"The Scimitar's Arc" is an original poem we wrote about the stark contrast that exists between the majesty and mayhem on the backstreets of Bangladesh. Our filmmaker was given no more clue than the poem itself before leaving for Bangladesh and was left to interpret our words alone. He realised the story on the rubbish tips and rail yards of the sweltering city; capturing life there in all its unique colours.

Like the BBC, the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) is a nationally funded broadcaster that has never ran advertising within its programming. So the challenge for us - when asked to promote its Arts Channel - was simple: how do you advertise a brand whose audience so clearly rejects advertising? The answer was to create art films.

Sleep sound, this heady Bangladesh

Of wheat, white robes and heaven’s rest

Whilst carriages clank in jagged blur

Sweet urchins scour filth with an alley paw

Splashing in puddles, long dry as dead bone

Clambering on castles of another world's waste

Drawing the raw and sickly, sweet stench

Down deep in the marrow of life’s dusky lair

Up high on the roof tops of rumbling ruin

Shouldering the scars of hessian's debt

Trudging the March of blister and sore

The sack-cloth of sorrow still weighty as death

The temple’s deft hum and the throb of the throng

Pushing and poking the flood of new flesh

This is the song they sing without weeping

Darting and dancing over scolding hot tiles

Of burnt, raw Siena and bust-blood-shot stare

The tobacco-brown lens of cardamon’s fancy

There barks the dog-end of a dastardly day

A saddening slant on a badger-black heart

The ripening rot of an empire in mourning

Cut to the quick by a scimitar’s arc