1980 Australian Film Institute Awards
Australian film awards ceremony in 1980
The 22nd Australian Film Institute Awards ceremony, presented by the Australian Film Institute (AFI), honoured the best Australian feature films of 1980, and took place on 17 September 1980 at Regent Theatre, in Sydney, New South Wales. The ceremony was hosted by Graham Kennedy and televised in Australia on ABC.
Breaker Morant was nominated for thirteen awards and won ten, in all categories it was nominated for, including Best Film and Best Direction for Bruce Beresford. Other winners with two were Hard Knocks, and Manganinnie and ...Maybe This Time with one.
When the Australian Film Institute established the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) in 2011, the awards became known as the AACTA Awards.
Winners and nominees
The nominees were announced on 29 August 1980. Breaker Morant received 13 nominations across ten feature film award categories, winning all ten categories it was nominated for including: Best Film, Best Direction for Bruce Beresford, Best Actor for Jack Thompson, Best Supporting Actor for Bryan Brown and Best Screenplay for Jonathan Hardy, David Stevens, Bruce Beresford. Stir received ten nominations in the same categories but walked away with none. The only other winners in the feature film categories was Tracy Mann for Best Actress, for Hard Knocks; Jury Prize for Hard Knocks; Jill Perryman for Best Supporting Actress, for ...Maybe This Time; and Peter Sculthorpe for Best Original Music Score, for Manganinnie.
Non-feature films were awarded with a prize at the awards, but are considered the best in their categories by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA). Although Bird of the Thunder Woman is considered the winner of the Best Cinematography – Documentary category, it was the recipient of a "silver prize" at the awards, while No Such a Place, also a finalist in the category, was presented with a "bronze prize".
“1980 Australian Film Institute Awards” enters the record as australian film awards ceremony in 1980. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Australian, Film and Institute can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“1980 Australian Film Institute Awards” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Australian, Film and Institute provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4579167. The first chronological checks are 1980 and 2011.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “1980 Australian Film Institute Awards”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 1980 Australian Film Institute Awards primary sources, 1980 Australian Film Institute Awards archive and Australian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1980 Australian Film Institute Awards”?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “1980 Australian Film Institute Awards” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.