Documentary Australia Foundation | Film Screenings | Undermined

Featured Film

Storykeepers Arts, Community, Education, Environment, Health & Wellbeing, Human Rights, Indigenous, Social Justice, Youth Storykeepers is a celebration of an extraordinary individual, Boori Monty Pryor, who throughout his life has risen against the odds to become a celebrated author and storyteller. Growing up as an Aboriginal kid, dodging the cops in Townsville, Boori was asked by a school teacher what he wanted to do when he grew up; ‘stay alive’ was his response. When his brother Paul chose to take his own life, Boori cast aside his own deep anguish, and took on the work his brother had started as a cultural storyteller, performer and teacher.Three decades later Boori has worked with more than a million children in classrooms all over the country and written a bunch of award winning books. His books, including the biography Maybe Tomorrow, have moved the hardest of hearts, and wherever he goes Boori meets his audiences with humour, love and inclusivity. Storykeepers goes on the road with Boori to see him at work and play, performing in front of thousands of people around Australia. Spiraling deeply into the stories and sharing the heartbreak, love and humour that sit behind them, Storykeepers takes viewers into the heart of the man and the heart of the country, in new and groundbreaking ways.In watching Boori share his stories we are constantly asking what it means to be Australian. As Director Hayden Layton observes, “As a white young man, I was surprised to find we have such a large wealth of beauty to be proud of, so much waiting for us all to love, celebrate and to be proud of in this country’s culture. Where were was this when I was growing up?”With unfettered access to Boori, his family, the schools he visits and the people he works with, Storykeepers is able to delve deeply into the stories and their source. We hear about the barefoot kid with seven sisters who grew up in the mangroves and we see the man that he has become – a multi award winning author and storyteller. We see also the profound impact the stories have on audiences of young and old alike, we see the hunger for people to connect experience and culture through story and Boori’s extraordinary ability to facilitate this.While Storykeepers explores concepts that are often highly politicised and can be confronting, we endeavour to approach a conversation on our national Identity in a open and inclusive way. Rather than constructing a traditional didactic piece with many talking heads, this documentary will be playful, energetic and creative.It will move through time, space and form mixing up fly-on-the-wall accounts and intimate reflections artfully spliced with interviews and 20 years of writing and spoken word poetry alongside animated and live action sequences. It will appeal to a broad audience and spark a desire in people creatively embrace a new identity. We hope to this documentary will start conversations between the young and the old, the recently arrived and the people who’ve lived here for over 40 thousand years.

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