After a three-year stint as a prostitute, Mary-Anne aged 28 bought her first house of ill fame for $80,000. Now at 45 she has built a business empire, with a string of massage parlors, brothels and escort agencies, on the back of a thriving illegal sex trade. Outside the shadowy world of prostitution this Rotarian striving for respectability has diversified her interests into fashion, sex toys and property development.

Mary-Anne is a single mother of four with an insatiable drive to possess the best sex-empire in Australia. Plus, she is on a mission to transform the world of prostitution into a squeaky clean and respectable industry by decriminalising prostitution Australia-wide. Prostitution is technically illegal in WA; police turning a blind eye and prosecuting only when complaints have been made.

The Madam follows the astute and fiery entrepreneur as she claws her way to the top…and the industry to the brink of reform. In the next 12 months her vision is to launch her brothel’s website, Langtrees.com. Mary-Anne has sunk every last penny into developing Langtrees.com in hope of gaining a greater share of the declining traditional sex market. At the same time she is gearing up to take on the government regarding decriminalising the industry. And can she win the Sex Worker of the Year Award?

This timeless place has become home to Gormley’s most ambitious work to date, Inside Australia. Fifty-one sculptures stand silently in the hot desert wind, capturing a moment in time. The installation celebrates Menzies – a community that has taken this journey with an artist willing to break the mould of tradition. It also celebrates an extraordinary place.

Antony Gormley: “I’ll never forget that first approach when you come the edge of the salt lake, it is absolutely magic. The feeling of being at the edge of endlessness – being on the lip of the edge of the world.”

The Perth International Art Festival commissioned Gormley to create the installation; but it was Gormley who chose to make this new work in one of the remotest and harshest regions of the world.

The film follows Gormley into the Menzies community, into the western desert, and shares his passion for all aspects of this hard land. Gormley says: “Having discovered this extraordinary place, which I thought had such a strong mythological feeling, I couldn’t believe it wasn’t strong dreaming to the original people – I then had to find the today people.”

So the film discovers the mining giants and the self-made prospectors, the pastoralists running thousands of sheep on their million acre properties, and the original inhabitants, the Aboriginal people for whom Lake Ballard is part of an ancient homeland. Lake Ballard unravels as a complex and contested space.

Gormley: “I didn’t know anything about the geology of Western Australia when I first went, you feel immediately here you are flying over a very ancient continent. It’s almost like your heart starts beating slower, everything slows down and you’re close to something that is close to the beginning of things.”

The documentary captures a physical, creative and spiritual journey. It explores the nature of landscape and of sculpture, rocks and the reason human beings make art. Gormley calls his sculptures on Lake Ballard ‘Insiders’, for they are his attempt to capture the essence of the human body and the traces – minerals, memories, history – that each body carries within it. But this film also reveals some of the challenges an outsider faces when exploring Inside Australia. He gives an answer to the challenge that he has no business to be there: “I can accept that very deep sense of suspicion that somebody who is unfamiliar in a very, very real way with the territory should seek to interpret it. In a curious way, I don’t think I’m doing any interpreting. I’m trying to allow things that are already there to be seen more clearly. I hope what it represents is an open attitude as to what art can be.”

This documentary reaches under the surface of an isolated yet complex community. It makes a journey through one of the most ambitious art projects of recent times, going from the concept, through scanning, casting, transportation, to installation – all the steps that take an artist from idea to creation. And we hear the response of the people to the work. This is a film that indeed reaches Inside Australia.

Rosalie and her sister Beverley were both fostered out to the Kelly family by the Welfare Department. Rosalie suffers years of terrible abuse at the hands of her foster mother. When the abuse gets too much Rosalie runs away, but her foster mother is always able to coax her back home. Rosalie finally leaves the Kelly family for good when she meets a young aboriginal man by the name of Stan, whom she also later marries.

In an emotional encounter, Rosalie is reunited with her sister and they both trace and find their natural mother. For Rosalie however, the length of the separation from her biological mother is too great, and despite the abuse Mrs Kelly remains the only mother she has ever really known.

After Mrs Kelly’s death, Rosalie realises that she needs to confront and deal with her painful past. After rising above the traumas of her childhood and building a happy family life, Rosalie overcomes a literacy problem and writes Shadow Child.

“Rosie” is a journey of self-discovery through the trauma of physical and emotional abuse. It is a story of triumph over adversity, telling the life of a strong and determined woman, who despite the odds comes to terms with her situation and ends up living a happy and successful life.

Backed by the Western Australian Farmers Federation, a dating initiative is hatched whereby single British women are selected and flown 12 thousand miles from the other side of the world to meet the bachelors. The British Sheilas are joined by six single women from Perth who are also looking to find love.

Over a weekend in Perth, each Bush Bachelor dates three women before finally picking one to spend a month with him living & working the life of a bush wife. What will our ‘sheilas’ make of these guys and how will they cope in some of the most remote places on earth? Will they find love?

Desperately Seeking Sheila follows these single men and women as they meet, date and attempt to make a life with each other in the harsh and isolated conditions of the Australian outback.

Ep 1: School Girl to Actor
Ep 2: Policy Officer to Chef
Ep 3: Barman to Real Estate Whizz
Ep 4: Roller Driver to Animal Carer

It documents a ‘David and Goliath’ tale of how a small team of supporters can force the justice system to take another look.

Twelve years ago, in the leafy Perth suburb of Mosman Park, an attractive middle aged woman was murdered in her jewelry shop. Bashed about the head some twelve times with a blunt object, police described it as a frenzied attack.

Andrew Mallard was living in the area at the time. With no money, low self-esteem and a psychiatric disorder, Andrew was passing himself off as an undercover cop and smoking a lot of marijuana obtained from the proceeds of petty theft. He’d emmigrated to Australia from England with his parents as a child – to the land of sunshine and hope. Nothing could prepare him for what was about to happen next.

The police bring Andrew in for a total of twelve hours of questioning and claim he confesses. Andrew says he never confessed. He was successfully prosecuted on the strength of this so-called ‘confession’ – un-signed handwritten notes in detectives’ notepad, plus a bizarre 20-minute interview in which Andrew gives a third-person “theory” about how the crime may have been committed. He is sentenced to thirty years life imprisonment.

Andrew’s family and friends work tirelessly to clear his name and get him released. When his heartbroken father Roy dies of cancer, it is left to his ageing mother Grace and feisty sister Jacqui to continue the rescue effort. Along the way they enlist a colorful array of supporters ; investigative journalist Colleen Egan, MP John Quigley and QC Malcolm McCusker all of whom work unpaid to try and prove Andrew’s innocence.

Almost a decade after Andrew is convicted, the “Rescue Team” present fresh evidence to the Supreme Court of Appeal. They argue that a sub-standard police investigation led to the wrong man being arrested, and that a prosecutor hell-bent on securing a conviction withheld crucial police evidence. And for the first time in Australian legal history, the results of a lie detector test are considered in court.

In a decision that shocks Perth’s small legal community, the appeal is turned down. The last recourse is the High Court of Australia.

Saving Andrew Mallard is a compelling story of how a small team of ‘ordinary folk’ force the justice system to take another look.

Ian the yabbie farmer and Katy the photographer fell head over heels in what seemed to be a fairy tale romance. Marriage was in the air – but this fairy tale looks to have turned grim. Love is a long and winding road – can Ian and Katy stay on track?

Mike and Ali, whose slow burn and mature romance, set against the backdrop of a northwest mining town, contrasted with the rollercoaster ride of the other couples. They are faced with their biggest challenge yet – a life-threatening illness. “Desperately Keeping Sheila” comes into extra-sharp focus.

Finally Shane the lonesome cowboy is recovering from the acid tongue of Georgia the London socialite. Nicky the insurance broker from Essex persists in her dream of finding a genuine Aussie bush bachelor after her experience with Pankaj, the Margaret River playboy. Theirs is an accidental love affair – they met at the series wrap party and hit it off. Can the sensitive new aged cowperson lassoe the feisty Cockney firebrand?

Do our desperate bachelors get to keep their “Sheilas”? Well the bush wedding finally happens but whose? All will be revealed.

Action centers around the Asian style bar, where the Karaoke convention of accompanying song with video creates a platform for a series of multi screen short Noodle Western films, projected on both the front wall of the bar and the billboard. The films ‘shadow’ the onstage performers with historic Broome characters (such as the pearl diver, geisha, Aboriginal stockman).

Thus each live performer on stage has a ‘ghost’ or ‘double’ on screen. The multi screen short films explore classic inter-racial melodrama love stories against the backdrop of the White Australia policy deportations and forced removals for co habitation.

Burning Daylight sought to break new territory in the arena of contemporary Indigenous dance. The collaboration between Indigenous dancer and choreographer Dalisa Pigram and contemporary choreographer Serge Aimé Coulibaly from Burkina Faso, West Africa, in negotiation with the elders of the Yawuru community and the dancers in the project is exposed in the documentary as the backbone of the final work. The question of what constitutes contemporary Indigenous dance and how aspects of traditional movement forms can inspire contemporary practice are explored from the personal point of view of the dancers and choreographers.

At the centre of it all is madly devoted puppeteer, Philip Mitchell, the creative director of the festival. It was Philip who curated the program and he’s responsible for the creative success, or failure of the festival – as well as the technical reality of bringing so many shows to life.

We follow a one woman show with ten stages revolving around her body and a penchant for the dark side. Spare Parts Puppet Theatre build a theatre made entirely out of shoe boxes on the spot.

Cabaret Decadanse redefine sexy as the lithe Serge and Enock, bring their transvestites, raunchy dancers and cabaret singers to life in an unholy merging of the human dancing body and puppet creation.

Amidst the chaos, an attempt at establishing a new world record is on. The call has been put out world wide for puppets and the postal system can hardly handle the deluge pouring in through the door from all over the world. The race is on to get the greatest number of puppets all in the same place at the same time. Katherine McClean, Million Puppet Project Manager has more than her hands full.

Meanwhile, Woyzeck, South Africa’s most famous performance is resurrected in Perth. The show is directed by well known artist William Kentridge, whose charcoal drawings are an animated background for a raw and sometimes savage performance from his African troupe with their large wooden puppets.

Stephan from Belgium re-inacts Shakespeare’s Richard the Third, with the butchery taking place in the most literal sense. Stephan’s puppets are various cuts of beef, from steaks to roasts with kebabs and mince makers brought into devastating effect.

Audience members are right to feel nervous when they are handed a plastic apron as they take their seat. Australia’s Men of Steel are a fearsome trio, bringing anything to life with an alarming and ferocious dexterity. Cans of dog food become rabid destroyers with a hunting cos lettuce and a broccoli forest in the mix. Their motto – ‘the further we can throw it the better’. Hilarity follows in a whirlwind blaze of food and objects that’s never quite been done like this before.

And Australia’s most well loved puppeteer, Richard Bradshaw performs his famous Bradshaw’s Shadows with such divine simplicity it steals the show.

Truly Madly Puppetry – a one hour documentary giving an inside look at the adult puppet world and the boundaries it likes to push. Prepare yourself…