The largest leisure and shopping complex in Europe, the Metro Centre in Tynemouth, and its creator John Hall.
Rod O'Hara bought Bellingen Video Connection in 2018 when video stores were already considered to be on the way out – if not already dead. Now, years later, against all the odds, and after facing many personal setbacks, Rod and the local community have kept this iconic local business and bastion for lovers of television, film and screen culture alive - but for how long?
When is the moment you think: I'm going to hoist my regional flag? Who are these flaghoisters? And what does it mean to identify with your region? These are questions that filmmaker Okki Poortvliet, theatermaker Hans van der Werf and designer Vera Vos asked. So, they went through the whole of Drenthe, a region in the North of The Netherlands where all three of them grew up, to collect as many stories as possible from hoisters of the flag of Drenthe. The Flaghoisters is a film about the confrontation between the countryside and, as people from Drenthe call it, “the city dwellers”. A story about a disappearing language, the safety of your village, greeting each other, being proud, and just acting "normal".
By the 1970s the global counter-culture movement had well and truly reached Australia, seeing young, educated hippies from well-to-do families moving to the Bellingen region to live an alternate lifestyle. Back then, Bellingen was a rundown, quiet country town with business in decline. Then, new ideas, new ways of living and a new status quo began to take control. What some called an influx of hippies, others called an invasion on the conservative lifestyle of farmers, causing a clash of ideals. Compiling countless hours of 8mm footage and historical photos, retired journo Peter Geddes and filmmaker Peter Gailley paint the historical landscape of how modern Bellingen came to be, following the cultural movement that eventually became the backbone of Bellingen’s identity.