"Old man Wiggan said, 'I know who you are. I've got songs and stories for you.' So here I am wanting to do someone else's story and he's got these songs and dances that haven't been performed for 50 years that we thought we'd lost," Ozies says. He and his family's production company Wawili Pitchas had been commissioned by NITV and Screen Australia to make a short documentary for an ambitious series on the Indigenous songlines which sweep the length and breadth of the land. The result is Footprints, a poignant introduction to the songlines lying beneath all Australians' feet. Ozies describes songlines as a library of information, a road map and a Bible, all at once. "They all interweave," he says. Songlines have long held a poetic, romantic fascination for non-Aboriginal people. The stories seem too grand to be contained on a page. Their scope is so breathtaking, it is as if English cannot describe them and they must be seen and heard, performed on country, to be understood. The names of the most famous are alluring: The Seven Sisters or The Rainbow Serpent. Some songlines criss-cross the continent and loop back on themselves, each chapter of their narrative connected to a sacred rock, waterhole or other geographic feature. Some are small and teach about local features and the cycle of the seasons. They are maps and instructional manuals, with rules and recipes for survival. They also embody Indigenous art, law and religious belief.

Footprints, to be screened on Sunday, June 12, ushers in eight short films which NITV channel manager, Tanya Denning-Orman says is the first Songlines series ever televised. Local film-makers and cultural custodians from the Kimberley to Arnhem Land have made the land itself the beautiful star of each show and brought the stories up-close. "I describe this as a gift to the community… All Australians were deprived of being educated about the culture and belonging to the land. What the songlines teach you is the connection you have to the country in this land," Denning-Orman says. When Ozies sought to document his family's ancient songlines, his role extended way beyond that of director. He found himself coming out from behind the camera to learn Djugun law, alongside his nephews, cousins and uncles, who were stunned to receive knowledge they thought doomed to oblivion since early missionaries banned use of languages, lawmen were incarcerated and elders had died. "Roy had seven or eight songs from our tribe and particular artefacts that you have to have that you dance with…We sat with him for months learning these dances and making these artefacts and learning from him," Ozies says.

Much of what they were taught about their songlines was deep, secret knowledge, including men's initiation business. "It was painful sometimes because we would learn this dance and I'm formulating how we're going to shoot this particular dance and we're practising this dance and then Roy says – 'Oh no, you can't show this one'," Ozies says. "You're thinking, 'Oh, this is going to be awesome', because it's this spectacular dance and he says, 'No, no, this one's for you, but it's not allowed to be shown publicly.' Then it's like – aw, if only I could show it." Finally, Wiggan taught them a dance which could be filmed on a beach near Broome and shown to the Australian public. It is part of a long songline about a Creation ancestor's journey to the Northern Territory and back. With the wet season pressing in, the Djugun men had just two weeks to learn the moves and make the documentary while carving pearl shells, rustling up feathers from an emu farm in Perth and procuring white ochre from the interior.

There is a sense of intimacy by the end, when the men dance to the haunting rhythm of clapstick and song, white paint and luminescent pearl shells shimmering on their bodies, as the red sun sinks behind them into the sea. The film demonstrates that in Indigenous belief, the songs are dormant in the land and waken when the right people use the right ceremony. Songline custodians, Roy Wiggan and Brian Bin Saaban speak of "bringing this out from the dirt". In Goorrandalng: Brolga Dreaming, shot at Keep River National Park in the Northern Territory, director Ju Ju Wilson says: "It's the spirit of the country that gives people songs …The children are lost without the country. The country is lost without the children." This documentary shows 95-year-old Granny Sheba Dignari singing and teaching women and children stories near a spring so sacred to female fertility that in the past, men who used to pass the gap behind which it is hidden would cover their faces . "We talk about the law of law and not the law of men," says senior Yolngu songman of north-east Arnhem land Keith Lapulung Dhamarrandji, who has translated the epic journey of a great warrior ancestor Wurray to screen for the first time. In just 12 minutes, it takes viewers through a story with a scope equivalent to the Odyssey. The hero is followed by a crow spirit, speaks in strange tongues and discovers the water of life.

Dhamarrandji sees the Yolngu's intellectual property as being lodged within the land itself through the songlines handed down by their ancestors. To him, film is just another ingredient – like body paint or song – to convey the story and the law. "It's something coming from the culture. It's different to screening Peter Pan and Wendy … we have to be careful that it is culturally appropriate to do," he says. According to Denning-Orman, NITV gets emotional feedback "almost daily" from people moved by learning about Indigenous lives from the screen, because they grow up loving, living and breathing Australia's beauty without knowing its full story and the way Aboriginal experiences have shaped theirs. "Many Australians don't realise how black they are. Their language, their connection … The elders know this is an Australian audience. They want you to connect and understand and know where it is coming from. They wouldn't have given the stories, otherwise," she says. Through the searing impact of colonisation on indigenous life, many songlines are endangered.

Ozies and his family were only able to reclaim some of theirs because when Wiggan married a Djugun woman, the old men taught him, hoping he would one day find someone suitable to pass them on to. But against the odds, remnants of songlines have survived in even the most surprising places, including the longest-colonised. "Sydney has amazing songlines. Culture is still being practised. It's not just a northern Australian thing," Denning-Orman says. WHAT Songlines on Screen WHEN NITV, Sunday, 8.30pm