Essential Media and Entertainment

Author P.L. Travers looks back on her childhood while reluctantly meeting with Walt Disney, who seeks to adapt her Mary Poppins books for the big screen.

Jack Irish is a man getting his life back together again. A former criminal lawyer whose world imploded, he now spends his days as a part-time investigator, debt collector, apprentice cabinet maker, punter and sometime lover - the complete man really. Jack is an expert in finding those who don't want to be found - dead or alive. He helps out his mates while avoiding the past. That is until the past finds him.

Michôd and Peedom's hour-long documentary recounts the tale of Andrew McAuley, an Australian adventurer who, in 2006, launched a quest to become the first person to paddle a kayak across the treacherous Tasman Sea, one of the loneliest and toughest stretches of water in the world.

In a climate change ravaged world in 2012, after 240 days without rain Sydney has only two weeks of water left. When the city is then ringed by severe bushfires, the question becomes, how do you fight fire when you have no water?

Explore the fascinating relationship between author P. L. Travers and her much-loved character, Mary Poppins. This is the story of a complex woman who escaped her upbringing in rural Australia to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, reinventing herself and her past along the way.

Jack Irish is thrown into a world of club owners, drug dealers and killers when he is hired by a judge to find a mysterious red book.

An evocative crime thriller that captures the chilling action and sharp wit of Peter Temple's acclaimed novel The Broken Shore. In this gripping adaptation, Detective Joe Cashin uncovers a web of lies, betrayal and police corruption in a small coastal town where tensions are at boiling point and the shocking face behind the community's respectable mask is slowly unveiled.

This is the story of a typical contemporary Australian family. Skye is getting married to Lachlan. They have to tell her mother, stepfather, father, step mother, his father, his new wife, his mother and her girlfriend. Not counting grandparents, aunt and friends. They live with Skye's stepfathers son and best mate who is in love with Skye.

Jack Irish has no shortage of friends, but family members are few and far between. His wife was murdered by an ex-client and his father is a fading photo on the pubs football wall of fame. So when Des Connors, the last link to his dad, calls to ask for help in the matter of a missing son, Jack is more than happy to lend a hand. But sometimes prodigal sons go missing for a reason... As Jack begins to dig, he discovers that Gary Connors was a man with something to hide, and his friends are people with yet darker and even more deadly secrets.

Set against New Zealand’s Golden Shears – the Olympics of competitive sheep shearing – Brian Castlehead, a washed-up hairstylist to the stars, enters the competition world determined to prove to his father that he’s a real man.

The next great voyage of human exploration has already begun: the search for life on planets orbiting distant stars. With extraordinary CGI, the world's most inspiring scientists, via extreme environments on Earth and around the solar system, the film takes viewers aboard the next generation of space ships, across the cosmos and beneath the clouds of the exo-planets to discover The Living Universe.

A chronological history of one of the most influential bands to come out of Australia, the Go-Betweens.

2006 was one of the deadliest Everest seasons on record. Experienced mountaineer Lincoln Hall was invited to join an expedition as a high altitude cameraman. It was his second attempt to summit the mountain, having turned back just short 22 years earlier. Shortly after reaching the summit, Hall began to behave irrationally, suffering from lack of oxygen. Aided by his loyal Sherpas for over 9 hours, he eventually collapsed and they declared him dead. His family were informed and the news hit headlines. But something happened that night that science cannot explain. The next morning Lincoln Hall was found alive by approaching climbers and his dramatic rescue began. Never before has a man been declared dead so high on Everest and survived. This is the remarkable true story of Lincoln Hall’s extraordinary journey back from beyond.

The Grammar Of Happiness follows the story of Daniel Everett among the extraordinary 'nonconvertible' Amazonian Pirah tribe, a group of indigenous hunter- gatherers whose culture and outlook on life has taken the world of linguistics by storm. As a young ambitious missionary three decades ago, Dan, a red-bearded towering American, decamped to the Amazon rain forest to save indigenous souls. His assignment was to translate the book of Mark into the tongue of the Pirah, a people whose puzzling speech seemed unrelated to any other on Earth. What he learned during his time with the Pirah led him to question the very foundations of his own deep beliefs. As a 'born again' atheist, Dan divorced his devout Christian wife and became estranged from his children. Having lost faith and family, his new life is dominated by the desire to leave behind his legacy. Everett's most controversial claim is that the Pirah language lacks 'recursion' - the ability to build an infinite number of sentences.

Over three thousand years ago, legend has it that Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt's first female pharaoh, sent a fleet of ships to the wonderful, distant land of Punt. A bas-relief in the temple where she is entombed in Luxor shows them bringing back extraordinary treasures. But did this expedition really happen? And if it did, where exactly is the land of Punt? Drawing upon recent finds, the archaeologist Cheryl Ward sets out to recreate the voyage, in a full-size replica of one of these ancient ships, sailing it in the wake of Hatshepsut's fleet, in search of the mythical land of Punt. A human adventure as well as a scientific challenge, the expedition proves that, contrary to popular belief, the ancient Egyptians had the necessary tools, science and techniques to sail the seas.

Drawing on a life's work defined by controversial and ground-breaking ideas, the world's greatest architect has inaugurated his first Australian building - and debate still rages over whether it is eyesore or icon. Our film follows the drama as Gehry'Äôs vision for this commission is realized.