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Featured Film
Beautiful Sunshine
Aged, Community, Education, Environment, Health & Wellbeing, History, Human Rights, Indigenous, Rural, Social Justice, Youth
We follow Melbourne based musician Allara Briggs Pattison, a young Yorta Yorta woman, on her journey to reconnect with her family and culture. Allara feels disconnected from her family and wants to reconnect and dedicate time to learning her culture and responsibilities as an Aboriginal woman. It becomes clear to Allara that a trickle down effect has consequently left Allara physically and emotionally disconnected with her Aboriginal identity. Along her journey, Allara learns of her family’s ongoing fight for recognition as the Traditional Owners of southern New South Wales and northern Victoria. After reconnecting with her family and spending time on Country, Allara returns to Melbourne to unravel the events of the Native Title case. She meets with solicitor, Peter Seidel, the representative for the Yorta Yorta Native Title Claim, who reveals the unjust result that hinged on a ‘Frozen in time view of Aboriginality’. She challenges this perception and decides to meet with other family members to challenge the hypothesis that someone cannot be Yorta Yorta if they do not live a traditional way of life. Ignited by her passion, Allara begins working at the State Library Victoria as the Koori Research Officer. Through her position, she teaches others how to take initiative to connect with their own family and cultural archives using library research tools. However, she also reflects on government initiatives such as the Bunjilaka Centre at the Melbourne Museum, where her grandfather features in a looped video and evaluates how additional government resources could be used to urgently enhance the preservation of Aboriginal culture and heritage. Meanwhile, her family encourages her to reopen the Native Title Claim again, to which she feels compelled. Allara finds herself immersed in protests to stop changes to the Native Title Act that would weaken the Act and the voices of Traditional Owners. She consults Peter Seidel again, who believes that the Native Title Act has the potential to be an effective Act if it were designed in a way to favour Traditional Owners. Realising that her time may be wasted until a system is put in place to protect Indigenous peoples, the activist decides her life will not be defined by the negative Native Title ruling, she will not reopen the Native Title Claim and will instead continue to focus her energy on establishing her career as a powerful musician and fundamentally, a Yorta Yorta woman who wants to continue strengthening the bonds between her family, culture and Country as that’s all there is in the end. Featuring: Allara Briggs Pattison Uncle Don Briggs Aunty Sue Briggs Uncle John Briggs Peter Seidel Belinda Briggs Suzie Russell Marinda Pattison Uncle Alf Turner (Uncle Boydie)
Featured Film
Red Dust Dreams - the Documentary
Aged, Arts, Community, Education, Environment, Health & Wellbeing, History, Indigenous, Rural, Social Justice, Sport/Adventure, Welfare, Youth
There are several aims for our documentary, ‘Red Dust Dreams – the Documentary’. One of these is to try to help bridge the country-city divide that is still so evident throughout Australia; another is to have a look ‘behind the scenes’ - taking a look at the little-known about domestic side of life on some of our pastoral stations. We also want to showcase some of our spectacular scenery which is unique to our outback. To help preserve and record history both on the stations, between them and in some of the outback towns. Many of our pastoral stations have had to turn to tourism or other forms of business in order to be able to remain where they live. We are trying to feature these businesses and provide these people with extra exposure. As well as some of those in outback towns. We plan for the four parts of our documentary to include both well known tourist attractions throughout the outback as well as those that are not so well known - but should be. Highlighting things out there – trying to show tourists there is a lot that our outback has to offer as well as the lusher areas of our nation. Education is one of the aspects we are trying to involve through the book and documentary (we have permission to film a station class in action – including School of the Air/Distance Education), as well as from the base end (filming the teachers in action as well as a couple of interviews), the purpose being, again, to show how our remote education system actually works. Other aspects we are including are employment, entertainment, transport, distances travelled – for anything, holidays (what holidays?). Also infrastructure, mail, shopping, fuel, power, health (and the Royal Flying Doctor Service), communication, the advent of the internet and social media, the Indigenous aspect and more. We are also trying to coincide our travels with some of the outback’s events – one being the Big Red Bash at Birdsville. We do have permission to film interviews with some of the entertainers (some of Australia’s best vocalists) as well as the founder of the event and the owners of the station on which the event is held. Also the Marree Camel Races. Another essential part of our documentary – and the entire ‘Red Dust Dreams’ project is a ‘warning’ to anyone who plans to travel out there – do their homework. Research. Prepare, prepare, prepare. Explaining how unforgiving the outback can be, but just a bit of preparation and research can help to make it one of the best – and safest - holidays a person can have. We do have a Risk Management Plan in place. The first trip of our documentary has already taken place (self-funded) and we filmed an interview with an amazing character in Newman. This is something we plan to do throughout, with people who want to join in. Film some yarns, a bit of fun. We do plan to donate a percentage of whatever profits we might eventually make to several organisations relating to the outback.
Featured Film
Earth Cry - A Profile of Peter Sculthorpe
Arts, Education, Environment, History, Human Rights, Indigenous, Rural, Social Justice
The film explores the remarkable life of the greatest living Australian composer, Peter Sculthorpe. At 85 Sculthorpe is a true legend in Australia – not simply because of the extraordinary range of the music he has written, but because he has been centre stage in Australia’s cultural life for over sixty years. In fact, the story he tells through his music, and the story we will examine in the film, is the story of Australia since the Second World War – the shift politically from being European oriented and still part of the British Empire, to being focused now on the ‘empires’ to the north – of Japan and China, Asia, Bali, Indonesia and Malaysia.\n\nSculthorpe’s understanding of landscape and environment, frequently being laid to waste by unthinking societies, how global warming is causing havoc to Australia’s ecology, and his relentless campaigning against the desecration of indigenous culture by successive Australian governments, mark Sculthorpe out as being of crucial significance in understanding Australia as it is today. Sculthorpe though his music has provided eloquent testimony, both as witness and as a warning, about the world he inhabits. “Ritual mourning for the plight of the land,” was how one critic described one of Sculthorpe’s most significant works, Earth Cry, which is also the title of our film.\n\nThe backbone of the film will be an extended interview with Sculthorpe himself, not merely biographical but ranging over his social and political concerns about Australian society today, illustrated by substantial examples of his music specially performed for the film. Principal among these will be Kakadu, a large orchestral work describing the exotic wilderness that is Northern Australia. Also Momento Mori, inspired by a visit to Easter Island with its enormous, brooding, enigmatic stone heads, which themselves represent both the indomitable nature of the human spirit, while at the same time being part of its greatest folly. In the creating of them, the land was deforested and impoverished. The Piano Concerto, one of his major works, especially the long elegiac 2nd movement with its hints of Japan and Indonesia, is both brutal in its melancholy, and yet unforgettable in its opulent bleakness.\n\nThis 120 minute film will the first full length international portrait of Peter Sculthorpe, a powerful prophet for Australia - a land whose history and culture and environment remains as yet unknown to most non-Australians.