This film follows historian Professor Jenny Hocking as she fights a David and Goliath battle against the Australian Government and the British Royal Family in a landmark legal action. At stake is whether letters between former Governor General Sir John Kerr and HM Queen Elizabeth, written at the time of the constitutional crisis of 1975, are deemed private correspondence and therefore remain closed, or official documents that should be accessible to the Australian people. Running for more than four years, the Palace Letters Case was ultimately successful and opened the secret archives on the Palaces role in the unprecedented dismissal of the Whitlam Government. This documentary follows the personal struggle and immense legal battle faced by Hocking as she goes all the way to the High Court of Australia, the highest court in the land, in her bid to uncover the last piece of the extraordinary jigsaw that is the 1975 dismissal. She is motivated throughout by her determination that the Australian people have the right to know their own history.
Daryl Dellora is a film producer, director, writer and author. His most recent work is the documentary portrait of multi award-winning Australian architect Harry Seidler, Harry Seidler: Modernist (ABC-TV 2016). He was an executive producer on Film Art Media’s box office and critical triumph The Dressmaker (2015) and co-producer and executive producer on feature documentaries Hunt Angels and Celebrity. He is a published author and his most recent book Jørn Utzon and the Sydney Opera House (Penguin 2014) sold into two reprints. His first book Michael Kirby: Law, Love & Life (Penguin 2012) is an intimate portrait of the former High Court Judge and great Australian human rights advocate.
Daryl Dellora has been making documentaries for many years. He formed Film Art Doco Pty Ltd in 1987 and Sue Maslin joined as Producer soon after. Together they founded their production, distribution and rights company Film Art Media Pty Ltd in 2008. He is an award-winning writer and director and he executive produced, co-wrote and directed his first feature length film, Against The Innocent, in 1988. Daryl has been a recipient of an AFC Documentary Fellowship and in 1991 his Mr. Neal Is Entitled to be an Agitator won the Australian Human Rights Award.
In 2005 Daryl was accepted to the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation study centre in Bellagio. He co-produced the feature Hunt Angels (2006) and has worked closely with producer Sue Maslin on a raft of documentary films including Michael Kirby: Don’t Forget the Justice Bit; The Edge of The Possible; A Mirror to the People; Conspiracy; The Highest Court and Koories and Cops.
Daryl’s films have screened and sold all over the world including in South East Asia, US, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
