We are pretty lucky here - we have the ABC which is generally pretty good. One series I really like is Australian Story which highlights stories of really interesting Aussies - often total nonconformists:
http://www.abc.net.au/austory/ - if you can't watch the videos it is really worth reading the transcripts if you are low on inspiration. The "Streets with No Names"
http://www.abc.net.au/austory/specials/streetswithnonames/default.htm episode shows what you can do with FI - see below for an interesting exchange on how his change in lifestyle was finally triggered.
We also have SBS - a broadcasting service set up for "special" needs (SBS="Special Broadcasting Service"). This features a lot of indie and foreign language movies and very little c**p (relatively speaking), although it does show ads which ABC does not. A bit like channel 4 in the UK used to be (when I was a youngster still living over there in 1989) and totally unlike anything I have seen in the US, particularly free-to-air.
Extract from "Streets with no Name" transcript:
SCOTT NEESON: The moment I stepped there it was just, it was the single most impactful moment in my life. I was standing there facing into the abyss. The smell’s almost visible - it’s almost tactile. There’s this sudden moment when you realise it’s people - it’s children and they’re working. There were kids everywhere. In some cases, been left there by parents that didn’t want them. They’d be going through the rubbish looking for recyclables, metals, plastic bottles making maybe 25 cents a day. The noise of these garbage trucks... The rubbish there includes everything from hospital garbage to body parts, foetuses, through to industrial waste through to restaurant waste - so kids will be searching through for recyclables as well as food. It really shook me to my, to my very core. You’re face to face with the fact that there’s you and this child, or this family who have no backup plan. It was either me or... I could walk away, just turn my back and pretend I didn’t see it.
...
SCOTT NEESON: I was convinced I’d found my calling, but I’d seen some terrible mid-life crises go down in Hollywood, and so I made myself promise I wouldn’t do anything drastic, anything rash. It was in July 2004 - I was on a business trip, and I made a side trip to Phnom Penh and I was standing on the garbage dump, and my cell phone rang and it was my office in Los Angeles and they patched through the major star of the time and the star’s agent, and they were very angry. They were ready to leave; they had a G5 sitting on the tarmac, but we hadn’t put the right food on board the plane. The star, in this most angry, indignant manner said to me, word for word, said, "My life wasn’t meant to be this difficult" and it was, it was a synthesising moment. Inside of me, it all just came together. If I’d wanted - and I did want - vindication that this was where I was meant to be, if I wanted a moment that would show me just how ludicrous the Hollywood life I had was, there it was.
