40,000 Years of Dreaming

40,000 Years of Dreaming
Directed byGeorge Miller
Written byGeorge Miller
Produced byBob Last
Colin MacCabe
StarringGeorge Miller
CinematographyDion Beebe
Edited byMargaret Sixel
Music byCarl Vine
Production
companies
Australian Film Commission, Kennedy Miller Productions, BFI TV
Release date
  • 10 November 1997 (1997-11-10)
Running time
67 minutes
CountriesUnited Kingdom
Australia
LanguageEnglish

40,000 Years of Dreaming (also known as White Fellas Dreaming: A Century of Australian Cinema, 40,000 Years of Dreaming – A Century of Australian Cinema, A Century of Australian Cinema and The Years of Dreaming) is 1997 British documentary film directed and written by George Miller and produced by the British Film Institute, as part of its Century of Cinema series.[1]

Premise

The film is mainly a collage of various pieces of Australian film, past and present, including Miller's own Mad Max series.[2] Miller focuses primarily on Australian cinema as a vessel of public Dreaming, creating a link between contemporary Australian cinema and the Dreamtime lores from a variety of Aboriginal Australian groups.[3][4] Miller also places Australian cinema in the context of Joseph Campbell's monomyth concept.

Availability

The film has been out of print since its release in 1997, along with several of the other films in the Century of Cinema series, apart from Martin Scorsese's feature.

References

  1. ^ "40,000 Years of Dreaming". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 16 October 2025.
  2. ^ "40,000 Years of Dreaming: A Century of Australian Cinema". aso.gov.au. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  3. ^ Refer to the AIATSIS map for more information on Aboriginal language groups.
  4. ^ "40,000 Years of Dreaming: A Century of Australilan Cinema". variety.com. 22 December 1996. Retrieved 5 December 2019.