''40,000 Years of Dreaming'' (''White Fellas Dreaming: A Century of Australian Cinema'') is an hour-long documentary film presented by George Miller and produced by the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves filmmaking and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

, as part of its ''Century of Cinema'' series. The film is mainly a collage of various pieces of Australian film, past and present, including Miller's own ''Mad Max'' series. Miller focuses primarily on

Australian cinema The cinema of Australia began with the 1906 production of ''The Story of the Kelly Gang'', arguably the world's first feature film. Since then, Australian crews have produced many films, a number of which have received international recogni ...

as a vessel of public Dreaming, creating a link between contemporary Australian cinema and the

Dreamtime The Dreaming, also referred to as Dreamtime, is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology, Australian Aboriginal mythology. It was originally u ...

lores from a variety of

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 year ...

groups. Miller also places Australian cinema in the context of

Joseph Campbell Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of t ...

monomyth In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's quest or hero's journey, also known as the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home ch ...

concept. It 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 Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November17, 1942) is an American filmmaker. One of the major figures of the New Hollywood era, he has received List of awards and nominations received by Martin Scorsese, many accolades, including an Academ ...

feature Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature recognition, could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (machine learning), in statistics: individual measurable properties of the phenome ...

. It has occasionally been aired on television.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:40000 Years Of Dreaming 1997 films Films directed by George Miller (filmmaker) British documentary films History of film 1990s English-language films 1997 documentary films Documentary films about the cinema of Australia 1990s British films English-language documentary films Films scored by Carl Vine