Docos catch moments in time

Occasionally television productions serve as something of a time capsule, with the ramifications of their content changing between shooting and airing.

There are two such scenarios this week.

The first is in Compass airing tonight on the ABC. In the special ‘Men of Means’ host Geraldine Doogue meets with high flyers in the worlds of business, sport and media. One of the six men is mobile phone king John Ilhan ‘Crazy John’ who passed away not long after this production was filmed. Acknowledging his death, Doogue will record a special introduction and back-announce this program prior to transmission.

Meanwhile SBS has a series commencing on Wednesday called Down Under Grads, ‘a snapshot of Queensland tertiary life through the eyes of 11 students.’ In the first episode a young Chinese student interviews a politician as part of her journalism course.

The cameras are there as the ‘Shadow Foreign Minister’ Kevin Rudd answers her questions, in fluent Mandarin.

Given Rudd’s present status, it’s quite a coup for the student, and for the SBS doco.

Compass screens 10:15pm tonight on ABC1.
Down Under Grads screens at 8pm Wednesday on SBS.

Press Releases:

Following the success of Compass’s three-part dinner series with Australian women, Geraldine Doogue now turns her attention to men to find out what matters to them and what doesn’t in the 21st century.

While the first Compass dinner series focused on women from different parts of Australia (Kellyville, Longreach and Melbourne), the men’s series focuses on three phases of a man’s life – fatherhood, career and retirement.

In the second episode Geraldine meets the big end of town – high flyers in the worlds of business, sport and media.

Home loans baron John Symond; sports powerbroker John O’Neill; broadcaster and journalist Mike Carlton; micro-financier Chris Cuffe; media buyer Harold Mitchell; and the late mobile phone king ‘Crazy John’ Ilhan* join Geraldine for dinner to talk about their success.

Is the search for meaning the same for those with power, wealth and/or influence? How do personal beliefs, ethics and morality influence their decisions at work?

The men are amazingly candid about their backgrounds, personal crises and beliefs.

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As the university year starts for students around the country, SBS Television shows what they can expect in Downunder Grads – a snapshot of tertiary life through the eyes of 11 students.

In poignant individual stories, Downunder Grads takes viewers from househunting to sleep deprivation and from affairs of the heart to telling parents final assessment results.
In 2006 a group of new students were filmed during their first year at university. Downunder Grads tells the story of how going to university changed their lives.

A four part half-hour documentary series, Downunder Grads was shot at the University of Queensland as an initiative to develop the talents of young Queensland filmmakers. Director Randall Wood, writer/director Phoebe Hart and writer/segment producer Suzanne Howard were chosen to work on the series.

Phoebe Hart says they found that both local and international students shared many issues, including making friends and developing relationships, as well as finding their own identity away from home and in a new environment. They also shared the challenges of struggling with their student workload, a cut in services caused by voluntary student unionism and the increasing financial burden of a user-pays system.

“Universities have been criticised for downgrading the quality of education in their bid to become ‘degree machines’ – corporations that sell education – and for their reliance on income generated by overseas students,” according to Phoebe Hart.

Each episode looks at the individual stories of a few students, following them for a nail-biting semester. In episode one we meet Chinese journalism student Wei Wei (and see her interview the yet-to-be-elected Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, in Mandarin), American psychology student Emily Laird who wants to make Australian friends and first-year engineering student Gurteaj Atwal Singh who relocates to Brisbane from his parent’s banana plantation in regional Queensland.