LOADING
Directed by Various | 81 minutes | Unrated |
11:30am Sunday, 17 May | Balam Balam Place - Cinema 2 | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes
Six shorts; six First Nations filmmakers; a mosaic of remarkable stories made by, for and about Mob, celebrating its 30th anniversary.
In 1993 - the same year that Mabo’s Native Title Act was passed - six Indigenous storytellers got funding from the Australian Film Commission’s brand new Indigenous branch (took em long enough). What emerged was this fierce, faceted anthology: featuring the first works from talents like Warwick Thornton (Samson & Delilah) and Darlene Johnson (Stolen Generations).
Police brutality is “the storm that rages around us” in Frankland’s No Way to Forget, which would screen in the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes in 1996. Sally Riley’s Fly Peewee, Fly! captures a young boy’s escape into nature. Round Up by Rima Tamou shows the aftermath of a fistfight between two stockmen. A fair-skinned Koori girl yearns for acceptance at the public pool in Darlene Johnson’s Two Bob Mermaid. Warwick Thornton’s directorial debut Payback compares prison time and an older, tribal form of punishment. And death is not the end in Bill Crow’s experimental Black Man Down.
Screens with a prerecorded interview with Round Up director Rima Tamou and producer Pauline Clague.
OVERALL RUNTIME: 81 mins
SIMILAR: Small Axe, We Are Still Here, Babakiueria, Shifting Sands, Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
“When I watched those…short films that inspired the heck outta me. I just went, 'wow'. My stories were on screen. I just went, I could finally relate to something.” - Wayne Blair, SMH
“It’s possible to draw direct lines from the Sand to Celluloid program (and its two subsequent sequels) to the phenomenal international success of Indigenous short filmmakers, which in 2005, saw three Indigenous-made shorts screened in competition at Sundance” - Rochelle Siemienowicz, Kill Your Darlings
CONTENT WARNING: Re: Black Man Down: In this film, there is a dream seguence which displays the use of a bull-roarer. Some indigenous communites may be sensitive to the display of this men's initiation tool. In some Indigenous communities, women and unitiated men are not permitted to view or hear this object. No offence is intended by the fimmaker.
Country: Australia
Year: 1996
Language: English