While continues to bring you detailed coverage and analysis of ongoing protests across the USA in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, USA, and brings discussion on the connection between the Black Lives Matter movement and issues affecting Indigenous Australians, we’ve put together a collection of documentaries, covering Australian and American stories, that will enlighten, inform and educate.
Australia
The Point – Black Lives Matter
In this episode of NITV’s current affairs program , hosts Ryan Liddle and Shahni Wellington speak with Senator Malarndirri McCarthy and Black Lives Matter worldwide network co-founder Rodney Diverlus to discuss the ongoing deaths in custody in Australia and the US, in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, USA last month.
airs on NITV on Wednesday nights at 8:30pm. This episode aired on Wednesday 3 June and is now streaming :
Mabo: Life of an Island Man
As we commemorated , we screen this award-winning documentary about the private and public stories of a man so passionate about family and home that he fought an entire nation and its legal system.
Living Black: spotlight on Palm Island, Queensland
We’ve selected three episodes of this long-running and highly respected news and current affairs program hosted by Karla Grant, each focusing on Palm Island.
looks back at one of Australia’s harshest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander settlements on its 100-year anniversary and asks what the future holds:
covers the class action brought against the Queensland government by Palm Islanders in September 2015, a case which centred on the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee:
Karla Grant Presents …
Presenting stories through an Indigenous lens, that launched in August 2019.
In , a worried grandfather tracks down his grandson to bring him home and take him through Country and law:
, which means ‘we look after each other’, follows a team of women from the Tiwi Islands who work day and night making sure the Islands’ kids and families are safe:
is the inspirational journey of a group of Aboriginal women working to stop the violence in their communities:
Our Stories
includes a variety of stories from around the country about people reconnecting with their communities, language and ancestry. , a television initiative to broadcast mini documentaries creating digital songlines:
Cold Justice
Hosted by Walkley Award and Amnesty Media Award nominee Allan Clarke, covers the injustice Indigenous Australians face with cold case victims:
First Contact
Hosted by award-winning journalist Ray Martin, this three-part series takes six outspoken Australians into Aboriginal Australia for the first time. Hosted by Indigenous families, the participants’ views on topics from welfare to identity are challenged. and .
is now streaming at SBS On Demand:
Vote Yes For Aborigines
The 1967 referendum resulted in the removal of two sections of the Constitution which discriminated against Aborigines. Over 90% of voters agreed that Aborigines be counted in the census and that the Commonwealth government take charge of Aboriginal affairs, effectively acknowledging Aboriginal people as citizens within their own country.
Warbudar Bununu: Water Shield
In the late 1970s, elders from Borroloola, a town on the McArthur river in the Northern Territory, co-produced this landmark film to expose the threat to their homelands from mining development. The eco-battle was to re-ignite in 2019.
The Truth About Racism
Host Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a Sudanese-born Muslim Australian, is joined by four volunteers from different ethnic backgrounds who undergo a series of scientific psychological tests. They attempt to find out if racial bias is inevitable, if it can be consciously overridden and if brains can be re-trained. The tests include experiments involving facial recognition empathy and pain, and split-second fear responses.
Keeping The Language
This documentary presents a series of interviews with the Nyul Nyul/Jabirr Jabirr cultural leaders who describe the genocide they and their people suffered in the days of the Beagle Bay Mission, Western Australia. In English and Bardi languages.
Elsta Foy
This is the story of true maverick and renaissance woman, Elsta Foy, a Walman Yawuru Elder of Broome. Foy is a pioneer of Indigenous health services and was the first Indigenous health worker trained in Western Australia.
USA
Let The Fire Burn
On 13 May 1985, cameras were there to capture a decade-long conflict between the Philadelphia police and MOVE, a radical African American back-to-nature group, as it comes to a head.
Burn Motherf----- Burn
Sadly all too timely, this provocative documentary looks at how decades of racial tensions, injustice and a troubled relationship between the LAPD and the African American community led to an uprising.
Race For Justice
Exploring the chaotic situation in the US, this documentary looks at major cases of police brutality, and interviews social activists, families of victims and academics about this ongoing issue.
Charlottesville: Documenting Hate
Investigative reporter for ProPublica, A.C. Thompson was in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 when white supremacists and neo-Nazis converged on the city in a rally that quickly became a “crime scene”. Nearly a year after the deadly rally, Thompson is still trying to understand that crime, identifying the groups and the individuals who carried out the racist violence, many of whom have yet to be held accountable. This confronting documentary investigates why.
Fixing The System: Crime and Punishment
It took till July 2015 for a sitting US President to visit a federal prison. In a special report examining the larger landscape of an unjust and badly broken prison system, the VICE crew filmed Barack Obama in this historic event as he sat down and spoke with inmates of El Reno Federal Prison in the heart of Oklahoma.
VICE
Staying with the VICE team, we’ve selected two programs from this . takes us back only 6 years to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which sparked protests that quickly spread across the country. Reporter Thomas Morton travels to Ferguson at the height of the protests for an in-depth look at the situation. (Also in this episode, Suroosh Alvi goes to El Salvador to see the conditions that are motivating a mass migration to the US border.)
In , VICE investigates the water crisis in Flint, Michigan and the realities of life in a city poisoned by its own government. (Also in this episode is a report from the front lines as rival militias fight to save Libya.)
Raised In The System: Youth Behind Bars
The US incarcerates more juveniles than any other country. VICE News and Michael K. Williams investigate this trend and how it affects those stuck in the system.
Hate Thy Neighbour
Ever wanted to travel the world to ask people what drives them to feel and act out prejudice against their fellow humans? That’s what host, comedian Jamali Maddix has set out to do in this documentary series, hanging out with haters from the US, UK and further afield.
The Cleveland Strangler
From 2007 to 2009, 11 black women were assaulted and murdered on Cleveland’s east side, raising disturbing questions about race, class and law enforcement in the Ohio city.
Race And Education
Exploring the fact that not all US schools are treated equally, this documentary examines how despite decades of protests, court victories and political pledges, some schools still lack resources that act as barriers to students’ success.
Segregated City
New York’s school system is among the most segregated in the country. Now a new Schools Chancellor is promising change. Can he fix a broken system?
For detailed coverage and analysis of the ongoing protests across the USA, head to . Also see for first-hand accounts of how the Black Lives Matter movement connects with Indigenous Australians.
