PO Box 9Elphinstone Vic 3488
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Betty Churcher, former Director of The National Gallery of Australia, explores and illuminates the creative process behind works of art held in galleries across Australia.
A film about the life and work of Joy Hester, one of only a few women artists working in one of the most creative and pivotal eras of Australian art, the 1940s and 1950s. She was a striking and gifted painter and poet who, in the last ten years has become increasingly significant. Her life was short and sometimes tragic, and she received little recognition for her work during her lifetime.
Cutting directly through bustling Istanbul, the Strait of Bosphorus is one of the busiest trading routes on Earth, with a new cargo ship or supertanker entering its congested, chaotic waters every 10 minutes. The oil they carry is the lifeblood of Europe, but with human error, crumbling vessels and the Bosphorus' own treacherous currents at play, it's only a matter of time until disaster strikes.
In a disused hospital pantry in the 1940s, an Australian doctor, John Cade, discovered an astonishing treatment for bi-polar disorder. It would revolutionise the way we think about mental illness and mark the beginning of psychopharmacology - using drugs to manage psychiatric conditions. This was inspired thinking at a time when Freudian psychoanalysis, electric shock and lobotomy were the dominant approaches and patients were often locked up in asylums. The breakthrough followed years of research and experimentation and it would take two more decades of struggle before lithium treatment was finally accepted - but Cade's successors persevered. Their work has meant a chance at stability for hundreds of thousands of people, and lithium remains the benchmark for bi-polar treatment today.