Detail from Picnic at Hanging Rock sheet music

Australian Film Music

Film Scores and Cinema Soundscapes

From composed scores to pre-existing popular music, this collection focuses on examples of film music from a range of notable Australian features.

It includes music from the early silent and sound periods, big-budget blockbusters, indie films, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories, musicals and animated productions.

The pieces in this collection challenge the notion that effective film scores do not call attention to themselves and operate only as a type of subconscious backdrop.

Instead, we invite you to explore film music as a potentially powerful and manipulative mode of expression, and discover the many shapes and forms that it can take.

WARNING: this collection may contains names, images or voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Main image: Detail from 'The Ascent Music', Picnic at Hanging Rock sheet music, composed by Bruce Smeaton. NFSA: 386239

Ironic use of music in Samson and Deliah

This clip from the film Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton, 2009) demonstrates the multi-dimensional and often ironic power of music in film.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons

A young man with long dark hair and thick rimmed glasses

Shine: The Rach 3

Shine (Scott Hicks, 1996) profiles the formative years of the acclaimed pianist David Helfgott – a child musical prodigy who struggled with mental health.

Picnic at Hanging Rock: Panpipes

Some of the most distinctive examples of Australian film music are the panpipe pieces by the Romanian folk musician Gheorghe Zamfir in Picnic at Hanging Rock.

The Man from Snowy River: Bruce Rowland’s orchestral score

One of the most widely recognised examples of Australian film music is Bruce Rowland’s orchestral score for The Man from Snowy River (George Miller, 1982).

The Piano: Michael Nyman's mesmerising melody

The influential minimalist composer Michael Nyman created the score for Jane Campion's Oscar-winning film, The Piano (1993).

Woman runs down a road in terror holding a child while a motorcycle gang chases her.

Mad Max: Musical Motifs

The Mad Max films include some of the most compelling music on Australian celluloid.

A line of Aboriginal men wielding spears on a grass plain under a sunny blue sky

Didgeridoo in Ten Canoes

Ten Canoes (Rolf de Heer, 2006) follows the story of Dayindi (Jamie Gulpilil), a young Aboriginal warrior, as he wanders the wilderness hunting for eggs.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons

Two men talking close together on the street at night

Head On: Zembekiko dance

Head On (Ana Kokkinos, 1998) tells the story of a 19-year-old Greek Australian youth, Ari (played by Alex Dimitriades), who struggles with his sexual identity and his Greek heritage.

Young Indigenous girl wearing a school uniform

Music creates the narrative in Jedda

In this scene, Jedda (Rosalie Kunoth-Monks) sits and begins to play the piano in a European style.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons

Young Indigenous girl shielding her eyes from the sun.

Rabbit-Proof Fence: Peter Gabriel's score

This is probably the film’s most controversial scene, as well as the most harrowing, partly because it’s different to the way Doris Pilkington Garimara describes her abduction in the book.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons

Guy Pearce with a long flowing silver banner riding on top of a bus in the red desert.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert meets La Traviata

After a drunken night at a pub in Broken Hill, the three drag artists – Mitzi (Hugo Weaving), Felicia (Guy Pearce) and Bernadette (Terence Stamp) – awake to find their bus defaced with a homophobic

WARNING: This clip contains coarse language

Two women dressed as the singers from ABBA

Muriel's Wedding and ABBA

In Muriel's Wedding, the music of ABBA forms the backbone of the soundtrack, functioning as a significant plot device and assisting in characterisation. In this recording from a Q&A at

Scared looking young woman with blood on her face on a roadside

Experimental sound in Wolf Creek

Kristy (Kestie Morassi) has escaped from the camp. She has been tortured and beaten, but she runs, without shoes, until she finds the road.

WARNING: This clip contains human suffering or death

A dishevelled man stands in from of a choir of Salvation Army members at night

Bad Boy Bubby: Binaural Sound Effects

Bubby (Nicholas Hope) has left the room carrying a suitcase that contains the now-dead cat. He follows the sound of singing until he finds a group from the Salvation Army.

The figure of a man in an outback landscape silhouetted against a setting sun

The Proposition's poetic and dark lyrical score

The Proposition contains a poetic and dark lyrical tone, both in its narrative dialogue and also through a highly stylised and painterly audiovisual synthesis.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons

Warren Ellis on composing for The Proposition

Multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis is a member of several musical groups and has also composed film scores with Nick Cave.

Strictly Ballroom: JPY on 'Love Is in the Air'

Singer John Paul Young talks about re-recording 'Love Is in the Air' for the film soundtrack and how Strictly Ballroom revived the hit song.

Head and shoulders portrait of composer David Hirschfelder looking into camera

David Hirschfelder on Strictly Ballroom

Composer David Hirschfelder talks about his work on the film Strictly Ballroom (1992), noting it was one of the most enjoyable professional experiences of his career.

Bran Nue Dae: Film adaptation of the stage musical

This clip introduces Willy (Rocky McKenzie), the lead character; Rosie (Jessica Mauboy), his love interest; Lester (Dan Sultan), his romantic rival; and Willy’s mother Theresa (Ningali Lawford-Wolf

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons

One Night the Moon: Musical signifiers

A lyrical launch into the tale of the lost girl and the story of Albert Riley (known as Tracker Riley), a successful tracker who is denied the chance to find the girl.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons

Musical pastiche in Australia

Nullah (Brandon Walters) thinks 'coppers’ are coming to take him away. The car in the distance is actually bringing Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) to Faraway Downs.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons

A herd of cattle emerging from an outback river in the bush

The Overlanders: A Majestic Score

This is a spectacularly well-handled sequence, made more effective by the fact that we see the actors doing it for real.

Bruce Smeaton composer Picnic at Hanging Rock

Composer Bruce Smeaton on Picnic at Hanging Rock

Composer Bruce Smeaton talks candidly about his musical contribution to Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).

Picnic at Hanging Rock: Ascent Music played by Roger Woodward

This version of the 'Ascent Music’ was recorded by Roger Woodward in 1996 and originally composed by Bruce Smeaton for P

Sydney Harbour at night showing a large cinema screen, lit stage and Opera House.

NFSA Restores: The Sentimental Bloke with live Paul Mac score

In 2019, the NFSA restored one of Australia's most famous films from the silent era, The Sentimental Broke (Raymond Longford, 1919).

Animation image of dancing penguins in the snow

Happy Feet: An animated jukebox musical

Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) has been expelled from the penguin colony. His dancing upsets the elders, but he finds that Adelie penguins have a much more open attitude.

Young boy with black wavy hair and stands against a brilliant blue sky.

The Year My Voice Broke: The Lark Ascending

'The Lark Ascending’ functions as the main musical theme in the coming-of-age film, The Year My Voice Broke (John Duigan, 1987), and features in this trailer for the film.

Magenta coloured image of two men either side of a kneeling woman.

For the Term of His Natural Life: Musical accompaniment

This clip features imagery of the film For the Term of his Natural Life (originally released in 1927, but restored by the NFSA in 1981).

A rough looking man shaves with a large knife while a woman walks past looking shocked

Peter Best's score for Crocodile Dundee

This theme from Peter Best’s score for Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman, 1985) fuses lush, spacious consonances, drawn-out reverberant flute gestures and bedding strings.

Photo of the band Mental As Anything is highly saturated colours

Crocodile Dundee: Live It Up

The wistful and yet danceable song ‘Live it Up’ by Australian band Mental As Anything provides the soundtrack for a very 80s party scene in New York in Crocodile Dundee.

Black and white image of a chorus line of female dancers

The Hayseeds: The Novelty of Sound

Typical Beau Smith direction – there’s absolutely no explanation of what a line of dancing girls is doing on the edge of Dad Hayseed’s land, no establishing shots to give us a sense of the farm, no