Documentary has a long history of interrogating the world and representing different points of view, voices that don't always get much of a hearing in those media which are institutionally or industrially controlled. Today television is the primary locus for documentary exhibition, but throughout its history, there has also been a tradition of alternative forms of documentary production and distribution both in Australia and across the world. In the sixties and seventies there was the Melbourne Filmmakers Co-op and 'Reel Women' in Melbourne, the Women's Film Group and the Sydney Filmmakers' Co-op in Sydney, the Newsreel Group in the USA, and in UK, the film workshop movement spearheaded by Cinema Action and the Berwick Street Collective. These organizations of filmmakers were dedicated to making non-fiction works in ways that didn't replicate the hierarchical industrial model, and distributing them outside the accepted channels. And their subject matter often reflected a preoccupation with issues such as war and peace, gender, class and race. But before the sixties, there was the fifties... and, while in Melbourne the 'Realist Film Unit' had made a series a independent films (1946-52), in Sydney a small band of filmmakers stood out for the productivity and sustained excellence of their work. This was the Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit. A group of three - Jock Levy, Keith Gow and Norma Disher - made 17 films between 1953-9, most of them for trade unions... The films were financed by the trade union movement, principally the Waterside Workers Federation. They spoke of important issues - working conditions, health and safety, housing. They weren't screened much in cinemas although The Hungry Miles was screened at the Sydney Film Festival in 1955 - instead they were taken by the filmmakers into the streets, homes and workplaces and were screened and discussed on the spot! The unit was indymedia before indymedia. Norma Disher, a member of this pioneering Australian filmmaking group will be the special guest of Ozdox on August 12. Norma will be in conversation with John Hughes, one of Australia's leading filmmakers, whose 1981 film about the unit, Film-Work, introduced a newer generation of filmmakers to their works. http://www.ozdox.org