Preceded by short:
Doos and Don'ts.

Feisty and strong willed, Australian composer Anne Boyd is a more–than–full–time professor and chair of the music department at the publicly funded University of Sydney. As budget cuts multiply, salaries decrease, and workloads and stress increase, Boyd must negotiate, for herself and her department, strategies of survival in an institutional environment of constant crisis. Facing the Music follows Boyd through a full academic year as she juggles teaching, fundraising, mentoring, staff upheavals, and her own increasingly vocal political stance in this emotional portrait of a prestigious, committed music department on the brink of financial collapse. Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, known primarily for their incisive documentaries shot in the New Guinea highlands (First Contact, Black Harvest), here do a remarkable job of honing their observational skills on urban academia in crisis, as experienced from the inside.

Doos and Don'ts (Johan Eriksson, Scotland, 2000). An intriguing look at a group of Scottish men, their pigeons, and the cutthroat sport they practice on the outskirts of Glasgow.-IL (14 mins, Video, From The National Film and Television School)