[Photo: Con Colleano in The Colleano Heart]
The 85-minute documentary film The Colleano Heart premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2025. It traces the career of an Aboriginal circus family, the Colleano family, and draws attention to the influence of identity, place, accidents, luck, imagination and persistence in our lives. “This film will stun you” wrote Lenny Ann Low in her review of the film (The Colleano Heart review: An Aboriginal circus act loved by Hitler? This new doco will stun you)
The Colleano Heart is now available at SBS on Demand.
It is of special interest to the PAHN committee because our Treasurer, Mark St Leon, was deeply involved with the production of the film as its originator, an archival resource, the historical consultant and an investor. The life and career of the most famous of the Colleano family – the tightwire artiste, Con Colleano, – “The Wizard of the Wire” – has already been celebrated on the pages of Mark’s Australian circus history books. A short biography of Con Colleano is available on Mark’s website, The Penny Gaff (Colleano, Con – PennyGaff)
PAHN’s next annual conference, to be held in Sydney later in 2026, will include a session on the theme “Making History” where Mark will outline the luck, challenges, obstacles, misfortune, fortitude and serendipity involved – over some 40 years – in getting The Colleano Heart onto the big screen. Mark will be joined by others on making histories through exhibitions, websites, publications, films and oral histories. We will publish more details in the coming months.
Paul Bentley
Performing Arts Heritage Network 