John Swindells
Three decades of documentary filmmaking.
Across three decades, these films have followed very different people into very different worlds — mysticism, ecology, activism, migration, mental illness and art. What connects them is curiosity: an attempt to get beneath the obvious story and closer to lived human experience. Click to enter each world.
Benedictine monk and mystic Bede Griffiths spent decades in Southern India exploring the meeting point of Eastern and Western thought — and what it might mean to move beyond religious dogma.
View FilmCultural historian and ecological thinker Thomas Berry challenges the modern world's relationship with the Earth, calling for a radically different understanding of humanity's place within the living universe.
View FilmHenry Spira — widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's most effective animal-rights activists — turned moral conviction into practical change. Directed and co-produced by John Swindells; written and co-produced by philosopher Peter Singer.
View FilmAn intimate portrait of a young Melbourne university student living with schizophrenia, made during a period of major reform in Australian mental-health care and designed to take audiences beyond diagnosis into the lived experience of mental illness.
View FilmOlivia Mensah-Kamara — mother of seven, former broadcaster and political prisoner in Sierra Leone — rebuilds a life in Tasmania while two of her brothers remain stranded as refugees in Ghana.
View FilmWriter, philanthropist and cultural figure Barbara Blackman AO reflects on a life of extraordinary highs and lows, creativity, relationships and the search for meaning — never defined by blindness.
View FilmNew documentary and narrative projects are now in development.
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