APERTURE Festival Director, Dr Erminia Colucci from the Centre for International Mental Health, is getting ready to bring some amazing and confronting films to Melbourne. She tells Annie Rahilly she is involved because she simply loves a good story.

VCA Drama recently staged two edgy contemporary plays rarely staged outside New York. By Kate Mazoudier, with graduating actors from Victorian College of the Arts Rachel Perks and Oliver Coleman.

Zoe Nikakis reports on the forthcoming Wagner and Us conference being organised by the Conservatorium of Music’s musicologists, with guest keynote by Wagner’s great granddaughter, Dagny Beidler. 

The Melbourne Graduate School of Education is researching the challenges of being an artist and a teacher, and offering graduates the chance to maintain their practice through an annual exhibition. By Catriona May.

A new exhibition by Indian artist Gigi Scaria, a former McGeorge Fellow at the University, explores images of a vast, arid, and salty desert. By Katrina Raymond.

Award-winning documentary maker Steve Thomas is filming an independent feature about the many and varied contributions that former asylum-seekers are making to Australian society. He spoke to Alix Bromley about this ambitious project.