Fantome Island

Jul 13, 2011

1h 28m

★ 0.0

Overview

In 1945, at the age of seven, a young Joe Eggmolesse was diagnosed with Leprosy. He was immediately removed from his family and home and transported under police escort over a thousand kilometres to be confined on an island for the treatment of the disease. For the next ten years, a leprosarium for Aboriginal people became his home. A lush tropical idyll off the north east coast of Australia, Fantome Island was the home to a close knit community of indigenous 'lepers' who made the most of their existence as people living on the fringes of the marginalised. Now as a 73 year old Joe reflects on his indelible Fantome years. His incredible, poignant story offers a profound insight into one of Australia's hidden histories.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

LCR Filmsound

The Post Lounge

Fantome Island Trailers

Cast

Self

Joe Eggmolesse

An observational documentary which looks at Sydney’s first community Aboriginal radio station, 88.9 Radio Redfern. Set against a backdrop of contemporary Aboriginal music, 88.9 Radio Redfern offers a special and rare exploration of the people, attitudes and philosophies behind the lead up to a different type of celebration of Australia’s Bicentennial Year. Throughout 1988, 88.9 Radio Redfern became an important focal point for communication and solidarity within the Aboriginal community. The film reveals how urban blacks are adapting social structures such as the mass media to serve their needs.

7.4

Final Account

May 21, 2021

A depiction of the last living generation of German participants in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

0.0

Joh: Last King of Queensland

Jun 7, 2025

Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen reigned over Queensland for 19 tumultuous years (1968–1987). Hugely popular, he presided over enormous growth, but corruption raged under his tenure, as did electoral manipulation and often violent suppression of dissent. This film tells Joh’s story through rare archival footage and revelatory interviews, exploring a life shaped by a hard yakka, god-fearing upbringing on his family’s farm. Trump’s spectre is evoked in Joh’s famously mangled and meandering way of speaking – brilliantly dramatised by Richard Roxburgh – alongside his unyielding execution of power and the desperate denial of his final days in office.

7.5

Little Dieter Needs to Fly

Dec 1, 1997

Three decades after German-American pilot Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, he returns to the places where he was held prisoner during the early years of the Vietnam War. Accompanied by director Werner Herzog, Dengler describes in unusually candid detail his captivity, the friendships he made, and his daring escape. Not willing to stop there, Herzog even persuades his subject to re-enact certain tortures, with the help of some willing local villagers.

7.0

Gurrumul

Apr 26, 2018

Blind from birth, Dr G Yunupingu found his identity through song and the haunting voice that has already become legend. His debut album introduced Australia to the Songlines and culture of his Elcho Island community, but now Dr G Yunupingu finds himself increasingly torn between city and country, present and past, self and the community to which he owes so much.

0.0

Voice

Aug 21, 2024

With a national vote approaching to enshrine Indigenous peoples voice in the constitution, a dynamic Indigenous youth group travel on a pilgrimage across Australia to commemorate a historic civil rights victory. Buoyed by the imminent referendum, the group voyage through ephemeral Australian landscape in the microcosm of a minibus, sharing the rich, multilayered stories of their personal histories, as they dream up a hopeful new vision for Australia. As the results of the vote are counted, it’s impact on their future offer two paths – a hopeful breakthrough or another chapter in the long fight for recognition.

8.3

Dino Bird

Jan 1, 2017

Dino Bird is a visually spectacular one-hour film that explores the life of the endangered southern cassowary through the eyes of matriarch Bertha, as she and her family strive to survive in the tropics of northern Queensland in the oldest rainforest on Earth. Over the course of one tumultuous season, Bertha, her partner and her chicks battle fearsome predators and formidable rains, but also play an invaluable role in sustaining life in this ecological hotspot. Dino Bird is an intimate and rarely seen portrait of one of Australia's last remaining southern cassowaries.

0.0

The Legend of Fred Paterson

Apr 9, 1996

The story of Fred Paterson, member for Bowen in the Queensland parliament in the 1940s and the only Communist Party member ever elected to any Australian parliament.

0.0

Bakala

Sep 17, 2017

Anindilyakwa man, Steve 'Bakala' Wurramara is afflicted with a profound hereditary neurodegenerative disorder. While modern medicine looks for answers, the stories of an ancient curse and black magic still permeate this remote Aboriginal community in far northern Australia. Bakala enlists the help of his daughter to search for a cure from the traditional bush medicines in the land, desperate to find an answer before she too is diagnosed. As his desperation grows and his disorder takes an ever greater hold, Bakala realises he must fight this ancient curse to unlock the secrets of his Ancestors.

10.0

Queen of the Desert

Oct 27, 2012

Not only has she got pink extensions, painted on eyebrows, glitter stockings and superman hotpants, Starlady’s a youth worker in some of Australia’s most remote and challenging places. And she reckons that hairdressing can improve people’s lives. Like a real life Priscilla, Starlady takes us on a Queen of the Desert journey to Areyonga, an indigenous community in Central Australia, where she’ll work with a group of curious and cheeky young people.

8.0

Freeman

Sep 13, 2020

The story of a nation coming together around Indigenous athlete Cathy Freeman who delivered when it mattered on the greatest stage on earth. 20 years on, Freeman sheds light on one of Australia's proudest moments. In 49.11 seconds, Cathy Freeman's win at the 2000 Sydney Olympics brought Australia together as a nation.

0.0

Cop It Sweet

Mar 4, 1992

In the winter of 1991 an ABC film crew spent six weeks following Sydney's Redfern police. The inner city patrol of Redfern is predominantly working class with a large aboriginal and migrant population. The police in this film are general duties officers mostly on mobile patrols. At the time of filming 78% of police at Redfern were under the age of 25.

5.0

Island Home Country

Aug 2, 2008

A poetic cine-essay about race and Australia’s colonised history and how it impacts into the present offering insights into how various individuals deal with the traumatic legacies of British colonialism and its race-based policies. The film’s consultative process, with ‘Respecting Cultures’ (Tasmanian Aboriginal Protocols), offers an evolving shift in Australian historical narratives from the frontier wars, to one of diverse peoples working through historical trauma in a process of decolonisation.

6.5

Hitler, My Neighbor

Jan 24, 2013

From 1929 to 1939 Edgar Feuchtwanger lived across the street from Adolf Hitler in Munich Germany From his bedroom the young Jewish boy often viewed the Fuumlhrer just across the avenue A schoolboy in Munich at the time Edgar witnessed the rise of Nazism firsthand sharing in the fear and dread felt by all German Jews witnessing the unstoppable ascent of a madman and the start of World War II

8.0

Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra

Feb 18, 2021

Taking us through Bangarra Dance Theatre’s spectacular growth, we follow the story of how three young Aboriginal brothers — Stephen, David and Russell Page — turned the newly born dance group into a First Nations cultural powerhouse.

8.2

Back to Chernobyl

Jan 11, 2020

The film tells the story of the Chernobyl accident through a mosaic of unique personal testimonies of its participants. The experiences of the difficult past and the sad results of the present recreate the full picture of the accident 30 years later.

0.0

Cracks in the Mask

Jun 6, 1997

A century ago the Torres Strait Island were the subjects of the famous Cambridge Anthropological Expedition - the resulting depletion of their cultural artifacts left them with nothing but a history of remembered loss. The only people in the Pacific to make elaborate turtleshell masks have none left - they are all in foreign museums. In a quest to reclaim the past, Ephraim Bani, a wise and knowledgeable Torres Strait Islander, travels with his wife to the great museums of Europe where his heritage lies. The film, an SBS Independent production, shows that the thickest of masks cracks when a descendant of the original owners enters a museum.

Fantome Island

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Fantome Island Trailers