Midnight Oil Movies

The Australian musical group Midnight Oil are known for their political activism over such issues as oppression, environment endangerment, discrimination, and poverty, and they use rock & roll as a platform to increase the awareness of the world's problems and the alleged perpetrators. Prior to their album release of Blue Sky Mining, Midnight Oil performed a concert on May 30, 1990, on the back of a flatbed truck outside of Exxon's Manhattan's offices in protest of the near-catastrophic oil spill off the Alaskan coast. This video features six songs performed at this protest concert, and also contains interviews with the band members, a conceptual clip of the song "King of the Mountain," and other documentary footage. ~ Forrest Spencer, All Movie Guide

This is one of the more unusual films about a nuclear holocaust, nearly introspective in its focus on a handful of people in Sydney's world-famous opera house, finding ways to pass the time until the morning brings more news. The setting is New Year's Eve (in the middle of summer here), and some intimation of the immediate future surfaces in the form of reports on a major crisis in Europe and the aftermath of demonstrations against U.S. nuclear ships at harbor in Sydney. Sharon (Cassandra Delaney) and Eva (Saskia Post) are young teen roommates who are more interested in their own personal relationships than what is happening in distant Europe, and after meeting at the opera house where Sharon works, they are ready to go off to a New Year's party together. But before they can leave, a radio broadcast announces that nuclear bombs have been dropped in Europe and North America and also on U.S. targets in Australia. The announcer requests that people remain where they are, and the two shocked teenagers are at a loss as to how to cope. They are soon joined by an American soldier gone AWOL and a custodian who was busy working after the end of the evening's concert. The four isolated people explore the empty building, engage in conversation just to fill the time, and even distract themselves with a game of strip poker -- anything to avoid facing the possibility that this may be the last night of their lives. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Director David Bradbury has put together a war documentary on the Vietnam years, as seen from the point of view of the Vietnamese, and one extraordinary Australian cameraman, Neil Davis, who supplied most of the footage. Davis first went to Vietnam in 1964 and decided then to film with the Vietnamese and not the Americans. As a result, his footage was seen around the globe for many years, offering the only alternative to a one-sided representation of events. Davis was made especially famous for his filming of a South Vietnamese general shooting a prisoner in cold blood on the street, and he risked his life more than once to record dangerous battles and to interview soldiers on the frontlines. The documentary exposes many American errors, such as the use of shaving lotions or cigarettes that could be smelled by anyone from a distance, or the excessive 70-lbs. of guns and clothing the GIs had to carry around. There are also the stories of friends lost to war, and the inevitable tales of destruction and torture that made Vietnam a low point in human history. In order to wrap up his coverage on events in Vietnam, Davis returned to film the fall of Saigon to the Viet Cong, for posterity capturing scenes of tanks knocking over the palace gates. The North Vietnamese allowed him to keep on filming when they found out he was Australian and not American. The result of all of Davis' footage, and his able commentary on little-known events and conditions of war were spliced together with other historical footage in a smooth chronological sequence that is seamless in the telling. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide