Cricket, education, wine... no this time Bangalore is getting to experience a different facet of the the Kangaroo nation. ‘Australian Visions’ that the City has been playing host to over the past two days, showcases the best of recent Australian cinema.

The tale of a migrant mother and a daughter, the struggles of a swimmer, stories of murder, love, belongingness, marriage and mafia, is what makes up the film festival being presented by the Australian High Commission in association with Suchitra Film Society. Ray Lawrence’s engrossing flick ‘Jindabyne’, Rolf De Heer’s  ‘The Tracker’, ‘Harvie Krumpet,’ the biography of an ordinary man seemingly cursed with perpetual bad luck, ‘Dirty Deeds’ directed by David Caesar and ‘The Caterpillar Wish’ are among the movies that were screened.

“Australian cinema is vibrant, healthy and diverse. It has been able to counter the challenge called Hollywood through festivals such as these. These festival are about people telling their own stories and in this case a variety of them,” says Murray Hariss of the Commission.   The festival will also show how meaningful cinema can be made, adds noted film-maker Girish Kasarvalli. Drawing parallels, Kasarvalli says that while Australian film industry was threatened by Hollywood and the Kannada industry by Bollywood, Australians realised that they were becoming a prey and strived hard to maintain their identity. We, on the other hand, opened our field to Telugu and Tamil industries too.

The area where we score over Australians is that while Mel Gibson, Kate Blanchet and Nicole Kidman moved on to Hollywood, many of our actors stayed back in our industry (thanks to Bollywood that wasn’t kind to them)! he jokes. Then on a serious note he says that our films are not thought as a part of our culture, but as business.