AACTA Awards for Australian Feature Films

The Samsung AACTA Awards were held on Tuesday 31st January. Our DVD collection holds a selection of nominees and winners. Today's highlight is Australian Feature Film Awards.
Red Dog - winner of Best Australian Feature Film and AFI Members Choice Award
Oranges and Sunshine - winner of Best Supporting Actor (Hugo Weaving)
Snowtown - winner of Best Direction of an Australian Feature Film; winner of Best Adapted Screenplay; winner of Best Editing; winner of Best Sound; winner of Best Actor (Daniel Henshall); winner of Best Supporting Actress (Louise Harris)
Griff The Invisible - winner of Best Original Screenplay
Legend of the Guardians; The Owl's of Ga'Hoole - winner of Best Visual Effects
Mad Bastards - nominee for Best Feature Film
In my next blog I will highlight award winners for documentaries and television.
Do we have your favourite movie in our collection? Post the title here and tell us about it.

Author Talk: Arwa El Masri at Hurstville City Library

Share an evening with Arwa El Masri whose memoir Tea with Arwa: one woman's story of faith, family and finding a home in Australia has become a bestseller with its focus on how alike we all are, regardless of faith as we seek safety, love and a sense of home. Arwa was born in Saudi Arabia in 1976 and as the child of Palestinian migrants was a stateless person. Just before her 9th birthday her parents came to Australia to give Arwa and her sisters a place to call home. Although it took some time for Arwa to feel at home in Australia and for her to reconcile her Muslim faith with life as a young woman in Western Sydney she became an Australian citizen in 1990. Part of her fascinating story is her courtship and marriage to legendary Rugby League player Hazem El Masri.


Thursday 16 February 2012 @ 7.30pm
Hurstville City Library cnr Queens Rd & Dora St, Hurstville
FREE EVENT
Bookings 9330 6142 or in person at the Information Desk
Copies of Tea with Arwa will be available for sale & signing

Be My Valentine

It's nearly Valentine's Day! Join us at the Museum & Gallery for a fun afternoon of papercrafts and make a handmade card for your Valentine. Participants will take home a handmade card, envelope, and a small woven paper gift basket.

Sunday 12 February 2012
2.30pm - 4.30pm $5 per person
Hurstville City Museum & Gallery
14 MacMahon St, Hurstville

Ages 12 to adult
Refreshments and materials provided, places are limited
Bookings on 9330 6444 or museumgallery@hurstville.nsw.gov.au

Image courtesy Bing Wu

Stock Up! 2012

Start off the National Year of Reading 2012 with some brand new books, CDs and DVDs that will be on show at Hurstville and Penshurst Libraries. Browse, choose and borrow on the day, bring along your library card or join on the spot. Membership is free!
During this special year devoted to celebrating the importance and pleasure of reading, each month will have its own theme. February's is Laugh and there's sure to be something to make you smile or laugh out loud amongst the new stock.
Take the opportunity to meet staff and tell us what you think of the collections and what you'd like to see more of. Find out how to make suggestions, requests and write reviews of your latest read to share with others.
Learn how you can download audio and ebooks from the comfort of your own home and about Freegal where you can download 3 tracks of music per week to keep for free.
Hurstville City Library
cnr Queens Rd & Dora St, Hursville
Tuesday 14 February 11am -9pm

Penshurst Branch Library
630 Forest Rd, Penshurst
Thursday 16 February
10.30am - 1pm, 2pm - 6pm

Apple Starts Selling Interactive IPad Textbooks

Apple Inc. has launched its attempt to make the iPad a replacement for a satchel full of textbooks by starting to sell electronic versions of a handful of standard high-school books. The electronic textbooks, which include "Biology" and "Environmental Science" from Pearson and "Algebra 1" and "Chemistry" from McGraw-Hill, contain videos and other interactive elements.
More..

Rachael

Author Talk: Kim Cheng Boey at Hurstville City Library

Award winning author and poet Kim Cheng Boey will be Hurstville Library's first guest author for 2012 and will share his ideas of home and belonging, and the predicament facing a migrant writer. He will read from his poetry and his recent book Between Stations. Kim Cheng is the author of four collections of poems Somewhere-Bound (1989), Another Place(1992), Days of No Name(1996), After the Fire(2006) and a collection of personal essays entitled Between Stations. These essays focus on his experiences travelling and working in China, India, Egypt and Morocco and transport the reader to particular places and states of mind. Kim Cheng emigrated from Singapore in 1997 and is now an Australian citizen teaching creative writing at the University of Newcastle.

Hurstville City Library
Friday 3 February, 2012
Free event. Bookings 9330 6142

His nostalgia for his childhood home and memories of his father travel with him as he visits places of difference, but there are vivid reminders of pathways previously trodden. His return to Singapore seeks to remind the reader of the, at times, distressing and disturbing effects of change on the itinerant traveller, who upon returning to his home country, finds it vastly different to the traditional memories he has carried with him on his travels. Part of a review for Between Stations on media-culture.org.au

Forget the Super League Wars!

The Museum & Gallery was luck enough to secure PhD candidate Katherine Haines to give a talk on Sunday 4th December on The Story of the NSW Ladies Rugby Football League, 1921. Kath had visitors enthralled with her story of the historic match between the Metropolitan Blues and the Sydney Reds, and the efforts of these women to begin their own rugby league competition. Though the NSW Rugby League was initially supportive, the politics of the ensuing debate was enough to rival that of any of the issues in the contemporary NRL. Thanks to Kath for volunteering her time give this fascinating presentation! You can read more about Kath's research here.