile hunter Dundee from the Australian Outback for a visit to the Big Apple, it's a clash of cultures and a recipe for good-natured comedy as naïve Dundee negotiates the concrete jungle. Dundee proves that his instincts are quite useful in the city and adeptly handles everything from wily muggers to high-society snoots without breaking a sweat.
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Playing Beatie Bow
New South Wales The 1980s The 1870sAbigail Kirk was an ordinary enough sixteen year old growing up in todays Sydney. An intriguing chain of events finds Abigail, through some eerie time shift, transported back one hundred years after watching some children playing a scary game called Beatie Bow.
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Dogs in Space
Victoria The 1970sThe place is Melbourne, Australia 1978. The punk phenomenon is sweeping the country and Dogs In Space, a punk group, are part of it. In a squat, in a dodgy suburb, live a ragtag collection of outcasts and don't-wanna-be's who survive on a diet of old TV space films, drugs and good music. And the satellite SKYLAB could crash through their roof at any moment...
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Dead End Drive-In
🇦🇺 Australia The 1990sThere's a party every day, a movie every night, and all the junk food you can eat. What more can a kid want... except to get out. — In the near future, drive-in theatres are turned into concentration camps for the undesirable and unemployed. The prisoners don't really care to escape because they are fed and they have a place to live which is, in most cases, probably better than the outside. Crabs and his girlfriend Carmen are put into the camp and all Crabs wants to do is escape.
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For Love Alone
New South Wales England The 1930sTeresa is a spirited young girl chafing under the oppressive attitudes of 1930s society, and her father in particular. She fancies her poverty-stricken Latin tutor Johnathan Crow, without realising he merely considers her a pleasant diversion and nothing more, and eventually follows him from Sydney to London. En route she meets the gentle banker James Quick. Whilst navigating her relationships in London, including with a political poet bound for the Spanish Civil War, she experiences a transformation in her understanding of love. Based upon Christina Stead's best-selling Australian novel.
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Pallet on the Floor
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1960sOne of Those Blighters. — A murderous black comedy set in the 1960s. Sam (McCauley) and his small band of hard-drinking and eccentric friends are having a night of it when a drunk truck driver, Jack (Bach), attacks Sam's Maori wife Sue (O'Brien). In the struggle, Sam and friends end up killing Jack. None of them regrets this, but it has been observed by Miriam (Gruar) who decides to blackmail Sam. Jack's brother Joe (Napier) comes looking for revenge and ends up being killed by Basil (Spence). Their jobs at the freezer works are terminated, and Basil has his own idea about how to get out of their troubles.
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Came a Hot Friday
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1940sSet in post-war (1949) rural New Zealand, this film traces the efforts of two con men to run a betting scam in a small town (Tainuea) already rife with illegal gambling corruption, and eccentricity.
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The Wild Duck
Tasmania The 1910sA dramatic and haunting tale of a special love that will charm you, stun you and touch your very soul... — The Wild Duck is a 1983 Australian film adapted from the play by Ibsen
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The Slim Dusty Movie
Queensland Northern Territory New South Wales The 1980sJimmy Sharman Sr was a legend in Australia. He took his travelling show and boxing tent around Australia and young blokes all over Australia would try to take on his people. It was a nice touch to include Jim Sr in The Slim Dusty Movie, a film that doesn't just showcase Slim Dusty's travelling shows, but gives an authentic look at country Australia.
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Careful, He Might Hear You
New South Wales The 1960sAbandoned by his father after his mother dies, young PS lives in suburban Sydney with his aunt Lila and her husband George. While they lead a modest existence, PS is happy with them. However, his contentment is derailed when Lila's wealthy sister, Vanessa, returns from England and takes an interest in PS.
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Hostage
🇩🇪 Germany New South Wales The 1980sA living nightmare — Set in 1980's Australia, this is the true story of a woman whose husband eventually reveals to her that he is an active member of the Nazi party. A real nightmare begins for her.
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The Dismissal
Australian Capital Territory The 1970sThe drama surrounding the dismissal of Mr. Gough Whitlam as the Labor Prime Minister of Australia - on 11 November, 1975 - by the then Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr - and the subsequent installation, in Parliament, of the Liberal 'caretaker government' and Mr. Malcolm Fraser as the 'caretaker' Prime Minister.
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Lousy Little Sixpence
Victoria New South Wales The 1930sTells of Aborigines' removal from their families to be sent to work as servants for white people and the rise of the first Aboriginal organisations in the 1930's, in particular the Aborigines Progressive Association.
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Kitty and the Bagman
New South Wales The 1920sNotorious Australian flop set in the Roaring 20s Sydney follows Kitty O'Rourke who, after her thug husband ends up in jail, becomes a tough gangster on her own, befriends a crooked cop called The Bagman and takes on the competition.
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We of the Never Never
Northern Territory The 1900sThe story of the love and courage of a remarkable woman — Based on the well-loved Australian classic by Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, this is the remarkable true story of Jeannie Gunn, a woman who fought to overcome sexual and racial prejudice amid the harsh beauties of the outback. Leaving her Melbourne existence for a new life on her husband's isolated ranch, Jeannie's feisty, good-natured attitude soon wins over the misogynistic stockmen, but she faces a much tougher challenge in trying to change their racist attitudes towards the indigenous aboriginal population.
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Gallipoli
🇪🇬 Egypt Western Australia 🇹🇷 Turkey The 1910sFrom a place you've never heard of, comes a story you'll never forget. — As World War I rages, brave and youthful Australians Archy and Frank—both agile runners—become friends and enlist in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps together. They later find themselves part of the Dardanelles Campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, a brutal eight-month conflict which pit the British and their allies against the Ottoman Empire and left over 500,000 men dead.
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Puberty Blues
New South Wales The 1970sThe coolest things to do are the things they say we can't do. — The mating rituals of two teenage surf chicks from the southern suburbs of Sydney. Meet Sue, an Australian teenager in the late 70s, whose life mainly consists of doing what all the other girls do: watch the surfing boys and have sex with the same surfing boys. The girls have to follow lots of strange customs, e.g. do not eat or go to the bathroom when a boy is around. Ugly girls have two choices - being bitches and hate boys, or being generally cheap and looked down upon by everyone. The afternoons are spent on the beaches, in the backseats of cars or at home-alone parties where sex and alcohol are the main ingredients. Parents and teachers are trying to straighten the kids out, but that is not easy.
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Goodbye Pork Pie
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1970sGerry hires a car in Kaitaia with a stolen licence and travels to Invercargill with John, who's wife has just left him. The ultimate NZ roadtrip adventure.
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Fatty Finn
New South Wales The 1930sThe time is the 1930's. Australia like the rest of the world is in the grip of depression. For Aussie's one man lifted their spirits, Don Bradman. Arguably one of the greatest sportsmen of any sport, The Don's cricketing prowess was a ray of sunshine to all Australian, especially to one Hubert "Fatty" Finn. He had a dream, to own a crystal set ( very early radio receiver) so as to listen to Bradman flay the Pom's ( English) in the upcoming Ashes Test match. However that took money to buy and times were hard. Fatty uses his enterprise to raise money and promptly loses it as misfortune strikes time and again. Then of course his arch rival Bruiser Murphy is also plotting Fatty's downfall. If he can only win the goat race again he will have enough to pay for the crystal set; or will Bruiser Murphy gazump him? With his band of friends plus Trumper the frog and Hector the goat Fatty sets out to win the day. Hurray for Fatty Finn. Oh yes and Bradman made a record score in the test.
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